Re: Call for Kaseya to shift development focus...fix the core modules not add more modules

All,

I'm glad I have Kaseya, it has saved me a one man IT department countless amount of time but I see that it has more potential that isn't being realized.

It seems like Kaseya is more and more interested in creating new modules (income streams in some cases) and it seems like it's hampering their ability to work on their existing core modules.  KAV

Modules added in 2011 (by my estimate which will contain some mistakes)

KAM (12/31/10...essentially 2011) no experience with it
KAV (12/20/10) unfinished product while essentially giving up on KES
KDPM...unpolished but I hear 3.5 has some promise
KDM don't think many people use it
KDS unfinished
KID there is 12 posts in that forum...I don't think it's really being used by many people.

I could keep on going but you get the point.  It seems like they are more focused on adding new modules that don't really seem to be wanted or wind up being widely used.

After almost a year we are still missing any kind of alerting feature for virus detected etc from KAV.  KES's core engine is a couple years old.  Labtech is now offering to cover our costs of moving away from Kaseya.

I completely agree. I've been working with support to try and get KAV 1.2 somewhat stable for a few weeks now. I think we're finally getting there, but it's such a waste of time and pisses our clients off.

I installed the new Policy Management module, and really want to start using it in production, however it seems extremely buggy and I feel I don't want to waste my time until I know policies will actually apply correctly based on how I configure it. The desktop migration module was also painful at best to use, my techs tried it multiple times and at this point we've pretty much given up on it, even after spending $2,500 on licensing.

I really want to stay with Kaseya at this point due to the time, effort, and cost of migrating to a new solution, but the quality of the software being put out really needs to improve.

kuuser, I've looked at Labtech many times over the last few years, but just keep in mind that every piece of software has it's quirks, and we've recently heard from other companies we stay in touch with that are migrating to Labtech that they are running into some major pain points with that software.

I strongly agree with this title post, we pay allot for our maintenance costs yet what have we got to show for it, a KPM module, we had to complain for, a service desk module which is so slow and non-useable, LC which none of our engineers use due to errors and speed issues, whilst there is allot of cool and really useful features in LC, the bottom line is it is supposed to make our engineers jobs quicker, but it's slower for remote control then the original KVNC and it crashes quite often so less stable. I'm still on 6.1 as I like to stay 6-9 months behind Kaseya core releases to save wasted time on bugs and issues.

I really wish they would just release 3 modules a year but get them in a position where they are useable, e.g. no bugs, all required core features (nothing cut from release at last minute), and fully developed so I can then invest my money in them and can actually gain a benefit for my investment. At the moment I'm just reading on these forums on a daily basis with the hope some of these products get to version 1.3 quickly or higher so I can decide if they are ready for my investment.

Sorry to sound harsh, I am still glad I signed up to use Kaseya 6 years ago and I'm not looking at moving to another provider, but I really wish they would sort things out but I believe bad decisions have been made higher up over the last two years and they have took on more than they can deliver with a new module coming out nearly every month. It looks good for marketing on the website which every module under the sun but what’s the point if nobody actually invests their hard earner money in them.

It would seem to me they have the marketing guys telling the programs that we must be first to market with everything, so they push everything out before it is ready, stable and functionally useful.  And then I have to wonder who is doing the market research becuause some of the modules will never make a return on investment!

For most MSP's, a good AV solution is a must, yet they brought out KAV without server support, poor deployment tools, and no alerting, this pretty much makes it useless and means you need a seperate AV for the server.  We recently took over a client from another MSP using kaseya and they had switched the client from Trend Micro WFBS to KAV/KES/KAM and this was one of the causes of them losing that client!  They have requested that we re-instate Trend Micro.

I would like to use KAV once it is bug free and functional rich, but I also fear that if I will end up with an outdated product, just like KES and Backup

+1000 to this thread. Kaseya has become bloated, buggy, slow and is starting to lack some serious features that other products now have (and the company is a pain to deal with). We will probably keep Kaseya until our subscription finishes, then we will see what happens....

