The Deal Behind VARStreet

I’m extremely biased (because as an Autotask integrator we stand to make and save a ton of money) in my opinion but I’ll offer it to you anyhow: The Autotask acquisition of VARStreet is perhaps the biggest announcement to hit the MSP space in quite some time. How so?

Think of VARStreet as an “App store” service for software companies (like mine) and service providers (like you) where the nightmares of partnerships, paperwork, agreements and licensing junk are reduced down to the point and click.

I was at MSP University event when Len DiCostanzo started discussing this subject with the MSPs in attendance. The premise of having an integrated shopping cart for the MSP is huge in terms of time savings and prospecting. I can tell you that because the biggest obstacle in doing commerce in the MSP world (as far as vendors and MSPs are concerned) isn’t the golf or the partnership or the handshakes with the owner – it’s making the solution easy to price, quote and position for the sales staff that actually makes the transactions happen.

The MSP industry and the associated PSA & RMM tools have made significant progress over the past year in the area of integrations – we can at this point pretty easily support your purchases directly through Autotask, we can sync your seat counts for reoccuring services, we can streamline the process of getting into the clients service through LiveLinks, etc – so what happens after the line which is dotted is signed is pretty smooth.

VARStreet is about the only thing out there, in my opinion, that will make the process that happens before the purchase smoother. At this point OWN distributes “Sales Cheat Sheets” for our products, brandable marketing collateral, go to market pamphlets and all this stuff you can “attach” to the quote or proposal – something that typically involves further complexity with a quoting tool, etc. In other words, we have a good bureaucracy of a process behind trying to get the sale.

With VARStreet all that changes.

Kudos to Autotask for spending their money wisely. We’ll be at the Autotask Live Conference later this month and I’m very interested in learning how we can further automate the process of selling. Nearly all the MSPs I talk about have growth goals – and you grow by selling more. Interesting times indeed.