My Thoughts on Kaseya's Acquisition of Datto

Monday, we heard the news that Datto was acquired for roughly $6,200,000,000.00. That's billions with a 'b.' So to the shareholders of Datto stock, congratulations! You've hit your all-time high of $34.76 per share.

Kaseya's portfolio of businesses include IT Glue, RapidFire Tools, Spanning Cloud Apps, ID Agent, Graphus, RocketCyber, TruMethods, and Unitrends. They also acquired Vorex, turning it into their PSA platform, Kaseya BMS.

Kaseya gets a lot of hate from MSPs. Kaseya loves implementing 3-year contracts and raising prices, often while reducing the quality of support and development. Sure, there are MSPs that still use Kaseya. There are also people who think Putin is the good guy. Okay, that may have been a bit extreme... My point is that Kaseya doesn't leave MSPs feeling "warm and fuzzy." On the other hand, Datto is regarded very highly. I would even say they have as great of a reputation in our channel as Apple does among its fans.

How Should MSPs Move Forward?

This is a tough question with more than one answer. I'm going to speak my mind, but you need to make your own assessment and decisions.

I'm cautiously optimistic that Kaseya will learn from its mistakes and allow Datto to continue operating with autonomy, allowing Datto to continue developing their products at the same pace while providing the same level of support that has been enjoyed.

What if You Want to Leave?

Autotask users have few options available to them these days. ConnectWise is the most obvious choice, but they suffer from similar negative ratings. Halo PSA has been floated amongst the community, but they just recently implemented a 10-user minimum to "catch up and sort out some issues with documentation and other internal processes."

Datto BCDR customers could setup their own Veeam infrastructure or consider SolarWinds Backup, but neither are going to offer the same level of service that BCDR customers have come to expect.

Datto Networking is possibly the easiest to replace with options spanning Ubiquiti to Meraki and beyond.

Datto RMM won't be too tough to replace. Many larger MSPs use their RMM to manage Microsoft and third party updates and this can be done by a different tool like Automox. These same MSPs use Intune to manage everything else on the endpoints.

Quitting Datto Products is a Big Deal

Those of you that have made immediate statements that you're leaving Datto have a lot of work cut out for you—especially if you're using Autotask. There will be dozens if not hundreds of hours migrating all of your data and getting the new platform implemented, learning all its nuances, and getting your team trained on using the new platform. If you're using multiple Datto products then the time invested into all of your new products may simply grow exponentially.

My Recommendation: Wait

I'm hopeful that it will take Kaseya 6-12 months to make any detrimental changes to Datto products, however I'm more hopeful that they will allow Datto to continue being a great company. Rather than making hasty decisions based on your feelings about this deal, I recommend waiting to see what changes take place, if any.

Agree or disagree? Share your opinions and feedback below.