Transcript
guys can see us out there as we get started. Apologies for that. It looks like we went live a second early, so we're about five minutes early, Cam. Hey, why not? You know, let's be spontaneous, right? Hey, you never know what's going to happen when you're live. And we are live from Exchange 2025, and I have a good friend here, Cam. How are you doing, brother? I'm doing awesome, man. It's been a good week. Lots of learning. Lots of engaging. Great partners. Yeah, it's been awesome. You know, it's always interesting when you see the events that are in the space these days and how many wonderful folks you get to meet. And you know, I drove down here to come and be a part of this, and again, shout out to Exchange for allowing us to be able to broadcast live from the event. But it's just been an honor to see so many wonderful folks have interesting conversations about the future of managed services. And you know, last night we were talking a little bit about what the future looked like, but we also even had a little bit of fun. We got into some pie last night. We took us to the House of Pies, which is a gem if you're in Houston, so you've got to go. It was definitely a good time. You know, it brings me to the moment, again, why I'm so excited about today. And Cam, I want to say thank you, guys, because, you know, obviously, as Super Ops, we are super excited to be partnering with you and also making sure that, you know, everybody that's out there, the reason we wanted to do this LinkedIn Live was to talk a little bit about the partnership between Super Ops and ASAP. And so, you know, we think about, you know, the things and the conversations that we've been having over the last couple of days with some of the partners. One of the big things and the theme that we've heard a lot about is modern value equations and the ways that MSPs are finding value and why they're here and the way that they're thinking about operating their business in the future. And I look to the synergy behind what we've created, right? And the reason why we talked and one of the main reasons behind it was we see that MSPs are looking to do things smarter, better, faster, quicker, more profitable. And they're looking to see how not only can I generate value for my own business and profitability, but how do I generate value for my customers? And we're going to talk through some of that today. And I'm really, really, really, really excited to kind of have that conversation with you guys because you guys are doing a great job over there. And I look forward to really having that conversation. So for those of you guys that are out here that are joining us here today, do me a favor. If you've got any questions, make sure that you ping us in the chat. We're here live, so anything that you ask is going to come up here and we definitely want to get to some of those comments and we want to say thank you guys for being a part of this and making sure that you're jumping in here with us. But at the same token, I want to make sure that all of you just let us know where you're from because this is all about you. The whole reason that we decided to partner and the whole reason behind this live stream and all of its wonderful live aspects is because we're doing this to make sure that we bring value to you. So let us know how that's working out. And if you guys are finding value in this conversation, throw some likes in the chat. So let's talk about Cam. You know, here we are, top of the hour. We're excited to be having the conversation, announcing for the first time a partnership between Super Ops and ESET. And that partnership is an integration partnership. And I know for many of the MSPs that are out there, they're probably thinking, OK, what's special about this one? Why are we doing this? Like, you know, obviously you're making it, you know, you're putting it on social media and what's the whole point behind it? And I think that, you know, when you think about the conversations and the ways that you operate your business as a managed service provider, you know, you have to be thinking about ways that you are generating value for your business. So when we at Super Ops look at how we present and create value inside of our platform, we're looking at our partnerships very strategically. We're looking at the things that A, number one, our MSPs are asking for. B, we're looking at how does this work internally to the organization? How are we saving them time? How are we creating, you know, better uses of time? How are we activating inside of their businesses? But also, how are we translating that value to their customer? And so when we sat down with ESET, one of the conversations that we had was, let's talk about what the current state and what the future state of managed services looks like. And I know that, Cam, you know, you have, and again, thanks you guys for all the comments here. I appreciate it. I know that you guys have a lot of thoughts around what the future looks like inside of ESET. So why don't you give me a little bit about ESET and then let's talk a little bit about some of the things you're doing. Of course, yeah. So, you know, for those of you who don't know ESET and the brand, you know, we've been in the market for technically about 37 years. And we've been in the channel for most of that. We are channel dedicated and focused and, you know, we see a ton of value in it. So whether you're a VAR, a VAR, an MSP, a CSP, whatever the terminology is, you know, our goals as a cybersecurity platform and company and community is really to serve our partners, the people who go to bat with our brand and believe in it. So, you know, we're very excited when we're able to create unique partnerships with especially emerging, exciting RMMs, PSAs, and tools that the MSPs specifically are asking for. So, you know, we're really excited about that. I think, you know, when we get down to value, value can be defined a bunch of different ways. There's the technical aspect of it. How do I, you know, automate my business a little faster? How do I simplify? I don't really want to use the single pane of glass phrase, but, you know, I guess I will say it in there. But, you know, just reducing what is needed to not only operate the business, but show actual value to the customers. So when we're