PSA and RMM platform giant Kaseya will be welcoming MSP and enterprise customers to its Kaseya Connect event this week in Las Vegas, where CEO Fred Voccola will make what the company has teased as a huge announcement. The MSP social media community has been abuzz about what that might possibly be – an acquisition that’s bigger than the Datto deal? A product announcement? Improvements to the company’s recent billing issues? Better contract and licensing terms that don’t require a three-year commitment?
The answer to that big question is still unknown, even as theories spawn new variants faster than COVID-19. But ChannelE2E will be at Kaseya Connect, bringing you the news when it breaks.
What we do know now is that, like every other technology company out there, Kaseya is planning to make a series of announcements around artificial intelligence and automation. Is 2024 the year of cybersecurity for MSPs, or is it the year of AI and automation? ChannelE2E believes that all vendors will make major announcements and strides in both these important areas this year.
Here's what we know about what Kaseya will be announcing at the Kaseya Connect event at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas this week.
The IT Glue Piece of Automation and AI
IT Glue was founded in 2013 as a document management company and acquired by Kaseya in 2018. It’s a platform that helps MSPs centralize and standardize document management. Kaseya’s Nadir Merchant, the GM of IT Glue who is also responsible for the IT operations suite at Kaseya, told ChannelE2E that MSPs can expect news about AI and automation.
IT Glue serves as the connector (yes, glue) between three different categories of knowledge management in IT documentation – asset management, password management, and documentation of standard operating procedures (SOPs). When a technician is working with one of these types of information, it’s likely they’ll also need information from the other two, so it makes sense to have a platform like IT Glue that integrates it all.
“We are going to be launching the first set of intelligence features for IT Glue at our Connect event,” Merchant told ChannelE2E. “We’ve got a huge slew of additional capabilities that we’ll be launching in this theme over the course of the rest of this year, and also for the majority of next year as well, that will permeate both IT Glue, PSA, and also other offerings as well.”
IT Glue: Looking at How Technicians Interact with Data
Looking more closely at the plan, Kaseya will be looking at technicians’ behavioral data – for instance, if a technician looks at a password, what does the technician usually do next? Are there other relevant documents that the technician need that automation could surface for the technician?
Kaseya is creating this functionality by training its own algorithms using the company’s archive of data about how technicians interact with the platforms.
Automation and AI can also help with updating outdated documentation. When performed manually, such updates are a time-consuming and tedious process – one that may drop to the bottom of a technician’s to-do list and off the bottom of the list if they are too busy.
“Imagine you have a documentation platform with 10,000 documents sprawled all over the place,” Merchant said. “Going through and curating that is very challenging because one human can’t make the judgement call for every piece of information.”
Once the judgements are made, documents can be archived, made more visible or flagged for updates.
These announcements will build on Kaseya’s automation and AI announcements last year under the product name Cooper Intelligence Engine (named for the CEO’s dog, Cooper).
More AI and Automation Announcements at Kaseya Connect
Merchant said that MSPs can expect some announcements this week around AI and automation in Kaseya’s PSA tool to help technicians become more efficient as they go through the ticketing process.
“How do we better leverage the information inside the ticketing system to help technicians? Because very often there’s tomes and tomes of insights buried in ticket notes. We are looking at how we can utilize AI there, and then also how we can help our MSP customers sell more effectively using different AI technologies.”
Kaseya and Microsoft Copilot?
Merchant said Kaseya has no plans to integrate with Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI assistant in its office suite. However, he said Kaseya is definitely looking at Copilot and also at ChatGPT.
How are MSPs using AI today? How do they want to use AI?
“MSPs are interested in how AI can help them be more effective, but I’m not seeing a lot of practical expectations around what they can do,” Merchant said. “People aren’t coming to us and saying ‘I want to use AI for this specific thing or can you deliver an AI solution that does this specific thing.’ They are largely expecting us to innovate on their behalf.”
