What’s in a Name?
October 14, 2020
Moniker change reflects expanded focus for evolving asset management player
The Channelnomics Staff
If you’re looking for an example of how creativity and innovation can pay dividends – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic – look no further than ScalePad, formerly Warranty Master.
The 5-year-old company, based in Vancouver, Canada, continues to find a niche of opportunity in a technology market with no shortage of ingenuity. At its inception, Warranty Master targeted a defined need for hardware warranty lookup but has since expanded its value proposition to robust reporting and, now, software asset management.
“Identifying aging hardware had become something put on the side by RMMs,” said Dan Wensley, CEO of ScalePad. “Many MSPs forgot to bring traditional IT infrastructure along with managed services. There were obviously some attempts, with HaaS and the evolution of SaaS, but in our early days we were just fulfilling something that was still a manual process and turning it into an automated one.”
From there – automating the process of collecting hardware warranty data – ScalePad started providing a way for MSPs to better communicate with customers and help them address hardware rotation, budgeting, and planning. That was via an easy-to-understand reporting capability. With 30-plus RMM platform integrations and more than 40 integrations on the OEM side of the house, ScalePad’s solution can collect and present the real-time, digestible data MSPs need to help end users manage their hardware lifecycles.
With the economic downturn brought on by the novel coronavirus, those lifecycles are being protracted, as fewer clients have been able (or willing) to open their purse strings to make capital investments in hardware.
“This has driven up the desire and opportunity for extended warranties, which increased dramatically on the server and networking side,” Wensley said. Now those numbers are climbing for workstations too. “That wasn’t a typical focus for MSPs before, because it was only about replacing servers, but [customers are] sitting on millions and millions of workstations that are at the end of life,” he said. “Their desire to replace them has diminished, with people worrying about the economic conditions that we’re in, so we launched the ability to add extended warranties on workstations this past summer.”
ScalePad’s value proposition to date consists of data collection automation; the ability for MSPs to do sales forecasting internally and budgeting for clients; and the ability to deliver information with robust reporting, thus driving hardware replacement, revenue, and extended warranty services.
Now, with the launch of the new moniker – ScalePad – the company has taken on software asset management as well.
A study released earlier this year by Spiceworks, a professional network for the IT industry, revealed that software is the second-biggest IT budget allocation item for companies in North America, at 31% of budget, behind 35% for hardware.
“I joined Warranty Master as CEO back in June of 2019, and a week later I was at DattoCon, where we were a Platinum sponsor, on the main stage in front of 3,000 partners,” Wensley said. “I heard very quickly the value they were getting from hardware management, and they said they needed the same thing for software.”
Indeed, that’s what the company gave them – a way to gather and showcase real-time software asset data so MSPs can help end users manage all of their IT assets at once.
“The data is arguably out there, but it’s very cumbersome to pull together. [MSPs] would have to spend a lot of time on manual processes, getting it in an Excel spreadsheet and extracting it to their platforms, and that doesn’t allow them any kind of meaningful way to parlay the data into value for the customer,” said Wensley. “One of the unique things we’ve done is to couple together the hardware with the software so they can look at the assets side by side. You’ve got this hardware with that software running on it. We cover all the major software, so now you’ve got a single data source of truth for [all the assets].”
The name change allows the company to communicate its maturity, expanded focus, and extended value proposition.
Today, ScalePad has more than 8,000 MSP partners in 76 countries, managing about 10 million hardware assets. Wensley said the number of software assets is 10 times greater than it is for hardware, which means ScalePad’s database jumps to nearly 100 million assets overnight.
The company is now offering MSPs a free trial of its asset management solution. “Within minutes, they can see their immediate hardware revenue opportunity,” Wensley said. “Here’s what should be replaced, here’s the revenue opportunity, here’s the warranty sales opportunity. If they see value – and the majority do immediately – they can purchase our solution on a monthly basis. They pay based only on the number of hardware devices they’re managing.
“This is immediately going to help partners deliver better service and value to their customers while driving both top-line revenue and profits for their business,” Wensley added. “Hardware and software are the two largest investments SMB customers make, and now partners are going to be able to take the strength and versatility of what they’ve done with hardware asset management and apply it to software.”
