Building A Smarter ConnectWise Platform (1025)

[0:13] Hello, friends. Uncle Mark here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast. We are broadcasting from Salt Lake City, Utah at the PAX 8 Beyond Conference here for 2026. Here on Radio Row, it is starting to get late on Sunday. People are flying in, having a wonderful time getting set there. And my guest right now, David Raissipour from ConnectWise. And uh did i get that right you did you did a very good job nice it's not an easy name um well thank you for not uh, Not telling me that I butchered it. Oh, no, no, not at all. Not at all. Okay. All right. So, David, you are the chief product and technology officer. And, of course, that means different things for different vendors. So, tell us what that means for you. Okay.

[1:08] So, I lead all of products and engineering organizations, so R&D, as well as our expert services and service delivery teams. Okay. Um, uh, we have, um, you know, organizations that operate like a pseudo MSP. So we have a health desk service, a knock service, sock service. Those are expert services. Um, I lead our, uh, CISO office because of my cybersecurity background as well. And I have some other groups that are within my order. Um, but primarily I come from a engineering and product background. Okay. That's my, that's my area of expertise. All right. So your background in cyber, where were you at before? So I've spent about 16, 17 years in cyber in companies, including RSA Security, which most people know, Sophos, as well as Mimecast. And I've held kind of CTPO-type roles or general manager product engineering-type roles within those organizations for cybersecurity. How do the ConnectWise folks convince you to come over?

[2:15] Good story. Um, so I was, uh, I was actually retired. Uh, um, I'm one of those people that, uh, apparently I can't stay away from doing stuff. Um, so it wasn't the family that said you need to find something to do. Oh no, no, no, no. I, I, I, uh, my family, uh, would have preferred I stayed at home. I actually just, uh, felt like I, I wasn't done yet. Um, and I spent some time at home, spent some time with my wife and family and, um, still felt this itch to go do something else. So, um, met, um, Manny Ravello, who's our CEO, and we kind of hit it off. We have similar personalities, similar approach to how you, you know, uh, drive a software business forward and how you meet customer demands and customer needs. Neither of us are from an MSP background. We both worked in all kinds of, um, different aspects of software and enterprise software and SMB software, cybersecurity software, um, and decided, Hey, you know, this is a, this is a good opportunity to go take one more run at this or here I am 18 months later, here I am. Okay. So 18 months now, it sounds like it could be a long time. It sounds like it could be a short time, depending on stuff. Now, the ConnectWise that I normally hear about is all focused on ASIO and how everybody can, you know, connect and work, how it's supposed to help MSPs and stuff.

[3:44] I also hear now, you know, there's a new AI component that's coming in. You guys have a milestone announcement. Yes. That, uh. Yeah, several. Several. Yeah, several. Okay. What can you tell us about that? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So, uh, ASIO was, uh, the name that we used for our common platform services behind all our products. So whenever we talked about products and we kind of confused people a little bit, we would use the products and the platform names interchangeably. So people would always, when I first joined, they'd go, when is ASIO going to be ready? I go, the platform. But you don't buy the platform. Like, well, what do you mean when is ASIO going to be ready? So that is the platform name. And we've actually rebranded it. That's part of one of the things that we're launching is a rebranding of the platform because of that confusion that it caused. people thought it caused. People thought it was a product. And we've simply decided to call it what it is, the ConnectWise platform. And the ConnectWise platform is a set of common services like authentication, authorization, reporting, management, common UX framework. At its core, it has something that is unique and not really available out there in other platforms that are designed for MSPs, which is a common data analytics platform behind everything that we do. So there's a single source of truth.

[5:08] And then above that layer of the platform, we built an AI and automations layer that's built in on top, directly on top of the platform. And that includes our AI platform, our both agentic and AI assistant platform that we have. It also includes our deterministic automation platform or RPA, things that are script based. It also includes our common workflow engine and automation and workflow automation platform that is there. So and then we build our suite of applications on top of it. You mentioned earlier that you're very familiar with Enable. So many of the companies like us, we have our PSA product. We have our RMM product, CPQ. We have our remote access product, Screen Connect. We have our cybersecurity products. All of those really sit as applications on top of one common platform. So it's common user interface. Like I said, single sign-on, common authorization, common reporting systems. And there's a bunch of other capabilities that are built into it. For example, our documentation and password management and credentials management, which was known as IT Boost, is now built into the platform. Okay, I was going to ask because a lot of these things, even though ASIO has been out, they were still kind of separated to some degree.

