MSP Shocker: Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola Steps Aside, Search For New Leader Underway

‘He was the face and the voice of Kaseya. When he was speaking, the company was speaking,’ says Mark Essayian, president of Kaseya partner KME Systems.

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola, the hard-charging leader who over the past decade has built the company into the dominant MSP platform, is stepping down in an unexpected move that shocked Kaseya partners.

The move comes more than 10 years after Voccola took the helm of the Miami-based IT service management provider and has since become the face of the company.

“He was the face and the voice of Kaseya,” said Mark Essayian, president of Irvine, Calif.-based KME Systems, a Kaseya partner. “When he was speaking, the company was speaking.”

Essayian believes Voccola was innovative and did a good job running the company, otherwise “private equity wouldn’t have supported him,” he said.

Marc Menzies, president and CTO of New York-based MSP Overview Technology Solutions, echoed Essayian’s sentiment.

“He was very visible and always talking to the community,” Menzies told CRN. “It may not have always been what the community wanted to hear, but he was talking to the community.”

Voccola, who is one of the company's largest shareholders, will remain on Kaseya’s board as vice chairman, Kaseya said Thursday in a statement.

“With Kaseya coming off the strongest quarter and year in our history, now is the right time for me to step up into the role of vice chairman and hand over operating responsibilities to a new CEO,” Voccola said in the statement. “It has been the honor of my professional life to lead Kaseya and work alongside the talented team that has driven our success.”

CRN has reached out to Kaseya for additional comment.

Kevin Thompson, Kaseya board member and executive chairman and CEO of Austin, Texas-based vendor Tricentis, will be assisting the Kaseya leadership team in operating the company as the search for a new CEO commences, according to the statement. Thompson previously was the CEO of SolarWinds for about 15 years.

“Kaseya’s future is incredibly bright, and I’m excited to work with Fred and the board to identify a new leader who will guide the company through this transformative period,” Thompson said in the statement.

Voccola will focus on long-term innovation and strategy while helping the board look for a new CEO as it lays the foundation for a potential public offering.

Under Voccola’s watch, the company has grown from a single-product vendor into a platform provider with more than $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue.

In the last year the company has also strengthened its C-suite with the additions of a new CFO, CMO and chief human resources officer, as well as several key internal leaders.

Kaseya’s Transformation Under Voccola

In the last decade the outspoken Voccola has led the company through a dramatic transformation that has seen the MSP software maker leapfrog its competition through billions spent on acquisitions, a revamped go-to-market and a hard-nosed sales strategy that gained admirers as well as detractors.

Voccola had a knack for finding and buying tools that MSPs leveraged to expand their suite of services and drive more profit. The biggest game-changer came in 2022 when he won a bidding war with IT service management rival ConnectWise to buy Datto in a $6 billion deal, bringing a strong portfolio of secure backup offerings into the Kaseya fold.

In 2018 Kaseya acquired IT Glue, a documentation platform that gave MSPs an easy, safe way to store their customers’ credentials. IT Glue made the company’s PSA platform a stickier tool for MSPs and enticed new customers to buy more Kaseya offerings.

Last year Kaseya debuted its Kaseya 365 product, which bundled its entire suite of MSP offerings under a single price tag. Voccola has said the launch represented an “over $14 billion investment to deliver this platform.”

But there have been several bumps for Voccola along the way. In 2021, Kaseya offerings were used as a vector in one of the largest ransomware attacks yet on MSPs and their customers. Fallout from that attack led some to sue the company over its security practices.

The integration of Datto into Kaseya also came with strife as Voccola ruffled feathers when it became apparent that the two companies had built starkly different corporate cultures.

Menzies said a lot of the more recent moves Kaseya has been making have been very positive as they have taken partner feedback into account.

“They’ve done it better than most in terms of how platforms were all linked together,” Menzies said.

Henry Timm, president of Rolling Prairie, Ind.-based MSP Phantom Technology Solutions, said this could be a “very positive move for Kaseya depending on who they decide to put in his place.”

“I think this gives Kaseya a chance to reset and potentially re-evaluate the relationship with the channel at large,” he said.

As to what he thinks will happen next, he said it’s a wait-and-see game.

“This definitely shakes things up and has a potential to, but I think it will largely depend on what actions the new CEO will take,” he said.

Kaseya’s leadership change comes at a pivotal moment in the MSP market.

In September, Jason Magee, CEO of ConnectWise, stepped aside and was replaced by Manny Rivelo, a security and networking leader who has promised to deliver a brand-new end-to-end solution for MSPs to run their business, called Asio.

Kaseya is also dogged by newer, smaller competitors such as HaloPSA, NinjaOne, Syncro and SuperOps.ai, as well as MSP stalwart N-able.

“I think [Voccola has] recognized that they need a change of leadership like Jason Magee recognized that [ConnectWise] needed a change of leadership,” said Essayian. “Maybe [Voccola] is putting the good of the company first.”