News, Insight From Autotask Community Live! 2014

By The Business Solutions Network

Last week’s Autotask Community Live! was held in Miami and gave Autotask users a lot to digest. Following are my notes from the event.

• Autotask’s President and CEO Mark Cattini takes the stage to open and announces that Autotask was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. Cattini assures the crowd that Autotask is “still private, and still independent.” He quickly moved on to other topics in his opening address.
• Some attendees, myself included, wondered why there wasn’t more information given on the acquisition. What aren’t they telling us!? In a one-on-one interview with Cattini , he told me that there really isn’t much more to say. “It’s just a changing of shareholders,” he said. “Autotask’s mission doesn’t change. Leadership doesn’t change. If anything, this validates what we’ve been doing and the path we’ve been following.” He went on to say that the acquisition will allow the company to accelerate its roadmap and move quicker.
• Some Autotask-related stats shared by Cattini
  • 93 countries
  • 5500+ customers
  • 7 offices
  • 300+ employees
  • 114 integration partners (they had 26 just 3 years ago)
  • 40 million tickets processed last year
  • $4 billion invoiced in Autotask last year (which is 1% of the global SMB IT spend)
  • 75% of Fortune 500 companies are serviced by companies using Autotask
• Pat Burns, VP of product management took the stage to discuss Autotask’s updated UI, which should be available in the fall. Full article here. This was huge news at the event. Every user I spoke with was excited.
• I met with Gary Power of Power Consulting. He's been part of the UI development as a user. The new UI allows the creation of dashboards for each user so people are able to see data that's relevant to their role. The data you can gather from the PSA has allowed him to better service customers and make more informed business decisions as his company grows.
• Alaistar Forbes, CEO of GFI spoke about IT fragmentation. He reported that 45% of end users still find managed services difficult to understand.
• Planning on adopting a PSA tool (or any sizable business software package)? Steve Curran of Autotask gave a presentation on implementation. His #1 tip? Have a strong internal champion dedicated to the software and its implementation. This person should have a knowledge of your internal business processes, know your short- and long-term goals, and ensure on-going meetings are taking place. In short, it’s not something for you or an employee to manage with your left hand.
• A bonus meeting with Intronis revealed a few things in the works.
  • Launches new ECHOplatform to simplify delivery of data protection and business recovery services
  • Intronis declares the end of ‘per gigabyte' storage pricing
  • Rollout of partner enablement kit. “At the core of the new resources is the Intronis Partner Guide, which gives channel partners easy access to business basics such as onboarding instructions, marketing collateral, sales best practices, and technical information. The Intronis Partner Guide also links to a full library of downloadable documents housed in the new Intronis Essentials site.”
  • Intronis will be launching a file sync and share service. Think business-class Dropbox
  • The company will be hosting 7 roadshows in the coming months