Kaseya acquiring Datto gave out fascinating insights for MSPs

Not so long ago, Kaseya acquired a historic disaster recovery service for $6.2 billion to support its security and IT departments. Datto has a fascinating story. In 2015, the company raised $100 million as a startup and a $75 million investment. In 2017, Visa Equity purchased it, and three years later, they took the company public.

Since the start, Datto did not have to look back as the well-wishers and invested parties were taken well care of by its service. In 2022, Kaseya and Datto started a joint venture to empower more of an MSP focused platform. The merger is expected to be completed within Q2 2022. Tens of thousands of global customers benefit from Kaseya-Datto’s joint venture in SaaS.

Software as a Service (or SaaS) has a legitimate background in the cybersecurity side of things. In the IT department, the most focus is not on data collection but its safekeeping from prying eyes. The two MSP vendors primarily focus on ransomware prevention, remote monitoring and management (RMM), and cloud data protection.

The $6.2 billion acquisition is a well-put play in accelerating cybersecurity industry M&A. Cybersecurity leaders such as Trellix, Fortinet, NTT Application security, Sophos, and Malwarebytes discussed cybersecurity M&A at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

The purchase of Datto gave Kaseya the power to provide backup and disaster recovery-related services. When Datto is enabled in your system and if something goes wrong, it will be an easy process to get stuff up and running. CEO of Kaseya, Fred Voccola, talked about the “legendary commitment” and said, “The alignment of our mission and focus makes us a natural fit that will help our greatly appreciated customers reach new levels of success.”

When Datto and Conn.-based data backup and disaster recovery software provider Norwalk joined pace with Miami-based company standout, which specialised in cloud security and management, the whole MSP community was shaken up. We may have seen the very best service offered by reupdated vendors. Still, the Kaseya-Datto partnership is something on a whole different level. Voccola said they were excited about what lay in front of them. “Kaseya and Datto will be better together to serve our customers” in a recent statement.

In July 2021, one of the most significant ransomware attacks took place. It penetrated through Kaseya and became a headline in global news. Popular hacker group REvil was behind the distortion compromising nearly 60 MSPs. Up to 1,500 end customers received messages saying payment was required.

According to Kaseya, threat actors exploited VSA tool vulnerabilities, passed the authentication step, and ran arbitrary command execution. Kaseya provides VSA products to at least 36,000 MSPs, and as the chain was exploited, they also suffered a disruption. The FBI came into action and pulled out the access decryptor tool and recorded the service provider. Hence the push toward Datto’s backup and disaster recovery services became a priority.

It was pretty devastating, to be honest. Becoming vulnerable is one thing and thousands of services having downtime is another.

IT management software maker Insight Partners backed Kaseya. Part of the investment was sourced from TPG Capital, Sixth Street Partners and Singapore state investor Temasek. In 2020, Datto’s stock price was $27nn per share, and Visa Equity was one of the biggest equity holders. They purchased nearly 70 per cent of the company. With the $618.7 million in revenue, the company grew 19.3 per cent year over year.

The Visa owned backup and recovery company Datto is truly spectating better days in need, revenue and growth. Kaseya is making sure a company of this scale does not fall victim to the exploits again, and even if they do, there are options to fall back. The previous one had a rough toll as stock price exceeded expectations, and customers had a tough time.