738 DattoCon 2024: Uncle Marv's Vendor Hall Tour

All right, Uncle Marv here on Vendor Row outside of the Vendor Hall, and instead of me speaking with Alex from Empath, I'm going to speak with Dean Trempalas, and we're going to chat about whatever you want to chat about. Dean, how are you? Good. How are you? Good to see you.

I'm doing good. So, got to ask, how is it being down here in Florida? And then second, how does it feel to be stuck here at the pinch point heading into the Vendor Hall? I love Miami, so it's awesome to be here. And I lucked out.

It's been so windy that my Massachusetts temperament can tolerate it. It's not your typical Florida day here. Very lucky with the weather.

All right. So, about the weather, when did you get in? I got in here yesterday, at midday. So no Sunday yet? No Sunday.

Just rain. Yeah. All right.

You going to try to hit the beach here soon? Well, you can't see on the microphone, but I am not beach body ready, everybody. I want you to imagine like a thin Santa Claus. It's not time for me to be on the beach.

All right. So let's transition from that talk, and let's talk about Empath here at DattoCon. So how's it going for you guys? Any new announcements? Anything new with the partners? Not new announcement, per se, but it's been kind of cool to be here.

You know, most of us at Empath are more comfortable and familiar with ConnectWise, Halo, you know, sort of the other side of the space. It's really cool to be out here with Kaseya. I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and if you believed Reddit, you'd think this conference was empty.

And there's 3,000 people here, and it's just nice to see. It's nice to see all these MSPs here learning, successful, happy, smiling. I think they may have padded some numbers here.

You know, the corporate office is just a few blocks, though. Well, we're counting the Greenlanders as well, all the employees as well. Yeah.

But you know what? You know, with their introduction of their 365, I think they have a lot of new MSPs that, you know, haven't seen the dark side of Special K, as they would say on Reddit. Well, you know, in one sense that's true, but I think Kaseya 365 is what the industry needs. There needs to be a way for that MSP that's getting started that doesn't want to have to think to have a product stack they know they can be successful on.

So it's a pretty smart move, and I would actually like to see more of the industry allow for that level of buy-in to success. So I'm happy. Yeah, I like the fact that you are getting products that all work together.

It's no integrations, no bundles. It's just you've got your product, everything's right there. So I like where they're going.

I haven't made the switch yet, but it's down-the-road consideration. We haven't made the switch either, because we don't have any MSP tools internally. But it's also, you know, Empath being a learning management system, those MSPs that are signing up for Kaseya 365 that are maybe a little bit earlier in their journey or are more established and just trying to pivot to that platform, they all have that same problem of how are they going to train their employees to be effective and just be excellent to their clients and give that service-first experience every MSP wants.

And so for us, it's awesome, because it's more of those MSPs are here for us to interact with. Well, I was going to ask the question, in terms of Empath, a lot of what you guys are doing is simply educating MSPs on how to run their business, how to get more customer engagement, how to get more sales and stuff. How has that been going over the last few months? It's been going awesome.

The Empath guys are kicking butt. They have signed up so many MSPs. The thing is a rocket ship.

It's so cool. And for me, having been from an MSP and coming to the vendor space, I love what we're doing, because we're helping people learn and grow and progress. All right.

Sounds good. And I just got attacked by Lisa Loco. So well, Dini, it was good to chat with you.

I'm going to wander on down here on vendor row, but nice seeing you down here. Hope you do and get to enjoy at least a little bit of sun. Thank you.

It's always a pleasure. So glad you stopped by. I hope to see you at the next show.

I'll be there. All right, folks. Hello again.

Uncle Marv here on the vendor hall floor, and I have found the gentleman over at Channel Program. And right now we'll be talking to the one and only Matt Solomon. Matt, how are we doing today? I'm doing good.

It was a long first night already, and it's going to be a much longer day today on day two. So how long did your night go? No. So I was actually not bad last night, but, you know, three hours of booth duty is just intense in the first night.

And I think day two, 7 a.m. to a minimum of 10 p.m. Wait a minute. The party starts earlier, doesn't it? Well, there's like two parties. So there's the Expo Hall party, which goes from like 7 to 9.30, and then I think there's the B-Voight party, the community party that goes from 9.30 to, gosh, who knows? To the wee hours of the morning, which could be 4 a.m. since we're so close to South Beach.

