ConnectWise Product Announcements at IT Nation Connect 2024
As the newly appointed leader of ConnectWise, I am deeply passionate about the future that lies ahead. Building on the strong foundation laid by my predecessors, Jason Magee and Arnie Bellini, along with our dedicated team of over 3,000 colleagues worldwide, I am committed to driving transformative change in the MSP industry.
Throughout my career, I have consistently been at the forefront of innovation.
From my early days at Cisco during the internet revolution to my tenure at F5 Networks during the explosive growth of the web, I have witnessed firsthand the power of transformative change.
Now, as I take the helm at ConnectWise, my vision is clear: to lead the company into a new era of innovation and unparalleled growth for our partners.
Let’s delve into the latest product announcements and enhancements that were unveiled on the main stage at IT Nation Connect 2024. These innovations will empower MSPs and shape the future of our industry.
The evolution of the MSP tech stack: Capitalizing on the platform economy
As they say, the only constant is change, and you’ve adapted for decades. From the evolution of networking, internet, telephony, personal computers, BYOD, cloud computing, cybersecurity, to the unprecedented challenges brought by COVID and the rise of remote work and AI, you have navigated through countless inflection points with resilience and determination.
As we look ahead, it becomes clear that the future of the MSP industry lies in embracing a true MSP platform, and we’re proud to lead the charge with ConnectWise Asio®.
According to research from Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys, “The platform economy has fundamentally reshaped the way we live, work, and consume...Companies like Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite, and HubSpot have capitalized on this trend.
At its core, a platform is a digital infrastructure that facilitates interactions between two or more distinct groups. These groups, often referred to as "sides," can include vendors, distributors, customers, and the partners they trust. Platforms such as ConnectWise Asio create value by connecting these sides, providing advanced automation, tighter integrations, and the power of generative AI.”
The ConnectWise platform advantage
The ConnectWise Asio platform offers a single-user experience where the products and services are designed to use the same foundational elements, allowing users to scale and grow faster than previously possible. It is the first and only true comprehensive MSP platform that eliminates the extra costs associated with disconnected products.
What a true platform means for you:
- Simplified user experience
Access information about RMM, data protection, security and tickets, and more in one dashboard on the login screen with the ability to drag and drop widgets.
- Centralized data
No more mapping companies, sites, contacts and devices between products or trying to match up security access across products.
- Hyperautomation
Work smarter, not harder. Centralized data allows the marriage of traditional automation to create hyperautomation.
Our go forward AI solution is ConnectWise Sidekick™, a next generation AI solution that has been integrated with nearly every ConnectWise solution. It can be accessed from inside the platform, individual products, and Microsoft Teams.
A big part of hyperautomation is one of our latest developments, ConnectWise RPA™. Robotic process automation (RPA) helps eliminate manual steps with easy-to-use workflows.
- Extensibility
We are committed to maintaining an open ecosystem where you can integrate the best third-party tools—or the “sides,” as Jay McBain calls it—to round out your tech stack.
ConnectWise PSA in Asio: Streamlining your end-to-end business management
With ConnectWise PSA™ in the Asio platform, MSPs can eliminate double data entry and use one system to streamline processes and improve overall efficiency. Manual tasks can be automated, reducing business costs and eliminating unnecessary overhead. Our modernized PSA empowers teams to accomplish more with less, helping ensure that SLAs are met and billable time and products are accurately invoiced.
What PSA in a platform means for you:
- Revolutionized ticketing
A new dashboard offers quick insights into ticket statuses, SLA adherence, and upcoming tasks, helping technicians prioritize their work effectively. Techs can add time entries, communicate with clients, and manage tasks directly within the ticket interface.
- Streamlined procurement
Procurement has long been a challenging area for MSPs, and the process is often bogged down by inefficiencies and manual processes. We’re introducing a more intuitive interface for managing product details, pricing, and vendor information.
- Improved agreements
Agreements are the engine for all your recurring billing. This functionality will also now be available in Asio with all the mass actions your team needs to work efficiently.
- Elevated client onboarding experience
When the backend of your business works like a well-oiled machine, the client onboarding experience becomes effortless. The Client Onboarding Project is a key process and ensuring you have everything mapped out and on time is important to being efficient. We’re including project management capabilities in Asio with even more functionality. You’ll have access to templates for various onboarding actions with dependencies and skill set requirements built in.
