Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Private equity firm Tower Arch Capital has acquired MSP Intelligent Technical Solutions (ITS), which provides managed IT, cloud, cybersecurity, VoIP phone and fiber internet services to SMBs throughout the United States. Tower Arch didn’t say how much it’s paying for ITS; however, the investment completes a recapitalization with ITS’ founding management team.

This is the first MSP acquisition for Utah-based Tower Arch, whose portfolio includes everything from industrial services to consumer services. The deal will not be its last foray into the MSP market, the company said.

Tower Arch Capital’s Aubrey Burnett

Aubrey Burnett is a partner at Tower Arch.

“We’ve had other kinds of IT services-related investments, but this is our first pure-play MSP investment. Our goal would be to expand our footprint in the MSP space through ITS. We want to put more capital work here by investing more money into ITS for them to go and buy other companies and build their service offerings. But, yes, the goal is to expand to other MSPs.”

Expanding Headcount

ITS has offices in six U.S. cities and an international workforce that makes up half of its staff. The influx of capital from Tower Arch will allow ITS to expand its headcount.

Tom Andrulis is CEO of ITS.

ITS’ Tom Andrulis

“Ten years ago, we started expanding outside the U.S. We have a much bigger talent pool to pull from. And the other strategy we’ve been implementing for many, many years is just training people from within [the company]. It’s a lot easier to find people with potential that may not have the experience. We can pull people in with high potential and then teach them and have them grow up through the ranks.”

A strong workforce wasn’t the only factor ITS brought to the table that Tower Arch found appealing. ITS built out an “acquisition playbook” that designated roles internally in the company post-acquisition. They determined what roles individuals would take on to make sure everything from customer facing to ticketing systems were integrated successfully.

“Tom has been very thoughtful about building up his platform,” Burnett said. “He has all the resources internally needed to scale. This was really important to us. We wanted to make sure that we essentially had a strong backbone to build the rest of the business around. A big part of our thesis is continuing this pace of acquisitions to help business grow.”

Platform Transactions

Focus Investment Banking’s Abe Garver

Abe Garver is MSP team leader and managing director at Focus Investment Banking. He introduced Burnett to Andrulis.

“Having been the catalyst for nine MSP ‘platform’ transactions for private equity groups, a couple things stood out to me about this transaction. First, Tom is an M&A prodigy. The number of outstanding MSP targets that he was able to uncover in the time we’ve worked together is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

“Tower Arch Capital also stands out to me as an exceptional transaction partner to ITS because of its ability to listen closely to client’s objectives, and then craft a unique partnership proposal,” Garver added. “This offered not only compelling value today, but also an attractive upside opportunity for shareholders and employees as the company continues to grow.” 

Mergers and acquisitions are still happening left and right, with the strong pace set earlier in the year not slowing. In 2021, deals topped $5 trillion, reaching new records, and 75% of global dealmakers predicted that this space will remain hot in 2022. 

Well, it has indeed.

Beyond M&A activity, the amount of private investment pouring in continues to surge. Private equity firms and other investors are seeing the value of the channel like never before.

Deals have spanned the gamut, from names like Vendasta and Dataprise to players such as Cerberus Sentinel and Charles IT.

Scroll through the images above to see a sampling of the latest and mergers and acquisitions and investment deals in the IT/MSP channel in 2022.

Ensono has named Howard Malloy as its new senior vice president and managing director (MD) for Europe. His job is to grow the Ensono brand in the European market.

Malloy’s appointment, said Ensono, is part of its commitment to invest in the U.K. and wider European market.

Ensono’s Howard Malloy

Malloy replaces Hannah Birch, who the company appointed to the role in June 2021. Malloy most recently served as the global VP of client success, and prior to that, as managing director for India.

There, said Ensono, “people, culture and mentorship were at the top of the agenda.” Ensono said that the focus on diversity and equality within the workplace will be replicated in the U.K.

“Malloy hopes to lead with that same mentorship, creating a culture where employees feel welcome and empowered to give back to the community,” it said.

