Barracuda MSP continuing to increase options for managed service players

Competing for the attention of managed service providers is one of the main challenges for vendors and Barracuda MSP has made moves to increase its chances of standing out from the crowd.

The vendor acquired Managed Workplace earlier this year, picking up the remote monitoring management specialist from Avast as it looked to bolster its MSP offering.

In a blog post explaining the rationale for the purchase in February, Brian Babineau, senior vice president and general manager, Barracuda MSP, stated that it made it easier for partners: "Managed Workplace, MSPs can routinely assess security risks across their customer base, test and update password policies, patch devices, and manage email accounts and security from one console."

In the months that have gone by since the deal was struck Barracuda MSP has been busy adding more depth to the Managed Workplace RMM offering and is launching the latest version of the product with expanded patch management and software update capabilities.

It has also added backup monitoring to work with its 2015 acquisition Intronis Backup as part of its ongoing strategy of developing a portfolio of products that MSPs can take out to market.

“Our acquisition of Managed Workplace earlier this year builds on the momentum Barracuda has generated in the MSP market, particularly around our managed security offerings,” said Babineau.

“We are pleased to be announcing our first major update to the platform, with the addition of Advanced Software Management and Intronis Backup monitoring scripts, among other enhancements, in Managed Workplace 12. Both of these new capabilities are illustrative of our commitment to further strengthening our security and data protection solutions portfolio for our MSP partners," he added.

The idea of providing more features in a single package appeared to have gone down with channel partners with Damien Kelly, technical operations manager, Ergo Group, one of those happy to comment on the launch.

"The introduction of third-party patching tackles one of the more complex issues we have in securing customers environments. It mitigates the need for expensive third-party services that are siloed and require individual attention while also being time consuming, with most solutions excelling in one area and not in others," he said.

"With mass management and monitoring for all our clients available in one simple platform, if Managed Workplace picks up on a security concern, we’re now able to deploy a fix to 6,000 devices across all our clients in a matter of hours," said James Watson, founder and owner at Primary ICT Support.

The vendor is hosting a webinar on 26 September to give service providers a first look at the latest incarnation of Managed Workplace, with particular focus being paid to advanced software management.

Barracuda has been one of the leading lights involved with MSP Day, held towards the end of May, and supported calls for more education around the managed services proposition at this year's celebration.

Speaking to MicroScope at the time, Jason Howells, director EMEA at Barracuda MSP, said that there continued to be a need for education to make sure that MSPs had the skill sets that customers were lacking themselves and that was a baton that had to be picked up by everyone in the industry.

The Managed Workplace update needs to be seen against that background and is further evidence that Barracuda is building a portfolio of security and data management tools that the channel can take out to customers.