‘We need to stay close to the MSP community. We are here to support them. Period … I will not allow us to ever deviate from that as a business,’ ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo tells CRN.

ConnectWise’s new CEO, Manny Rivelo, is on a mission to deliver more profitability to MSPs and return the company’s core product to a ubiquity and usefulness that it hasn’t seen in decades.

“I didn’t want to come to an organization that was looking to squeeze profit or something out of the business at the expense of what we do — and we do really, really well,” he told CRN in an interview. “Our job is to continue to grow the MSP. Period. Our success is completely tied to the MSP community. Which is why listening to MSPs is priority number one. If we give them what they need and we anticipate their needs, and we are there before they even know their needs, then we’re going to be successful.”

ConnectWise’s 45,000 MSP customers say they need a better product than the long-in-the-tooth ConnectWise Manage that was created by ConnectWise founder Arnie Bellini 21 years ago. The company was sold to private equity heavyweight Thoma Bravo in 2019.

The Tampa, Fla.-based ITSM provider introduced a new platform called Asio at its IT Nation conference in 2021. It hopes to use that to unify all of its MSP software tools — PSA, RMM, backup, security — inside a modern codebase and modern UX and UI. Several of its MSP customers, former C-level employees and vendors told CRN that ConnectWise must get that right.

Rivelo said it will. The company has invested $70 million in the past few years towards bringing that product to market. Rivelo said ConnectWise is 90 percent of the way there. “The delivery of Asio is the top priority,” he said. “I want to make sure we get under that.

The Asio development effort includes “centralization of data, AI and automation,” said Rivelo. “We have what I think is the only product on the market targeted to what MSPs need today and into the future,” he said.

Rivelo is a technology industry veteran with 30 years of experience between organizations like Cisco, Arista Networks, AppViewX, and most recently at cybersecurity company Forcepoint where he was CEO. He said ConnectWise has a plan to help MSPs get more cybersecurity wins with their customers, which he plans to talk more about at IT Nation in November.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the security space. I think it’s a massive opportunity for our partners. You think about RMM and PSA, there’s always new features to come, but to some degree those are classic systems, similar to an ERP,” he said. “Security is a need. It’s a need for every one of their end customers and it is hugely complex, so I believe that we also have a massive opportunity collectively to address that for our MSP community.”

Step one, however, for Rivelo is listening to ConnectWise MSP customers. He said ConnectWise needs to “stay close to the MSP community” if it is going to win.

“We are here to support them. Period. We are here to create the best experience possible for them, so they can run their businesses as effectively and profitably as they possibly can and meet their end customers needs. That is paramount,” he told CRN. “I will not allow us to ever deviate from that as a business. As a matter of fact, we need to enhance that. You will see us continue to make investments in IT Nation and in all forms of Connect that we have. The forums. The listening posts that we have out there. The engagement forums we have.”

Below is an edited transcript of the conversation with Rivelo.

The MSPs I spoke with, some of them have been with ConnectWise for 15 years. They have chosen to use it to build sometimes multiple businesses. So they’re loyal. Those same MSPs say it’s time for the core PSA product to get better. What can you tell us about your plans for Manage?

I think you know the core of our business is both the RMM product and PSA product. That is the core of what the MSPs need. The core of the value we provide and an area in which we continue to make investments. The big investment we’re making is in the Asio platform.

We’ve been making investments in that platform for the last three years. That is a new platform. It’s a multi-tenant, cloud-based delivered platform. If you will, it is the first-ever, fully integrated MSP platform that not only brings the RMM and PSA components together, but it brings a whole security portfolio.

Now it’s going to bring the whole business continuity and disaster recovery portfolio together. All stitched together with a common UX, UI. All with automation. All with AI built into a platform. That’s the core of the investment.

So what you’re going to see us continue to do is port our technology, meaning the PSA, into Asio. If you look at it from the view we have into it, we’ve ported probably already about 90 percent of the feature functionality, and are quickly marching to port the rest of that functionality.

We will continue to make that investment, while we continue to provide a path for customers who have the traditional products on to this new platform.

Are you prepared to say when folks can stop using Manage?

No. I don’t have that at this point in time. I don’t think we want folks to stop. We want to provide a path.

I mean are you prepared to say by late 2025 we’re going to be transitioning folks off of Manage and onto Asio? When do you see that shift happening between the traditional products and this new platform?

I would like to see that happen sooner to be perfectly honest. I can’t give you a definitive date today because I haven’t had that level of detailed review yet. But the platform today is capable of onboarding customers and we are onboarding customers with it. As a matter of fact we are migrating dozens of customers per week across the platform.

But we have to make sure we do it for customers where we have the right feature functionality and there’s a plus-one for those customers. I think over the course of 2025 we will definitely have more customers migrating and we will definitely begin to take net new logos onto that platform.

We want to service the partner landscape and put them on the right platform. We do have some partners who have used that platform for a long time. Those may be a little trickier, but obviously we’re catching up on Asio to offer them that migration path.

