As expected, Kaseya went outside the organization last week when hiring a new CEO. However, it did surprise channel followers by how far outside it went in hiring Rania Succar to replace Fred Voccola. That’s because Succar comes from beyond the world of MSPs that Kaseya sells through.

Succar does have plenty of experience working SMBs, who make up a big chunk of MSP customers, from her decades of experience at Intuit. Now Kaseya wants to combine its long-standing position with MSPs and Succar’s experience with SMBs into another three-letter acronym: IPO. Succar, Kaseya chairman Mike Triplett, analysts, and Kaseya MSP partners talked about the company moving towards going public under Succar.

Ahmed Mahmood, CEO of Ashburn, Va.-based MSP Ocean Solutions, said he sees Succar’s hiring related to Kaseya bringing in Ryan Courson as CFO last year and adding SaaS Alerts founder Jim Lippie as chief product officer this year.

“I think [Succar] and CFO Ryan are changing the organization overall. And with Jim Lippie as head of products, I think the next chapter is going to be very positive,” Mahmoud said. “I believe Kaseya will go public within 24 months. They are changing the organization’s direction to have a successful IPO.”

A strong Kaseya partner, Mahmoud said the organization changes were necessary.

“I have deep ties with the Kaseya system and a high dependency on their platforms and solutions, but in the past couple years, Kaseya products have not improved to meet what competitors are doing,” he said. “NinjaOne is ahead in RMM, for example, and the list goes on and on. I believe Kaseya wanted to focus on a different direction than the platform and pricing and packaging, and more towards having market-driven solutions.”

The CEO of another Kaseya partner, Luke Fong of Australian MSP Lateral Plains, said he expects Succar to be a worthy successor to Voccola.

“It will be hard to follow in Fred’s footsteps, but with someone of Raina’s credentials, I would expect nothing less than a solid commitment to the partner and community base that Kaseya has while showing how we as MSPs are leading the way,” Fong said. “I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of continued industry-leading innovation from Kaseya.”

Still, Succar’s hiring took much of the channel by surprise. As Canalys analyst Jay McBain pointed out in a LinkedIn post “Rania comes to the position without any managed services, MSP, cybersecurity or channel history.” He added that the Canalys team was “surprised - but also intrigued and excited about this move” mainly because of Succar’s impressive resume and experience with SMBs at Intuit. McBain called the Kaseya CEO hire a significant change in direction from Voccola but explained how it can prove successful.

“Kaseya has a very robust management team from top to bottom,” he wrote. “The hiring of Jim Lippie to run product strategy was celebrated by MSPs. The management team is so robust that you could put a CEO in place to focus on the product platform, build a company culture, and in the end, take the company public within 18 months.”

Succar and Kaseya chairman Triplett both mentioned IPO in announcing the hire.

“Rania’s bold leadership and track record in building and scaling innovative, customer-centric businesses for the SME market make her an ideal leader to guide Kaseya into its next chapter and potential IPO,” Triplett said in Kaseya’s press release.

And Succar told Channel Futures: "I can tell you that Kaseya is a special company with significant opportunity and I look forward to delivering the innovation, providing industry-leading customer experiences and building a culture of accountability that will prepare us for a potential IPO."