ConnectWise has announced Automation Nation 2024, a highly anticipated event that will take place on Feb. 5-6, 2024, and Feb. 8-9, 2024, at the ConnectWise global headquarters in downtown Tampa, Florida. This two-day event will focus on pushing the boundaries of automation with a special emphasis on hyperautomation and AI training.

At Automation Nation, TSPs will have the opportunity to immerse in the world of hyperautomation through hands-on product training sessions, dive deep into robotic process automation (RPA), task automations in RMM, the Asio workflow engine and ConnectWise Sidekick, the MSP AI assistant. The event enables partners to gain practical skills and knowledge that you can immediately implement in your business, giving businesses a competitive edge in the industry.

"Automation Nation is returning by popular demand, promising an exciting new twist," said Jason Magee, CEO, ConnectWise. "This year, we are not only exploring automation, but also delving into the limitless possibilities of hyperautomation and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) like never before."

Automation Nation 2024 will offer a range of highlights and opportunities for TSPs attending the event:

• Actionable Insights to Drive Efficiency
• Discover the Asio Platform
• Certification in ConnectWise Automation
• Connect and Network with Industry Experts and Like-Minded MSPs
• Connect with ConnectWise Leaders
• Insights into the Future

This exclusive two-day training event operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Don't miss your chance to secure your spot among industry leaders and innovators in an intimate setting like never before. Automation Nation 2024 is your ticket to gaining the knowledge, skills and insights needed to lead the charge in this tech revolution. Join us in Tampa in February 2024 and become part of a community that is shaping the future of automation, one hyperautomated step at a time.

In other news, ConnectWise has announced game-changing enhancements to its business management solutions. These updates are prioritized from partner feedback and designed to modernize and streamline how partners manage projects, procurement and the sales process. With a focus on usability, visibility, automation and AI powered by the ConnectWise Asio platform, ConnectWise is revolutionizing how partners manage their business through team productivity and client satisfaction.

A reimagined, transformative user experience (UX) for ConnectWise PSA starts with projects, including a modern Gantt chart experience and a brand-new Kanban board feature. Gantt and Kanban views enable project managers to easily visualize project durations, project depdencies and drag-and-drop tasks as projects progress. Additional new time-saving features include mass updates and quick views of project work plans. Client contact information stays current with real-time syncing of Microsoft 365 user data to ConnectWise PSA. Also, SmileBack, a ConnectWise solution, now allows partners to trigger customer satisfaction surveys for client projects from within ConnectWise PSA.

Innovations for ConnectWise Business Management include a new product catalog for ConnectWise PSA and ConnectWise CPQ, providing quick search and customizable product lists or card-based views. The new product catalog now has even more vendor integrations. These enhancements highlight the reimagined UX rolling out across the ConnectWise Business Management portfolio for increased usability, visibility and TSP team productivity.

ConnectWise CPQ has a brand-new quote editor providing drag-and-drop functionality, real-time updates reflecting any changes, and undo and redo features. The quoting experience further improves with guided selling that adjusts products shown during discovery in real-time, so requoting is minimized. Also, leveraging WisePay, a ConnectWise solution, ConnectWise PSA can now accept payments, post invoices and sync payments to QuickBooks and Great Plains.  

Additional ConnectWise PSA innovations and UX improvements are focused on AI, reporting and time management. ConnectWise Sidekick is the generative AI chatbot that provides TSPs highly productive access to and generates insights from key client data in the PSA on desktop and mobile through Microsoft Teams. New time management features include capturing time entries for tasks and tickets, granular time sheet approval workflows and mass updates. QuickSync is a new feature that is part of the real-time dashboard set of capabilities for BrightGauge, a ConnectWise solution, allowing TSPs to see frequent updates for new unassigned tickets, customer-updated tickets and device availability.

"ConnectWise Business Management solutions help TSPs save time and save money thereby helping TSPs grow their business profitably," said Jake Varghese, executive vice president and general manager for business management, ConnectWise. "Our reimagined business management solution seamlessly scales with the needs of the TSP's business while providing a delightful, modern experience for their employees and their customers."

The reimagined solutions are available now.

In other news, ConnectWise has unveiled ConnectWise Sidekick, an innovative AI companion designed to enhance efficiency and ingenuity for TSPs and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). ConnectWise Sidekick is immediately available across the business management and unified monitoring & management solution portfolios.