Glad someone got round to writing this up, it's something that's been on my mind for a while.

Everytime I see an announcement from Kaseya that there is a new module coming the curious nerdy side of my head thinks - yee haa something new to install and play with, the slightly more cautious side tells me not to install it as there may be trouble ahead.  Unfortunately the latter is mostly true.  Of all the new modules KDS is the only one we are actively using and it needs a lot of work.  

Now take a look through the core modules - why oh why can't we have a common interface?  In audit I can click a cross to change views in Agent I can't.  K2 is by no means new so why haven't these issues been ironed out yet?

Live Connect is a fantastic looking tool but in a busy working helpdesk environment it's simply far too slow to be useful.  Our guys have far too many calls on the go to wait until connections are made and because of this remote control is used to connect to customer machines.  This makes me angry at times as there's things the guys could do but I totally understand why they aren't using it.

I agree with Eddy that it looks like the marketing guys have a bigger say on what's released and when because I really don't think the developers would have rubber stamped some of what's come out.  Or are Kaseya's testing environments unrealistic?

Thank you for this post, I feel less alone

A product such as Kaseya must be stable before all things. The purpose of this product is optimized operational tasks.

Currently, my teams do not trust a Kaseya.

- Problem bug

- Stability

- Design Problem

And the same answer in the future module fee.

I feel myself much wrong but one thing is on my time savings are lost in the incident management Kaseya and impact to my clients.

good morning guys,

Here's my opinion on this topic:

1. 3 years ago: I really liked how developed the core module was, and the direction K was plodding along with it. However, it did seem they were getting bogged down with being able to give us meaningful upgrades.
2. 2 years ago: I got excited when Kaseya told us that 6.x would be an entire rewrite of the base code so they could being a new launching point for their product (clean out the years of garbage code, insert new cleaner code and language, and really move thing forward). Though the release of 6.0 blew up a lot of people (and needed a lot of fixing), I put my faith into K and waited to see what next (their track history was god, so I figured once they got done ripping of the band-aid all would move forward again). We could see the potential here with the new interface, and the promise of LC.
3. 1 year ago: I got real excited with Kaseya's announcement that there were several new major features (mostly new modules) that would be coming out soon (now andwithin the next year). OF course in most cases, pricing wasn't really discussed (will we be charge, won't we?), but it look to me like the promise made 2 years ago would come to fruition (the core module would be push forward again!). Also, now that 6.1 was out, and all seemed stable, the core module was working as good (if not slightly better) that 5.1 version... and it had a few extras that 5.1 didn't have (like quick menu, LC functionality, a better UI).
4. The past K user summit May of this year till now: I am confused... On the suface, it looks like the core module isn't being pushed further. However:
   1. LC has a lot of potential, and is in the core
   2. Advanced Network Discovery was just added to the core  (after it was announced that it would have a big add-on price)
   3. KPM was added to the core (after it was announced that it would have an add-on price).
   4. A few other add-ons were offered to us as add-on maint cost only.
   5. Lots of new add-ons added. However, since KAV/KAM (and this includes KAV/KAM too!) almost all of these new add-ons are not feature rich enough to warrant an investment. We call them Almost 1.0 products.

So after thinking these things out, the core module looks like its being developed as I would want, but because of the wishy-washy way K handled the new features to the core (this is not meant to sound harsh, just trying to pinpoint the feeling) I got the impression that K was looking to leverage their new development as new revenue from existing clients instead of making the core product more feature rich (especially the Enterprise product). However, I am concerned with the way they first tried to bill (in some way) for these core feature builders. I really hope this doesn't become a recoccuring problem with K.

