Kaseya CEO reveals 2019 IPO plans

Kaseya chief executive Fred Voccola has outlined ambitions to get the MSP software vendor into a position to IPO during the first half of next year.

Speaking to Microscope, Voccola noted that the firm’s recent acquisitions mean “the financial preparations take a little longer” but “assuming the environment is still positive, you’ll see Kaseya as a public entity within 18 months, without a doubt.”

“The wheels are in motion,” he added.

Kaseya’s 2018 acquisitions include backup software vendor Unitrends, compliance software specialist Rapidfire and SaaS data protection firm Spanning Cloud Apps, which it acquired yesterday.

Speaking before the Spanning Cloud Apps announcement, Voccola noted that both Unitrends and RapidFire’s customers are primarily based in North America, “so we are aggressively hiring sales and development teams and professional services support to build out the European operations for those.”

“Our European business to Q2 grew 46 percent year-over-year,” he said, adding that there are also plans afoot to hire new general manager for EMEA.

Alongside RapidFire’s 8000 MSPs, Spanning has around 10,000 active MSP and enterprise customers worldwide. Kaseya says the firm will retain its headquarters in Austin, Texas and will operate as an independent business unit.

Elsewhere, Voccola said he had been challenged by a competitor at a recent industry event who suggested Kaseya was “abandoning its other products” following its acquisitions this year.

“At Kaseya our combined research and development spend is over $120 million a year. We have had so much innovation in our other products– you can’t measure it – including the second generation of remote monitoring and management,” he said.

The CEO also said that despite plans to announce more future acquisitions, “every single product we buy, before we announce it, we make sure that’s its very deeply integrated with the other Kaseya products” in its ‘IT Complete’ platform.

“Everything is done for the single purpose of making sure our managed service providers have an integrated, complete suite of solutions that they can provide every managed service that their customers want.”