Yeah, it could be. It will not be me, Marv. All right.

So in terms of how things are going here traffic-wise at the booth, how's it been for you guys? Yeah, I mean, traffic's been great. Like, DattoCon’ s always delivered tons of MSPs. You know, I think they said 3,500 MSPs here total.

You know, we never know the exact numbers, but yeah, we're seeing tons of traffic, really engaged MSPs and MSPs who actually, you know, this is, we think every MSP goes to every event, but a lot of people, this is their event, the one event that they go to, and they actually do want to explore the different vendors. So it's been really good conversations. So I've talked with MSPs over the last few months, and there is no way to keep up with the 500 plus events that are happening here.

So if you've got to pick and choose a few, DattoCon, IT Nation, PAX8, yeah, these will be the big ones. Yeah, and I'd probably throw in, if you're talking just the very large one, Robin Robin Spirit Camp is another one that's like been great for both MSPs and vendors, but I do think it's important to support the regional events that vendors in the different communities are putting on. But yeah, it's getting tough.

We do have an industry calendar, a free industry calendar on our platform. I get that every week. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you can see how many events, how many webinars are going on. But one of the cool things I'll do is a very small plug, and it's still the free tools, so I'm not doing anything crazy.

But inside NaviStack, when you build out your stack in our visualization tool, it actually has a widget that says, these are upcoming events specific to your stack. Nice. So it kind of cuts through the noise of all the things happening, and it's like, hey, these are the vendors you're spending your time and money with.

And is that Kevin behind me? Yeah, it's Kevin up here giving the mean mug face, man. What's up with that? It's my job. It's my job to give him, like, dirty looks.

Sean's out here plugging your program. So let me ask you this, not to hijack your thought there, but I saw one of the other vendors out there who had on their table a card saying that they were the number one reviewed such and such in the channel program. So how many of those do you think are here? Almost everybody that has a booth here has some type of product review on our platform.

Actually saw Mail Protector, it was really cool. On their screen, I think they had six different badges that they've won from different parts of their product. So it was cool seeing that visualization.

But yeah, we just crossed over 5,500 product reviews in the platform for hundreds of different vendors. And it's definitely a way for MSPs to have their voice be heard, and it's not Reddit. You have to put your name on it.

Or at least your real name. Yeah, you do have to put your real name. So I think that was good to have that validation out there that they're not just saying their own stuff.

There's some stuff behind it that, yeah, we're highly rated, and here's the numbers to prove it. That's exactly right. And we used to, and I don't think we did it this year, but we used to give them a postcard that they could put on their booth where it would say they're highly rated.

And that's the idea. Just, hey, don't just take our word for it. Read some of the reviews we have that are public.

And they don't control the good and the bad. We publish everything. So it's a way to keep the industry honest.

All right. Well, since Kevin's back, I'll let you get back to work here at the booth. I don't want to take too much time, but thanks for spending a few minutes.

Yeah, always great seeing you, Marv. Thank you. Bye.

All right, everyone. Uncle Marv here. I am back on the floor, and I am at a familiar booth, CyberQP, and I've got Cynthia here.

And we're going to talk swag later, but I just want to get a feel for how things are going. So Cynthia, how are things? Things are going fantastic. We've got a lovely spot here right up front at DattoCon, and we've had lots of traffic all day long.

So I definitely can't complain. I love getting to talk to MSPs. All right.

So I'm going to ask this and get it out of the way. How's the hot sauce going? Hot sauce is going great. I'm down to my final bag that I brought with me.

Already? Already. Everybody loves that hot sauce. They come back for it.

So I see you got a little sign up there saying, proud sponsor of Cooper Cares. What's that all about? So basically, we donated money to the Miami Zoo Foundation's project to help out sea turtles that have been injured either by boats or maybe people. Maybe they didn't get back in the water when they needed to.

So just helping out with that. Very nice. Very nice.

And in terms of CyberQP, what's new since we last chatted? Yeah. So we actually just added a new end-user elevation product. So a nice, simple elevation product that allows you to give some empowerment back to your users.