I would like to see Kaseya put out a better roadmap that would focus on what's being developed in the core, and what add-ons are being developed as well. Because my final opinion of all of this (and the most common problem I see K having) is a lack of clear communication between them and their clients. In the end, I find it to be wishy-washy most of the time, so expectations become improperly set among us. Then when a new addition comes out (or a module gets upgraded), our first thought now is "I wonder what Kaseya will ask us to pay for this???". This is not a good feeling since I recently wrote a check for yearly maint on 5000 agents (its a biiiig check).

I agree with most of the sentiments raised so far and have also voiced my concerns several times past when new modules where announced that there are more important core features that needs to be improved to keep up with Kaseya's competitors.  

As for KID, to put it in the nicest way possible it should not have been released yet and it has a long way to go before it will be ready from what I have seen of it.

This is an excellent thread, though I hope it won't be perceived as "yet more forum whinging" by the Kaseya management.

I really feel that the issue is a lack of communication. This goes both ways.

I attended Kaseya Connect for the first time this year, and was extremely encouraged by the open mic forum, in which several of us were able to share our views directly with the Kaseya High Priests. I was the annoying New Zealand accented guy asking Kaseya to please stop pushing Service Desk and focus instead on... you guessed it... fixing the core in line with user requests repeated over and over again.

I came away from that forum a little conflicted. On the one hand, I felt some of us had been listened to. On the other hand, it seemed there was quite a bit of defensiveness in the responses, and a lack of actual listening and comprehension of our problems. I remember thinking at the time "this is going to come to a head at some point". This thread might be that point.

To make me happy as a customer would require three things.

1. Kaseya to understand that solving a problem via an extremely convoluted method is only slightly better than not solving it at all (just read many of these forum threads for examples of things which should "just work" but instead require multiple interacting scripts, direct DB manipulation, and outright bypassing of the core product itself).

2. As others have said, showstopping bugs in releases (core or modules) are just not good enough. The classic examples here are KPM breaking horribly the first few months it was out, and KAM which seems all but orphaned, and causes many performance issues on endpoints, and has no global exclusion list or ability to spread updates across a time window.

3. Fixing the UI to present a consistent experience across all modules. I wouldn't mind this, except it is laughable when the actual experience is described by Kaseya as a "single pane of glass" solution. If so, I suspect that single pane would only be sold by a glazier who had taken some serious psychedelics! :)

In short, and I've said this here before, what I really want is for Kaseya to connect their marketing message (Our Automation. Your Liberation.) with their development process, which seems to leave our users with anything but automation and feeling extremely unliberated.

Guys at Kaseya, I love your potential. I love the "can do" attitude at Kaseya Connect. I love the tireless devotion of people like Brendon Cosgrove who show day after day that they genuinely care about we users. I love support, who have been great when I've had a problem specific and reproducible enough for it to be worth raising a ticket. All I want is for the marketing department to slow down, take a breath, and maybe move to a model where their salaries are authorised by the Quality Control and Support departments...

Please guys, connect with reality (it's all here on this forum) and maybe let us in on why things are so disconnected, and when/how they'll be fixed. Fellow posters... I don't see the point in waving threats of moving to Labtech or similar. Let's just do what we can to help Kaseya help us.

Great thread.

I've never used an enterprise product with such a fast and fluid development cycle.  The whole dev process just seems like it flies by the seat of its pants.  The other product I use (CRM, accounting, PSA) have controlled releases - quarterly, annually, etc.  It is incredibly rare for an out-of-band release to come out.  Even Microsoft has figured out how to to regular cyclical updates to its products.  

In my former life I was a software engineer at Symantec for 6 years and aside from the antivirus engines, once a product was shipped, we froze the code-base and touched it as little as possible until the next iterative release.  After code freeze, applications would go through weeks, if not months, of rigorous testing before release.  Only show-stopping bugs get fixed - no new features period.  No last minutes changes, no off-the-cuff updates because users x,y,z asked for them.

