CRN Exclusive: Mac Management Vendor Addigy Launching Reseller Program During Inaugural Partner Summit

Addigy, a maker of cloud-based software for IT management of Apple's Mac computers, is aiming to expand its channel presence with its first-ever reseller program as the Mac gains traction in the Windows-dominated business world.

Founded in 2014 by Kaseya veteran Jason Dettbarn, Miami-based Addigy has focused its channel efforts to date on working with MSPs, and counts about 170 channel partners in total.

Next week, Addigy will be holding its first-ever partner summit and will be announcing the debut of a reseller program that will offer competitive margins, training and sales resources, a partner portal and deal registration, according to Dettbarn, who is Addigy's CEO.

[Related: HP Is Bringing Apple's iPhones, iPads And MacBooks To Its Device-As-A-Service Offering]

Addigy aims to offer a simplified approach to management of Macs, with easier setup of policies that are enforced at all times, along with remote control and other management capabilities.

Kinetic Technology Group, a Mac-focused MSP based in Dallas, is one partner that is using Addigy instead of the Mac-specific tools provided in other remote monitoring and management (RMM) offerings, said Kinetic's founder and CEO, Jim Harryman.

"It's the only true macOS RMM on the market that we have found," Harryman told CRN. "With Addigy you get all the things you get in the Windows world with Kaseya or N-able or ConnectWise. You get all of those features for the Mac—and they keep adding things in. It's a continuously expanding product."

Harryman said he's enthusiastic about the expansion of Addigy to work with the reseller market, since the MSP model is not a fit for every type of customer.

"If they were to open that up to where partners could resell Addigy into larger organizations, and even possibly work with that client on implementation and doing a project, we would be definitely interested in that," he said.

Addigy saw 10-fold revenue growth in 2017, and expects to grow by about a factor of three this year, Dettbarn told CRN. The product is a particularly good fit for channel partners because Mac management typically supports charging higher margins than PC management, he said.

"Our MSPs have grown at ridiculous rates compared to MSPs that are just doing PCs," Dettbarn said.

Helping to drive the growth is Apple's own push into the enterprise, which is causing more corporations to offer Macs to employees than in the past, he said. Apple's enterprise partners include Cisco, IBM, Accenture, Deloitte and SAP, and Mac revenue grew 13 percent during Apple's fiscal 2017 compared to the previous year.

Apple has re-emphasized the Mac in its product lineup with refreshes to the MacBook Pro and iMac in recent years, though Dettbarn said that's a less-important factor than Apple's increased efforts around selling Mac into the enterprise.

"I don't care about the [MacBook Pro] Touch Bar and other things, but they're doing the right things for businesses," Dettbarn said.

Overall, Addigy is helping to enable more companies to feel comfortable with using Macs, he said. Often, after a successful deployment of Addigy, a customer will expand the number of Macs being used within the organization, Dettbarn said.

"In the corporate environment, they push back if they don't have the tool sets and don't have that comfort level" around managing Macs, Dettbarn said. "But they'll quickly expand their Mac portfolio once they feel confident with it."

The inaugural Addigy Partner Summit is being held in Miami from Feb. 28 to March 2, and about 200 attendees are expected, Dettbarn said.