Autotask-Datto merger: What partners need to know

Datto's EMEA managing director and Autotask's international GM tell CRN what partners need to know about the mega merger

Vista Equity Partners confirmed its acquisition of Datto yesterday evening, merging the vendor with its existing Autotask business to create a managed services titan.

The combined organisation will have around 1,300 employees across offices in nine countries.

CRN today spoke with Andrew Stuart, EMEA managing director at Datto, and Mark Banfield, international general manager at Autotask, to ask the questions on the tips of partners' tongues.

When will details of a roadmap be announced?

With the deal not yet closed, and not expected to be for four or five weeks, it is too soon for Autotask or Datto to be releasing any details of a roadmap.

"There is no technology supplier to MSPs anywhere that is close to our level of investment in the UK channel," Mark Banfield, Autotask

Autotask's Banfield did however say that the obvious aim is to bring solutions from the two vendors closer together.

"Both organisation have their own roadmap and both are product- and engineer-led organisations," he said. "We're very focused on roadmaps.

"Of course there's a strategy and an idea of how we can develop those two platforms closer to deliver more value.

"There won't be any announcement yet as to what that will look like, but what I would say is that what we're going to do with the combination will be exciting for managed service providers."

While the two portfolios will be integrated, Datto's Stuart said that partners should not be concerned about conflicts of interest.

"There is very little overlap so partners are not going to be [thinking] ‘should I be using this similar product from Datto or from Autotask?' Our products are entirely complementary so partners won't be caught in the middle."

Will there be any disruption for partners during the integration?

As is always the case when two vendors join forces, partners fear that the integration will lead to a period of disruption.

Datto and Autotask have not yet released any information regarding the future entity's branding.

While not being able to provide further details on how the two businesses will be integrated, Banfield pointed to Autotask's acquisition of CentraStage which he said was a pain-free integration for partners.

"It will become clear very quickly," he said. "If I take our experience of acquiring CentraStage, that had very minimal disruption to our customer base - if anything it was just about adding more value.

"We were very quick to market in terms of developing an integrated story and we explained to the market what the story was going to look like, what we planned to do, and we delivered on it.

"You can probably expect that [this integration] will be a fairly quick move into defining what the future looks like and executing on it."

Eamon Moore, managing director of Dublin-based EMIT, said that the roadmap will be the most important aspect of the deal from a partner perspective, and that partners will quickly want to know how their interaction with the new business will be different.

"Any partner is going to ask what it means in terms of the roadmap," he said. "Is there going to be a rebranding, is there going to be a new channel account manager, is there going to be a new way of doing business?

"It does feel like it's business and normal, and no doubt it will be when it is first concluded, but what does it mean going forward? A lot partners are going to wonder how the business is going to change in terms of how they interact with Datto and Autotask."

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Autotask-Datto merger: What partners need to know

Datto's EMEA managing director and Autotask's international GM tell CRN what partners need to know about the mega merger

What will the integration mean for partners that work with competitors of Datto or Autotask?

A huge benefit for partners in the deal is that there is very little crossover in the portfolios of Datto and Autotask.

"Both sides have focused heavily on building the best products in the industry and will continue to do that and win customer business on the strength of that," Andrew Stuart, Datto

Some Datto partners may have already been working with Autotask to fulfil particular needs - but others may have been working with Autotask competitors. Will they still be able to do this?

When asked, both vendors said that partners do not need to worry about the pair making it difficult for them to work with competitors, with the aim to maintain other relationships.

"One of the things we want to do is really focus on an open ecosystem," Datto's Stuart said. "We will continue to build strong integrations with other vendors in the market because we want to win our MSPs' business on the strength of our products, not because we're trying to create a closed ecosystem.

"Both sides have focused heavily on building the best products in the industry and will continue to do that and win customer business on the strength of that."

EMIT's Moore said that it is crucial for Datto and Autotask to communicate these plans quickly with the channel - particularly Datto partners that have typically worked with competitors of Autotask.

"When Dell and EMC came together partners had a lot of the same kind of questions," he said. "The best way to do it for the new entity is to give visibility to partners.

"We get a lot of value from the partner conferences that we go to and that's what we need to see. There are absolutely going to be Datto partners using competitors to Autotask and they're going to have some concerns.

"You would hope that in their strategy they've been planning for that for quite a while and they've mapped it all out. Datto won't want partners to fall away if they don't use Autotask."

What does the merger mean specifically for UK partners?

Once the deal is completed, the combined Autotask-Datto business will have four offices in the UK and 200 people on the ground.

Banfield (pictured) said that partners in the UK should be especially optimistic about the global deal, given the amount of investment that is set to be poured into the UK market.

"This is a very exciting move for the industry in the MSP community, but it's particularly exciting for the UK," he said.

"If you look at the UK market Datto and Autotask have been the two biggest investors in terms of independent vendors. We have a strategy to invest where our customers are to deliver our products and services through local people.

"I would say that for the UK industry this means an even bigger investment. There is no technology supplier to MSPs anywhere that is close to our level of investment in the UK channel."