All this is to say that when I first bought Kaseya and learned about the 'maintenance' fees, I was expecting a similar process. I would have never dreamed that we'd be essentially running my business on a product that had silent, behind the scenes updates multiple times per day/week/month.  No apparent scheduled releases, no announcements of upcoming fixes, no real visibility to what's going on under the covers.  All of this leads me to a lack of confidence in the code base - how can we ever feel comfortable or have faith in the product with this type of system?

With the speed of hotfixes, I just cannot believe that things get properly tested.  When new modules are released, they always undergo weeks of frantic bug fixes.  This is despite Kaseya's insistence that they did extensive alpha/beta testing in live customer environments.  The response to our (the community) complaints and criticisms of flaky modules and long-lingering bugs in the core feel defensive.  We get a lot of the same type of responses - we did a lot of testing, we didn't see these issues during testing, etc, etc.  In my opinion, the entire development/QA/release system is generally substandard.  Yes, things have improved a little in the recent core releases, but there are still way too many glaring bugs and problems when new code is released.  We (along with many others) take a wait and see approach because we've been burned before by being an early adopter.  I've always contended that software development is easy - it's the QA testing that is really hard to do right.

As others have said, it would be really nice to stop with the marketing of new modules and spend some of our maintenance money on a long, solid cycle of core development/QA.  My two cents.

Kaseya Management,

There is some very good constructive criticism in this thread that even gives suggestions on what to do.  Care to comment and perhaps voice your opinions?  Communication needs to be a two way street and it wouldn't be fair to not hear your side of the story.

Thanks,

Phlight,

You are quite correct and from the day you first started this thread Kaseya Management has been watching and learning.  Many times when a Kaseyan jumps in on a thread like this it tends to interrupt the conversation, so we have very deliberately kept quiet.  This has been a fantastic thread with very valuable feedback presented in a constructive manner.  

Our side of the story is a bit complex to quickly churn out, however, we will put together some thoughts for you shortly.  

Thanks to you for starting this thread, and thanks to everyone who has participated.  Please don't let this stop your suggestions and feedback.

I would also add my name to the list of users who are less than thrilled with the current state of Kaseya core development. I would prefer some focus on making something brilliant before taking your finger and sticking it in 10 different pies.

We started using KAV a few months ago in the hope that the server version would be just around the corner. Still waiting for that and now I am scratching my head wondering what to do with my servers. If I have to install a separate direct from Kaspersky version I might as well go the whole hog with their management tools. No point using Kaseya to manage a fractured environement.

I looked at the service desk module recently as I saw there was a Kaseya app for the  iPhone. Did an install of the trial and then I saw the quote for installing it and the mandatory day or two of configuration service that was required. I promptly uninstalled the trial from the server. Not being the milk in that cash cow sorry.

@phlight, I dont see KOB in your list, that program has given me more problems in 5 months than any other application in my business.  20+ tickets create, many of which are still open.

This post is brilliant.  I would also like to add my name to the list of Kaseya users who are not at all happy with the direction product development has taken over the past 2 years or so.  I agree with those that state that it seems as though the marketing department is running the business.  

We have been using Kaseya for over 3 years now and are disturbed by the seeming abandonment of core modules, KES & BUDR being key examples (there are others but I digress).  According to Kaseya's web site they are still part of the package.  In my own experience and from what I have seen in these forums these products have never performed satisfactorily.  Yet, instead of fixing or replacing them Kaseya's solution is to introduce parallel products that don't work very well either?  Am I supposed to get excited to pay for new features when the existing ones I have already paid for don't work?

The new features are nice but why do they have to come at the expense of the existing features we have already purchased and continue to pay maintenance for?  What exactly are my maintenance fees paying for?

All I would like to see is a little bit of focus.  Give us a workable Live Connect, Backup, Antivirus (pick one and make it work), Patch Management, etc.  Then come talk to me about adding modules.

Add my vote to priortize fixing and enhancing the core functions instead of introducing new modules that cost more money. Been patiently waiting over two months for Kaseya to fix the new KLC VPN which hasn't worked for us since it was released.