[6:32] We now treat it as a proper platform. That was part of the change that was made about 18 months ago when Manny joined. And I think like three weeks later, I came on board. We took a step back, said,  Great strategy. We haven't executed to the extent that we wanted to execute. Um, some of that was just the perspective on that we had on what it meant to build a platform. Um, so we brought some new talent in, we reset some direction, and then we worked like mad over the last 18 months. Um, so when I said, it's not just about the platform launch, the ConnectWise platform, there's a lot of things that are coming out. The ConnectWise platforms is an enabler. Um on top of it we're also announcing the broad availability of uh, our connect wise agentic platform and layer that is available and that was built on top of things that we um started organically developing ourselves as well as we made an acquisition back in February a company called SOFIC out of Toronto Canada um some, really cool innovation really different approach that they took to build in, building an agentic platform.

[7:47] We integrated our RPA and our workflow into the same thing. So we have that being launched and broad availability globally of that platform, as well as products are help desk agentic products that are available now. We're also launching the general availability of our SIEM product, which is intended for our larger partners. It's a capability called SIEM Dedicated Tenant, where we can stand up dedicated infrastructure for our partners that are really serious about doing threat hunting in their customer environments. Folks that are not just MSPs, but more like MSSPs, and they do that kind of advanced threat hunting. And that'll be also available to all products in the platform. Correct. You will be able to throw your SIM logs up there. Well, it's a full SIM, so we will ingest all the logs. We have integrations with 22 different products that are out there, and we have generic log collectors. So it is a full-fledged SIM built on top of Elastic's security stack. So it is an enterprise-grade product.

[8:49] We are also launching our Agentic SOC for our managed DDR and our managed SIM product. Okay. Industry-first 15-minute SLA. Really? Yes, sir. Okay. We actually have had the managed same, managed EDR product in market since last November. We officially launched it in Q1. We've met 100% SLA. Really? Really, really. Okay. That sounds impossible. That sounds impossible. I know. It's not impossible. It's actually not impossible because we put a lot of thought into this. There's a bunch of us that you mentioned at the beginning. We're from a cybersecurity background. Um, I worked at Sophos, the gentleman who leads our, uh, product organization for security was the gentleman who used to run Sophos Central. He's the guy behind, uh, Sophos Intercept X. He comes from 25 plus years of cybersecurity background, dating that back to his Microsoft days. We're all pretty serious cyber people. Okay. So we take this very seriously. You cannot promise something.

[9:54] Insecurity, and then almost get there. Some do. We don't. But I'm glad to hear you don't. We do not. We do not. We put a lot of thought, a lot of effort, a lot of technology in this to build an agentic layer that deals with processing, every notification alert that comes in, classifies it, triages it, does all the background research and threat, gathering around it, creates a ticket for it, It adds all that attribution and additional information to the tickets. Recommends remediation and we built automation to provide remediation for those issues and then we have a tier two and a tier three if escalations are required um so that that has been, crazy successful and we didn't tell our partners when we launched it we waited to see if they would notice it and boy did they uh, so it was nice it was really nice we didn't tell anybody it was in production um when we went to it nation in November we had a couple of partners come up And they said, we want to talk to you about your SOC service.

[11:01] So, you know, we kind of swallowed hard. Like, are they going to yell at us? They tell us we did something wrong. No, they go, well, we don't know what you changed, but the stuff that we're seeing from you is dramatically different. The reports are awesome. You caught everything before we did. And we're like, yes, it worked. Okay. So question. I was at IT Nation in November and a lot of this stuff, like you said, you didn't announce it. Correct. That would have been the perfect time to announce it. Why not? Because I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver. Okay. I'd rather get something out there, see the value, measure the value, and then when I stand up there and say, I'm going to put my name on this and it's got a 15-minute SLA, I don't want to almost make it. Okay. So that was the reason. It's not about the marketing event.

[11:47] Security products and a 15-minute SLA is a promise you're making to your partner and your customer. That to me is far more important than the marketing opportunity of having everybody around. So I'd rather give up that opportunity and make sure that the product is right. So a lot of vendors will make an announcement that, hey, this is on the roadmap. This is what we're doing. It may not be out for six months. And then six months comes, well, it may not be out for another six months. That's not me. That's not Manny. That is not the way we operate. That is part of the cultural shift in the company. Okay. I'm glad you said that phrase, cultural shift, because I'll be honest, even though I've never used a ConnectWise product, I talk to MSPs who do. Two, there are some that are just absolutely ConnectWise fans, diehards. They will die with ConnectWise. And then there are others that are not. Correct. Our industry is fickle. Every industry is.

[12:44] And I've heard that, you know, the ConnectWise platform was, the best word I could describe was heavy. Four years in the making? It was a lift. It was a long onboarding process to do that stuff. Sounds like you guys made a ton of stuff in the last 18 months.

