whensley shopify

welcome to the secure connections,podcast brought to you by iotsa,the internet of things security services,association i'm your host brian sherman,i get the pleasure of not only leading,this educational series but,talking to some phenomenal people over,the past,three years now it's uh it's been a,great time and,my special guest today is one of our,long time friends,dan wensley ceo of scale pad,dan is one of the pioneers of the,managed services industry and his latest,venture aligns perfectly with the msp,community's recurring,revenue goals welcome back to the secure,connections podcast dan,thanks brian appreciate you uh having us,here under the new brand new scale pad,brand this is actually the first,live podcast interview i'm doing under,the new scale pad uh,brand and being announced as ceo since,uh we evolved from warranty master so,it's exciting times and uh it was good,to hear it it,verbalized back to me for the first time,you got a new background for those,watching the video too,so yeah it's a lot of things going on i,want to touch on some of those,uh today as well but let's start off,personally it's been a,couple of months since i think we've,last chatted so,how was your summer amidst the pandemic,did you get any,normal activities in it all this year,well,uh normal for us brian during the summer,period has been,you know uh comptia channel khan and has,been,dattocon and certainly you know leading,into it nation here in the fall,and you know that's been over the last,15 or 20 years,the typical summer um so it it has not,been normal,no um it's been an exciting,time i think the amount of work that,obviously where we were as a business,and and,the opportunity to work with partners we,we spent a lot of time working with our,partner advisory council,during this transition period brian and,it was uh,it was you know not as good as being,there in person and and having that,one-on-one time but uh,it was certainly you know invigorating,to understand what everybody was working,on,here over the summer from our home,offices,and and couches and uh and kitchens,the good news from the pandemic i've,learned is that you can typically find,everybody either at home or working uh,during the time so it's uh we know,they're not on the road and,well not very often they're on the road,at least this summer so,there is something that do it yeah the,only piece we used to get was uh,a plane ride with no wi-fi i guess and,and that those days are gone,so yeah yeah we are connected for the,time being,but uh but uh it's it's good yeah and i,hope you had an enjoyable summer,personally getting some time out at,least i know it was a good hiking summer,for us,yeah the weather the weather was good um,again,my my reprieve in the summertime is is,escaping to to a cabin,um and frankly we'd actually rented it,out a lot this year,pre-pandemic planning thinking we were,going to be on the road,and a lot of other travel and uh and in,the office quite a bit over this period,of time with the plans we had so,um i uh some some renters of ours had a,very nice time enjoying uh,enjoying what we've got so it was uh it,was good it we again we had a lot a lot,to keep us busy this year so,um it's really gone by slowly in some,respects and,and even faster than usual in others you,know what they say about best laid plans,yes well good let's let's switch uh talk,about the work side a little bit now,you and your team have been quite busy,the last few months with a number of,innovations,and most recently as you mentioned,earlier a new name,so why did you decide to transition away,from warranty master which seemed to be,gaining a lot of traction in the channel,i know a name change isn't always easy,amidst,uh when you're doing really well no it's,not and,and we we put a lot of thought into it,um,over over even even pre you know,pre-pandemic and,pre-all the events that we've gone,through here,but it was really predicated brian on,this application,evolving past its brand and passed its,name,um you know in the the early adoption of,this application,warranty master was when it was designed,as a warranty lookup tool and it,provided,phenomenal insight um and automation for,partners who hadn't had,you know that that sort of easy access,to the information that would help them,better service their clients on warranty,and asset life cycle and warranty master,frankly was the was the perfect brand,and the perfect name and the first few,thousand partners who joined,and used the application it it was very,fitting,um but we've worked very hard to evolve,the technology,thanks to you know feedback from our,partners and seeing opportunities to,extend asset life cycle management into,a into much more of a proactive process,versus a reactive you can react by the,automating the data and,pulling it in and then we we strive to,get very proactive so partners could,work with their customers,to plan asset retirement plan asset,procurement,and really budget and even sales,forecast for the msps,so warranties and you know we'll touch,on this in a little bit here brian,because,warranties quite honestly although we,just changed the brand and changed the,name,um our warranty business