I agree with some of the sentiment here. In the last 18 months we have seen some improvements in support but there is still plenty of hype and little in way of delivery. The product roadmap seemed like a good idea of keeping everyone in the loop but as the modules were released you could see they were pushed out before they were ready. Many features missing and stability problems.

My biggest concern of late has been the price changes. We work very hard to maintain a price book of services which our sales team build contracts from. Imagine my surprise where on several occasions after the point of ordering after customers had a singed off to find they had increase – in one case 100%. In one case with Replay4 the response was we no longer resell that. No communication at all on these changes.

I don’t want my maintenance fee spent on developing half cut add-ons I have to pay extra for not a half backed PSA replacement. Give me the core tools that surpass all others. That’s is what I signed up for.

Cheers,

Jason

I also agree (frankly I can't imagine who wouldn't agree).

The need to push out an ever growing list of poorly tested new modules with their own licenses is really damaging the product. They need to get rid of the 5.x elements, fix the long standing issues and requests with the core modules and then look at putting in to a place a proper development and testing philosophy stating the minimum level of testing and features that a module should have.

We need to get beyond this stage of releasing a module with only half the features that any reasonable user wants, with the features that are there being buggy and poorly implemented, and then wanting to charge us an arm and a leg for it.

Oh, also, can we call and agent an agent and not try to bill us twice for supporting iphones and android devices?

Olly

Well I am glad I saw this thread as well.  I have used Kaseya for over 5 years now and have been fairly happy with it.  I could be a whole lot happier with it though.  When I first looked at Kaseya we evaluated several like products before making the purchase decision and I certainly would not want to go through that again.  It takes a lot of time to get a product like this rolled out and working properly.  That time is a huge part of the investment and a big part of why I do not want to even think about moving to a different product.  I have made the commitment to Kaseya and now I want Kaseya to make that commitment to me to fix the base product first and foremost.  Stability and consistency is a must.  Once the core products are stable and consistent then start working on add-ons and additional functionality.

I know that Kaseya has made a big investment in improving the support and it has helped a bit.  There is however a huge improvement that they can make that will not cost them or us any money at all and that is "Communication".  One of my biggest complaints lately has been the lack of communication and knowing that they are working on my problems or when they will start working on my problems.  There have been many times that I have submitted tickets for things that are broken and of course you get the initial we are looking into this, and then the "we are escalating this" and then thats it for days.  Sometimes you will get a reply that they have fixed the problem only to find out that they have not fixed anything so you reply to the ticket letting them know that it is not fixed and it is days before getting any kind of reply.  I have even gone as far as submitting updates to a ticket that simply ask if anyone is doing anything on the ticket or even paying attention to the ticket and did not get a response for 2 weeks I think and then I only got a response because of calling my sales rep.  When we have things that are not working we understand that sometimes things take time to figure out, or maybe we are not the priority at the moment but a quick update once a day or two letting us know what is going on can go a long way towards keeping us happy and making us at least feel like you really do care about us, even if you cannot fix our problem right at the moment.  The other part of that is also the support people really need to read what we put in the tickets and think before responding.  I get so tired of the time wasting generic responses to do this or try this and if they had taken the time to read the ticket they would know that I had already tried those things.

Kaseya "IS" a very useful product.  It does help with a lot of different things and it has a lot of great potential.  You guys really need to quit shooting yourselves in the foot with releasing these add-ons that are not fully tested and riddled with bugs.  I am just know finally getting the KDS module working properly and stable (hopefully) and I was one of the early adopters of it.  I have always supported Kaseya and recommend it to others and want to see it succeed and continue to grow and put out new features, but they need to be stable from the start.  Things need to be consistent across the board, for example in agent procedures you can do a run once for things, but in other places where you would think you would have that ability it was missing, one place was in the new Policy management module.