There are still folks who are using Manage. They love using Manage and until they are sure the new platform does what they need it to do, they will keep using Manage. Is there any plan to upgrade it or make it easier to use? MSPs say there are some long-in-the-tooth problems with Manage. Are you planning to continue to invest in Manage?

Yes. We will continue to invest in Manage, but not at the expense of Asio. Asio is the future platform for the business and for all of our MSPs partners.

We will make some investments. There’s a long list of feature requests and enhancements that all of the products have, but the bulk of the investment is in Asio and to bring Asio to market quicker.

Do you feel comfortable with the level of investment you are making now in R&D? With Asio you’ve said you’d like to move that along faster? Do you see ConnectWise investing more in R&D next year in terms of percentage of revenue?

I don’t think it’s a question of more. It’s a question of prioritization, of finishing the thought. It’s a large platform. It has a lot of feature functionality. If you think about it, it covers four pillars of technology. It has an open set of APIs so we integrate third-parties into the product.

It’s an all-around centralization of data AI, automation, all of that. That investment has been going on for three to four years already and we’ve invested $70 million-plus, just to give you an idea of what’s going into that platform. There is a lot of effort.

The rest of it is really continuing to prioritize with our partners, what is the most important element associated with that. What is the most important element in RMM, in PSA, etc.

I don’t think it’s a function of more. I think it’s a question of continuing to prioritization. Continuing to deliver the value out there. We’re very far along. This is a real product in the market segment with real customers operating it today. The feature functionality that’s missing is it’s just getting things done at the right time and getting them out to the market.

The collective value of the product is huge. We have common services inside the platform. Which means once we build that service — think about ticketing as an example, it is leveraged by all the business modules in the product.

That’s the integration that we had to get right through the architecture. We feel really good about that. Now it’s all about the individual features that somebody may need and how quickly we can bring those to market.

Look, rest assured, if we have to invest a little bit more we will find ways of investing a little bit more. We’re not constrained on the investment. We will apply the right investment to get the product out into the market to meet our partners’ needs.

You’ve probably heard this 100 times, already, but partners said, ‘He’s from outside the MSP industry. It’s going to take him time to get up to speed.’

I don’t think it’s going to take me time to come up to speed. I’ve spent over 30 years in this industry, supporting a partner community. Every single company I worked with, we did 98 to 99 percent of our business non-direct. Making our partner experience great. Making their business profitable.

I don’t see that as a challenge whatsoever. On the contrary I see that as a massive opportunity. I actually understand their business because I understand who they’re trying to service also: the end customer. And the needs of those end customers, and the demands being placed on them.

I’m also fortunate in that we have a great transition plan here. So I’ve been boning up, rest assured for the last couple of months, in this process. I’ve already been in front of some of the partner community and we’ll get in front of that partner community at IT Nation. I’m a quick study. I don’t see that as an obstacle whatsoever.

I’m super thrilled to jump in and I think I understand the business and I’d like to get as intimate as possible with each of their individual problems.

Can you tell me a little about what you see out there. You’ve talked with partners. What do you need to do next to make sure you are meeting the MSP customer’s needs?

Simplification of their experience. Making it easier for them to run their business. They have way too many tools to run their businesses. Those tools are not integrated. The demand from the customers is there. Not only are there training complexities, but it’s hard to get teams to support customers overall.

What we’re going to do is bring in that experience and make that easier, a very simple, common UX, common UI, with automation, with AI built into the platform, making it easy to service their end customer’s needs, and driving greater profitability for the MSP community.

I just came out of the security industry. There are a lot of corollaries in the security market to what MSPs are facing. If you think about a security market, the end customer has anywhere from 40 to 100 products. They don’t have the staff they need to support all those products. They’re not trained. These things line up so similar to the MSP community.

Not to mention the MSP community needs to provide security solutions for their end customers. So I feel I understand the market very well. I’ll continue to bone up. I’ll be very humble about it. What I don’t know, I’ll learn and apply solutions.

We have what I think is the only product on the market targeted to what MSPs need today and into the future.

This is a market where the competition gets chippy. Halo’s CEO said they hope to see more competition from ConnectWise around PSA. N-able CEO John Pagliuca told us he thinks you are going to be “internally focused” and he sees that as an opportunity. How do you feel entering this market where the competition is right on you and right next to you?

I think it just makes us better. Competition is great. I’ve never been in an industry without competition. I think competition will give better solutions to the MSP community and allow the MSPs to support their customers better.

We look forward to that. We’re not fearful of competition. We respect competitors. We need to make sure we deliver solutions that meet the customers needs and we will continue to do that.

We’ve been in this market for multiple decades. We’ll be in this market for multipl decades more. We like the vision we have. We like the strategy we have and we know the community views it as right. Our job is to not get distracted, not listen to what competitors are saying about us, but actually execute for our partners and that’s really what we’re all about.

We welcome that. We really do. One of the things I have a big belief in is you gotta have a competitor. If you don’t have a competitor, you’re not doing the best you can. If we have multiple competitors out there, we welcome them.

We will see them in the market. We will offer solutions to the MSP community and may the best company win.

