How efex scaled through standardization, cybersecurity and platform-driven efficiency

Case Study Highlights 

• Standardized operations across 24 locations by consolidating disparate tools and acquired environments onto the Kaseya platform, reducing onboarding time by 50%.  

• Built security-first service bundles aligned to Australia’s Essential Eight framework, helping customers improve cyber maturity while creating a key competitive differentiator.  

• Improved operational efficiency and profitability through integrated reporting, deployment visibility, SLA management and service desk workflows.  

• Protected customers with proactive threat detection and response using RocketCyber, successfully isolating threats before lateral network movement and minimizing business disruption.  

• Delivered backup and recovery as a core managed service by standardizing on Datto SaaS Protection and Datto BCDR, enabling rapid recovery and improving customer resilience.  

Standardizing a rapidly growing MSP 

Efex is one of Australia’s largest and fastest-growing managed service providers. Founded in 2013, it operates across 24 locations on Australia’s East Coast, with around 8,500 customers and 370 staff, and it’s on track to reach 60 locations. 

That rapid expansion — fueled by acquisitions and regional growth — created operational complexity that eventually became difficult to manage. 

“We had multiple product owners in the business. We were getting tools from all sorts of different vendors and providers.” The result was fragmented operations, inconsistent onboarding experiences and difficult vendor management. “Our tech stack and vendor management was almost impossible,” Rose said. 

They also struggled with disconnected systems and inconsistent tooling. “We trialed around four or five different agents before we landed on Datto,” he explained. 

As efex continued growing, standardization became essential. “We continue to acquire businesses and organizations and they consistently review what do they have, how do they use it, how does it play into our tech stack,” Rose said. 

The company ultimately consolidated around the Kaseya platform to simplify operations and create consistency across the organization. It also immediately accelerated onboarding and service delivery. 

“It makes things really simple and easy when we’re doing deployments and onboarding of new clients,” Rose said. “It’s cut the time in half.” 

One platform driving better service delivery 

Before standardization, efex operated with a fragmented support model and limited cybersecurity alignment. “We had one agreement that was one supported product, and that was kind of it,” Rose explained. 

As customer expectations evolved, so did their need for more integrated services and standardized security. “We could just see that the market was shifting so quickly that we had to meet that demand,” he said. 

Today, efex delivers four standardized service bundles with integrated cybersecurity built directly into every tier. And they’re all aligned directly with Australia’s Essential Eight cybersecurity framework. That alignment allows customers to quickly improve their cybersecurity maturity without requiring fully custom engagements.  

Operationally, the Kaseya platform has transformed how efex manages onboarding, reporting, SLA tracking and customer support. Now, the company has greater visibility into deployments, onboarding progress and reporting. 

“The operational efficiency around pulling reports, getting confirmations of deployments, reducing failure rates… has been immensely successful for our onboarding teams,” he explained. And that improved efficiency also directly increased profitability. 

The service desk also benefits from the integrated platform approach. “Our service desk are really managed on tickets and time and SLA,” he explained. Because customers increasingly expect real-time visibility into ticket activity and service performance, integrated tooling became critical. They make it easier to meet expectations and work faster. 

“Having tools that integrate and talk to each other is key,” Rose said. Which is exactly what the Kaseya platform offers. It’s foundational to their future service delivery model. 

“We want to have everyone in one ecosystem managed in a single portal,” he explained. 

Turning cybersecurity into a competitive advantage 

Cybersecurity has become one of efex’s biggest strategic growth drivers. “We are seeing  that clients really do care about security,” Rose said. 

Plus, Australia’s evolving compliance landscape has accelerated demand for stronger protections. “The next five years in Australia will be about mandating certain industries and verticals,” he explained. The government has instituted the Essential Eight standards, which companies must meet to help protect their online presence. 

Efex positioned itself ahead of that trend by building security-first service bundles aligned to Essential Eight maturity standards. “That’s been really strong for us,” Rose said. “It gives our customers a lot of confidence.” And it’s all thanks to Kaseya’s cybersecurity tools. 

The Kaseya stack now powers monitoring, alerting, SOC operations, endpoint protection and threat response across the business. “Protecting the entire infrastructure is really important,” Rose explained. 

RocketCyber became especially important as the company scaled. It’s even become their internal SOC platform. 

The platform has already helped EFEX contain active threats before they could spread. “We had a client that had a device… [where] a threat actor gained access to that device,” Rose recalled. RocketCyber immediately isolated the endpoint. 

“RocketCyber was able to alert and isolate that device before it moved laterally in the network,” he said. Because backups were already in place, EFEX was able to rapidly recover operations. “We were able to pull that device out of that network, import a new device and then do a forensic analysis.” 

The incident ultimately strengthened the customer relationship. “They actually moved up one of our tiers and took the next package above that,” he said. 

For efex, integrated cybersecurity is no longer optional — it is now a core business differentiator. “Our clients that aren’t offering it… [but] we can protect at this level.” It’s been a game changer. 

Building cyber resilience through backup and recovery 

Backup and disaster recovery are deeply integrated into efex’s managed services strategy. 

“We had a lot of customers that really think that Microsoft is the ecosystem and everything’s backed up in there,” Rose explained. But it’s not. Educating customers around retention, recovery and resilience became a major focus. 

Efex standardized heavily around Datto SaaS Protection and Datto BCDR appliances to backup Microsoft 365 where gaps exist. They also rely on Datto appliances for customers with on-premises infrastructure and hybrid environments. They also offer offsite replication and backups. 

That simplicity became critical for both service delivery and customer adoption. “It just needs to work and it just needs to really be easy to sell, easy to understand and easy to support,” he explained. With Kaseya, it is. 

Today, SaaS backup protection is included in every customer package. “All of our clients take up Datto SaaS, and that’s included in all of our packages,” Rose said. 

The integrated backup stack now allows efex to quickly recover systems and validate data integrity. “It allows us to recover quickly and easily,” Rose said. 

Automation, intelligence and the future of the MSP platform 

As efex continues expanding, automation and intelligence are becoming central to the company’s long-term strategy. 

“Clients want more. They expect more. They want it faster,” Rose explained. Traditional SLA models are no longer enough. “On paper four hours sounds okay. But in reality people don’t want to wait that long.” 

To meet rising expectations, EFEX is investing heavily in automation, operational efficiency and platform intelligence. 

“We have to be smarter and we have to be more efficient,” Rose explained. 

The company sees Kaseya’s platform strategy and intelligence roadmap as critical to the future of MSP operations. “Intelligence is something that I think will be immensely beneficial to our engineers and frontline teams,” he said. 

They believe centralized intelligence will dramatically improve technician efficiency and customer experience. And since they plan to expand aggressively across Australia, any operational efficiencies and self-service automations will support their growth exponentially. 

Rose expects platform standardization, cybersecurity, automation and strategic partnerships to remain central to that growth.  And without Kaseya, they wouldn’t have been able to grow as quickly or as effectively. Their aggressive expansion wouldn’t be possible, either. 

“That march towards 60 branches is on the horizon,” Rose said. 

 Kaseya has become far more than a vendor relationship. “This is absolutely a strategic partnership for us,” he said. One that will help them grow. 

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