My techs were really quite happy with Kaseya for the most part prior to the 6.2 upgrade, now since installing the 6.2 upgrade they have lost a lot of faith in Kaseya and have been very displeased with it because we had so many problems after the upgrade and it took over 2 months for some of those problems to get resolved.

Ok, I am done with my rant.  I look forward to Kaseya getting things smoothed out and moving forward and making it the product that I know it can be

Hi Gerald. Wow such a long post, but no real information. Why is KAV 1.2 taking so long to get released? Why is KAV running such an old version of Kaspersky? Why does Live Connect on the Mac miss many of the features that windows has? Why is K2 so much slower than version 5? Why doesn't Kaseya work on the iPad? Why is there still no iPhone application (This was such a required feature my Company wrote our own!!! and no the service desk application doesn't count)? Why do you plan on charging extra for the iPhone/Android agent? There are so many issues with Kaseya 6.2 that it isn't funny.

Your post basically just stated that you have no plans on improving the Kaseya development process! Really concerning.

Once again and echoing the initial post, the foundation is in need of severe repairs. You guys just keep adding on more and more on top of a poor foundation, just adding to the instability of the product. Instead of 1 thing going wrong, it is compounded, resulting on fixing 1 thing and 3 other things going bad.

You can't build a house on a bad foundation. You can't build a high rise on a bad foundation. Quite addin on and fix the foundation, which has been in need of repair since 2005. The VSA is suppose to be a time saver, but often results in wasted time because of constant troubleshooting the quirks in it.

You are loosing user confidence in the product, hesitation from users on investing more into Kaseya products, and even loose users because of the never ending unreliability.

Simply put, its would be a great product, if it works reliably. Enough with the FUTURE ADD-ONs, fix the foundation.

@michaeldale - all of our work is about improving process and improving the product to continue to deliver a world class ITSM solution.  Most of your other concerns seem to be about add-on functionality and if you go back to the beginning of this thread the main concern was that the core features weren't getting enough attention.  Gerald explained how we allocate resources, and that we don't pull people off of the core to work on the add-ons and that we have a major core update coming next year that will include many updates to those core features including reporting, monitoring (tighter integration with intellipool) and remote control improvements just to name the few that I know of with certainty.   KAV 1.2 was released with server support with the latest server engine on 11.21.2011 and work is already underway to update the workstation engine to the latest business engine. ( See this post )  -  In terms of some of your other concerns about functionality, keep the ideas coming, you should see our wish list of features, however we don't have unlimited resources and that means some things don't get done as soon as we would all hope.

@Shickey - The foundation is getting those "repairs" you refer to with the core udpate Gerald mentioned above.  Please apply for the Test Pilot program so that your feedback on those updates can be fed directly to the product team as we get closer to moving that update to release next year.  

We have a wonderful base of customers like you who have helped us get where we are today and we are listening.   

@everyone - This thread has been very good, but I don't want this to devolve into a heated rant.   Let's keep it constructive.  

Hey Gerald,

Thank you for taking the time to join in with our discussion. Please review my post and you'll see that my focus in this posting is about improving communications between K and it's clients (us). I make a few points that focus around this topic, and in the end I do recognize that K is actually working in the direction we need. But the way k has been communicating it's roadmap for core and add-on has led to a lot of confusion. Yes K does give us a site where we can see what's on it, but the real confusion to many of us is whats going to be part of the core, and what's not. And lately we've been told initially things we wanted are going to cost extra, then suddenly they're now included with the core (though sometimes additional maint will be charged). The end result is really good(the core module is improving and getting better!),  but the road K took us on to get to this point was very confusing.

Also, regarding the add on modules, I have to agree with many users that I do like to see all the new options that K is offering (he we can buy only what we need, and not what we don't). But if I'm going to pay extra for it, I'd like it to be more robust before I pay for it. Take KAV for example, I bought 1500 agents almost a year ago, but really cannot deploy them because, while it really isn't buggy (works fine for me), when I deploy it to my clients it will take down their networks when it updates (cannot tell it to use a local repository). So I am stuck with using KES until you guys have the release that will do this.

