It was just a week or two ago that we asserted the surge in mergers and acquisitions our industry experienced in 2018 would continue into the new year. It didn’t take long; add another to the growing list of MSP-centric software company acquisitions.
Continuum has announced that it has acquired BrightGauge, a business intelligence platform for MSPs. The move allows Continuum partners to benefit from new data management solutions while bringing greater resources to BrightGauge for accelerated product development and customer support.
The acquisition will add to Continuum’s software and services portfolio that currently spans RMM, data protection, help desk, network and security operations, and broader cybersecurity services. The move into business intelligence services makes sense given the rising attention and importance surrounding BI, but perhaps most notable is the focus on business intelligence software specifically designed for MSPs. According to Continuum CEO Michael George, this was not by accident.
“Today’s MSP doesn’t just need the solutions to serve their end-clients, but also the technology to better understand their business,” says George. “Our goal has always been to give MSPs the confidence to scale dynamically and the acquisition of BrightGauge fits perfectly with this strategy.”
BrightGauge was founded eight years ago to meet the needs of small to medium-sized IT service providers as they sought to better manage their data and demonstrate the value of their work to clients. This is achieved through better visibility into important business metrics, leveraging a full range of channel solutions including the Continuum platform. This approach will continue to be underlined by BrightGauge’s vendor-neutral approach to platform integration, offering MSPs the freedom to integrate their choice of solutions for a complete picture of their business performance.
“We started BrightGauge because we recognized that the channel needed best-in-class business intelligence technology to power their businesses,” said Brian Dosal, CEO at BrightGauge. “We’re proud of our successes in building that technology and bringing it to thousands of MSPs around the world, giving them visibility into their business with data from across a multitude of solutions. Joining the Continuum family gives us a renewed opportunity to take our platform to the next level.”
The two companies have already been working together for the past several years, but Continuum made the acquisition now because BrightGauge has reached a critical mass of partners, and the company has a best-of-breed BI platform for measuring MSP performance. It will be interesting to watch the impact of this maneuver in the channel, especially with respect to the effect on rivals providing other BI-oriented tools for MSPs in the market, including MSPCFO.
Patricia Ames is president and senior analyst for BPO Media, which publishes The Imaging Channel and Workflow magazines. As a market analyst and industry consultant, Ames has worked for prominent consulting firms including KPMG and has more than 15 years experience in the imaging industry covering technology and business sectors. Ames has lived and worked in the United States, Southeast Asia and Europe and enjoys being a part of a global industry and community.