[13:04] Did it lighten the load yes it did okay so um we spent a lot of time focusing on partner migration right and partner ease of adoption so again instead of announcing something for the marketing opportunity just because i have a bunch of eyeballs in the room um, i would rather focus on make sure that when we do announce it the experience is great okay uh the old saying of you don't get two opportunities to make a first impression right i don't get a second chance to make a first impression i.

[13:34] Don't want to do that again uh i don't want anybody to look at connect wise today and say here we go again, absolutely not that is not the way we operate uh i think at it nation uh if you were there i think i sit on stage and said this isn't your grandfather's it uh connect wise anyway um, it's not we have we are focused we have done what we're going to say, uh, uh, what was, um, uh, we have said what we're going to do and then gone ahead and done, um.

[14:08] That's it okay um it's a commitment it is it is looking at your partner and saying you're not just a partner you're a customer you're paying us you have an expectation, and we have to meet that expectation okay so that is the cultural shift that comes from, people to process to everything that we do yeah and one that um we're quite proud of and we're starting to see, the outcomes from that change over the last 18 years. Interesting. All right. So I get not announcing it at your own event. Yes. But then you're coming here and you're making a ton of announcements here at the Pax8 event. What is the relationship between ConnectWise and Pax8? I don't think I've ever asked anybody about that. I know that you're relatively new. They are a partner of ours. They are a partner that many of our partners purchase products. Okay. I think it would be rather naive for anybody like us to look at Pax8 as anything but a partner.

[15:16] They help us reach our customers.

[15:21] They are a wonderful opportunity for us to be in a broad marketplace, go compete. They have built a transaction machine, which is going to be smoother than anything we will ever build because they do it at a scale that's greater than ours and we take advantage of that, platform and transaction machine. We take advantage of our relationship with them and we partner with them. So we tell them what we're going to do. We participate in, uh, different types of product launches and announcements that they have. There's a lot of news here around AI. We're one of them. Um, and, um, we, we wanted to make the Pax8 event also bigger by being part of the announcements that are made and selfishly, there's a lot of folks here. So I want to reach that audience there is but now i want to reach that audience when we're ready instead of saying hey I m going to build you something in six months no, everything that we talked about is ready at the end of this month nice very nice so you talked about some of the places you were before they're not necessarily uh MSP, no this is my first experience so i was going to ask you so for the last 18 months getting ingrained into the MSP space, the channel services space, any differences with some of the other places you've been? I, I don't, honestly, I don't think so. Okay. Um, look, I, I've been around software for a long, long, long time. I like building software and I like solving a problem.

[16:50] Um, MSP is another partner or customer you should listen to. You should listen to how they run their business, why they do the things that you, they do and what their needs are. And my job as a product leader is to go meet that need.

[17:04] It's software isn't different. I mean, MSP isn't a unique snowflake. They provide a service. By the way, when I was at Sophos, we had a managed security service offering that we had. So while we weren't an MSP, we had that. ConnectWise has a managed services offering. We're not an MSP. We don't consider ourselves to be an MSP. When I was at Mimecast, we had managed services for an MSOC, I'm messaging a managed email security operations team. So those are things that I'm familiar with. So delivering those services to a partner who works on behalf of their customer is something that I'm familiar with. And if we look at the entire corpus of the things that we build, 98% of it is about listening to what your customer needs, meeting their expectations. Whether it's an MSP or an internal IT shop or an enterprise customer, listen, then build. Anticipate their need, go solve tomorrow's problem because otherwise you're always behind. And that is the thing that's in common with anything in the software industry. So I came here. I did not consider myself to be at a handy cow because that's what I love to do.

[18:30] I don't know why a handicap would come up. There's, there's. Well, because when I interact with people, one of the things they actually say is, have you been an MSP? Oh, I say no. I got you. And they go, well, did you work for another company? No. Then why? Like, I don't think that's. I hear you. So, so MSPs do get that way where they think that you have to have walked in our shoes in order to understand us and help us in that way. And I see it as.

[19:03] I can spend time with you and you can tell me what it feels like to walk in your shoes. My job isn't to do the service delivery. That's what you do. My job is to go to build a software that helps you. So if I can listen to you, I can go design something for you. You know what? And that's a lot of what we just need. Somebody, you know, we may not be able to do everything, but we can find others that can. So that makes great sense. And there is, there's also a nice thing to bring a different perspective because sometimes just because we've done something the same way for the past 10 years doesn't make it the best way to do it. Absolutely. It is true. So I have an opportunity to look back at other ways that we've solved the problem for an internal IT organization or for a cybersecurity operations team and say, hey, how about this? Here's an idea. Do you think this will work? Nice. All right. So you've been here 18 months. Yep. I normally don't ask, how long do you plan to stay?

