Channel Mastered News

Something surprised me about the bombshell Kaseya dropped at its DattoCon 2024 event in Miami this week, but it might not be what you think. It’s not that the company had a bombshell to drop in the first place. CEO Fred Voccola told me (as I told you) all the way back in July that…

I’d call the annual Canalys Forum, which I attended in Miami this week, “Woodstock for tech nerds” except that the crowd tilts more toward elite than massive and your head is more apt to be full of insights than controlled substances when you leave. And I am indeed high on analyst insights as I write…

Earlier this week, recruitment firm Pinpoint Search Group reported there were 86 security vendor funding and M&A transactions worth $2.15 billion during Q3. That’s way down from the roughly $4 billion worth of deals recorded in the peak quarter of Q4 2021, but roughly in line with the norm since mid-2022. Interestingly, 59% of all…

Manny Rivelo, the recently named CEO of ConnectWise, had planned to spend this week in Tampa at the company’s headquarters until Hurricane Milton got in the way. Like everyone else, he was mostly awaiting—and dreading—the storm’s impact on Tuesday when he spoke with me from his home office not far from my own home base…

Private equity has been stuck in something of a logjam in recent years. Starting in about 2022, fear of a possible recession, uncertainty about global unrest, and—above all—doubt about how long high interest rates would stay high have combined to produce a prolonged drought in exit activity. IPOs and acquisitions both hinge on confidence about…

I did what was probably my last one-to-one interview with Jason Magee, who until a few days ago was the second CEO in ConnectWise history, back in February at the company’s still shiny new downtown Tampa headquarters. He answered my questions for a half hour, stuck around a little longer to chat, and then walked…

We shared some bad news for SaaS vendors here a few weeks ago. Sales growth, while still in double-digit territory for plenty of well-known brands both in and out of the SMB channel, is slowing. Some of that, as we wrote before, stems from IT spending cuts spurred by modest (and possibly declining, after this…

My phone rang about 10 minutes before I was scheduled to meet with Sunny Kaila, CEO of IT By Design, at the managed services outsourcer’s Build IT Live event in Orlando this week. It was Kaila’s assistant, calling to confirm I was on my way to the conference room. I subsequently learned that IT By…