ConnectWise Upgrades Its Marketplace To Include Buying

‘If someone wants to go buy one of these third-party products, they can go do so, whenever they want. They can choose how many licenses they want to give, and also upgrade and downgrade the licenses and we’re also providing usage-based licensing, where appropriate for the product,’ ConnectWise chief product officer Jeff Bishop tells CRN.

ConnectWise will soon revamp its marketplace website as an e-commerce platform that allows partners to buy third-party software licenses -- even usage-based licensing of certain products -- and provision them almost instantly, said ConnectWise chief product officer Jeff Bishop.

“We had the existing marketplace, which was more informational, and now we’ve added a transactional buying process to it,” Bishop told CRN. “If someone wants to go buy one of these third-party products, they can go do so, whenever they want. They can choose how many licenses they want to give, and also upgrade and downgrade the licenses and we’re also providing usage-based licensing, where appropriate for the product.”

He said in areas such as A/V, for example, rather than a partner choosing to buy 500 licenses, they can select a usage-based model, which is charged based on consumption.

“As consumption goes up and down, they pay for exactly what they are consuming,” Bishop said. “That was a big change there. All of that is new.”

He said the work is nearly done and the new marketplace will officially roll out on June 24. The revamped marketplace will be available to partners and non-partners alike by the end of the summer, with Webroot and Bitdefender being the first two products offered. Bishop said StorageCraft, Storage Guardian and Acronis are expected to follow shortly.

“Webroot has long valued our relationship with ConnectWise, and they are a trusted partner in helping us get our next-generation cybersecurity solutions to market,” Charlie Tomeo, Vice President of Worldwide Business Sales for Webroot said in a statement. “We are excited to have our solution be among the first available for purchase on the new version of ConnectWise Marketplace and provide the flexibility and cost effectiveness our MSP customers require.”

Bishop said prior to the revamp, if a partner wanted Webroot they would contact an account manager, the account manager would send them a quote, sign the quote, and send it back, which would go through the business operations team, then Tampa, Fla.-based ConnectWise would reach out to Webroot about provisioning the licensing keys for the customer.

“That could take, at minimum hours,” Bishop said. “Typically, we’re talking about a few days for all that back and forth processes to happen. Now what I demo’d on stage today, was someone going in and facilitating the exact same thing and doing it in less than a minute.”