You might call Steve Ridout a serial Canadian office opener. He has launched Canadian operations for Oracle, Sybase and Aribia, and now he’s been tapped to help build-out Kaseya‘s Canadian operations.
Based in St. Helier, Jersey and with operations worldwide, Kaseya is a provider of IT automation software for IT solution providers and public sector IT organizations. The company has had a small sales presence out of Ottawa, but Ridout will be tasked with growing a cross-Canada organization including sales, marketing and technical resources to support Kaseya’s Canadian partners and managed service provider (MSP) customers.
“I think (the Canadian expansion) is an endorsement not only of the marketplace up here, but also the maturity Kaseya sees not only in its products but also the marketplace,” said Ridout. “We have over 130 customers now in Canada, and the goal is obviously to build on that success. It’s great news investing in local resources.”<pKaseya's primary route to market is helping a solution provider or services provider integrator set up an MSP practice, using Kaseya's software to automate and run the MSP business. In Canada, Ridout has found success primarily in the core business centres of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.
Among the first items on Ridout’s to-do list is to form a user group, beginning in Ontario and likely to be followed by B.C., to give Kaseya a closer view to the MSP’s view of their business, to better understand their challenges and how Kaseya can help them go to market successfully.
He added Kaseya largely takes a stand-alone approach with its country operations, giving him some latitude to build an organization and support structure geared to the Canadian market.
“We have corporate programs we can rely on to get going, but the goal is to build-out Canada as an independent business unit, with pre and post-sales, marketing and professional services support, press releases and case studies,” said Ridout. “That’s my charter.”
Kaseya’s largest growth in Canada will likely be geographic in nature, said Ridout. He’d like to use their success in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta to build on the to-date limited success experienced in Quebec. Vertically, health care and education have been strong areas.
“I think it’s just a matter of focusing and putting the right team in place to capitalize on our successes elsewhere,” said Ridout. “Our growth strategy is going to be building on the MSPs and branching more into the midmarket and corporate customers.”
While there will be a direct sales component to work with the larger enterprise customers, Ridout said Kaseya will be relying on its channel partners for the midmarket, and while it’s still early, he’s exploring the partner program components and tools he needs to bring to Canada to support that push.
On the product front, Kaseya recently launched its Kaseya 2 family line of system management tools which include a re-engineered product framework, new applications. Software-as-a-service options and new ability to scale to different market segments.
“It’s a whole family of products, from entry-level to enterprise organizations so small and new MSPs and break-fix organizations can get into and start realizing the benefits of Kaseya, all the way up to large companies to use in-house and re-dedicate IT staff,” said Ridout.
The product offerings are designed to scale to different target market segments, including SOHO, break/fix IT service providers, remote support and troubleshooting service providers, SMBs, MSPs, corporate IT departments and IT outsourcers.
With enterprise and SMB editions, Ridout said Kaseya’s ability to make a play for the corporate market is really solidified with Kaseya 2.
“I really believe the breadth and approach is bang-on,” said Ridout.