Kaseya Acquires Spanning Cloud Apps To Add SaaS-based App Data Protection For MSPs
Kaseya, a developer of an IT management platform for managed service providers, on Monday said it has acquired Spanning Cloud Apps and has already integrated Spanning's data protection technology into its Kaseya IT Complete platform.
Austin, Texas-based Spanning Cloud Apps is Kaseya's second storage acquisition announce in 2018. Kaseya in May unveiled its acquisition of Unitrends.
This is also the second acquisition Kaseya has made in the last month, following its early-September purchase of RapidFire Tools, developer of a suite of IT assessment, threat detection, and compliance tools.
Spanning Cloud Apps specialized in SaaS-based backup and recovery of Office 365, Google G Suite, and Salesforce data, said Fred Voccola, CEO of Miami-based Kaseya.
That is opposed to Kaseya's earlier storage acquisition, Unitrends, which focused on data protection primarily for on-premises data, Voccola told CRN.
Voccola declined to discuss how much Kaseya paid for Spanning Cloud Apps, but did say Spanning was very profitable and has enjoyed "triple-digit" growth in the last 12 months.
The company has about 10,000 enterprise and MSP customers, Voccola said. About 50 customers have already been testing the Spanning Cloud Apps integration with Kaseya IT Complete, he said.
Together, Spanning and Unitrends provides a complete range of data protection capabilities that are integrated into the Kaseya IT Complete platform, which offers all the functionality MSPs need in a single interface, Voccola said.
"I'm pretty jazzed about it," he said.
With the integration into Kaseya IT Complete, MSPs can just press a button on the Kaseya console to start a backup or recovery of cloud-based data, Voccola said, all without the need to go to another console or pay a single-vendor price.
The acquisition of Spanning Cloud Apps was actually competed in January, but Kaseya waited until now to unveil it because it wanted to show MSPs a completed integration, Voccola said.
"Our strategy when we buy a company is to spend months to build bi-directional integration," he said. "So when we announce the acquisition, we don't have to tell customers they need to wait six months for things to be ready."
That strategy is based on Voccola's own experience with four mergers and acquisitions.
"Before I joined Kaseya, I helped one company go public, and sold three companies," he said. "Every time a company was acquired, it was the same story. The acquirers went in, spent time on the integration, changed the branding, changed tie sales model. They messed it up."
Voccola is determined that will not happen with Spanning Cloud Apps. Spanning will remain based in Austin, Texas, and it will continue to be run by Chad Savoy, the company's general manager.
"We're not changing the sales teams," he said. "We'll keep it operating as a stand-alone business unit. We don't want to change the things that make Spanning a great company. Nothing is changing except that they now have more resources."
Voccola declined to discuss how the Spanning offering will be priced through Kaseya. However, Spanning's website lists an inclusive price of $48 per user per month, with volume discounts available.
While both Unitrends and Spanning Cloud Apps compete with about a couple dozen other storage vendors who partner with Kaseya to be integrated with the Kaseya IT Complete platform, Voccola said that the acquisitions do not impact Kaseya's other storage partnerships.
"Kaseya is always open," he said. "We are in a coopetition environment. But we will remain open. Our APIs are published. This doesn't change. We would piss off so many customers if we shut off our environment to partners."
The acquisition is great news for MSPs who struggle with how to manage data protection for cloud-based applications, said David Raucher, director of IT and managed services at CHR Solutions, a Houston-based MSP and Kaseya partner.
CHR Solutions has already migrated many of its clients to Office 365, and is continuing to do so, Raucher said.
"Office 365 and data protection is an interesting model," he said. "First, some customers think you don't need backups. They don't realize that data protection is not part of the product suite. Second, what is the right product to use for backups? For now, I have to back up from the cloud server to on-prem, and then back that up. That's not that efficient."
Spanning is a much cleaner way to back up SaaS application data, Raucher said. He said he looks at applications for clients that do the job promised, that are affordable, and that are easy to manage.
"Spanning with Kaseya gives me three for three," he said. "I will start rolling it out right away."