The 5-year-old company, based in Vancouver, Canada, continues to find a niche of opportunity in a technology market with no shortage of ingenuity. At its inception, Warranty Master targeted a defined need for hardware warranty lookup but has since expanded its value proposition to robust reporting and, now, software asset management.
“Identifying aging hardware had become something put on the side by RMMs,” said Dan Wensley, CEO of ScalePad. “Many MSPs forgot to bring traditional IT infrastructure along with managed services. There were obviously some attempts, with HaaS and the evolution of SaaS, but in our early days we were just fulfilling something that was still a manual process and turning it into an automated one.”
From there – automating the process of collecting hardware warranty data – ScalePad started providing a way for MSPs to better communicate with customers and help them address hardware rotation, budgeting, and planning. That was via an easy-to-understand reporting capability. With 30-plus RMM platform integrations and more than 40 integrations on the OEM side of the house, ScalePad’s solution can collect and present the real-time, digestible data MSPs need to help end users manage their hardware lifecycles.
With the economic downturn brought on by the novel coronavirus, those lifecycles are being protracted, as fewer clients have been able (or willing) to open their purse strings to make capital investments in hardware.
“This has driven up the desire and opportunity for extended warranties, which increased dramatically on the server and networking side,” Wensley said. Now those numbers are climbing for workstations too. “That wasn’t a typical focus for MSPs before, because it was only about replacing servers, but [customers are] sitting on millions and millions of workstations that are at the end of life,” he said. “Their desire to replace them has diminished, with people worrying about the economic conditions that we’re in, so we launched the ability to add extended warranties on workstations this past summer.”
ScalePad’s value proposition to date consists of data collection automation; the ability for MSPs to do sales forecasting internally and budgeting for clients; and the ability to deliver information with robust reporting, thus driving hardware replacement, revenue, and extended warranty services.
Now, with the launch of the new moniker – ScalePad – the company has taken on software asset management as well.
A study released earlier this year by Spiceworks, a professional network for the IT industry, revealed that software is the second-biggest IT budget allocation item for companies in North America, at 31% of budget, behind 35% for hardware.
“I joined Warranty Master as CEO back in June of 2019, and a week later I was at DattoCon, where we were a Platinum sponsor, on the main stage in front of 3,000 partners,” Wensley said. “I heard very quickly the value they were getting from hardware management, and they said they needed the same thing for software.”
Indeed, that’s what the company gave them – a way to gather and showcase real-time software asset data so MSPs can help end users manage all of their IT assets at once.
“The data is arguably out there, but it’s very cumbersome to pull together. [MSPs] would have to spend a lot of time on manual processes, getting it in an Excel spreadsheet and extracting it to their platforms, and that doesn’t allow them any kind of meaningful way to parlay the data into value for the customer,” said Wensley. “One of the unique things we’ve done is to couple together the hardware with the software so they can look at the assets side by side. You’ve got this hardware with that software running on it. We cover all the major software, so now you’ve got a single data source of truth for [all the assets].”
The name change allows the company to communicate its maturity, expanded focus, and extended value proposition.
Today, ScalePad has more than 8,000 MSP partners in 76 countries, managing about 10 million hardware assets. Wensley said the number of software assets is 10 times greater than it is for hardware, which means ScalePad’s database jumps to nearly 100 million assets overnight.
The company is now offering MSPs a free trial of its asset management solution. “Within minutes, they can see their immediate hardware revenue opportunity,” Wensley said. “Here’s what should be replaced, here’s the revenue opportunity, here’s the warranty sales opportunity. If they see value – and the majority do immediately – they can purchase our solution on a monthly basis. They pay based only on the number of hardware devices they’re managing.
“This is immediately going to help partners deliver better service and value to their customers while driving both top-line revenue and profits for their business,” Wensley added. “Hardware and software are the two largest investments SMB customers make, and now partners are going to be able to take the strength and versatility of what they’ve done with hardware asset management and apply it to software.”
