Late last year Clarity Channel Advisors declared Kaseya VSA 9.3 as the best RMM for MSPs. Now that same RMM has been boosted with a bevy of new features that all add up to VSA 9.4, released in January.
Aimed at managed service providers (MSP) and IT departments, VSA 9.4 is packed with functions that let both constituencies more fully automate the management and protection of IT resources through policies and enhanced remote control.
A Great Starting Point
In the Clarity shootout, Kaseya VSA faced off against AutoTask, ConnectWise and SolarWinds MSP. The results ran on MSPmentor, where VSA came out on top. Kaseya was the outright winner when evaluating the RMM capabilities of each platform and was ranked first or second in core capabilities. Kaseya excels in the area of automation and technician productivity which is highly critical in a competitive landscape where fixed fee engagements have become the norm and MSPs need to drive employee efficiency to realize satisfactory profit margins. Kaseya also offers better scale around its functionality and gives service providers more features to impress clients, which is the most important aspect of any MSP platform.
New Feature Deep Dive
Enhanced Technician Experience:
- Live Connect On-Demand extends the support capabilities of VSA, enabling customers to conduct remote sessions with end users who do not have a Kaseya agent installed.
- A single dashboard allows users to manage printers, switches, routers and other networked devices instantly and remotely over a secure socket shell (SSH) from without any network configuration.
- Kaseya Extensions provide one-click deployment and execution of favorite support applications and utilities on any device, so your tools are always live.
- Live Connect Mobile brings Kaseya’s world-class technician experience to mobile devices, enabling IT professionals to troubleshoot issues while on the go.
- Real-time remote control recording provides a complete visual audit trail to improve support quality and streamline regulatory compliance.
- Universal Search saves time by providing faster access to users, agents, groups and views across the entire organization.
Cloud Backup:
- File, folder and full image backup are available for Windows PCs, Windows servers, Macs and virtual machines, including Hyper-V, VMware and Xen.
- Complete flexibility to backup locally to Kaseya’s low-cost cloud storage environment or to your own cloud.
- Advanced compression and deduplication technology makes efficient use of bandwidth and storage usage, while AES-256 encryption keeps data safe.
Improved Discovery:
- Kaseya’s best-in-class discovery engine has improved to make finding and categorizing machines more accurate and comprehensive. Updated discovery algorithms fingerprint all devices on a network and automate the deployment of patches, software, antivirus and monitoring.
- Multi-subnet scanning support greatly simplifies discovery by allowing a single probe to discover entire environments across network boundaries.
Cross-Platform Enhancements:
- Deep support for new Red Hat 7 and Ubuntu 16 Linux distributions.
- New policy management for Windows Server 2016 and Mac Sierra operating systems.
The Customer View
Customers put VSA 9.4 through the paces in a rigorous beta test and walked away impressed. “For Power Consulting, great service means being able to deliver the technology, services and processes our customers need to succeed. We support a ton of growth with our users, and technology, such as Kaseya VSA, helps us not only keep up, but deliver the type of advanced computing that was once only available from larger companies. Partnering with Kaseya enables us to stay ahead of customer demands and deliver the type of high-level service Power Consulting is known for in the highly competitive greater New York market,” said Jason LaPorte, director of IT, Power Consulting.
The revamped RMM also proved its security mettle with one customer in the demanding field of financial services. “Working with financial institutions means having to deliver a paramount level of service and security unseen in other industries. We need to be 100 percent transparent in the work we do for our customers, and security is always of the highest concern when we remotely access their systems. Kaseya VSA offers a breadth of security and compliance services unsurpassed by the competition with its new recovery and automation capabilities. It is truly the next generation platform for IT systems management, which elevates us as the next-gen MSP for financial services,” said Chris Banta, director of security and automation at Safe Systems.
