Turning headwinds into tailwinds
N-able is a leading global software provider of enterprise-grade monitoring (RMM), security and data protection software purpose-built for MSPs. It was founded in 2000, acquired by SolarWinds in 2013 and then spun-off as a separate entity to provide cloud-based software solutions to MSPs in July 2021 – a move that David Weeks, VP Partner Experience at N-able, says has enabled the company to focus completely on the MSP market.
“The last two years have been an exciting time. We’ve put a lot of different programmes in place for our partners and, on top of that, we’ve accelerated the roadmap across our products to meet our partners’ needs out in the marketplace,” he said.
“One of the biggest changes we made post spin-off was to bring in a partner success team that is focused solely on supporting our customers globally. Each of our customers gets a dedicated account manager, not a salesperson, who is simply there to help drive the growth of that business. Over the top of that we have numerous other resources.”
These include Head Nerds, a real job title, who provide regular boot camps on everything from automation, optimisation, sales and marketing, security, backup and data protection, as well as free training material, which N-able makes available to its 25,000 customers and the wider MSP community.
“We look to support all MSPs whether they’re a customer or not because it’s healthy for the industry,” said Weeks.
Last year N-able published the PowerShell Cookbook, featuring 175 pre- developed PowerShell scripts, and more recently it released the Co-managed Digital
Playbook for MSPs to help MSPs address what Weeks sees as one of the industry’s key trends.
“The MSP space has grown for 11 consecutive quarters and one thing we have seen is how a headwind like a labour shortage can be turned into a tailwind. Post-Covid, a lot of businesses have struggled to hire good talent and that has given MSPs, including smaller ones that have a lot more capability and software than they did 10 years ago, the ability to go into mid-enterprise and enterprise environments and say ‘I’ll do your patch management. I’ll do your data backup and retention. I’ll do your endpoint detection and response’. In a lot of cases these businesses don’t have very large internal IT teams and because they are short-staffed they don’t have time to do the high value project work they’re supposed to. They’re looking to bring in service providers to help support them so they can report back to the business on the KPIs they’re held to.
“We do see Co-managed as a big trend, and we’ve got partners now who exclusively focus on the mid-market and enterprise. They have their SMB and SME customers that they will continue to work with, but going forward the sole focus of their marketing opportunity and sales opportunity is that upper level of the market.”
Weeks says that while co-managed is a big opportunity for UK MSPs, it does require a different approach.
“One of the things that we talk about with a lot of service providers is patch management. We all know this is the baseline of security, but how you patch a small and medium-sized business
is very different to how you patch an enterprise-level business with multiple or global locations. A lot more planning and consulting goes into the initial engagement to baseline the environment and ensure the MSP really understands what the end customer is looking for.
It’s not a case of saying ‘Hey, we’re the experts, let us do it’ because you have two teams of experts that want to work together. There’s a lot more collaboration. MSPs sometimes go in thinking their traditional offering will work and it doesn’t; with Co-managed you need more of an à la carte menu.”
Scalability
Weeks adds that the scalability of N-able’s product offering is a big attraction for MSPs addressing a Co-managed opportunity.
“A product like N-central, which is one of our main platforms, scales extremely well to the mid-enterprise and enterprise market, as well as working extremely well in the SME and SMB space. Then there’s our partnerships with companies that are well known in the enterprise space, like Sentinel One for our endpoint detection and response. That gives us name recognition along with the capability of the product.” Other big growth areas cited by Weeks include cloud management, as more and more MSPs move customers from physical to cloud-based devices, and a growing professional services role for MSPs as they become more involved in customers’ growth strategies and planning for future expansion.
“A lot of that came from COVID, when MSPs moved almost a global workforce to work from home. That made a lot of business owners realise just how much technology impacts their revenue streams. I think the perception and the willingness to work more and deeper with MSPs has dramatically improved over the last two years,” he said.
Growth drivers
For N-able itself, MSP acquisition activity remains a key growth driver.
“Our growth comes from new MSPs entering the market and from MSPs
that continue to scale and grow their businesses. M&A is a big part of that – partners acquiring other businesses and standardising on our tech stack. M&A activity has slowed a bit since Covid but we still have partners that are very active in M&A and today acquisitions are more strategic, which tends to mean that they’re larger.”
He adds that from a product perspective, most of N-able’s growth is coming from its security and data management offerings and their evolving cloud management capabilities, rather than from its two RMMs, which he describes as ‘very steady’ business.
Future attractions
N-able has just launched a new podcast series (see box). That apart, what can MSPs look forward to from N-able in the future?
“You’re about to see what we call Nerds Eye View, where our Nerds talk about their specialties and what they’re learning from working with different MSPs around the world. We are also just launching a new customer portal called N-able Me, which is going to have a massive amount of resources, forums and peer-to-peer collaboration for our partners to enable them to be more efficient in the way they interact with us as a company,” explained Weeks.
“Starting in the first week of September, we’ll be taking a roadshow to 19 cities around the world (including Manchester on October 10). We’ll be explaining our roadmap to prospects and partners; we’ll have talks from industry experts; above all, MSPs will have the opportunity to hear from their peers. We did a test run of Five Cities earlier this year and it was extremely successful. Having 75 or 100 MSPs sitting in a room all helping each other out is what it’s all about.
“Then watch for what we’re doing on the product side. We’ve got very aggressive roadmaps on our products and there’ll be news throughout the rest of this year on updates around security, cloud management, our RMM platforms and backup and data protection. There’s a lot happening, and it is all driven by customer requests. It’s our partners who guide us.”
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