[20:07] I have no idea. Because you were already retired. I have no idea. I'm having fun. Yeah. I enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy my team. A lot of my team and I have worked together at different companies. I'm sorry. Is that a ring con or a ring? This is an aura ring. Okay. I'm sorry. I have a ring con. Oh, yeah. Squirrel? So I had two rings on my weight of a minute. Yeah. One of them was my wedding band, obviously. Um, um.

[20:34] I, I, I'm having fun. Um, when I said, you know, we brought a lot of talent in here. I've been fortunate enough throughout my career to get to work with some people that, that I'm very familiar with. They're familiar with me. They have a level of expertise that I can tap into and they're here. I love working with them. I love the management team and the executive team that Manny has built around. So I'm having fun. And as long as I'm having fun, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. That's the way to do it. That's just like athletes. As long as you're having fun. Exactly. At some point, nobody wants to look around and go, the CTO of that company is how old? So at some point I'll say peace out and I'll walk away. But that's not now. They're not going to say that if you're providing, you know, great things that work and all of that stuff. I also look, as executives in the company, our job is to also provide mentorship on a path to what it means for other people to be in our shoes. Okay. And other people shouldn't look at the place they want to be and say that's 40 years old.

[21:38] So I do believe in always having young blood in the organization. Uh, I am energized. I feel like I'm adding value. Uh, I enjoy what I'm doing and I'm going to keep doing it. And when I'm not doing it, I shouldn't want to be here and neither should anybody want me here, but that time hasn't come. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel that says that's when I'm ending. Uh, so I'm going to keep going until it's time to not keep going. The AI replaces you. I am not afraid of AI. I have worked on machine learning models and artificial intelligence and things before it was called AI for over 25 years. It's been around for a lot longer than we've been. Correct. And it has not replaced me. I think AI, agentic AI, those things give us the opportunity to achieve more. We shouldn't be afraid of it. Better tools, faster tools. Exactly. But still us at the core. Look at a factory that builds cars. Yeah. Okay. Nobody's soldering a piece of metal to another piece of metal yet. Factories that build cars employ lots and lots and lots of people. They're still providing great.

[22:56] Additional value to that assembly line it just we didn't get replaced by robots we didn't get replaced by ai we learned to do something that was more, valuable something that provided more value to the company and the end consumer and i think ai is doing this to certain parts of the industry and we shouldn't fear it, we should embrace it we should put guardrails around it we should make sure that we leverage it to the best of our ability and leverage it to the best of its ability and keep growing all right, all right i want to end on one last question that is not even related uh you were you know over on another show here on podcast row and uh that host yelled out that uh you have an affinity for watches, and i was like okay i know nothing about watches. Although, uh, when I did wear watches, when I, let's see, was it when I had my first real job, got real money, I went and bought a watch. Does the name Wittenauer mean anything? I've heard the name. Okay.

[24:08] I'm very familiar with. Uh, it was an expensive watch and I thought it was, you know, up there. Um, what is it about watches that. It's mechanical. It's mechanical and it's accuracy. And it is, it is, um, something that is, that operates on a bunch of gears, uh, a tightly wound spring, uh, and a timing mechanism. So you don't like the new digital watches. I do not buy, uh, I only have mechanical. I see that. It's a, it's a very big mechanical, uh, black face.

[24:44] I love watches. Uh, I'm fascinated by time. I'm fascinated by mechanical objects. I love cars too. I like anything mechanical, things with gears. I'm an engineer. Okay. Um, so, uh, my, my dad used to have watches when I was a kid. Uh, he's passed since passed away. um i, i bought my first nice watch um uh i think it was my second wedding anniversary so this is like 31 years ago my wife and i were together in Jamaica and we went to a jewelry store and i bought a nice watch and I ve been collecting ever since all right what's the one you on your wrist now this one is a is a, is called the sky dweller uh and it's a GMT watch with an annual calendar Um, and, um, Yeah. I just, I love the mechanical part of it. That's what it is to me. I have a bunch of them and I just, like I said, I like the cool thing. And, and, you know, some, again, something mechanical that can be accurate to within plus or minus two seconds a day. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Especially with all the stuff that's going to digitize everything, you know, digitize watches and cars and no, that's, I like an old mechanical car exactly so to me this is this is like Lego blocks this is like all the things that i used to play with when i was a little kid it's just another mechanical toy and i loved mechanical all right.

[26:11] Well David thank you very much and my pleasure thank you for uh entertaining that last random question of course my pleasure David uh Raissipour with connect wise uh we'll need to chat again sir very nice meeting nice to meet you take care all right folks that's going to do it from here at Pax8 Beyond. We'll have more interviews as we move along here. We'll see you soon. And until next time, Holla.