The Hits and Misses of Last Week’s DattoCon

I will try and do a bit more event coverage – if you want me to cover an event, let me know for consideration.

DattoCon was last week – what did you miss from the three-day event?

Some of the major announcements from the event include:

• New Capabilities to IT Complete: Kaseya introduced workflow integrations and claims they added hundreds of features to its modules of IT Complete.
• At the event, the IT Glue product team unveiled Offline Mode for Passwords, AD Password Rotation Scheduler, Datto RMM Web Remote and SNMP Data in IT Glue, Datto BCDR DR Runbook, and Unified Executive Summary Reports in myITprocess.
• Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola apologized for billing issues related to integrating Kaseya and Datto systems and promised a better billing system in the future.
• The event also featured a pre-day Autotask Community Live, using that previous brand to focus on Autotask and IT Operations.

Or, what’s my assessment? 

The announcements were boring.    Listening to the attendee buzz, the message was too much about Kaseya and not about their partners, which was divergent from previous DattoCons.  Long-time attendees were put off, although newcomers were much more pleased with their experience.

The facility was problematic, with a spread across three hotels, causing a lot of confusion and difficulty finding some vendors.    The lack of clarity about the ‘surprise appearance’ at the party led to rumors and ultimately disappointment when Wyclef Jean, albeit a significant name, was not the Pitbull many were expecting.

Events are emotional experiences; in this case, the emotion was too much disappointment and frustration rather than excitement.     That’s not to say there was no value – it’s more about a missed opportunity.