You know, we work so hard at taking away all of this power because you don't want everyone to have this admin access, but then sometimes your users do need to do things, and so being able to do that in a controlled environment. All right. So of course, the question is going to be, well, CyberFOX and ThreatLocker does that.

I'm assuming that it's similar, kind of in the same vein. A little similar and a little different. This is just a much more straightforward approach. ThreatLocker, we love.

They're kind of a cousin to us in our backing and whatnot. But what they've got is like whitelisting. It's a kind of different experience.

And so this is just sort of a simpler experience for those clients that just need something like that, but maybe don't need the full other stuff. All right. The full other stuff.

How technical is that? Listen, sometimes you got to speak small for people like me. So I'm sitting here looking. You guys got the TV going this time and everything.

Everything's looking good. Empower your end users, the end user elevation and stuff. So you guys seem to be like out and about a lot more.

So what's going on? You guys doing a lot more stuff? You know, we definitely started this year off going. Maybe we would do a little less. And by the end of it, we've definitely done just as much as last year, if not more.

Just partnered with Huntress on some awesome road shows. So we're loving that. And we're going to Australia for the first time.

So we will be at DattoCon APAC in Sydney, like mid-November. So a year from now? No. Three weeks from now.

Oh, three weeks from now. Ooh. Are you packed for that? I'm not going.

Oh, okay. I thought that was why you were so excited. No, I've been before.

I love Australia. I'm sure I'll get to go again as we expand over there. But not this one.

I actually had the honor of being in Charlotte that week at the CMIT annual show. All right. And let's see.

So that's three weeks from now. We're at DattoCon now. Next week, IT Nation? Yes.

IT Nation next week. We will be sponsoring the MSP initiative party there with Florida. And we also have a suite there.

So we'll be partnering up with Mail Protector and having a little suite crawl as well. Yeah, should be a great week. And we have a gaming lounge there I'm super excited about.

So out in that main hallway, we're going to have Space Invaders and a basketball game. And then I'm going to bring some nostalgic board games too. We've got a couple of tables.

So we'll just be hanging out all day there at the gaming lounge. Defender? Is that one of the games you have? Defender. Oh, is that like a... I don't know that one.

Okay. Oh, no. I guess I just stated my age.

All right, well, this will be good. So I need to hear more about some of these partnerships that you've got going. So we'll talk offline.

And you can give me links and stuff where to send people to sign up for all that stuff. That sounds great. And make sure you're following us on LinkedIn, because we're always very active there and you can know where we're going to be and what we got going on.

All right, there you have it folks, Cynthia Schreiner, I almost said that wrong, from CyberQP. Thank you so much for having me. Hello, friends.

Uncle Marv back here on Vendor Row. And we are at, I don't know, this is like the pinching point, where the funnel kind of gets at the very bottom, right at the beginning of the vendor hall. And I'm here with Dustin Puryear with Giant Rocket Ship.

You'll remember him. We did a show back in the IT Nation PitchIT days. But you're here now, how's things? Yeah, everything's great.

And actually, our location's phenomenal. We get to talk to a lot of people and seeing a lot of interest out there. So at first, you probably thought this was a great space.

And then the horde of 3,000 people walking by and not stopping. So how's it been since then? Well, I think you're right about that. I will say that at one point when people were waiting to get the food, I think the temperature was about 6,000 degrees Celsius here.

So it did get a little swampy, but that's okay. That was just a couple of minutes. But overall, the conference has been great.

Everybody's super friendly and everybody's really engaged. So let me ask you, because you're not from Florida, are you? I'm not. We're actually based out of New Orleans.

I'm out of South Louisiana. So how's the weather treating you? Actually it feels fantastic here. It was cooling down where I'm from.

And so the weather here is very similar to out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. So I think it feels fantastic. It got a little rainy, I think.

But when I flew in, it was beautiful and Miami weather. Any plans to make it over to the beach? Actually no, it's a little depressing. So I have this conference and I have another conference next week.

