At a moment of enormous uncertainty, Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola feels confident about three things: 1) The economy is in rough shape, 2) the economy will eventually recover, and 3) when the economy does recover, Kaseya and its partners will be poised for success.
Voccola made those and other points yesterday during a virtual event outlining Kaseya’s strategic thinking, latest product updates, and future roadmap plans. Undeniably, he observed, the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has already done unprecedented damage to SMBs and MSPs already, and it has yet to complete its path of destruction.
“A lot of people have lost their jobs. A lot more are going to. The economy is tough. It’s going to get harder,” Voccola said. Yet as surely as dark days lie ahead, he added, it’s equally certain that better times will follow. One need only look at the last hundred years and its multiple, often severe, downturns to know it.
“The economy always gets stronger. It always finds a way to grow.” Voccola stated. The growth that emerges from this crash, he added, will be especially kind to channel pros.
“We’ve now entered a new era, which presents even more opportunities for small to midsize business technology providers,” Voccola said.
That new era, which follows an earlier one marked by accelerating adoption of cloud computing and other transformative technologies, arrived all but overnight this spring in response to coronavirus-related distancing measures that have made remote work and online everything a necessity for survival among SMBs especially.
“Small to midsize businesses were hit first and were hit hardest in the COVID-19 crisis, and all the IT technology that became mainstream during the previous era is absolutely required now to deliver what SMBs need,” Voccola said. “All of this happened in just 60 days. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to think about how the speed of this took place.”
The healthcare industry is a prime example, he continued. With doctor’s offices closed to most patients, telehealth systems have suddenly become the only way medical practices can deliver care. Restaurants that can’t make money from in-room dining have had to embrace online takeout orders.
Indeed, as he discussed in an interview set to air on the ChannelPro Weekly podcast next week, Voccola has seen that particular phenomenon up close. He and his parents have been eating together regularly for years at a restaurant on the New Jersey shore that’s using internet ordering to keep itself afloat. “I know the guys that own this restaurant,” Voccola says. “They did not have an online presence two months ago.”
The presence they have now, he added, is here to stay. “It’s not like they’re going to stop doing takeout just to bring people back into the restaurant,” Voccola noted. Physicians aren’t going to shut down their telehealth solutions when coronavirus restrictions are eased either, nor will colleges forced to deliver courses online go completely back to classroom instruction the day a COVID-19 vaccine appears.
“Remote learning is going to put probably a third of universities out of business, and you’re going to see probably 2X that number emerging as virtual learning universities,” Voccola predicted.