ConnectWise Sidekick leverages ConnectWise's proprietary generative AI models and large language models to enable TSPs and their SMB clients to utilize natural-language prompts for automation and time saving. It automates tasks such as generating PowerShell scripts, ticket categorization, summarization, providing resolutions and automated responses to end users. By prioritizing daily tasks and addressing critical problems first, ConnectWise Sidekick increases team productivity and optimizes operations.

"Imagine a world where manual tasks fade, and customer issues are met with seamless responses and without the need to add more resources — this is the power of ConnectWise Sidekick," said Raghu Bongula, CTO, ConnectWise. "We are enabling more intelligent and more innovative ways for TSPs to support and drive greater satisfaction to SMBs. ConnectWise Sidekick is the only purpose-built solution that provides value for every persona/role across the TSP."

ConnectWise Sidekick is a purpose-built tool for the IT channel that enhances business efficiency through hyperautomation and AI. It automates triage, summarization and resolution suggestions, resulting in faster service ticket resolution times and consistent exceptional customer experiences. By streamlining ticket management, ConnectWise Sidekick enables technicians to work efficiently and effectively. The bot centralizes information access within Microsoft Teams and facilitates streamlined updates for all teams.

ConnectWise Sidekick delivers millions of AI-powered predictions daily across ConnectWise's suite of solutions. The aim is to make every organizational role more efficient, from technicians to service managers, sales and marketing, and owners. AI is utilized across sales modules, finance modules, agreements and invoicing, project management modules and time management modules to drive efficiency and resource optimization. ConnectWise also provides documentation modules with semantic search capabilities for more relevant information retrieval.

"ConnectWise Sidekick for PSA is what our partners have been waiting for when seeking enhanced efficiency and exceptional customer experiences," said Jake Varghese, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Business Management at ConnectWise. "By eliminating information barriers and enabling automated updates through Microsoft Teams, this powerful tool streamlines ticket resolution and automates triage, providing resolution suggestions with AI and hyperautomation capabilities. The innovation puts teams ahead of the game by removing barriers and facilitating seamless data consumption within the organization.

"Every hero needs a sidekick," Varghese continued. "True to its sense, ConnectWise Sidekick aims to make every organizational role more efficient, whether you're a technician, service manager, sales and marketing, or the owner."

In other news, ConnectWise has announced innovations for its suite of cybersecurity management solutions, including automated remediation for cybersecurity leveraging the ConnectWise Asio platform. The ConnectWise SaaS Security workflow engine now offers enhanced alerting for threat detection, and comprehensive monitoring, alerting and incident response for Microsoft 365 environments. ConnectWise Cybersecurity Management solutions empower TSPs to protect their cybersecurity tech stack end-to-end more efficiently.    

The SaaS Security workflow engine provides workflow orchestration and robotic process automation (RPA), enabling cybersecurity engineers to eliminate manual tasks through configurable triggers and actions. The workflows can trigger cybersecurity alerts, create tickets and escalate remediation issues. TSPs can now increase cybersecurity coverage while meeting or exceeding service level agreements (SLAs).  

"Powered by ConnectWise Asio, our new automated workflows strengthen partner cybersecurity while increasing productivity," said Raffael Marty, vice president and general manager for cybersecurity, ConnectWise. "ConnectWise leverages hyperautomation and RPA to help TSPs configure triggers and actions for automated remediation of cybersecurity threats."

As part of its suite of Cybersecurity Management innovations designed to improve threat detection, ConnectWise announced enhanced alerting for its security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. The solution generates high-fidelity alerts, making it clear which incidents are a priority and which are irrelevant, saving investigation and triage time. Enhancing threat detection through enhanced alerting within the SIEM gives TSPs improved visibility and proactive response to potential security incidents.

ConnectWise SIEM is also expanding its monitoring coverage for Microsoft 365 environments with prebuilt dashboards that offer out-of-the-box event notifications and investigations. SIEM monitoring and security dashboards for Microsoft services include Sentinel, Entra ID, Microsoft Security, email threats, risky user identification, Microsoft 365 licensing and more.  

"Enhanced Microsoft 365 monitoring also complements ConnectWise MDR with Microsoft Defender for Business," Marty said. "We're committed to helping TSPs protect their clients' businesses from cyberthreats and we're proud to offer these innovative solutions that leverage AI to make cybersecurity more efficient and effective."

ConnectWise makes it easy for TSPs to build and grow their cybersecurity practices. The company recently announced it provides more endpoint protection options and flexibility for TSPs when selecting preferred endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions.

The ConnectWise Cybersecurity Management portfolio is available now.