So I'm trying to stay focused and get back to my family for a couple of days. And so as soon as this is done, I'm going to be going on an airplane and flying out. I think the idea was to have brought the family with you, then they could, you know, have some time down here, head out on South Beach, all that sort of stuff.

Didn't think about that? Well, I don't tell my family what I do. It's a big mystery to them. They're pretty sure I'm some type of super soldier for the CIA.

But at some point, I'm going to break them the bad news that I run a software service platform. But in honesty, you know, they have school. My wife had to stay there to make sure I got where they needed to be.

And so I'm just going to get back to them as soon as this is done. All right. Well, Dustin, it's been a couple of months since we've chatted for that IT Nation Pitch It competition.

You didn't make the final three. Are you bummed? How's life? Well, I like to think we made the final 20. That was pretty good.

So we placed somewhere. But life has been great. You know, the company is really growing very quickly.

And there was a big change for me. I still own my MSP prior to this month. And I actually did a final exit of the MSP.

Now I'm 100 percent focused on this. We've been doing a dramatic growth over the past several months. Giant Rocket Ship is blowing and going and we'll be demonstrating our integration and managed next week.

So a lot of big things coming out of Giant Rocket Ship. So I know that when I sat here with you as the people were trying to get to the food and people are asking, what is Giant Rocket Ship? The easiest explanation is we help automate your ticketing. But if you had a chance to really sit with people and explain more and tell them, it's not just automation.

It's really going to help you run your business better. Right. So our Smart Dispatch feature, it hooks into your PSA.

It understands who knows what and how busy they are. And it makes a decision instantly of where tickets need to go and when your technicians need to work them. And so essentially you're giving every technician a 24-7 service coordinator that focuses exclusively on that technician to keep them as busy as possible at all times.

So here's a question that I don't think I asked you before, but I'm assuming that there are some companies that have either a service manager or they have somebody designated as the dispatcher and stuff. Is this something that would either complement them or replace them? Yeah. So if you're a small MSP, you won't ever need to hire a dispatcher with Rocket Ship.

For really large ones, you still need somebody that's going to engage with customers. And so what happens is we help you elevate your dispatcher into a service coordinator. But what happens as well is that you don't need to hire more.

So we let you amplify or really grow your service coordinator to do more things with the face-to-face side of customer service. But they don't have to do any of the grunt work of managing technicians and tickets going forward. Very nice.

Very nice. All right. I know you've been pitching all day.

You've been up early. So you're going to partake in the festivities this evening? Yeah. So actually today is a little bit of a grind.

I didn't realize this was a 7 to 10 job. So I think I'm definitely going to go to the first party. Will I be at the after party? I'll probably go in for a couple of minutes to show my face.

I don't know that I'm pulling a 2 a.m. shift with the rest of the MSB crew. Now that I'm on the vendor side, I have to look pretty and fresh the next day. So I can't stay out super late.

But you'll see me around. All right. Well, I won't see you because I won't be here at 8.30 a.m. to see if you made your spot.

But it's good to see you here. And good luck going forward. And hope things get better and continue on that upward swing for Giant Rocket Ship.

Yeah. I really appreciate the time. I'm Dustin at GiantRocketShip.com. Feel free to email me with any questions.

All right, folks. That's it. On to the next interview.

Hello again, Uncle Marv, and I am in one of the prime locations right outside the doors of the vendor hall, the thoroughfare, the highway for people coming into the vendor. And I'm here with one of the icons of the channel, George Bardissi with B-VoIP. George, how are you? Doing all right, Marv.

You know, another year, another DattoCon. Here we are. Here we are.

Now, how did you swing this spot? That's got to be the first question. You know, the spots, I believe, were assigned to everyone before we even walked in the door. So maybe somebody somewhere might actually like me.

I don't know. Yeah, that would be someone somewhere. It's a couple of people that like you.

I've heard your name mentioned. I did not ask. I just ran with it.

So, of course, let me just go ahead and get the obligatory questions out of the way. You know the Florida weather, so it's not how is that going, but how is Datacom going for you so far? Well, I'll tell you what, Marv. I don't know.

You ever watch the show Bar Rescue? Yes. Okay. I love that show.

