Autotask Community Live: 7 Behind the Scenes Rumors

The VAR Guy is quietly poking around the Autotask Community Live event in Miami. You’ll find official news and observations over on MSPmentor. But there’s also plenty of background chatter here involving executive strategies, potential alliances and… well… these seven rumors behind the scenes.

1. Stuart Squared: Watch for continued developments from MSP business coach Stuart Selbst and MSP marketing consultant Stuart Crawford. Perhaps an event from Stuart Squared in Chicago is coming…

2. Next Moves: Autotask Founder Bob Godgart has stepped away from day-to-day business activities but remains chairman at the company. Does Godgart have a side projects brewing? Lots of people say keep an eye on Godgart’s relationship with former Autotask community leader Mark Crall.

3. Successful MSPs: Several vendors — everyone from Intronis to Level Platforms and Reflexion — are expected to rally the MSP community later today to promote the new CompTIA MSP Partners Trustmark business designation. It’s not a certification or accreditation… but it sure sounds like there are longer-term plans in place to introduce a 2.0 version of the Trustmark.

4. The Synnex Connection, Times Two: Watch for Autotask to plug more deeply into the Synnex ServiceSolv managed services initiative. Also, Equus — which has launched a hardware as a service (HaaS) push — apparently is leveraging Synnex for many of its back-end managed services for VARs and MSPs.

5. Working the Crowd: Cisco employees are quietly navigating Autotask Community Live, exploring the community and learning more about managed services in the SMB market.

6. Reality Check: VARStreet, the product sourcing tool that Autotask acquired in 2010, was not mentioned during this morning’s Autotask keynotes. Yes, Autotask remains committed to VARStreet. And there’s a VARStreet breakout session here. But the clear bet is on SaaS-based business management modules within Autotask.

7. Google One, Microsoft Zero: Google SMB Channel Lead Jeff Ragusa is here… no doubt talking about an initiative (called Appsperience) that allows end-customers to test certain Google Apps for free, with help from VARs and MSPs. Meanwhile, Microsoft is ramping up Office 365 but the company is not here at the conference. That’s unfortunate, considering all attendees here already understand recurring revenue models.

That’s all for now. The VAR Guy needs to run to another meeting while chasing a few more rumors…