I talked with an MSP who said his account manager gives him the old ConnectWise vibes in all the best ways. How important is it to you to keep that IT Nation DNA that MSPs say Arnie had where you take the MSP’s business problems as seriously as you take your own, and you compete with vendors where you have to, but where there is an opportunity to solve problems, you work together?

It’s the most important thing we can do.

We need to stay close to the MSP community. We are here to support them. Period. We are here to create the best experience possible for them, so they can run their businesses as effectively and profitably as they possibly can and meet their end customers needs. That is paramount.

I will not allow us to ever deviate from that as a business. As a matter of fact we need to enhance that. You will see us continue to make investments in IT Nation and in all forms of Connect that we have. The forums. The listening posts that we have out there. The engagement forums we have.

We’re bringing back ConnectWise Automate, to get close to the community to help them with RPA solutions and AI solutions as we go out there. So rest assured this is a top priority. One of the reasons I’m here is that I believe in this community. I believe in building solutions with end users. In this case, it’s the MSP community that we need to stay close to and listen to intently.

In the last few months there have been other leadership transitions inside ConnectWise. The CRO and CFO both turned over. Can you talk about that and filling those roles?

They brought those in before me. Rik Thorbecke as CFO in May. Then in July we brought in Aziz Benmalek. He is our chief business officer. He’s in charge of sales and go to market. Those were filled before I came into the business.

Obviously, we will always look at leadership. I’ll be frank. People do have a time and a place and sometimes they’re ready to do something different. So we will look at that. There will always be leadership transitions. The goal will be to make leadership transitions in the future smooth — make sure we are prepared for them, make sure they don’t impact our partner community whatsoever. There’s no surprise with those. That’s just individuals who are new to the business. They’re very established and very credible. I think we have a good solid team to build upon.

Another vendor CEO in the channel said the tough part of the job is knowing when to push back against private equity and when to push back against the channel. They said it’s a difficult dance. How do you see yourself performing that in the coming months?

I’ve been around private equity for seven years, so I’ve done the dance with private equity numerous times. But I’m not chartered here to sacrifice the experience. I’m chartered here to help grow this business. We only grow when our MSPs grow. Our board – and its private equity but there’s some independents in there — knows that and knows that very well.

That was part of my criteria when I interviewed also. I didn’t want to come to an organization that was looking to squeeze profit or something out of the business at the expense of what we do — and we do really, really well.

That has been very, very clear. They’re here to continue to grow this business which means our job is to continue to grow the MSP. Period. Our success is completely tied to the MSP community. Which is why listening to MSPs is priority number one. If we give them what they need and we anticipate their needs, and we are there before they even know their needs, then we’re going to be successful. That’s job number one.

Obviously we do that well, there will be profits. Private equity will be happy. There will be a lot of great things that come from that, but that’s not my focus. My focus is the great experience for my MSPs.

Where do you see making the most impact the quickest?

There’s a couple of things. One of them is the delivery of the Asio platform. The prioritization and delivery of that. It’s very far along. But there’s a couple of things we need to round out and complete. I’ll give you one example, the PSA platform. We’re probably about 90 percent on Azio already. There’s still another 10 percent to go there, but that other 10 percent impacts certain customers and partners from being able to move, so we’re going to fix that.

The delivery of Asio is the top priority. I want to make sure we get under that.

The second thing is we just enabled a whole new business for our MSP community around BCDR and how we bring that forward to make sure they can take these solutions to market. It’s a fast-growing market. It’s an incredible market. It’s something we’ll talk about at IT Nation with our partners and it should get them super excited.

The third is with the partner community. Over the course of the next 60 days, I plan to get in front of thousands of partners and listen to them. IT Nation being one of the bigger events, but I will be doing roadshows where I’ll be getting in front of them, just to listen, triangulating what they say with our strategy.

That’s my next 90 days in the business.

On security, one of the potential investors last year in ConnectWise noted that they think ConnectWise is growing security at the expense of its core product line. Do you feel that’s the case? Is that a fair assessment?

No, I don’t think it is. We made an acquisition of Perch a couple years ago. It’s a great product. It’s growing quite nicely. We also have some great solutions around EDR and MDR, for the partner community to take to their customers. Now we actually launched a couple new things we’ll talk at IT Nation around that.

The difference is security was a little bit of a greenfield opportunity. I don’t think that’s the case, to be perfectly blunt. It’s just you’re dealing with something that’s had decades of innovation and feature functionality and customization that you have to bring over so it takes a little longer.

If I find otherwise as I’m digging into the business, rest assured we will fix that because the core of what we do is RMM and PSA. Everything else sits around that and leverages the power of those tools.

So we want to make sure we get that to market. So if I feel there’s a need to reprioritize to my point number one of prioritizing for Asio, then I’ll do it.

Any other big opportunities you see for partners?

I’ve spent a lot of time in the security space. I think it’s a massive opportunity for our partners. You think about RMM and PSA, there’s always new features to come, but to some degree those are classic systems.

Security is a need. It’s a need for every one of their end customers and it is hugely complex, so I believe that we also have a massive opportunity collectively to address that for our MSP community.

We’re doing a lot of interesting things there that we’re going to launch at IT Nation to give our MSPs additional chance to grow their business.