Viva! Channel Mastered Rocks ChannelCon 2023
You probably know it already if you were there, but Channel Mastered was all over last week’s CompTIA ChannelCon event in Las Vegas.
From the panels on M&A strategy and social media marketing that Erick Simpson and I participated in, to the session on strengthening vendor/MSP relationships that Erick and I led together, to the many hallway and expo hall conversations our Mark Crall, Charlene Ignacio, and James Kernan participated in, Channel Mastered experts were active players in the knowledge sharing that makes ChannelCon such a great conference for both vendors and MSPs.
Meet the “Rat Pack” Giveaway Winners!
And then there was our booth. If you visited the expo hall, you couldn’t miss our balloon-filled booth (pictured).
The booth is where we collected entries for our “Rat Pack” Giveaway, which awarded prizes worth over $20,000 to three lucky winners:
First prize: A free Channel Mastered thought leadership white paper
- Winner: Moovila
Second prize: A free Channel Mastered digital marketing campaign
- Winner: Augmentt
Third prize: A sponsored episode of the Channel Mastered MSP Chat podcast
- Winner: Quoter
Vendor Names to Know
We may have been the most visible booth in the ChannelCon expo hall, but we were far from the only one. The Channel Mastered team met with dozens of other exhibitors at the show. Here are a few of them that stood out to us as especially interesting or newsworthy.
Adaptive Catalog
Adaptive Catalog’s flagship solution isn’t a quoting tool, but it will make almost any quoting tool MSPs use better.
“We complement them, because for most quoting tools their bread and butter is trying to get the quote and approval,” says Stephen Yu, the company’s CEO.
Adaptive Catalog’s bread and butter is sourcing. The vendor pulls up-to-the-minute pricing and inventory data for hardware and software from not just distributors like Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, D&H, and CDW but consumer-oriented sites like Amazon, and NewEgg too, not to mention a user’s own in-house inventory.
“We’re at the core a cataloging company. We manage everything that you sell,” say Yu. That includes warranties and your own services, he adds, noting that users can create reusable standard configurations for workstations and other devices too.
“It makes it super easy for MSPs and VARs to have one source of truth and one place to search for everything,” Yu says.
The system integrates with ConnectWise CPQ and other leading quoting tools, Kaseya BMS and other top PSA solutions, and popular online apps like Salesforce as well.
Cofense
Don’t know the name Cofense? You may be more familiar with PhishMe, a security awareness training solution that was the Israeli vendor’s first product.
Or perhaps you know Cyberfish, the email security solution that Cofense bought, along with the startup vendor responsible for it, in 2021 and soon renamed Cofense Protect.
“It was, for Microsoft 365 and Google-based users, an API-based email detection mechanism that used computer vision and AI to detect any kind of phishing effect,” says Gal Glikman, a Cofense sales engineer.
Probably less familiar to you, because it shipped just four months ago, is Cofense’s latest product, a threat protection and security awareness training solution called Protect+ MSP that combines functionality previously provided by PhishMe and Protect separately in one platform with a single multitenant interface.
“This was the vision of where the Cyberfish product should go when we acquired it,” Glikman says.
Built on an all-new code base, he adds, the new system is an end-to-end email security solution offering crowd-sourced threat intelligence from over 35 million users, enterprise-grade indicator of compromise matching, cutting-edge phishing simulations, and the ability to quarantine recipients of malicious message swiftly and automatically.
The system also features an “aggregate inbox” that lets MSP and MSSP technicians view their own company’s messages alongside that of the tenants they support in one place, as well as a custom report generator.
Moovila
Moovila has been helping businesses in industries like construction manage complex projects since 2016. But it wasn’t until 18 months ago that a stray conversation with a very satisfied user inspired the company to optimize an edition of the product for MSPs.
“He said, ‘listen, if you guys can interact with ConnectWise a lot of people could use it,’” recalls Louis Bagdonas, a senior program manager at Moovila.
That’s exactly what the vendor did early this year. “And it’s taking off,” Bagdonas says.
The new solution, named Perfect Project for MSP, comes with AI-based autonomous monitoring and management functionality that supplements standard project management capabilities with continuous, proactive detection and resolution of capacity conflicts, critical path delays, cost overruns, and other problems. MSPs also appreciate the system’s intuitive interface.
