Governance & Risk Management , Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) , Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development

MSP Efficiency Set to Surge With SaaS Alerts Joining Kaseya

Kaseya purchased an application security startup led by a former Kaseya general manager to make managed service providers more secure and efficient.

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The buy by Miami, Fla.-based IT management software provider Kaseya will allow Allentown, Penn.-based SaaS Alerts to hire more developers and accelerate the product roadmap in areas like security automation and cost-efficiency, according to SaaS Alerts CEO Jim Lippie. Bringing Kaseya and SaaS Alerts together will result in enhanced service offerings that aim to support MSPs more effectively, Lippie said.

"There are very few times in one's career, if any, where you have an opportunity to change an industry," Lippie said. "When I saw the reaction to Kaseya's release of endpoint protection with 5,000+ MSPs signing up for it, I felt like this was an awesome strategy, and we could fundamentally change economics for the MSP community."

How Becoming Part of Kaseya Will Lower Labor Costs

SaaS Alerts, founded in 2020, employs 45 people and in September 2022 got a $22 million growth investment from private equity giant Insight Partners, which first made a "significant investment" in Kaseya in 2013. The company has been led since January 2021 by Jim Lippie, who had previously spent four years overseeing Kaseya's global MSP community and spearheading partner development.

Kaseya's acquisition will allow SaaS Alerts to provide unprecedented automation and integration for MSPs, which Lippie believes will have a significant economic impact. Insight Partners' relationship with both Kaseya and SaaS Alerts created a natural synergy, which Lippie said led both companies to see benefits in aligning their efforts to support MSPs with improved tools and reduced operational costs.

"Collectively, we thought that that two companies would be better together," Lippie said.

Lippie has put a multi-step integration plan in place to align SaaS Alerts with Kaseya's product suite, which he said will strengthen automation and security features and lead to tighter connections with products in Kaseya's portfolio, thanks to an expanded development team. The integration work aims to minimize compatibility issues and streamline workflows for MSPs using Kaseya's suite of tools, he said (see: Graphus' Amelia Paro on Why Phishing Has Exploded Since 2020).

"We're adding about 20% more developers to the team over the coming weeks, so we're anxious to start on these integrations and bring up a lot more functionality in the product to the community," Lippie said.

Integrating SaaS alerts into Kaseya's products will reduce labor costs and enhance security for joint customers, Lippie said. By strengthening automation, Lippie said SaaS Alerts aims to simplify complex workflows, reduce false positives and support cost-effective operations for MSPs. The number one cost for MSPs is labor, and Lippie said integrating SaaS Alerts into Kaseya will reduce labor costs for clients.

Bringing Automated Response to a Broader Range of Platforms

SaaS Alerts will maintain its integrations with third-party professional service automation and remote monitoring and management tools that compete with Kaseya such as ConnectWise and N-Able, Lippie said. It's essential for SaaS Alerts to meet the needs of MSPs, and Lippie said the acquisition by Kaseya won't affect existing functionality or disrupt services for customers who use competing platforms.

"We integrate with all the major PSAs out there, and we have no intention of doing anything with those integrations," Lippie said. "There should be zero impact on anyone that's not using Kaseya."

SaaS Alerts will continue to follow its original product roadmap, which is now further empowered by Kaseya’s resources. Lippie plans to expand SaaS Alerts’ Fortify feature set, which includes automated response capabilities for widely used applications such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with potential to extend these capabilities to a broader range of platforms like Salesforce and Dropbox.

"We currently do automated remediation for both 365 and Google Workspace, and we can bring that automated response to applications like Salesforce, Slack and Dropbox," Lippie said. "There is so much green field for us, and now we're in a better position to pursue it based on this."

Now that SaaS Alerts is part of Kaseya, Lippie said the business will monitor growth and success by tracking the number of new Kaseya 365 subscriptions, MSP adoption rates and revenue growth. Lippie said these metrics will indicate whether SaaS Alerts is effectively expanding its user base and improving customer outcomes.

"Certainly, the first metric is going to be, 'How many new 365 subscriptions are sold? How many new partners or MSPs are now on SaaS Alerts? How many additional user accounts do we protect?'" Lippie said. "Obviously, we'll continue to monitor our revenue and profitability."