And, you know, they always say that you have to, you know, use science to manufacture your space, right? He talks about things like the butt funnel and, you know, making sure your space is properly sized for the venue you have, like, you know. So when you look at that science and you apply it to here, it feels busy. It feels packed.

It feels like there's a buzz. So it feels like almost like they're at the capacity of the place and it's better than the inverse, right? Because if you had a lot more space and a lot less people, that buzz is definitely not there. So I think that alone makes me feel like there's a crowd here.

So that is the magic of the Fountain Blue because the rest of the hotel, wide open, airy, gives you that free, open feeling. Here in the vendor hall, tight hallways, almost like old school, you know, rich people basement type stuff where, you know, it's a long hallway and they don't expect a lot of people to come through here. But obviously, because they have packed in 3,500 folks.

So well, if that's the actual number, but OK, listen, I'm going to take that number as MSPs and vendors and Kaseya staff and the janitors. It's all good to say a staff alone is probably 500, right? Probably their office is literally right down the street, just a couple of blocks. So listen, good to see you here.

And another VoIP vendor down the hall. Of course, this space is big enough for plenty of vendors. I think there's over a hundred.

And if you had a chance to like wander down and chat with your fellow booth folks. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a little less vendors here actually this year than last year. But at the end of the day, with the growing number of events, I know we talk about this all the time, Marv, off mic, but I think next year we're on track for over like 500 events, you know, like can't be everywhere.

You know, the bank account only goes so far. Mine too, because I cannot make all those events. And to your point about the fact that maybe less vendors, Kaseya's got what, 25 percent of the vendor floor in there? No, I mean, when they keep on buying companies that they keep on making those companies in their bubble.

Right. So, yeah, they have a lot of space. But that's to say, you know, Marv, you've been, you've been to the IT nations, you've been to the enables, you've been to the, you know, the Kaseya's and the Datto's.

It's pretty similar, like a conference blueprint, right? Like they're in the middle, they got all their various arms and legs and third party tools that have been roped in and everybody else is around the periphery, right? Which, you know, it's pretty usual. So let me ask you about the people coming by the booth. How many of these are new to the space? Not necessarily, you know, full-fledged MSPs, but are just now dipping their feet in because we know Kaseya extends their reach beyond the MSP space.

So have you gotten any traction off of that? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty well known that in Kaseya land, there's a lot of, there's a huge percentage of internal IT direct sale separate from MSP. So we do see a lot of that and that's no different on this event than others. But as far as, you know, like, I forget, I think I saw it on a ConnectWise slide earlier this year that globally, not just the US, not just Canada, but globally, you know, they believe there's 400,000 unique companies that could be classified as IT or managed services, right? And of course, when you take those two realms, that could be break-fix, that could be low voltage, that could be, you know, boutique, that could be big, that could be small.

So at the end of the day, there's definitely a very wide variety. And by the way, Marv, I've been doing these large conferences now for, I don't know, about a decade. It's pretty consistently 50% year over year, new names showing up at these big events.

You're like, well, if you go there long enough, you've covered everyone. No, you really haven't. Like it does turn over that much.

Well, the space itself turned over. I mean, you've got just techs in general that are either moving positions, getting promoted, starting their own companies. So yeah, it's going to be new faces all over the place.

Now, let me ask you this. Are you ready for the party? Oh, you know, we're not coming to anything this size without having a party. And by the way, we used to say, you know, as an internal, we kind of had a joke.

It's like, well, we need to make it premium-ish. But we're at premium now. So like the party has got to be a good time.

I've heard people are afraid that they would be out till the wee hours of the morning. Is that possible? Listen, that's to each person's decision-making, right? Mileage varies, okay? If you're a late night person and you want to be out late, you can be out late. But if you're an early night person, then you can go to bed early.

Come in, have your few drinks, network, grab a pizza, because we've probably spent the most amount of pizza in any one order at this event. And it's got to be commas and zeros. But pizza, there will be.

So are we talking about national brand, local mom and pop? What type of pizza are we talking about? Well, unfortunately, when you go to some of these hotel venues, you don't have a choice. You're buying through them. So our money, we took it as far as we could, given the rules given.

