This was my first chance to attend an Empower event in my time at N‑able and quite simply I was blown away. I had heard that Empower conferences were one of the best events that N‑able produces, attends, or sponsors, and I took that with a grain of salt since I hear this internally a lot. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Our sponsors, vendors, employees, and most importantly our partners made sure that this was one of the best conferences that I have ever attended. From the N‑sight, N‑central, and Co-managed Boot Camps on Tuesday and the kickoff with Johannes Kamleitner, David Weeks, and John Pagliuca, to the closing party at the Red Stag on Wednesday, this was just a pleasure to be a part of.
I could not take enough notes and listen to enough of our speakers. Everything was delivered and digested with almost obsessive interest and the energy was exceptional. While I would love to share all of my notes, we cannot fit that in a blog. So, here are my top five takeaways from Empower 2023.
Community is Key
Every time that I attend an N‑able event I’m impressed with our community of partners. However, at this event, they all went above and beyond. In my N‑sight Boot Camp, I was thoroughly impressed that I did not get questions, I got discussions and was able to sit back a bit as the partners helped each other, and offered solutions that were different from mine. The real-world experience and expertise sharing was beautiful. While manning my demo booth, or just making my way to the next presentation, I was presented with ideas/needs/questions from numerous partners. Even though I was able to provide solutions or procedure ideas, it was a rare that another partner didn’t overhear our conversation, stop what they were doing, and join the discussion with another method or view of the topic being discussed. It was incredibly encouraging to see the number of partners that I was able to connect with each other and see that knowledge shared. I cannot express how hard this event would have been if we all didn’t leave competition outside the door and attack this event from a community perspective.
Mergers and Acquisitions are Becoming More and More Common
Six. I repeat, six. That is how many break-out sessions that we had regarding the subject of mergers and acquisitions. The amount of information that was presented was just astounding. My major takeaways boil down to just a few points:
- Operational efficiency has an impact on your valuation. Time and again I heard that the smoother and easier the merger is and the better standardization and SOPs you have in place, the higher your potential valuation will be. Being one of the Operational Efficiency Head Nerds this was music to my ears.
- Whether you are looking to sell today or not, know your valuation. It is an excellent gauge of your maturity as an MSP, and is a nice way to compare yourself to the Best-in-Class MSPs in your geo.
- The number of mergers and acquisitions is rapidly increasing to the point that we are now seeing about 30 per month. If you are a mature MSP and this has not come across your radar it certainly should as it will affect you at some point.
Automation is the Name of the Game
I was so happy to see how much enthusiasm there was around automation at this event. Every time I had an MSP ask about automating a part of their service delivery, at least two others would join the conversation and offer not only suggestions on how to automate, but also offer training. The Head Nerd team has long been touting that 70% of your service delivery should be automated, and to see industry leaders in the real world implement this is just exceptional. Not only are we using automation to free up our technicians’ time so they can generate more venue for their organizations, but it is also now being seen almost as a standardization of service tool as well, and I could not be happier.
Maintenance of Your Tools is a Needed Motion
We perform maintenance on the devices we manage on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Restore procedures should be tested once a quarter if not more. I believe this is a good thing, and I was pleased to see the “light bulb come on” when I talked to MSPs about maintenance of their toolset. In almost every technical talk we hit on this point in some fashion—from updating our N‑central servers, to optimizing our checks, to updating our agents. Going deeper, you should be looking at quarterly reviews of tickets, checks, and tasks to make sure you are providing the highest standard of service to your end users with clean, efficient, and well-thought-out policies/procedures to provide world-class customer service.
Preparing for the Future
Being content with the status quo is not an option for MSPs. We always need to be looking ahead to the future. So many of the talks at Empower drove this home for me. Dave MacKinnon’s AI round table and Mike Adler AI’s view into the future of N‑able products were great examples of why we need to be preparing now. I feel that AI is going to have the same impact on the MSP community as automation has had—if not larger. We need to be testing, preparing, and learning how to use these tools better so that when the time comes, and we can leverage these tools so we are not behind the 8-ball already. Keren Elazari’s discussion around cybersecurity also showed that if our security offerings and packages are not constantly improving we are going to open ourselves to vulnerabilities that we could not have imagined two to three years ago. Cybersecurity cannot be a “reactive” endeavor if we are not pushing to constantly become more vigilant and improve our security stance, we will get lost in the dust.
I was so happy to get to attend the event and see some familiar faces while meeting new ones. Empower 2024 in Frisco certainly has some large shoes to fill and I can’t wait!
Each Head Nerd that attended Empower Prague will be writing their own blog to provide their favorite highlights from the week. Check them out here:
Joseph Ferla is one of our Head Nerds. You can follow him on Twitter @headnerdjoe or on LinkedIn.
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