for our,partners is up 50,this year and up over 75 percent from,last year,and in the economy so some would,question why do you why do you change,the name when the warranty side of this,business and opportunity,is absolutely expanding but,you know back to the core value was it's,the warranty business,growth is predicated on us being able to,better,manage the assets and when they can't be,replaced as,readily because of economic conditions,or trying to extend budgets or,eliminating budgets for hardware refresh,warranty business picked up but that was,you know part and parcel with with what,we were doing around asset life cycle,management,and then the last sort of tipping point,brian was,when we decided we were going to deliver,asset,asset management for software this year,as well,and now the name warranty master,although again,huge growth for for our 8 000 partners,globally this year,when we added asset or software asset,license management and management for,both hardware and software warranty,master as a brand just didn't represent,the value we were bringing into the,market here in 2020.,yeah so so dan you bring up a common,common issue too i want to talk about,the tech,shortly but talked to a lot of msps,lately that have been really working on,doing the same thing some have had the,same,uh company name since they were avar in,their early days and are looking at,rebranding their company,how hard is it it's,no small task brian i will tell you we,um our our project for around the,software asset management release,um was,was really shadowed by the project to,change the brand,it's no small task we are using we're an,automation,organization we use a plethora of tools,um transitioning all those tools the,the brand awareness and the the brand,equity we had in warranty master that,had to be,um thoughtfully you know applied,um you know there was a couple of,immediate comments so we don't like them,you know change is hard and change isn't,always accepted by everybody and,we we were diligent about talking to,partners about it,you know we were working i'll tell you,an interesting story we're working with,our partner advisory council and,so excited to show them software asset,management when it was getting down to,its its final release versions,and giving it to them and at that time,we exposed to our pack that,hey by the way we're also changing the,brand but that's not what we're here to,talk about we're here to talk about this,release that we've been talking to you,guys about for months,and incredibly they went right to the,brand name and said wait a minute we,need to talk about this first and,so and i i appreciate it i understand it,and,and we were so diligent in having these,conversations so to answer your question,directly,brian it is no small task it is,incredibly detailed,process to ensure that it goes well that,it is representing your brand that you,have thought it all the way through,that you are able to communicate it,effectively that you are,you know not throwing out the old just,for the new,um so yes complex interesting,um lots of t-shirts and hoodies given,away even even internally to our staff,who you know are working for our,partners are working for that,application every single day,to tell them we're changing the name um,they were excited about but you know,some,they had questions there's no doubt,about it well you got to answer the,phone with the right name too i mean all,of those things you think about that,that especially for larger companies the,more employees you have the more complex,it can be,right down to the business cards even,though we may not be handing them out,right now,yeah eventually you're going to need to,have the business cards changed,yeah now and for us at the end of the,day,it just made sense as we looked at our,roadmap as we looked at where we were in,the evolution of the application and,in speaking to partners for us warranty,master just no longer represented,the value that we were delivering or,planned to,continue to deliver in the future and it,was it was,you know it wasn't a name say a change,for the for the sake of,of a branding exercise it was really to,allow us i mean,to better articulate what we're trying,to deliver and are delivering to,partners and,uh really we're trying to be the the,the pad so you can launch and scale your,business so the,sort of a launching pad to scale your,business was sort of the,the thought process behind it um and,that's really what we strive to do every,day so,so we we fell in love with the name,quite honestly because it is,core to what we're trying to do as an,organization with partners,uh you beat me to it i was going to ask,the the meaning of it so,that's perfect though thanks for,explaining that because i think a lot as,i,talked about a lot of i.t service,companies are looking at they're not,doing the same things they were years,ago,and are looking at the same thing as,knowing when you know it's a good time,to to go relaunch and,actually rebranding is a great thing if,you're getting stale and it doesn't,really represent what your company does,anymore so,thanks for hitting on that let's let's,shift now to uh,really what we want to talk about is