Talkin to Canadians: Auvik at IT Nation Connection 2024

 Harry Brelsford  00:00

Hey, nation, nation, we're on the last day at IT Nation Connect 202  here in Orlando. No hurricane this year. And I'm with AUVIK. So I'm with Mark Rawls and Joe Barnes. Did I get that right? Gentlemen? You did? Yep. Alright. So let's have a little fun. Because, like I say, I grew up in Alaska. The name itself conjures a Native American term, maybe a variation, but I could have heard this word in Alaska, what's, what's the story behind that?

Auvik1  00:29

You have it, yeah, I think that's right. So AUVIK was founded in Waterloo, Canada back in 2011 and so I think Auvik was inspired by some kind of native, you know, indigenous Canadian terms, yeah, and our mascot has always been a polar bear. And so many times we've delivered keynote speeches and other things, you know, wearing a polar bear hat, polar bear, yeah, we've got it on. We've got polar bears on our T shirts. And so, yeah, we try to, you know, be part of that culture and bring that culture out to to it nation. Well, cool. Well, hey,

Harry Brelsford  01:04

Well, cool -during rehearsal, I was sharing that, unfortunately, I haven't tracked you guys as closely as I should. I I knew you better. I don't know 10 years ago. And so what do you do? Yeah,

Auvik1  01:18

so, so at Auvik, what we pursue is what we like to think of as frictionless it. And so the idea is across network management, where we're already strong, but also now SaaS, SaaS management as well. How do we provide tools that our partners can use to help make it frictionless for their end customers? And so we believe in, again, monitoring, proactive alerting, enabling our partners really anticipate the needs of their customers and to help deliver a better, better service experience.

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Harry Brelsford  01:52

Before we get too far afield, so mark, you shared in rehearsal. You're from Austin, Texas. I am too, so that's pretty cool, Joe. Where where are you based out of? I

Auvki2  02:02

I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Oh, very nice, yep. But my team is all based in Canada right now. So one of the outliers,

Harry Brelsford  02:09

okay, great. And quickly, what are your roles? We have President and Director, Mark president and show director of global channels and alliances. What's, the day in the life look like? Yeah,

Auvik1  02:21

so as president, all of our go to market functions roll up to me. So everything from customer acquisition within marketing to them working with those customers to help determine if Auvik's the best solution for them with our sales team, and then as we then onboard customers through onboarding and customer success, help the, you know, make those customers successful with AUVIK, hopefully expand their usage, renew them over time. And so really, from from start to finish with our, you know, customer experience and making customers successful, that's how I that's what my job is, day to day. And it in that I'm very fortunate. I get to spend a lot of time talking with customers, understanding their needs and how we can meet them better.

Harry Brelsford  02:59

Yeah. Cool. And then Joe, how about you? Yeah,

Auvki2  03:01

so objects history is selling to MSPs. We've got almost 3000 MSP customers today. Yeah, that's a good number. Yeah, it is. And we've got a strong partnership with Connect wise, and we're we've got our functionality embedded in their ASIO platform. So excuse me, but my responsibility is to go grow and accelerate our other indirect partnerships. So by indirect, I mean the reseller type partners, VARs and solution providers, as well as other Alliance type partnerships and marketplaces. So we just launched on the PAC eight marketplace at the end of September, so that's an exciting new development for us. We're open and exploring others as well, but I spend most of my days focused on developing our resale business, and I see good synergy with the MSP world, because I think there's good opportunity for them to be opportunistic at times and resell object to customers or resell some of our newer products, like our SaaS management solution to customers. Sometimes it's easier to resell a newer product that they're they don't have the capabilities yet for their to offer it as a managed service, but we're having some good fun and success growing that part of the market for us. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  04:21

what's, you know, here we are essentially the end of the year as we know it, right? With the it nation. They're historically the last show. There's, there's one AWS reinvent, but that's not really our crowd, okay? That's not an MSP show. So given that, what's the, what's the roadmap for 2025 you know, it can be any acquisitions, new HQ, I mean, you name it. What's your roadmap? Yeah,

Auvik1  04:48

so we've got some exciting things coming out in early 2025 so a couple things. One, you know, again, we are fundamentally a network monitoring company, but we are extending that network. Monitoring, not just to your switches and firewalls and so forth. We're extending and launching what we call endpoint network monitoring, yeah, which is, how do we how do we monitor all the way to the endpoint? We recently released a feature in the last few months called North Star that allows you, when you're trying to diagnose a network issue, it enables you to visualize path tracing and see the path you know, wherever your trouble spot is, what's the path it takes to, you know, you know to the outside world. You know, through switches, through firewalls, you know what that status might be and where the problem might be occurring. Well, you know, we want to bring that same kind of troubleshooting all the way to the end point level and understanding, if you've got someone who's working remotely, you've got, you know, the CEO at one of your customers who is working from their beach house, and they don't understand why they can't access teams, and ultimately, they just want the issue fixed. And you know, you can't always get, you know, sufficient troubleshooting and insight, you know, out of out of an RMM, whereas a network monitoring tool that extends to the endpoint can do that. So we're real excited about that. And then I would say the other thing is, on our SaaS management platform, we're adding a lot of automation to enhance the onboarding and offboarding experience, so that our MSP partners can get much more efficient and how they support customer onboarding and offboarding, whether it's a brand new customer or whether it's, you know, employees, you know, within the customers they already have. And so really trying to save save hours, as we all know, you know, if you look at the cost that, you know, the cost basis of a typical MSP, it's about 75% people, right? And so if we can help them grow more efficiently, add new customers without having to add as many people, that's that drops straight to the bottom line. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  06:32

yeah. No kidding. And then finally, before we started recording, I asked about, you know, what are your feeling on events? First of all, you've just attended it nation, so let's start with that. Good show, yeah, you have a good time.

Auvik1  06:47

Yeah. Great show. Great energy. ConnectWise is continuing to push forward. They're doing some real interesting things with ASIO. We're really excited about that, how they're building an RPA AI automation. We've been a long time connect, wise partner and very tightly. We are very, very tightly integrated to both, you know, automate, and then also with ASIO itself. So, so we just, we think they're leading the way in the industry in terms of how they innovate and deliver value, and we're excited to be part of that. And then, you know, MSPs as a whole, you know, I think the last couple of years coming off the kind of COVID highs when there was a lot of software to be sold and a lot of services to be delivered. The last couple of years have been a little bit harder, and it seems like things are really rebounding, and folks are feeling good about their outlook for their business, and we love to help support their growth.

Harry Brelsford  07:37

Yep, and then finally, and you know, maybe that's still in planning. But will you be hosting any events, lunch and learns, or happy hours, or whatever? Is that a conversation you're having? You had an event Santa Barbara, years ago.

Auvik1  07:54

Yeah, years years ago. I would say, you know, what we have found to be most advantageous in terms of of us being able to meet you know, our community is to join events like it nation, right?

Harry Brelsford  08:03

Events are a lot of work. Yeah,

Auvik1  08:06

they are a lot of work. Yeah, we are. We are exploring doing additional lunch and learns. That's something that we're looking at. And then, and then, Joe is driving some great conversations out in the field with, with channel partners and through partners, you know, getting, customers together as well.

Harry Brelsford  08:21

Alright. Well, hey, we're out of time, so you know, we'll see you at the big party tonight, and thank you for your time.

Auvki2  08:29

Yeah, sounds good.

Auvik1  08:30

Thank you. You.

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