“The tools out there today are just extremely cumbersome for an MSP’s project manager to use,” Bagdonas observes.
ConnectWise won’t be the only PSA solution the product integrates with for long. Moovila has connections to Datto’s Autotask PSA and HaloPSA in the works as well. Other integrations in place now link the solution with everything from Microsoft 365 to Dropbox, HubSpot, Salesforce, QuickBooks Online, and Cisco Webex.
PC Matic
If you have a television, you probably know the name PC Matic well. What you may not know is that the same company responsible for one of the tech industry’s most popular consumer cybersecurity solutions also makes a solution specifically for MSPs and their clients.
You may not know much about the core strategy PC Matic uses to protect end users either. Called “allowlisting” (and sometimes referred to as “application whitelisting”), it automatically enforces zero-trust security best practices by blocking access to everything except software and processes explicitly approved for use.
The MSP edition of the solution has a lot of other attributes that users will appreciate, like cloud-based management, dedicated onboarding, U.S.-based support, NFR licenses, and flexible monthly billing.
Demand generation assistance is available as well. “PC Matic offers our MSP partners a one-of-a-kind lead sharing program—backed by a multimillion-dollar national TV campaign—that generates leads for managed services from organizations of all sizes,” says Corey Munson, PC Matic’s vice president of MSP, international, and commercial sales.
There are also no contracts and no minimums to worry about, he adds, and pricing starts at less than $1 per endpoint per month.
The vendor has more features MSPs will like coming soon too, according to Munson, who offers only hints for the moment. “Be on the lookout for PC Matic allowlisting integration with other well-known endpoint management and protection solutions,” he says.
Quoter
Please don’t lump Quoter’s core solution together with mere quoting tools. It’s a quote-to-cash platform that covers the entire sales process all the way through to billing and payment processing.
“Not to say those other tools don’t do that, but we’re building the best quote-to-cash platform for MSPs,” says Scott Bauer, Quoter’s director of marketing.
The solution integrates with ConnectWise PSA, Datto’s Autotask PSA, Kaseya BMS, Syncro, and HaloPSA, as well as Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, D&H, and Dicker Data. Additional integrations link the system to CRM solutions like Salesforce and marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, plus Kaseya’s ConnectBooster service, PayPal, Stripe, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and more.
An intuitive design tool lets MSPs create reusable, branded templates for quotes that their clients can view through an intuitive web interface, rather than a .PDF file. According to Bauer, that’s just one example of Quoter’s attention to user-friendly design.
“Many of the more legacy tools that we’re competing against just haven’t been updated on a regular basis,” he says. “What ends up happening as a result is you’ll have one person in an MSP who creates and sends and tracks quotes, which creates a bottleneck operationally.”
To further crush that bottleneck, Quoter offers unlimited user pricing. “We want to enable and give more visibility to the entire team,” Bauer explains.
Mere weeks ago, moreover, Quoter rolled out a major update giving users new levels of flexibility in how they structure and present quotes. “You can be very granular with what you want to show on the scope of work or you can just show line item titles,” Bauer says.
ZenContract
Speaking of end-to-end solutions, that’s what ZenContract offers for another critical MSP process.
“It’s full contract lifecycle management from the time you send out your proposal and your master services agreement all the way through renewal with automations built in and permissions built in,” says Trevor Thomas, the vendor’s vice president of sales.
That’s light years ahead of what most MSPs have at present, he continues. “I would say 90% if not more of MSPs use a Word document or just DocuSign,” Thomas says. “There’s no automation. It doesn’t tie back to your PSA.”
ZenContract, by contrast, is purpose-built specifically for MSPs. The system integrates not only with PSA solutions from ConnectWise and Datto but Microsoft 365, Dynamics, and SharePoint too. It also features an automated contract and proposal builder, a fully-stocked library of templates for contracts, proposals, policies, and processes, support for customized workflows, and a renewals management tool.
New policy management functionality for HR and other departments due in about two months will offer users a new opportunity to grow customer satisfaction and collect incremental revenue as well.
“This is going to be a sell-through product,” Thomas says of the new module, meaning that MSPs will be able to use ZenContract’s software not only to make themselves more efficient but to help clients streamline core processes as well—and make money in the along the way.