you,built your brand on life cycle,management,with warranty master but all the changes,i've read about in the channel this was,was the recent edition of sam,software asset management you mentioned,it already too,how does that work yeah it it's a,natural progression believe it or not,you know many are seeing it as a big,move and it is there's no question about,it and i'll share some statistics with,you,um you know today our partners are,managing about 10 million hardware,assets across,um you know half a million smb customers,across the globe and,in 76 countries where we've got partners,incredible number the the hardware,assets alone that that our partners,manage,it are worth about 11 12 billion dollars,what's incredible is the number of,software assets that every msp is,responsible for,is is eight to ten times more there are,eight to ten times more,software assets inside an environment,than there are hardware,so by pure volume it's incredibly,important um the amount of data and then,what we found was the,the same problems that we saw very early,on for,msps in asset data collection,around hardware again was arguably eight,or ten times,uh more a problem when it came to,software our core,value as an application was automated,data collection,providing you sort of date the data that,you can take insightful actions on,both internally as an mxp msp and,externally,so when we looked at software it was a,natural progression for what we've done,on the hardware asset life cycle,management component,first and foremost collecting that data,autonomically and providing it to an msp,in an easy to consume,automated fashion again the same value,we delivered in hardware,and with software being more and then we,could do some unique things,by putting hardware and software,together and showing,side by side this piece of hardware,running this software,you know it's when we talked to so many,partners early on brian about,you know what would be the attributes,you'd be looking for what problems would,you be looking to solve,if you had this data because many were,doing it manually and taking,hours and hours just to collect the data,the you know how accurate that data was,or or keeping it up to date was really,their challenge so,yes we can solve that with technology,but what is it going to,derive and deliver for you as a partner,to your customer and the one thing they,came to and the big one was,standardization,having that knowledge and having that,data and having that insight,allowed them to find environments that,were out of scope,and find environments that you know,didn't have the latest,uh software updates done or didn't have,software applied whether it was,antivirus whether it's the whether it's,the rmm agent,on each device you know as you know,we've got over 30 integrations,with all of the rmm and psa platforms,and others,and that's where we derive our initial,technology,information from but even even those can,get out of sync a little bit so we're,we're helping i'm happy to say we're,helping our integration partners a,little bit,uh ensure that they've got you know the,right uh,the right agent deployed across the,board on standardization,so it's it's good for the msp and their,partners,does it collect this information through,some of the integrations you have dan or,is it to,explain that process how is it,collecting yeah great question,again it's all been done based on the,platform that we'd originally built,here at warranty master the integrations,we have across those 30,um platforms the rmms the psas the,documentation solutions and others,that that inherently has the data in it,that we were able to,extract through the apis and now deliver,it for software,um believe me when you tell the team hey,we want to go from 10 million,assets to we're going to be pushing 100,million assets now brian,with software so there was some,performance uh,considerations that that we looked at,and have overcome,that was a big part of the engineering,feat of what we're doing but yes we,haven't had to,do any new api integrations we haven't,had to,uh do anything you know deploy agents or,or change sort of our,our our architecture of how we've been,able to deliver,hardware asset management we've been,able to duplicate that for software so,it's been pretty exciting it's it's,again a big a,big shout out to our dev team who's done,just a phenomenal job,uh taking this as a concept into,fruition and,in a relatively short period of time,here in 2020,yeah i mean i've going back to think,about you know how assets have been,tracked everything from spreadsheets in,the past,to uh you know even you've got more,modern tools like psas i know you can,collect a lot of,information but is it is it a lot,different process now to bring that back,into,in this case scale pad now how's that,transition process for an msp that goes,to set that up,again one one of the one of the key,attributes of our success has been ease,of use and,immediacy as soon as you have that api,connected so we immediately rolled out,uh brian on day one a free preview of,our software asset management to all 8,000 of our partners globally,they didn't have to change anything they,didn't have to do anything,as