ConnectWise has added transactional capabilities to the online marketplace it makes available to managed service providers (MSPs) that standardize on its professional service automation (PSA) platform.
At IT Nation conference, ConnectWise also announced ConnectWise Now, an interface that provides partners a single location from which to manage all areas of their business, including sales and marketing to service and finance, along with support for a single sign-on capability for its PSA platform.
Rather than competing with distributors directly, the revamped online marketplace is limited to roughly 30 offerings from third-party vendors that specifically focused on the needs of MSPs, says Jeff Bishop, chief product officer for ConnectWise.
“We’re not looking to become a distributor,” says Bishop.
Thus far, the only two vendors making their offering available under some form of a usage-based licensing model on the ConnectWise marketplace are Webroot and Bitdefender. Other announcements concerning additional vendors joining the marketplace will be made in the weeks and months ahead.
The primary goal is to reduce the level of friction that MSPs that standardize on the ConnectWise PSA platform might encounter when trying to take advantage of third-party tools that complement the capabilities of the ConnectWise platform, says Bishop. All the offerings on the ConnectWise marketplace will be accessible via the same integrated ConnectWise dashboard.
Vendors participating in the ConnectWise marketplace will also have committed to some form of usage-based pricing model that aligns with how MSPs typically charge their customers for services.
It’s not clear what percentage of the MSP community has standardized on a PSA. However, most MSPs that have mature management practices in place either have already standardized on a PSA or took the time to create the equivalent by stitching together various applications on their own.
As more traditional resellers continue to extend their reach into the realm of managed services, the total number of MSPs requiring a PSA should steadily increase. The only mitigating factor for that rate of growth might be the wave of MSP consolidation being driven as multiple MSPs are being merged to form larger entities capable of competing on either a national or global level.
Regardless of the number of MSPs, the one thing that is clear is influence MSPs exercise over what IT tools eventually wind up being employed by their customers is only going to steadily increase.
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