able to do stuff like that with other unique players who have a similar mission, it's amazing. So I'm really excited to be sitting here right there, right now. Yeah, you know, and that's the whole point behind, I think, why partnerships are meaningful. You know, I think back to my days as an MSP, and one of the things that, again, I was always looking for was deliberance in our conversations and looking for ways that we're actually going to partner together and be able to deliver value together. And, you know, having a conversation with Issa, it was very interesting and thinking about the way you guys are actually looking at approaching the market. What is the real reasoning behind what you guys are doing and some of the innovations that you guys are bringing into your business? And I think it's really, really awesome to hear. So let's talk a little bit about that. Obviously, you know, Super Ops and ESET, we have partnered to actually do a couple of things. First of all, there's technical integration. But one of the things that I think a lot of MSPs don't pay attention to is some of the integrations that are out there. And one of the things that we focus on is that smoothness in terms of how we integrate with a partner. And, you know, obviously, we've just taken the first step, which is just the first step into getting you guys into the platform and making sure that we're actually able to do the things that MSPs need. We'll obviously be working more and more with ESET to actually dive deeper. But when we think about the amount of time it takes in certain integrations, for those of you that are MSPs out there in the ecosystem today, you recognize that there's a lot of time that's taken between switching between panes and moving on. And so, one of the big things is that making sure that you're not wasting a lot of time inside of the platform. And so, when we think about the things that you need to be doing from a platform perspective, we want to make sure that it's saving you time. And that's really one of the things that we did in this integration was try to figure out how to save you time. And so, with that, I want to make sure that, you know, when we talk a little bit about you guys inside of your platform, the whole ethos around, you know, solving problems and cybersecurity issues is trying to reduce the amount of time that it takes to resolve an issue. And so, we started thinking about this partnership and looking at, OK, inside the platform, here's how this should work. And inside of your platform, how does this work? Can you talk a little bit about how you guys are saving MSP time in terms of, you know, their operations? Yeah, absolutely. So, from a basic level, what we've done is we've integrated our solutions to where you can deploy your point solution, some more advanced type features, and, you know, essentially the mission was, let's reduce the time, let's give that back to the MSP so that they can spend it, you know, with their clients and, you know, on their business. And so, you know, I think from the basic level, you know, there's basic need to be able to get the products on devices fast, get them protecting and watching and responding to any type of, like, real-world threat that might be occurring. You know, if you're able to do that and then, you know, go the step further and then show value to your clients, then, you know, you've achieved mission one, right? You're actually able to show them what you're doing for them, but using a tightly integrated solution so that you're not going all over the place to make your people work harder, right? Yeah. You know, you always hear from the technicians first, like, that's who's really, like, driving the conversations. You know, I'm having problems with these guys or, you know, I'm having problems with these ones. And so, you know, our mission is to make it smooth. We want to be in alignment. We want the experience to be good. You know, I think ESET, one of the real big value adds to is our support. It's phenomenal. If there ever is a question, an issue, whatever, there's so many different ways to get a hold of us so that we can help resolve and, again, reduce time because the time spent is not profitable, right? You know that as a previous MSP. Yeah. You know, I call it a death of a thousand cuts, right? You know, most MSPs chalk up this miracle time to this lost aspect of time to admin time. And then when you look at that, and that's often because we're not, you know, being able to use the tools effectively to track the time that we have. And so when the systems actually can do it more effectively, the more reality and the closer we get to profitability, and we talk about this often as two metrics, right? Time to revenue and time to profitability. And one of the things that we focus on is trying to get MSPs to revenue and also making sure that we get them to profitability faster than anyone else. And that's when we start to measure, like, how we look at our partnerships and looking at the problems we're solving and the ways that we're doing it. And so, you know, I know that obviously that creates a unique value, which is obviously at the bottom line is profit. You know, we talk about value and we think about the things for the future. You know, one of the big things and one of the, I like to skate to where the puck is going, not only just when I was building my MSP, but even now thinking about, okay, what do MSPs in the future need, right? They need profitability and they need new value equations for their customers. How are they positioning themselves in the future as a modern managed service provider, right? So in that case, you know, I know that you guys have some unique value propositions that you guys bring to the table outside of just the security lens as well. You want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you guys are doing on the technical side and then maybe we can stitch into the other pieces? Yeah. You know, I think from a practical side, you know, using the integration, using the tools, that's one thing. And, you know, you have to get set up and get set up for success fast. So, you know, one thing that I really love for our partners is our deployment and upgrade service. So, you know, specifically that's a few hours with our pro services team, we're actually