Channel Chief
“We plan to launch SaaS model in March 2010”
 Kaseya is planning to appoint more managed service providers (MSP) in the country. Girish Krishnamurthy, MD, Kaseya India spoke to S Ramdas about the agenda for future
Why should systems integrators and service providers opt for automated managed service?
Recently, we conducted a study using our partners and service providers (SPs) base in India. According to the study, for every desktop, a service provider handles about 10 support calls in an annual maintenance contract (AMC). For a server, the number is around 15.
In most cases, the problem is largely user or software-related such as missing patches. Some issues are more trivial. Yet, it’s important for a customer support engineer to go and visit the client’s premises. For a support contract worth Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500, this translates as weak business. In fact, many service providers are struggling to manage their business model.
By using automated managed services, an engineer can either be proactive and prevent issues from cropping up or fix them remotely after an incident has been reported.
But what about the extra costs on licensing software?
Considering the spiraling travel costs, savings that an SP can make by cutting down on just engineer visits is huge. By using able software like Kaseya’s, an SP can not only assign engineers to attend to graver incidents that definitely require manual presence but also ensure that they reach customer’s place with complete knowledge of the problem.
Kaseya follows a perpetual licensing model, which means as customer contracts get over an SP can deploy the license on another set of PCs. The licensing costs for our products are a fraction of AMC charges that a customer pays a partner. For a partner supporting 1,000 desktops, it could be as cheap as Rs 15 to Rs 20 a month per desktop—roughly 10 percent of an AMC contract.
What are the biggest challenges faced by Indian SPs addressing IT infrastructure market?
The costs are spiraling—be it people or infrastructure. The cost per support call has doubled over the past five years. So, even large SPs are facing major cash flow problems.
Kaseya can help SPs by reducing the operational costs and increasing profitability. Our idea of offering a monthly pay-as-you-go licensing model can aid SPs further.
In India, what has been Kaseya’s progress so far?
We have spent most of last two years selling the concept of automated managed services to Indian SPs, systems integrators and even large customers. The buy in has been slow but the acceptance is pretty good so far.
Today, eight out of the top 25 SPs in the country have aligned with us. Over 40 of the top 250 service providers are using our platform to service their customers. By next quarter, we expect 15 SPs from the top 25 list to move to Kaseya’s automated managed services.
Already, India is the second largest market for Kaseya with over 6,00,000 licenses sold, which is more than 10 percent of our global market. We have been pricing our licenses in India at much lesser as compared to other markets.
Your software licensing model mostly benefits the large SPs. But about 80 percent of Indian SPs support less than 1,000 desktops. What are your plans for them?
We plan to launch Software as a Service (SaaS) model in March 2010. This will help the smallest SP supporting a couple of desktop to use Kaseya platform. Post March, many such partners can start off on Kaseya platform with nearly zero investment.
What about IT organizations in large enterprises?
Among large enterprises, there are several user segments that prefer to buy licences but support their users themselves. Several of large customers that use our software also have competent internal teams.
In the government sector, there are various segments which do not allow third-party services providers to manage their networks owing to policy regulation. For example, policy states that Defense can’t outsource remote infrastructure management. To address such customers, we are planning to appoint 20 software resellers by January 10, 2010.
Large enterprise vendors like IBM, HP and CA are also planning to target SPs with their automated managed services. How do you plan to tackle the competition?
We welcome the competition. For the past two years 90 percent of our efforts and resources were spent in creating awareness. With a few more vendors joining in the fray, we will make enough noise to attract the attention of SPs and customers who are yet to move to MSP model.
Kaseya has made significant investments in India to address this space, and we expect more SPs to opt for our automated managed services. |