long as they had that the rmm api,connected,the data populated um so it's incredibly,important to us as a business that we're,not,putting any heavy lifting on our,partners or a lot of configuration,we're about automation simplicity and,taking,you know being able to take action on,data,but that is presented to you very very,very easily very quickly very,efficiently,and and very clearly it's that's the key,it's,um you know we get a lot of initial,views of our reports for example brian,the ones that our partners take to their,customers say oh,it looks very basic it's just you know,green yellow red,colors and but you'll talk to our,partners and say,do not ever change this the simplicity,is how i'm able to,actually convey to a partner a customer,excuse me,how important this stuff is red bad,green good,right and it's uh they can get into the,weeds if they need it exactly,so it's been it's been good although,when i see yellow i want to hit the gas,so it don't we all yes that is,that is the sign yellow is go faster,decide whether you're going to replace,the hardware or you're going to get it,under a warranty just,yes so the same is true here so you,uploaded this basically to 8 000,partners,immediately i didn't light them not on,your support desk because even good,things people are going to wonder about,how's that how's the feedback that,transition been for you,it's incredible i i literally where as,we're taping this brian,uh we have been in market for uh less,than a week,uh tomorrow will be one week um the,feedback has been incredible,um we're holding a an mlt a management,meeting this afternoon,right after my my interview here with,you to collect all the feedback,and and sort of solidify it and and,because,again we had a great opportunity to talk,to dozens of our partner advisory,council members and they were an,integral part of the build out and how,we were doing it,but i can't wait to hear from the,thousands that we've spoken to over the,last little while,we transition much of our partner,development and refocus them,to our partners here over q4 of 2020 to,ensure that,um you know they get what they need out,of this but,again a testament to our organization a,testament to,our development team it was built in a,way that it's easily understood,easily used easily adopted and the value,is there,incredibly well we didn't staff up a,support organization,lots of great conversation because new,and change is,is new and change and it takes some time,um,but i i will tell you the adoption of it,already,is well ahead of anything we'd expected,within the first week,and the feedback's been incredible and,we we've got uh,new things that we can add and we'll add,in the short term here but,um it's adding value to partners which,was exactly what we wanted to accomplish,here,with the release so let's take a look at,the,at the msp side uh dan if i'm one of,your partners and i,all of a sudden have this availability,how are they conveying this to their,their clients and how will it help them,in the future for,you know mrr and all the other things,that they need to do,yeah and we learned we learned so much,through through the process brian one of,one of the,um data points that was brought forward,by a number of our partner advisory,councils to me was hey this,can help us drive more hardware sales,and and that wasn't in our scope of,thinking during the design process and,the validation process was,how is software asset management going,to help drive hardware for example,and we we have discovered it does and,can and will,standardization on equipment that is,running sophisticated hardware or,hardware that,that does require you know more grunt,behind it to to operate efficiently,it will help identify those it will help,solidify,where you are in in the software uh life,cycle and and do we need to add new and,should we just do it with with a new,refresh so it's,pulled it together i mean we saw the,opportunity,to put the hardware and the software,information side by side,it's a great view i think it is already,one of our most popular views inside the,dashboard,um but again we've stayed to our core,the first thing we've provided is the,automated data collection,the second thing we've done internally,for the msp brian is they can,look at a holistic view across all of,their customers,what software licenses are we running,what software are we not where are we,missing,on standardization across our entire,customer base,and then we can break it down by,customer and they can look at each one,of their customers individually,and break it all the way down granularly,to the individual devices and again with,that side-by-side view so,i'm excited for what the partner,advisory council uncovered they were,going to do with this and how they were,going to utilize it,and then what our partners will do it,now that we've released it to all of,them,and i think it will come down to the,reporting and again just like we do with,our hardware reporting,this the software reporting engine that,we've created allows an msp,internally whether you ever share this,actually with your customer or not,it actually differs from partner to,partner some use it,you know the majority use