In other news, ConnectWise has announced the evolution of its remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution to Unified Monitoring & Management. This game-changing transformation introduces a host of enhanced capabilities to the ConnectWise Asio platform, including adding support for network, cloud and backup monitoring. Moreover, ConnectWise has unveiled an innovative, real-time, interactive dashboard as part of this unification.

In today's complex landscape, TSPs often need help piecing together multiple solutions, leading to fragmented interfaces and cumbersome login requirements. ConnectWise Unified Monitoring & Management sets a new standard by delivering a unified solution powered by a single agent, empowering TSPs to monitor and manage their ever-evolving environments effortlessly through a seamless experience.

Building on its recent partnership with Auvik, ConnectWise Network Monitoring equips TSPs with the ability to oversee their clients' network infrastructures, visualize network topology and proactively optimize network performance while minimizing downtime. All of this is integrated within ConnectWise RMM.

Expanding beyond networks and built from the ground up, ConnectWise introduced cloud monitoring and management, offering comprehensive visibility into cloud resources, workload health monitoring and seamless integration with Microsoft Azure, ensuring the smooth operation of cloud-based applications and services. Support for other leading cloud providers will follow.

TSPs are challenged to manage multiple backup vendors and stay on top of backup failures or issues, making backup monitoring essential to any robust IT infrastructure. ConnectWise announces backup monitoring capabilities, enabling TSPs to monitor the status and health of their client's backups in real-time, providing a single pane of glass across leading backup vendors, starting with Acronis, Axcient and Veeam, and expanding to additional backup providers in the future. With this, TSPs can ensure data integrity, minimize the risk of data loss and save valuable technician time on backups.

Furthermore, to provide TSPs with a single source of truth, ConnectWise introduces a cutting-edge, real-time interactive RMM dashboard. This centralized view empowers technology solution providers with holistic insights into their entire IT environments, encompassing patching compliance, network devices and cloud resources visibility, and status on tickets and backup jobs. The interactive nature of the dashboard enables admins to delve into specific areas for detailed insights and take immediate action when necessary.

"Enabling innovative solutions that help TSPs grow their businesses is at the core of ConnectWise's mission," said Ameer Karim, executive vice president and general manager for Unified Monitoring & Management, ConnectWise. "Our Unified Monitoring & Management solution represents a significant leap forward in providing a truly unified platform that simplifies IT management and enables proactive monitoring across all environments, facilitating quick decision-making and efficient troubleshooting."

ConnectWise's Unified Monitoring & Management solution offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities accessible through a single pane of glass. By consolidating monitoring tasks into a simple, intuitive web console built on the ConnectWise Asio platform and providing a real-time interactive dashboard, technology solution providers can streamline operations, reduce complexity and enhance efficiency. These advanced capabilities are available as part of ConnectWise RMM packages (Essential, Pro, and Premium).  

The ConnectWise Unified Monitoring & Management portfolio is available now.

In other news, ConnectWise announced the winners of its second annual WISE Awards at IT Nation Connect in Orlando, Florida.  

The WISE Awards program was launched in 2022 to recognize partners that have used ConnectWise software, services and community, and have achieved their most ambitious vision of success. The program also seeks to recognize those who seek to make a difference and empower others in the broader industry or their local community.

This year's winners were recognized in the following categories:

• Business Management Partners of the Year: Heartland Business Systems & IT Voice
• Unified Monitoring & Management Partners of the Year: Proton Dealership IT & Krantz Secure Technologies
• Cybersecurity Partners of the Year: Morefield Communication & Leaf Computers and Clouds
• All-In Partner of the Year: New Era Technology (North America), Air-IT (United Kingdom) & Atturra Managed Services (formerly The Somerville Group)
• Ecosystem Partner of the Year: Business Communications Inc.
• IT Nation Partner of the Year: Mytech Partners Inc. 
• Partner Referral Award: Decision Digital
• Community Giveback Award: Cheeky Munkey

"We are so excited to see another round of excellent candidates go through our WISE Awards program, and even more so to witness the success of each winner," Magee said. "These partners inspire us to continue innovating on their behalf so they can reach their full potential. We want to congratulate all winners and participants and look forward to highlighting more partners as this program continues to grow."

In other news, ConnectWise showcased the evolution and future of its Asio Platform during CEO Jason Magee's keynote at IT Nation Connect last week, highlighting robotic process automation (RPA), a new service that offers hyperautomation to simplify the creation, deployment and management of software robots that mimic human actions when interacting with digital systems and software. ConnectWise RPA, now available in the ConnectWise Asio platform, aims to help TSPs overcome client challenges while simultaneously reducing labor costs.

