Datto unveils slew of new MSP-centric features and products

Datto has made good on its promise to continue to simplify complexity for MSPs by unveiling no less than 20 new things during its DattoCon conference in San Diego this week.

The 20 'things' are a mixture of enhancements to existing products and entirely new ones, but all are designed to increase MSP profitability and efficiency, according to the firm.

Cloud Continuity for PCs was one of the headline announcements. It responds to the reality that, despite growing use of the cloud, a lot of data is still stored locally. Making use of continuous backups, the image-based offering is based on Datto's patent-pending technology.

"This is the first step on a journey of continuity to an appliance-free state. And Datto will lead," said Tim Weller, Datto's CEO.

One of the other headline announcements was in the form of SIRIS 4, the next-gen version of Datto's business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) appliance. Running on Intel's Xeon D Skylake and second generation Intel Xeon Scalable Cascade Lake processors which feature additional cores and a dedicated write cache (SLOG), SIRIS 4 is able to virtualise 50% faster than before and easily handle heavy-duty applications in a seamless manner.

Weller quipped: "Maybe it’s because I have a PhD in engineering, but I have fallen hard for SIRIS 4. This is not an incremental release."

Datto also announced a much easier way for MSPs to troubleshoot issues for clients. Historically, in remote situations, this has relied on the existence of a pre-installed agent. However, with Datto RMM HTML 5 Remote Control, it's possible to now do this in a browser-based way, in less than five seconds, according to Datto.

On the subject of RMM, the company also confirmed integration with Datto Networking, meaning MSPs can check, monitor and control available network and power devices directly from within RMM. That's in addition to an overhauled UI, which also includes dark mode.

SaaS Protection also featured on the agenda, with a new incentive and pricing model unveiled, while Autotask PSA will now benefit from new dashboards and an enhanced UI with a configurable layout.

"As a company, we are MSP-first and MSP-only. So it's about making sure that everything we do is in service of the MSP in terms of helping them drive and scale their business," Aaron Dun, vice president of product and growth marketing at Datto, told Channel Pro.

"There are three main thrusts to what we have launched. One is around this concept of faster. How do we make things - either process or processing - move faster, because that really creates savings of time, and if it's a faster piece of hardware, it has knock-on benefits from there.

"The second area is around efficiency. A lot of the enhancements we've talked about are around usability and user experience/interface. How do we help our partners and the techies that use our product day in, day out, get into exactly what they need to do and get out? We don't want them clicking, clicking, clicking, we want them actually servicing their customers. So the less time they spend on our product the better in that regard."

Dun added: "The third and, perhaps, the most important area is around margin expansion. How do we help our partners drive new products they can turn around and sell to their customers at a nice margin? It's a key consideration when it comes to scaling their business. We hold that challenge as core to everything we do and we're always looking for ways to drive that forward."

You can find more detail about all of the product announcements unveiled on Dattos' blog here.