6 Biggest Announcements From ConnectWise IT Nation

‘We need to be prepared to have what’s ahead of us in this industry on three constantly changing dimensions, the economy, economic ecosystem and technology,’ says Jason Magee, ConnectWise CEO. ‘But through surveys conducted by ConnectWise, our partners are telling us that they’re doing well and still expect to be growing in 2023 no matter what.’

ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee

Tampa-based ConnectWise wrapped up its IT Nation conference last week in Orlando with an abundance of announcements bolstered to help MSPs capture more of the market.

Just under 5,000 people attended the event even while Tropical Storm Nicole saturated the area and canceled flights to Orlando from across the country.

“We need to be prepared to have what’s ahead of us in this industry on three constantly changing dimensions, the economy, economic ecosystem and technology,” said ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee. “But through surveys conducted by ConnectWise, our partners are telling us that they’re doing well and still expect to be growing in 2023 no matter what.”

The survey showed that IT Nation partners grew more than 16 percent year-over-year in revenue and 22 percent in recurring revenue, Magee said. Seventy percent of the respondents are forecasting greater than 10 percent growth in 2023 and 94 percent are forecasting more than five percent growth.

“Hey look, we are a community, let’s help each other see what‘s going on,” he said.

Over the three-day event, ConnectWise shared a series of business improvements that reinforce the company as a “consistent center of gravity” for the MSP community.

The acceleration of innovation on the infinite edge is helping MSPs in real time, he said, so they must harness relentless automation, putting data to work for them and their customers, deliver exceptional customer experience and have a deep focus on cybersecurity.

“The biggest piece I’m trying to understand is the investment that they’re trying to do for the community and really understanding the strategies that they put in place,” Paco Lebron, president and CEO of Prodigy Teks, a Chicago-based MSP, told CRN. “I think having the ability to have that anonymous economic feedback will help give other IT Nation ConnectWise partners, and just anyone who’s submitted, to get a better idea of what‘s going on.”

Here are the six biggest announcements made at ConnectWise IT Nation.

ConnectWise Access Management Provides Credential-less Logon Accounts

ConnectWise Access Management is a newly announced privileged access management tool that provides credential-less, temporary administrative logon accounts and credential-less approval and denial of end user elevation requests. A free trial of ConnectWise Access Management is available to existing ConnectWise Control, Automate, Command and RMM partners through December 16. Many of the benefits include decreased ticket volumes, enhanced security, improved customer experience and the opportunity to redeploy resources to generate additional revenue, according to the company.

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A New Alliance with Arrow Electronics

ConnectWise and one of its premier partners, Arrow Electronics, have created a new innovative alliance to address how MSPs procure software and services. Through the alliance, ConnectWise partners will have access to simplify searching and quoting, procurement, subscription management and client billing with Arrow. As a one-stop integration, ConnectWise said this will eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks while giving partners access to a deeper set of products and vendors.

Two New Security-Focused ConnectWise Teams

Two new ConnectWise teams have formed and will serve partners with a combination of deep strategy and accelerated innovation. The Product Security Response Team will have a security-first mindset to all phases of product, engineering development, planning, design and execution.

ConnectWise Labs, a new special operations unit, will analyze data to anticipate what’s coming and build solutions that help partners solve problems they aren’t facing yet through ConnectWise Access Management, ConnectWise said. The team will also focus on incubating and testing new ideas and projects alongside existing project roadmaps.

Connectwise

New Integrations With ConnectWise PSA And RMM Focus On A Single Pane Of Glass

ConnectWise PSA now has an ITBoost overlay where partners can link to and access ITBoost data within tickets and the entire system without leaving the platform. A new integration with ConnectWise solution SmileBack merges customer feedback directly into the service desk module. ConnectWise says it has invested heavily into ITBoost to provide partners scalable business management tools to help perform bulk actions and mass updates on core assets.

ConnectWise RMM has a new Microsoft Intune integration that allows partners to see compliance status of all devices without having to click into each Intune tenant for visibility.

ConnectWise also touched on its intentions with its solution Wise-Sync, a recently-acquired payments automation company. Key integrations with ConnectWise CPQ (Sell ) enhance the quoting process, streamline quote creation and billing reconciliation and reduce the need to chase clients for payments. Through Wise-Pay, this will eliminate accounts receivables burdens.

BrightGauge Is Now Available Through Other Products

ConnectWise solution BrightGauge is now available across many other products in the ConnectWise portfolio. BrightGauge and Sentinel One allow partners to raise visibility for when threat actors may be at work. BrightGauge, along with ConnectWise RMM, allows partners to visualize health scores, status and summary of clients‘ devices. Paired with ITBoost, BrightGauge demonstrates ways to stay on top of asset expirations and how documentation is getting used, ConnectWise said.

Three New Capabilities Announced To Help MSPs Secure Themselves and Their Customers

ConnectWise says it has expanded capabilities to its cybersecurity portfolio to offer increased security for its best-in-class solutions.

ConnectWise Vulnerability Management automates routine scanning of environments for exposures and vulnerabilities, giving end users visibility towards potential cyberattacks.

SASE by ConnectWise and Exium offers endpoint protection from malware and data leaks through an array of technologies partnerships to provide secure internet access for users. It also provides zero-trust access to cloud and on-premises tools through a modern cloud-based SASE platform.

IAM by ConnectWise and Evo furthers protection for multi-factor authentication, single sign-on and elevated access for MSP administration to defend against the most exploited attack audience, partners’ employees themselves, ConnectWise said.