Another example is KMDM. This product is not Mobile iron, but it sure is priced like it is (I do know K offered a buy in price, but my yearly price will be the same as what mobile iron charges). Another interesting tab out this price for kmdm (which is used to manage smart phones)  is is almost double my price I paid per K agent (which manages more intelligent devices called pcs, servers, and laptops). In the end, this is a confusing message.

So my thoughts posted in this forum are about being confused by communications by K, and also wanting K to deliver add on modules that are more robust (and I will pay for it), as well as had a fair price on it (I have 5000 k agents, why am I being asked to not only pay double their cost for kmdm, but pay the same price as someone who may have only 100 agents?).

Finally, this is one of only a few companies where the big dogs join in with open discussions with their clients. All, please appreciate this as pretty unique and show respect to K for having a company mentality that promotes this kind of openness. In all frankness, this is one of the major reasons K is #1 with us.

I would agree with Brendan's comment about not losing the focus of the topic which is the core modules, which would include the following;

• - Agent
• - Agent Procedures
• - Audit
• - Info Center
• - Monitoring
• - Patch Management
• - Remote Control
• - System
• - Ticketing

I think that the following modules should also be included as core modules;

• - Network Discovery
• - Policy Management

however if we could get some traction on the top 9 that would make most of us happy.

The main complaint that I have had and that most of the other Kaseya customers  posts on the forums that I have seen are about the Kaseya interface and how it changes between modules and functions. The other two core modules that I believe should revamped are the "Info Center" and "Monitoring" modules.

I think what we maybe need is to start listing the issues per module however I'm not sure that the forum is the best place to create the list as we would end up with a very long thread. Any suggestions on how we can start listing these core issues would be great.

My concern is that you believe you have a team of developers who work on updating and fixing the core components and yet we, the end users, see nothing of that. Half of v6 still doesn't have the new interface promised when we were running v5. Most of the modules are still poorly integrated and suffer from poor development ideas and bugs.

What we DO see is constant information about new modules and new pricing. Indeed you just countered this complaint by telling us of a new intellipool module being released which shows that you don't really understand or want to listen.

People sign up for the test program, and they give their feedback, but this feedback never results in to fixes in the final modules, which seem to always be released with blatantly obvious features missing, bugs, and poor UI. There also doesn't appear to be anyone sitting down and thinking about how new modules will work individually, or with each other, before the devs start the coding. Someone must be doing some product research I'm sure. For example: Why can't I tell what the KES/KAV status is of a machine in KLC? Surely any new module should be integrated with KLC from the outset? Next example, why can't I set KAV requirements in policy manager so that any machine in a given dept gets KAV with x and y settings? Why can't I see the Policies applied to a machine from KLC? *EVERY* module should integrate with policy manager from the outset in order to make it useful.

I love Kaseya and I do think, at it's very heart, it's a reliable product, but it's let down by the company that makes it and their marketing team and the inane desire to constantly provide more modules, at every increasing costs, in order to tempt new customers in but without providing any reason for existing clients to remain with Kaseya (other then the pricing plans that you have no choice to sign up for due to the stupid licensing arrangements - why can't I just buy what I need?)

@oliverm - I think you missed the whole intent of the Intellipool acquisition.  One of the core areas that customers and we ourselves had acknowledged needing an update was monitoring.  Rather than build/re-build our offering, we purchased a world class company and solution that is Intellipool.  Intellipool wasn't purchased just to sell another addon module.  Yes it stands very well on its own as an enterprise class monitoring solution, and we will sell it as such, but it allowed us an opportunity to take a great product and integrate it to make the core VSA stronger.  Which is why right now, MSPs can get KNM 4.1 at no charge.  Things don't happen overnight, but KNM 4.1 is part of us making good on improving the core, but its a process.  Next year you'll see that integration evolve and allow for different levels of choice for our customers in terms of monitoring.  