For the past three years, ConnectWise has been on a mission to deliver more innovation to TSPs faster. The ConnectWise Asio platform is the only purpose-built platform-as-a-service solution for the IT channel ecosystem, consolidating multiple products into a modern user experience with a centralized dataset, powerful hyperautomation through RPA, with security, extensibility and nearly unlimited scale as part of its core. 

"ConnectWise has made substantial investments, particularly in how Asio has elevated the foundation to drive innovations like RPA, extensibility and product quality at an accelerated pace," Magee said. "The platform enables us to centralize foundational elements such as companies, contacts, devices, tickets and APIs in ways that create amazing synergies with the world of hyperautomation. Allowing Asio to connect the physical and digital worlds in new ways that would have been very difficult or nearly impossible as independent point solutions."

ConnectWise RPA has emerged as a cutting-edge industry solution to curb labor costs by enabling teams to automate more of the repetitive, time-consuming processes that take up valuable time. The ability to automate process flows between products and remove manual, repetitive tasks is pivotal to enabling team efficiency and driving customer satisfaction. ConnectWise RPA  reduces manual efforts, presenting an opportunity not just for cost savings but also allowing smaller companies to become more competitive.  

"As organizations are tasked with doing more with less in today's economic environment, bringing RPA to our Asio platform is a logical step in providing greater operational and cost efficiency to our partners and end users," Magee said. "We've been listening to the needs of our partners and are excited to deliver this groundbreaking technology. Partners no longer need to buy standalone RPA products when using ConnectWise. It is built into our foundational technology so that partners can truly maximize our services at a fraction of the cost."  

The offering comprises two key components: ConnectWise RPA and the new Asio workflow orchestration. ConnectWise RPA empowers teams to eliminate manual steps in processes and tackle time-consuming tasks using prebuilt bots. This not only reduces their workload but also enables them to focus on more critical activities. In addition, the visual workflow orchestration feature users can automate across multiple ConnectWise products and third-party solutions and seamlessly integrate their most frequently used tools. This intuitive drag-and-drop functionality makes it effortless to include a wider range of processes, enhancing efficiency and simplifying operations for users.

"I'm an Asio evangelist and I can't say enough great things about it," said Rod Bledsoe, vice president, ACNS. "With the platform powering my day-to-day operations, our productivity has significantly increased. It offers automatic patching for our 1,000-plus endpoints and cultivates significant trust with customers."

In other news, ConnectWise has announced the winners of its annual PitchIT Accelerator Program competition at IT Nation Connect. Thread emerged as the grand-prize winner, followed by vCIOToolbox as the runner-up and Nodeware in third place. Thread, the first-place winner, impressed the judges and attendees with its innovative collaborative AI solution for MSPs. It was awarded the $70,000 grand prize, propelling the business to new heights. The runner-up, vCIOToolbox, showcased its account management and advisory platform and received a $30,000 grant to drive its business forward. Third-place finalist Nodeware presented its MSP vulnerability scanner and network assessment tool.

"Today's event showcased groundbreaking solutions that address the diverse challenges and requirements of the channel community, spanning areas such as cybersecurity, finance, billing, data, marketing, sales, productivity, automation and more," said Sean Lardo, ConnectWise Evangelist. "This program not only impacts ConnectWise and the winners but also drives innovation across the entire IT ecosystem. We congratulate our winners on their hard work and incredible solutions." 

ConnectWise extends its congratulations to the winner, Thread, and eagerly anticipates the innovative contributions from Thread, vCIOToolbox and Nodeware in the future. 

"We are thrilled to secure first place in ConnectWise's PitchIT Accelerator Program," said Bobby Jacobs, head of growth, Thread. "The grant will undoubtedly fuel the development of collaborative AI to its fullest potential."

vCIOToolbox, Nodeware and Thread participated alongside 26 other emerging technology vendors in a 16-week business development and training program. In addition to presenting their solutions on stage, they received free booths at the IT Nation Connect event and coaching from previous finalists and ConnectWise executive team members.

Established in 2018, PitchIT is a competition and incubator designed for innovators to present a prospective solution that might be constructed or integrated into the ConnectWise platform. PitchIT demonstrates the enormous talent the IT Nation Community has to offer and helps ConnectWise fulfill its commitments to deliver quicker innovation and to invest in partners' growth.