N-ABLE EMPOWER 2022 — During day one of Empower 2022 by N-able, the company’s new general manager of RMM said his challenge for the company’s second year is how can it be a better partner.

Empower 2022 is the first live N-able conference. In July 2021, SolarWinds completed its spinoff of N-able, which is now an independent, publicly traded company.

Last week, N-able announced Mike Cullen has been named general manager of RMM. In his new role, Cullen takes responsibility for the strategic direction of N-able’s RMM platforms and complementary portfolio. He’ll also stay close to N-able’s Head Nerds, market development and customer success teams.

N-able’s Mike Cullen

“I had the perfect job, I was winding down,” Cullen said. “I was going to go down to three days a week, that sort of stuff. And then [CEO John Pagliuca] … tapped me on the shoulder to do this. I’ve been with N-able since 2001. What I liked about the job was the challenge of making N-able what it once was and making N-central the product that it is. So I agreed to come on board to do this for a period, just really for our partners and our employees. So the first thing I wanted to do is make N-central purpose-built for production. Having two products (N-central and N-sight) is actually great. But it’s also a deterrent when you’re going through the process. So when we first merged, we had a lot of trouble defining the product strategy. We wanted them both to be the same to do everything equally.”

On Cullen’s Agenda

The first thing Cullen wants to do is optimize the products for a segmented marketplace.

“The smaller-volume users have absolutely nothing in common with the large volume users,” he said. “Large-volume users want to do things at scale. They want to do advanced automation. They want to manage tens of thousands of devices at the same time where the smaller user wants to manage hundreds. So the first thing we did was to recognize the fact that we have 25,000 customers; 4,500 of them are using N-central and we’re optimizing N-central for the large customers. Two weeks ago we met with our largest MSPs for a two-day session of dialogue of us showing them technologies and getting their input on that, and getting their input on the direction and really getting to the point where our large customers are driving the product roadmap for and N-central. That’s probably the first and biggest thing that I’ve done since I took the job.”

Listening to MSPs is the only way you get a better product, Cullen said.

Message for Partners at N-able Empower

The message for partners at N-able Empower is the company wants its partners to win the MSP movement, Cullen said.

“There’s going to be a lot of consolidation,” he said. “I want the N-able partners to be the ones that win. In order to do that, we have to give them competitive differentiation. The easiest way to sell is when you have competitive differentiation. So if you look at the things that we’re talking about, we showed you the ability to monitor and manage the public cloud. We’re unique in that space.

“We’ll also show you the ability to monitor and manage Mac devices on par with Windows,” he continued. “And we’ll be the only MSP platform that can give our partners that. So when I look at the things that I want to get done, at the front end, I want our customers to be able to grow and acquire new customers. The only way we can do that is by giving them reliable product and competitive differentiation. We’ve … ticked both those boxes, and I think we have the most solid product road map we’ve had in seven years.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Day 1 of N-Able Empower.