ConnectWise Security360™: A new way to monitor and manage your security tools
As the security landscape continues to evolve, we are committed to expanding our security portfolio to better meet your needs. Earlier this year we announced ConnectWise Security360™ and opened early access. I’m excited to share that in just three months, we’ve welcomed over 400 users who are managing more than 75,000 endpoints. This progress wouldn’t have been possible without the invaluable real-time feedback from our early access users, which has greatly shaped the product into what it is today.
What modern security tool management means for you:
- The industry’s first MSP security score
ConnectWise Security360™ aggregates and analyzes data to return an “MSP security score.” This score highlights potential security gaps, shows areas where you can strengthen your and your customer’s security posture, and identifies other actions to improve your score. You can also see a summary of all your security tickets, alerts, and discovered vulnerabilities. Then, you can access the specific areas that require attention without switching between different applications to achieve the same result!
- Email security
Get comprehensive insights about the security of your mailboxes across all your customers. You can access detailed information about the prevalence of malware infections, phishing-related content, and blocked emails in your email traffic. Our goal is to ensure you have visibility and proper protection in place for all your mailboxes.
We have a fully integrated solution with Proofpoint email protection and plan to add more vendors soon.
- Vulnerability management
ConnectWise Security360™ now includes ConnectWise Vulnerability Management™ as a standard feature. We’ve also revamped it to enhance protection with automatic scans of all your endpoints. You can choose the frequency of these scans—daily, weekly, or monthly. When known vulnerabilities are detected, the system automatically generates tickets, a feature no other tool currently offers.
- Security training
An essential aspect of your security strategy—and that of your customers—is ensuring that everyone is trained to recognize and respond to common threats such as phishing and social engineering. They also need to know how to handle different types of data.
To help you stay informed, we are integrating with leading security training tools to provide an overview of which campaigns are effective, identify high-risk employees, and assess the overall performance across the organization. Our goal is to help you meet industry regulations and compliance standards, safeguard sensitive data, and protect your customers’ reputations. One of our key initial vendors is Infima, and many more are coming.
- Threat visibility
We understand the challenges posed by today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, especially with the number of tools available that offer diverse insights.
To tackle this issue, we created a capability within ConnectWise Security360™ that aggregates industry-leading threat intel using the MITRE ATT&CK framework and insights from our SOC and the ConnectWise Research Unit. Our goal is to help you identify security gaps, enhance awareness of threats, leverage the MITRE ATT&CK framework for threat hunting, and adopt proactive strategies for cyber defense.
ConnectWise Backup360™: Protecting the data at the heart of your clients’ businesses
According to a market study conducted by Axcient in partnership with Channelnomics, 87% of MSPs use more than one backup vendor, and a quarter of MSPs have four or more BCDR solutions. That’s incredibly inefficient.
ConnectWise Backup360 enables MSPs to easily view and monitor the details of their protected systems and all the associated health status information. This gives you a simple way to manage different types of environments, which is made possible by integrations with industry leaders such as Veeam, Acronis, and Axcient™, a ConnectWise company.
What centralized backup management means for you:
- An industry-leading portfolio of data protection products, services, and partnerships
We’re bringing together all of the data protection resources from ConnectWise, Axcient, and SkyKick™, a ConnectWise company, to form one unified team delivering the best data protection solutions in the MSP industry. We’re committed to an open ecosystem so you can still add third party products as needed.
ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup™ is also available if you want to offload the cost and complexity of in-house BCDR management to professional services and our network operations center (NOC). Co-Managed Backup customers can eliminate up to 80% of the labor associated with appliance-based or direct to cloud BCDR —including planning, deployment, backup verification, management, testing, support, and problem resolution
Conclusion
We are proud to bring you the first true platform for the MSP industry—underpinned by generative AI and RPA—which currently includes PSA, RMM, cybersecurity, and data protection.
The platform approach introduces a transformative opportunity for your MSP business that will help you meet your most ambitious vision for growth and success. Asio will continue to evolve with your feedback, so we all can look forward to a future where managing services is more intuitive, efficient, and integrated than ever before.