taking through the ABCs of how to deploy, how to protect, you know, optimal policy setting and configuration setting so that that way you are actually setting up the security product to do what it's intended to do. You know, yes, things are automated, things are pre-configured, but I think understanding why and how, that's the value because then that is something that can be taught within, you know, to the MSP, to their team and that's something that they rarely forget, right? They want that upfront help and, you know, we do that through a white glove onboarding service. So when you sign up as a partner with ESET, you actually get that included. We don't actually charge you for that. So, you know, that's kind of against the market grain. I think a lot of people, you know, it's not a good or a bad thing, they just want to monetize for their time. And we do that too, but, you know, there are certain things that we just feel on the enablement side, especially on the technical, we're trying to reduce that time to revenue and profit and, again, make that alignment to the rest of the tool set. I think one big value that partners will understand is the security education that we give. And so, you know, this is not a productized type of conversation. This is a, you know, we do a lot of threat research and we're very proud about our approach to security. We're preventative. We really focus on what if you actually didn't see the occurrence, you know, the threat against your network. And so, you know, efficacy is a very important thing. You know, we see this in, you know, physical tools, you know, and definitely on the digital side and, you know, it's no different. You know, why should we settle for something that's just going to alarm and tell us what's going on? No. We need to be ultra preventative. So, you know, ESET, a lot of people don't know, but we have 11 threat research centers around the world and, you know, that's not something everybody has out there. And so, I think the other thing is they're placed in some pretty hot zones close to threat actor groups. And so, this allows us to be close to the fire and close to the stuff that's happening and evolving. And so, it allows our researchers 24 hours a day to kind of get ahead of that stuff. And it is absolutely a differentiator for us as a company because we are constantly learning. Like, we get flooded with a lot of good information as a sales organization, as a technical organization, marketing, and that allows us to go and have those conversations as well with our partners and point them to the resources that can kind of help them out. One really, really good one, I always have to plug this, is We Live Security. This is probably, it's an amazing website. And so, a lot of the threat research that we're doing that goes into our monetized threat feeds that we actually sell to the market, a lot of this information we actually give away for free. So, we publish articles pretty much every day, whether it's a short one, a long one, a threat report that's going over a long period of time, you know, or something that's analyzing a forward-ahead kind of look. It's just amazing info and it's for everybody, whether you're B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter. This is stuff that's going on and there's something there for everybody, there's nuggets, but I always call that back to, in the onboarding process, those are the kind of resources you can take as a business owner and as a service delivery team and then you can start incorporating that into your QBRs with your clients and they love it. It's the sugar on top and they're like, oh, you know, you did all the basics but then you brought me this other free resource and I actually subscribe to this now, get feeds on my phone. It helps me stay ahead of the stuff and then when we have conversations, we're in more alignment. I understand a little bit more of the landscape than I did before we got together and so that's true value. That's bringing value to your customer base. I think you have to think about those things when you're thinking about becoming not just a trusted advisor but the trusted partner. I have to move past just giving you advice. I have to move into the future. I have to move into the more intimate aspects of being a true partner in a MSP slash customer relationship and so I love that you guys are actually helping with that because I know that our community often asks for a lot of those things in terms of, hey, do we have any resources that we can share? So I appreciate you guys actually thinking about how do MSPs need to be activated, what are some of the education aspects and I think everyone saw during the pandemic, most MSPs realized that we became educators during that time and so now we have a new nuance of educating business owners across the globe about their business and the security and complexity and all the regulations that they need to also work with and to comply with for their insurance requirements and whatnot. So I love that you guys are actually helping them down that path but I know you guys, we were talking about this earlier and how you're activating MSPs and when you think about the education piece, that's amazing. Would you think about when the buyers are buying in the current ecosystem, if you looked at the new state of the MSP 2024 research study that just came out, the number two thing that they were interested in was cybersecurity. The one thing that customers said and one of the big buyer summaries for 2024 was, give me relevant information. So when I pair these two things together, when this is the most pressing thing and here's the information I want to consume, how do I actually connect the dots? Because obviously we've been, as MSPs and again with super ops, one of the things that we're focused on is trying to empower MSPs to be more than just problem operators but business operators. So even the platform, the way we're thinking about it, it's not necessarily like getting back in and just turning it. It's like, let's use the technology to make us better, faster, smarter and more profitable. And so in that case, you guys are activating in a new nuance and you guys have a couple of different interesting approaches. