ConnectWise To Rename All Products As It Unifies Recent Acquisitions

ConnectWise's remote monitoring and management, quote and propose, and remote desktop tools will all adopt the ConnectWise name as capabilities in these areas become more tightly aligned.

"We have acquired multiple companies," said Scott Marshall, senior vice president of marketing. "We've now aggregated them under one roof, and we're moving forward with ConnectWise as our master brand across all of our products."

Marshall told attendees of XChange 2016 in San Antonio Monday, a conference hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company, that the company's flagship PSA product – previously known as ConnectWise – will now be called ConnectWise Manage, or Manage for short, Marshall said.

[RELATED: LabTech Bolsters Interface, Stages Patching As It Tightens Bond With ConnectWise Suite]

ConnectWise's remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool -- which retained the LabTech moniker since ConnectWise's early 2010 investment -- will be renamed ConnectWise Automate, or Automate, Marshall said. The company's automatic sales proposal generation capabilities – which retained the Quosal name since ConnectWise's 2011 investment – will now be called ConnectWise Sell, or Sell.

And ConnectWise's remote desktop control capabilities – which retained the ScreenConnect name since ConnectWise's February 2015 acquisition – will be renamed ConnectWise Control, or Control, Marshall said.

ConnectWise's PSA tool dates back roughly two decades, but the company realized over the past decade that it would need to make acquisitions in the IT service management software space to remain relevant to its customers, according to Adam Slutskin, the company's chief revenue officer.

"It was quickly becoming apparent that that [the PSA tool] wasn't going to be enough to satisfy the community," Slutskin said Monday during XChange 2016.

ConnectWise is working to create a unified framework and interface for all four of its products so that they all look the same from a design perspective, akin to the appearances of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the Microsoft Office suite, LabTech General Manager Brett Cheloff told CRN in June.

LabTech also plans to integrate more ConnectWise capabilities into its RMM tool so that technicians can do common PSA actions without ever having to leave the program, Cheloff said in June.

ConnectWise's business suite can address the three biggest business issues vexing solution providers, Marshall said: insufficient productivity, insufficient processes and excessive operational costs. The products can work together to help solution providers ramp up recurring revenue-focused cloud and managed services practices, and address the most cumbersome business issues for end users.

Marshall encouraged MSPs to break down their customer relationships into phases, be a little more analytical and ensure they're delivering the right service against the right need at the right time.

From evaluations and purchasing to purchasing and delivery to billing and support, Marshall said ConnectWise's four products can support and improve operational excellence in every phase. ConnectWise can also support MSPs with practice services such as break-fix, help desk, application development and cloud services, Marshall said.

ConnectWise's investment in acquiring best-in-class professional modules and integrating them into a master suite impressed Tony Zaragoza, operations manager for Lockport, Ill.-based Andromeda Technology Solutions. Zaragoza also liked the names – particularly ConnectWise Sell and ConnectWise Manage – saying they make what each individual piece of technology does clearer.

"They're not just rebranding," Zaragoza said.