it in a qbr,absolutely,but the majority use it more internally,the reporting that was,specifically designed to show a customer,they use it internally,to standardize at the msp level on,behalf of their client whether,it's without ever taking it to them,yeah that makes me wonder too is is are,you finding,the partners i don't know if you're,getting feedback on this yet but are you,finding that their environments are more,varied,than they thought they would be on the,software side once you collect the data,brian it's always amazing what you find,right,it's again and it just goes to the the,core,issue and the pain point that was there,data collection was hard,uh auditing the data was even harder um,it just,wasn't readily available and that's,that's the problem that we've solved,first and foremost and it's,wow we've got a lot of devices out of,our standardization spec we've got a lot,of devices,you know not running the antivirus we,want,you know we have a whole security stack,we have the os stack,so it's providing great information and,insight and again,the immediacy of that as as much as,you know warranties are driving top-line,revenue and profitability and hardware,replacement is driving top-line,um profitability just better managing,your customers environments,um drives profitability for the msp,themselves,and making sure they're delivering the,best possible value,and there's a there's a simple analogy,again we were able to look back brian,and say,you know we've talked about a spiceworks,report that came out in early 2020,that looked at smb investment excuse me,into i.t,and the number one investment from a,percentage standpoint in dollars,was hardware at 30 i think it was 35,percent,of the total i.t budget of an smb goes,towards hardware,number two that we had shaded out until,last week,was software at 32 so now you're talking,two-thirds,of the it budget allocation for an smb,is now better managed by the msp,because of our application and that's,that's incredibly valuable i think i,think for,um for any it service provider to have,you know,availability of that data in real time,yeah,and dan i know in previous podcasts we,talked about extended warranties how,they,they can improve the device and and data,protection,and reduce downtime uh for clients or as,smbs as well as msps too but how does,sam fit into the security equation i,know it's not a security sale,but i can see some benefits on that side,what are you seeing there really is and,and we've got security identified in the,reporting we've got security identified,inside the dashboard for,for software management um we have the,antivirus and the other components so,it is there um it's,you know how we use it again,standardization you've got to make sure,you've got,this antivirus on every single device,that is a security play so,you know without over emphasizing it,brian it is absolutely going to help,drive security,because standardization of the,environment is an,important attribute to any security,service you're trying to deliver to,customers,and if you don't have antivirus or older,antivirus or,a device comes on to the network that is,not,within the standardization protocol that,you want to set for that customer,you run a risk so i know we are helping,there,um but don't you know we'll the partners,can identify those,opportunities for themselves and it will,strengthen their security posture both,internally,and externally with their customers for,sure so,yeah i know i realize that the health,obviously the systems of the software,is you know if you've got everything,aligned there it takes one more thing,out of the equation that could be a,vulnerability,uh that it's have to deal with but is it,also about the insight that they're,getting,um as far as where everything stands as,i say from the software side is making,sure they know when things need to be,uh re-upped and in addition to,updated yeah,and again you you touched on on the,warranty piece and again we although we,again we changed our date,to scale pad and are are talking about,software asset management inside the,application,you know it's incredible to see what's,going on this year brian around,and it does pertain to security is the,extended warranty services i mentioned i,think earlier,we're up 50 over last year and 75,percent here just in,in the last quarter um we added,you know but with much less hype and,circumstance,than the scale pad launch but we added,the ability to add extended warranties,onto workstations earlier on in the,summer,and we didn't wait for the scale pad,launch to do that because we knew,how valuable this would be to all of our,partners so our partners had been,growing their extended warranty service,on servers we had a networking gear,earlier in the summer,but about 70 percent of the hardware,assets in an,environment are workstations whether,they be laptop or desktop,and what's incredible in good economic,times right we don't really focus on,extended warranties because we're,driving to replace those we immediately,identified that,the desire or the budget or the ability,for smbs to replace,those devices was diminished during an,economic downturn,and the volume of extended warranty,vulnerability