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you're doing to activate MSPs and helping them create profitability and actually helping educate the customer outside of some of the things you mentioned? Yeah, definitely. I think this gets down to the marketing conversation and some business owners like to put their head in the sand and other ones like to just go right at it. I know there's some marketing people that I just love and trust me, as a business owner, those are two things you have to meld together. And so I know even though it may seem like a necessary evil, it's a requirement, right? Yeah. And it's hard, right? So I get why. It's one of those like, OK, the technical challenge is one thing, but once I've sort of solved for that now, it's like now is the business side of it. And if that's not your first comfort, then yeah, it can be challenging. So what we really try and strive to do is make sure that we compare our expert marketers with the onboarding partners that are signing up for the journey. So we have different points of activation and that's on the technical side. That's on with the sales team, getting the pricing and packaging together and then, you know, the go to market. Right. But then how do I go and acquire new customers to keep my my funnel moving? But then also, how do I upsell on the existing set and not just to make money, but to make them more secure? I mean, that's that's the first part of it is let's make them more secure, but let's teach them. And I think two things with you said, right, we have a marketing automation platform that, you know, we offer to partners at no cost as part of the partnership. So, you know, this is a solution you normally have to pay for and probably a lot of money. And so I think that's a big value add for number one, what you can do with it is pretty cool. So you can take your own contact list and it's all, you know, shielded like we don't see that because we get it, you know, we're worth the big bad vendor. Right. But no, we are we're trying to work with you and your either cold list, warm list, existing list of prospects, customers, and we want to help you warm them up, wake them up, pay attention to you on the existing customers. We just want you guys to talk more. We want to help with that. So there might be a gap in the middle where a business owner would come to me and say, you know, you know, I want to have a close relationship with my client. I want to teach them. I want them to trust me. How do I do that? And it's like, really, it's just communicating more and like keeping the relationship intact and going. So, you know, with this platform, you can load in different content if you want to put together a newsletter that you wrote or you want us to help you write one, you know, security content. Like I said, there's a bunch of free stuff, but we can curate other items that you can drop in and mark it out to your wide list of targeted prospects or customers for those various reasons. Like I want to go tell them about something that's happened in the market. I want to tell them how I'm solving it and I want to tell them how it's going to help their business and reduce the time spent worrying because that's what they're doing. They're worrying all the time, just like you are as an MSP. So how do I make them worry less? You worry less. And then that will translate hopefully into more buyers and more consistent buyers for whatever technology you're trying to apply in their environments. So, you know, there's always the technical aspect, but that's just like product layering to make sure things are tight and secure. But then it's really just about communication and being in front of them more. And then that just kind of builds that trust. So, you know, our marketing platform is amazing. It's something where you can set up and put in webinars as well. You can do a webinar. We can do one. We can do one together. You know, it doesn't really matter. And, you know, we do a lot of white labeling for MSPs. Like we get it. We want to celebrate and promote your brand, not our brand. It can be a power buy you set if you want it to, and that's fine. But it can just be a power buy the MSP, you know. And so I think that that's kind of unique. You know, I would say, you know, a lot of MSPs are spending a lot of time, money and effort. And I hear I go to conferences often and speak about sales and marketing and improving your brand awareness and building that trust within your customer environments. And so many of them struggle with, you know, what is it that I do? Right. And what is it that I'm trying to position into the future? And the fact that I don't have to. And again, it's such an honor to be able to partner with a company that is empowering MSPs, like because you're a cybersecurity company, you're not a marketing brand awareness company, but you've taken the extra step to kind of get outside of the lane and say, look, we recognize that this is a challenge and we can actually build that value for you and at least build that mutual value. So, again, kudos to you guys. And again, I know that our community is going to love some of that. So for our Super Ops community, for those of you that are listening today, definitely you should take a look at that, because if you're paying for a third party marketing solution right now, you might want to just, you know, take a look and see what ESET's got going, because I think that that might be interesting. Absolutely. And, you know, margins are margins and all that. We have competitive margins. But, you know, I think when we're talking about value, like ask those questions. You know, we have a very extensive partner program guide and, you know, you can do one thing, two things. You can either not read it or you can like look through it extensively, because there's so many good things in there that, you know, one asset I have of our sales organization is that they're taking their partners through that and giving it to them constantly, even if it's like an existing partner, because maybe we missed something. Maybe we have something new in 2024 we didn't have in 2023. We're already discussing some very exciting things for next year. And how can we level up? Like we are always our own critics, right? And we're like, OK, how can we provide more value? How can we make it easier? How can we make their brands bigger? What