Slide is a new name to the UK market, having recently opened its first UK office in Maidenhead, but the company is looking to grow quickly and help managed service providers to keep their customers’ data secure.
Slide might not be a familiar name in managed service provider (MSPs) circles, but Michael Fass, CEO and co-founder of Slide, wants to change that. The company took its first step into the UK earlier this year with the opening of an office in Maidenhead, and how he is concentrating on getting his company’s message out there about how the company can help.
Slide’s mission is to be a backup company. “MSPs backup data that lives in lots of different environments such as on-prem, laptops, desktops and servers,” says Michael. “They protect data that lives in places like Azure cloud, on VMs and in files. Our mission is to be the solution provider to MSPs for all that data they are charged with protecting, wherever it lives.
“MSPs all over the world have similar requirements that they’re charged with. They have a huge responsibility to protect data on behalf of SMB end clients. IT is becoming increasingly central to their businesses as time goes on and it’s becoming more complex and there are more dangers. SMBs are becoming more reliant on MSPs as time goes on, so we see this as an incredible opportunity for us to create leverage and deliver value for MSPs.
“Wherever there’s MSPs protecting data for SMB end users, we want to be there to support them. Our first product is a business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) product, and that’s because it’s the most neglected piece of the stack in this space as it’s the most complicated. We wanted to go after the hardest problem first.”
MSP focus
Slide’s focus on MSPs is deliberate. Unlike some competitors, they are channel-only and won’t go directly to end customers. “We will never circumvent MSPs or go after their customers and cut them out,” emphasises Michael. “I see a lot of that in this industry, and it makes me sick to my stomach. MSPs don’t have to worry about that if they are working with Slide.”
Legacy BCDR vendors have underserved MSPs traditionally, Michael adds. “Looking at the landscape right now, there are some monolithic vendors out there that have rolled up a bunch of different companies, and private equity companies that have bought a bunch of different tech stacks and stitched them together with duct tape to deliver platform services to MSPs,” he says.
“It seems to me that for many their objective is to extract as much value as possible from MSPs. Our approach is the direct opposite, to infuse as much value into MSPs as possible. Rising tides will lift all ships. That was our strategy in the good old days, as I like to call them, and that’s our strategy today, and that ain’t going to change.”
Long history
Michael talks about ‘the good old days’ as his history in this sector – along with that of his Slide co-founder Austin McChord – is long and storied.
He took time out after the previous company he was associated with was sold back in 2022. But during his time out, Michael received contact from MSPs around the world that had been customers, saying they were looking elsewhere for services as they missed they way they did business.
“After hearing that enough times, the juices started flowing for us, and we were inspired to set up our own company,” he says. “It was more a sense of obligation. We owe all our success to the MSP community and felt a debt of gratitude to them and the incredible staff that helped build such a virtuous cycle of positivity.
“Hearing the din that we did during the year following the sale inspired us to think about how to bring back the magic. That also coincided with a technology revolution that afforded us the opportunity to grab five of the best engineers, all of whom had left their old company. We asked them if they’d be interested in building a next-generation backup company starting with a BCDR product.
“We said we’d give them all the resources, people and time they needed, just go ahead and build next generation products for MSP businesses. And that’s gosh darn what we did.”
Expansion
Slide has expanded quickly since the company first launched in Michael’s native USA in 2024. “We wanted to make sure that we could deliver the kind of value that we wanted to MSPs before we branched out,” he says. “It took us about six months to get comfortable. We then launched in Canada last summer, and we launched in EMEA earlier this year. We have lots of partners that live in other parts of the world, and I’m sure we’ll be landing on their beaches soon too.”
As part of the EMEA expansion, Slide recently opened an office in Maidenhead. “It’s right next to the train station, a 30-minute ride from downtown London, its perfect,” says Michael. “We have friendly faces there from the old days.”
Slide also has a data centre up and running in Frankfurt, with a UK one in development, which is in response to UK partners’ data sovereignty requirements.
Growth potential
As Michael has hinted, his ambitions for Slide are just beginning. “In the short-term, we want to be wherever MSPs are,” he says. “It’s incredibly important to respect your partner and your customer. So how do I develop empathy for my partner without being where they reside and where they work. So, with a great deal of humility, we will meet with our friends in MSPland and demonstrate the value of our systems, particularly in the backup and BCDR spaces. We hope that we’ll continue to see the same kind of growth over here as we’ve seen in North America.”
Michael is confident about the future for Slide and the MSP community. “I believe the MSP community are unsung heroes,” he says. “They are the only true delivery mechanism for IT to SMBs. As complexity abounds and cybersecurity risks increase with AI, the MSP becomes an increasingly key element of SMBs.
“MSPs that are riding the front edge of that wave are going to be successful. Some MSPs are not going to catch the wave and will be consolidated or left behind. So though there will be winners and losers in the SMB MSP channel, as there always has been, the concentration of need for MSPs continues to rise. As a result, we’re seeing huge demand for our products and will continue to.”