was incredible you know we,did some auditing and some big data,analysis and found that,we we increased the market opportunity,for our partners from about 50 million,dollars,with servers and workstation servers and,and networking gear,to pushing 500 million dollars by adding,workstations and that is absolutely,skyrocketed for partners,we have more first-time warranty,purchases from partners than we ever,have before and again,that business is up 75 percent for our,partners,where they're not going to replace the,fleet anymore or they're going to,replace it maybe,another year out it's critically,important they get a warranty service,coverage on it make sure the parts are,are available,for any replacement so it's been,arguably a bad habit we've gotten into,that we now economically has driven us,to to make that change so,incredibly proud of that release we did,earlier in the summer again,with a lot less press release than we,did on this one,you know what's amazing when you when,you throw out those numbers too is,is i think back like a decade when uh,you know tablets were first coming on,the scene it was like,oh we're not going to have a need for,workstations and pcs and laptops anymore,and they're going to go away and,honestly if anything i think i have more,than i had back then and,yeah there's a place for the mobility,devices but i don't think they're as,prevalent as,as we thought they were no it it was,another,really interesting integration brian,that we saw,um or sort of outcome was the number of,devices,have continued to go up inside the,environments um,and when when the transition to,work from home first started here kind,of end of q1 early q2,the number of assets being managed by,our partners ballooned,right so you know i i did a number of,press interviews and some were saying,well how can warranty sales be up,because,hardware were sales were up in in q2,they absolutely were,but that was incremental you know,devices being added to networks where we,saw that balloon because we saw the data,firsthand ourselves,but the incumbent set of solutions that,were out there were not being replaced,as readily,they were hard to find because again,there was the spike,we're all removing we're all going,remote okay here are new laptops,that drove a little bit of a run or we,were adding devices into the network,because we're now working remote,and i've added this old laptop i had,into my into my corporate network so,both were true simultaneously,the number of devices were going up and,the warranty opportunities were going up,simultaneously but all that said,regardless of what transpired here over,the last couple of quarters,the number of devices inside networks,has ballooned and,continues to expand iot imaging,um app you know i've you've heard a,couple of them have gone off during this,conversation,two of my other iot devices have gone,off here during uh during this podcast,and the one i'm speaking to so you know,i'm a small business sitting right here,with three,three devices in front of me it just,goes to show how many things there are,to manage and msps are,obviously being asked to manage it all,so i can see the value of you know,having more and more platforms and,automation to be able to uh to help them,with that part but uh,yeah you're talking about old laptops,i'm just hoping they don't have like,windows 98 on those,um there's probably a few of those,floating out there too it's,shocking what you can find when you,actually pull the data sometimes,very good well awesome always great,talking to you but,it's time for our parting shots any,final thoughts to share with our,audience before we sign off today,i i'm just incredibly impressed with,with our industry once again brian you,know we we've been through 2008 economic,downturn we've been through,the dot bomb together um you know this,is just another time in our history,where this industry has come together,continued to innovate and and change and,you know nobody likes the word pivot,anymore,evolve but all of those things are,continuing to happen,so it's it's been incredibly um,important time for our industry i think,is as much as ever you know coming out,of an economic recovery is one thing but,when we're really contributing to um the,livelihoods of a lot of businesses,i think it's incredibly gratifying so,i'm extremely proud of,of the entire industry and and our,little part and place in it,uh so yeah i think it's been an,incredible time and,i think we're on the way to to new and,better things because of it,i i mean when you look at it and msp,community being essential,i mean it's official now i think it's,clear to say but it's,yeah i agree we're in it in a great,place so yeah,thank you on behalf of iota i'd like to,thank dan wensley of scale pad,throw that in there dan for bringing us,up to speed on,a life cycle and software asset,management today uh,happy to uh welcome them in with their,new name and branding and,all the awesome new offerings that they,have too but be sure to stop back next,week,for a new episode of the secure,connections podcast,and have a safe and secure day thanks,for joining us,thanks brian

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