do they want to do? And it's like, you know, maybe increase the valuation. Maybe you want to exit one day. Yeah, absolutely. You've got to get your EBIT up. Exactly. You know, and that's where I think, you know, when you take a look at, you know, the nuances of the partnership that we have, you know, it wasn't just about the technical aspects of it. It was more about the approach to the MSP ecosystem and really supporting community. So again, kudos to you guys for that. That's really very synergetic with our approach. And again, thank you for listening to the MSPs that keep asking, because I know that that's a product of design and that it's probably something your customers probably asked a lot for. Sure. And so, you know, one of the big things I do want to say, and again, thanks to you guys for that. We're here at Exchange, you know, and we're having lots of conversations. We mentioned earlier we shared some pie last night, you know, and for all those MSPs that are looking to get a piece of the pie and some action and some revenue, this is definitely something that you should take a look at. I'm going to drop a link in the chat. You guys got to, you know, if you guys want to take a look at on the ESET side, if you guys want to take a look at Super Ops, go to superops.com forward slash ESET. And I know that for those that are going to superops.com looking at the ESET integration, we go to our marketplace page and look at our integrations with ESET. You guys can find a little bit more. Do you have a link that you want to share with the group as well? You know, I think the easiest thing to do is visit our partner page. We feature all of our RMM, PSA and other tools that we integrate with. So you can easily find, you know, information on our programs, our products, you know, our integrations with Super Ops right from our website there. But yeah, you know, one last thing I want to talk about is just how we're enabling our partners. And, you know, obviously we're very focused on our partnerships that we have. Obviously, ESET is a tried, true, trusted brand. And thank you so much for trusting us with your customers and we're trusting you with ours. We definitely see that there's a value here outside of just what we've built. But again, we're building this for the ecosystem. And when I think about partner enablement, obviously we've talked about a couple of things, obviously building the future focused RMM, PSA with, you know, cutting edge cybersecurity vendors such as ESET. You know, is there anything else you want to talk about from a partnership enablement perspective that you think our listeners here today might gain some value from? You know, I think, you know, really getting into our community, right? Like, so, you know, we go to a lot of these things and, you know, we're trying to represent ourselves at a lot of different channel events and even end customer events. But I think it's really just, you know, picking our brain and, you know, we want to approach you, obviously. And it's not just to sell you something, but I think as either an existing partner, you know, we're here to engage with you. We're out in the community and we want to do more and more of that. For anybody who's not, that's got, you know, curiosity about, well, how can I get involved? How can I sign up? How can I just like consume free information? Whatever. Ask us, you know, we're a wealth of information. We've been doing this forever. We have very talented people on our staff. And, you know, it's not just a product line. You know, it's like I said, there's the threat research aspect of it. And we're really a services company with products layered in. And I think really, you know, we probably used to market ourselves way the other way. And that's OK. It was the evolution of our company where we went from point solution to, OK, well, we do a point solution. We do 2FA encryption. We have a managed detection response service on top of our XDR that, you know, is probably the hottest thing talked about in the market right now. And we're proud of all those things. We can kind of teach you how they work. We've had so many conversations this week where we'll go up and it's a, hey, I need an EDR. Well, we have an XDR. Well, what's the difference? Well, yeah, it's an extension of the tool into different areas that you need to be concerned about. And so it's really just like general education. Like, well, if you want, we can talk a little bit about that and then I can tell you about our service and our product if you want. I'm not trying to hard sell you. I just want to make sure you're shopping for the right thing and you go in educated. So I think with partner enablement, it's prospect enablement, too. You know, I'm looking to have a long term, you know, relationship and partnership with somebody who is interested in including our or not just ours, but a good security solution, product service, the marketing aspect of it. Well, we want to want to bring everything to you. So there's a lot of value. There's a lot of points on the journey of partner activation, enablement and then ongoing maintenance and education. And so, you know, we're we're really trying hard. You know, we want to be in front of our partners. We want to meet with you. We want to educate you and we want to help bring value and, you know, get you to that higher revenue, higher margin line. Right. Well, and again, you know, obviously, SuperOS being an all inclusive RMPSA documentation, you know, network monitoring management platform, along with, you know, all the other pieces that MSPs need just got a little bit better with our new partnership with ESET. So thank you so much, brother. It's just an honor for those of you that want to learn a little bit more. We have a very awesome, wonderful webinar that's coming up and I think you're on it. Right. I am next week. Yeah. So if you guys want to dive in November 5th, come join again. We're actually going to do a very technical deep dive. I'm going to have the product team on and we're going to jump into this thing and talk a little bit about how we're making MSPs lives that much better. So, again, thank you for the partnership and thank you guys for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. We look forward to the next one. We'll see you all soon. Thanks.
