Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are there dynamics that are different from geography to geography? You said you’re catering to 35,000 MSPs around the world. Is there anything that is different?

Fred Voccola: That’s a fantastic question. Your audience is global I’m assuming.

Sramana Mitra: It is global. We know a lot about the dynamics of small businesses around the world. For example, we have a very big adoption in India. We know the Indian SMB market is very high touch. If you’re an MSP trying to cater to the small business market in India, that is an incredibly high-touch market. SMBs struggle with providing that kind of high-touch customer service profitably.

Fred Voccola: Independent of the country, how SMBs behave around the world really defines how the MSP market is around the world. To your point in India, the MSP market in India is a very thriving market because the proliferation of small businesses that want to consume technology is relatively high compared to other markets around the world. That makes it easier for an MSP to articulate value to a potential customer.

To your point, the service delivery challenges of an MSP in India makes the MSP delivery more automated and have a much better service delivery methodology so they can take on the many ad hoc requests. When we look at markets around the world, the most developed or the most mature markets for SMPs are where small to midsize businesses tend to thrive. The more entrepreneur-friendly economies tend to drive the most small business creation.

When you look at Europe, the UK, and the Benelux market are very mature markets for managed service providers because there’re so many small businesses. The cultures of those countries are very small business friendly. Take a company like Germany or Italy. They’re not very entrepreneurial. While the market is growing, it’s six or seven years behind UK or Benelux. When you look at the US and Canada, it’s quite small business friendly.

When you look at China, the managed service industry is just getting off the ground. What we’re finding in China is that the technology consumption is being provided by very large retail and distribution outlets. When we look at Japan, Japan is not a very small business economy. There’re a lot of MSPs there but it’s probably similar to Germany in terms of the rate of adoption. Most MSPs are also small businesses themselves.

If you are in an economy that’s influenced by a culture of small business friendly type of activities, you’ll find that there are willing third parties that want to form MSPs. Australia and New Zealand have very mature MSP markets. It goes country by country in Latin America. Brazil and Argentina have healthy managed service provider markets. Other parts of Latin America are a little less developed.

Mexico is rapidly becoming a fast-growing market for managed service providers. It’s still a couple of years behind some of the Latin American counterparts, but it’s showing very aggressive signs of growth the last several years. One last market worth noting is South Africa. South Africa is a very mature market for MSPs. There’re a lot of small businesses that are run in a very mature way. The Philippines is having a small business renaissance. It’s a very technology-driven business culture there. Small businesses there recognize the need for tech consumption.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya
1 2 3 4 5 6 7