The test program has most certainly yielded feedback and product changes, bug fixes, etc.  I don't have the specific data right now, but I can assure it the test pilot program is effective.  

All of this is about evolving features and products.  Your feedback is great.  Integration will continue to be a focus for all work going forward.  That has been heard loud and clear over here.  

Licensing falls off topic for this conversation, but the goal is to be more flexible as you've seen with our allowance for subscription and perpetual licensing for most modules/products.

Thanks for contributing.

@brendan

Quick deviation from the topic:

www.kaseya.com/.../downloads.aspx

Lists KNM as 4.0.  Did I just download 4.0 or 4.1?

Can I install KNM 4.0 now off this link and will it then update to 4.1 for free whenever that is release?

Also is there any catches here? Is this module free to use on all our customers equipment or is their some restrictions that I should be aware of?

"Which is why right now, MSPs can get KNM 4.1 at no charge. "

KNM 4.0 is also listed as a "free trial" when you get to the actual download....

@phlight @craig - watch this thread for info you're looking for.  community.kaseya.com/.../13575.aspx

.

I want to bring this thread back on track and make sure it is kept alive as I think it is by far the most important topic on the forum.

I have personally communicated with Kaseya management the issue of half-baked new modules being a distraction from fixing the problems with the core. In essence the response has been “your views are not consistent with what we are hearing from other users, and they are loving the new modules”.

If you have not yet contributed to this post, please make an effort and let Kaseya management know what you think. Are we just a noisy minority, or do Kaseya management need to change what they are doing?

Kaseya pre version 6 was always clunky to use the functionality, but we accepted this as a legacy of Kaseya’s beginnings as a basic toolkit for in-house IT departments (pre MSPs). We had high hopes that version 6 with the new UI would at long last address the usability issues and deliver the long overdue improvements to the core functions of remote control, monitoring and reporting. It would be an understatement to say what we have ended up getting with version 6 is disappointing.

What we want to see is:

Fix the UI - get rid of the remaining 5.x elements, improve performance, make the interface consistent across all modules (at least the core modules) and most importantly, change the way functionality is accessed and used to streamline the typical day to day activities that MSPs use Kaseya for.

Fix Remote Control – unbundle Remote Control from KLC so that a remote control session is as lightweight as possible and the whole remote control function is simpler and more efficient to run and maintain. We want something that is equivalent to industry standard solutions such as LogMeIn and TeamViewer; faster initiation speed, better performance, better reliability, support for multiple monitors and terminal services.  And how about the return of Windows shortcuts and Copy & Paste. This was a quote from the Kaseya 2009 Road Map document:

“Live Connect”

– Next-generation remote control capability

– Similar to LogMeIn / Citrix

Fix Monitoring – consolidate monitoring in one area instead of the current fragmentation across multiple modules. Incorporate Network Monitoring in the core where it belongs and deliver the long overdue trending.

Fix Reporting – we are now into the third major release of Kaseya 6.x and we still do not have any way of creating meaningful customisable reports for clients.

Improve the Development and Release Process – don’t start developing new functionality until there is a clear understanding of what users actually want. Focus on usability rather than functionality so that performing typical tasks is streamlined. Review the current alpha/beta testing process and make sure it is early enough in the development cycle to allow for issues to be properly addressed before release. Establish a separate forum where participants in the alpha/beta and Test Pilot programs can provide feedback and exchange ideas with the developers and themselves.

Kaseya Management – stop evading the issues and making excuses. Step up to the plate and accept that things are not all rosy. Make a commitment to get down and dirty to understand what users really want. COMMUNICATE with users what is going to be done about fixing the core and keep us in the loop with meaningful and regular feedback. NO MORE MODULES.

Kaseya user since 2004