Zenith RMM is looking to expand the functionality of its
remote monitoring and management platform through acquisitions of complementary
technologies.
That’s according to CEO Michael George who spoke with
Channel Insider during the ConnectWise IT Nation 2011 event in Orlando, Fla. this
week.
Zenith RMM has the money to invest in acquisitions now, said
George, because of the equity stake acquired by private-equity firm Summit
Partners in September. Summit Partners bought the stake from Zenith Infotech,
which retained the backup and disaster recovery technology and cloud technology
lines of business after the sale. About the same time Zenith Infotech defaulted
on $33 million in convertible bonds, which triggered a call on additional bonds
for a total of $85 million, and has since been sued by the bond holder which is
asking for full disclosure of the terms behind the sale of Zenith RMM.
The Summit Partners investment in Zenith RMM was one that
was overdue for the line of business, said George. As Zenith Infotech built out
its other lines of business beyond RMM its original RMM business floundered and
partners were concerned about its future. That led to some partners questioning
their relationship with Zenith and investigating competitors.
One of those partners, LevelCloud, had considered moving to
another platform and was investigating competitors such as Lab Tech, said the
MSP’s president and CEO Biren Shukla. In the end, Shukla elected to stay with
Zenith RMM.
“We had to ask ourselves who would do the NOC? If you switch
to another platform you will have to go alert by alert to configure everything manually,”
he told Channel Insider. But with Zenith RMM, the NOC is handled by Zenith and
the configuration is already done. The month-to-month cost may be more
expensive than competitors, Shukle said, but cost savings comes from reduced
labor needs.
“If you quit Zenith RMM you have to staff your own NOC,” he
said. “Also with the NOC you have a whole lot of research you have to do
yourself.”
Shukle and George both used the ConnectWise event to promote
the benefits of Zenith RMM over competitors’ offerings at a time when those same
competitors were using the Zenith Infotech bond default and subsequent lawsuit
to undermine the company’s business.
Meanwhile, Zenith Infotech Competitors Circle
For instance, eFolder delivered a BDR First Aid kit to
attendees’ hotel rooms with a flyer that said: “Protect your client from bond
defaults or bad service from your existing BDR vendor,” and offered a rescue
program that includes data migration, no forklift upgrade (letting customer
previous device investments stay in place), and offering a price of 15 cents
per-gigabit per-month.
Axient CEO Justin Moore, talking up his company’s new
premium disaster recovery offering which can have clients up and running in the
cloud minutes after a disaster occurs, said that his company has had about one
hundred Zenith Infotech partners approach him during the ConnectWise event to
ask about Axient’s DR offering.
Moore said that Axient had just raised an additional $15.5 million round
of venture capital, for a total of $33.5 million in
capitalization, and it currently has about one thousand channel partners.
Doyenz CEO Ashutosh Tiwary was also on hand, promoting his company’s own
DR offering which also promises nearly instant recovery with a return to
operations by relying on their cloud servers. Tiwary said his company’s
offering is the only one that enables partners to verify that it works. The
company’s prices are based on the amount of data it protects, and it has about 400
to 500 partners.
Meanwhile Zenith Infotech’s Maurice Saluan, senior vice
president of sales, was still on hand during the ConnectWise IT Nation event,
presenting to partners and potential partners about the Zenith Infotech
solutions. Zenith Infotech recently
announced a
road show to demonstrate its solutions.
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