All right, my friend, well, your party starts awfully late tonight. I don't think I'll be making it, but I'll wave as I'm driving back to Fort Lauderdale. Well, you know what, Marv, we always love seeing you.

We'll definitely take some pictures, the ones that we can share, and we'll share them. With other ones, we'll make sure that they don't see the internet. But either way, we're happy to be here.

And you know what? Even though different people have different reasons to be at different events, I mean, this event is, I would say, well-attended. And I'm excited for what that, you know, usually the party, you know, is a percentage of the people that actually show up to the conference, and so far it's tracking very well. Well, I will say this, this is one of those events that will draw people from as far north as Minnesota, Chicago, Wisconsin, Canada.

People have traveled a long way to be here. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's Miami. Well, it is 80 degrees outside.

I left Philadelphia, I was 32 when I walked on the plane, so 80 is a nice change of pace. Now, I will tell you, some people probably were worried that, you know, Florida wasn't underwater. You know, you had two hurricanes in a relatively short period of time.

That was West Coast. Oh, that's true. So, like, I'm happy to see that, like, you know, things are alive and well, right, at least here.

So, I would say that I've seen a lot of out-of-country people here, like Europe and Australia and Canada, for sure. But, yeah, you're right. I would say that if I was looking at the temperature gauge, I would definitely come to Miami for a change of weather.

Absolutely. All right, Bardissi, I'll let you get back to it. I see some people walking up to your booth, so I'll let you sell, man.

All good, my friend. Always nice to see you, Marvin. Later.

All right, continuing with our street interviews, inside the vendor hall, and I ventured across the Mario Brothers set, or SonicWall, and you can't see it on camera because I'm not filming, but I am standing... Which one are you? It's me, Luigi. Michelle Ragusa McBain here, and hanging out at the booth, so how's it going? Good, Uncle Marv. How are you doing, my friend? I'm doing good.

Great. So, how many people have been playing the games here? Oh, we've had quite a few playing. I think we're going to have to have a match after this, you and I, of course.

I don't play. You don't play? No, I'm the one tech that doesn't do any games. Oh, well, okay.

We can change that today. As Michael Crean gives me the mean mug eye. Actually, I didn't see you playing, Mike.

Playing what, Marv? You know this will be aired. I'm well aware, so I'm asking you to clarify. So, I don't even... What are these? Mario Kart Arcade.

Okay, listen. First of all, it's Mario, not Mario. It's Mario Kart.

Sorry. Thank you. Mario Kart.

It's a driving game. Marv, I believe you can do it. I mean, if you so desire, I will race against you just so that you can feel the agony of defeat.

Oh, fighting words. So, I've been a loyal SonicWall member for quite some time. Why would I subject myself to a beating? I feel like you're just scared.

Oh, no. Marv, it's all in good fun. I am scared of nothing, so I will take your challenge as soon as I'm done here.

Michelle, give me something positive that's been happening here at DattoCon. So many things. Firstly, seeing great friends from around the industry.

That's always a great time. One of the biggest events of the year. Also, just a lot of fun theme nights.

We're here in the week of Halloween. So, obviously, our whole SonicWall family is dressed in Super Mario family, but we have some interesting costumes ready for Halloween and just great conversations with our partners, telling them about our latest and greatest things like our Cloud Security Edge and Managed Security Services with my friend, Michael. So, I know that last time we talked, we had mentioned the new and improved partner portal.

Has there been a big buzz about that lately? Yeah, we've actually had so much good momentum with our partner portal. I mean, obviously, new customer deal reg, 50% off. We really want to drive business for our partners.

That's a big deal. The service provider program, a lot of MSPs are not yet in that program. So, that flexible consumption, billing and arrears, cancel anytime.

No contracts, no commitments. So, making sure that we're adapting our whole program and our portal for our partners remains top of mind and, obviously, our program and our technology. So, just keeping it exciting and making it profitable and easy to do business with us.

Are you allowed to say, no contracts, cancel anytime here at DattoCon? I won't comment. We can. And we do.

So, I guess, let me get over here and race Mike on this Mario Kart game. I'll play the winner and my money's on you, Uncle Marv. I hope not to be here that long.

That's it, folks, from the SonicWall booth, aka Mario Brothers Suite.