Ensono said Birch has left the company to pursue other opportunities.

“Hannah fully supports Ensono, its associates and the potential of the company, but she determined that the MD role and responsibilities are not aligned to her longer-term career goals. Hannah assisted with the transition to Howard,” the company said.

Potential for European Market Growth

Hannah Birch

Prior to Ensono, Malloy had nearly 25 years of leadership experience within a range of blue-chip firms. These include AT&T, CenturyLink and New York Life Insurance.

“Howard is the perfect person to fill the European MD role,” said Ensono president Marc Capri.

“He has a reputation for excellence at the company, bringing growth and positivity wherever he goes,” said Capri. “With many sectors following consumer demand for a more flexible, personalised and tech-driven experience, I have no doubt that Howard will lead his team to meet the challenge ahead of us. I am excited about what the future holds for our European colleagues. There are so many incredible opportunities ahead to forge new partnerships and expand our influence as businesses’ trusted ally to make better happen.”

“Ensono provides a phenomenal service in both the UK and Europe more widely,” said Malloy. “There is huge potential for growth right now, especially in the UK market, with the vast majority of firms running on hybrid infrastructure and going through a process of digital transformation. Ensono is well-placed to be a trusted partner to many organisations on their technology journey.”

Moving forward, he said his goal is to create “a diverse, equal, talented workplace in which we can mentor and develop the next generation of talent.”

Acquiring UK Tech Firms

Ensono was acquired by global investment firm KKR in June 2021. Since then it says it has been “hyper-focused” on expanding into new markets.

The company also has a history of investing in UK technology firms. It acquired IT services provider Attenda in 2016, and Microsoft Azure expert Inframon in 2017. Last year it snapped up cloud-native consultancy Amido.

Elsewhere, in February Ensono announced it would pay out more than $90 million to employees under a new Associate Equity Appreciation Program.

MICROSOFT INSPIRE — Microsoft is making its long-planned push into the customer service market with the launch of its Microsoft Digital Contact Center. The omnichannel customer service platform is among a wide range of new solutions and programs the company unveiled on Tuesday at the annual Microsoft Inspire partner conference.

For the third consecutive year, Microsoft is holding its global partner conference as a digital event. An array of offerings that the company is unveiling include added Azure cloud services and new migration enablement for partners. Microsoft is expanding its Azure Migration and Modernization program, launching Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty and expanding its Azure Space ecosystem.

Microsoft is also releasing additional Teams features, notably the availability of Teams Connect Shared Channels, enabling collaboration outside an organization. New Teams features Microsoft is previewing to partners include Excel Live, Video Clip and support for annotations. Microsoft showcased these features at its Build Developer conference in March. Excel Live enables real-time collaboration within Excel workbooks. Video clip, an addition to Teams chat, lets users record, send and view brief videos.

Microsoft Digital Contact Center

Teams, central to the Microsoft 365 portfolio, is also a core component of the new Microsoft Digital Contact Center. The platform builds on Dynamics 365 for Customer Service, integrated with Teams, Power Platform and Nuance AI. The latter is the outgrowth of Microsoft’s $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications. Microsoft last year announced the deal, one of its largest acquisitions, and closed the transaction in March.

When the deal closed, Microsoft emphasized it would bring Nuance’s AI and voice recognition technology to Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Microsoft first signaled its plans to add a voice channel to its Dynamics 365 Customer Service solutions in September 2020. Despite a crowded market of contact center solutions, Microsoft believes its offering will stand out.

Microsoft’s Charles Lamanna

“The addition of Nuance brings a new level of conversational AI, security, and automation to the contact center,” Microsoft corporate VP of business applications Charles Lamanna, wrote in a Tuesday blog announcing the new contact center. The Microsoft Digital Contact Center will help customers and agents resolve inquiries faster and with more personalized service, he added. According to Lamanna, Microsoft’s new customer service platform will also accelerate resolution times and allow agents to offer targeted incentives.

Lamanna said the platform lets organizations deliver customer service through both live and virtual agents, using AI to provide recommendations. The company designed it  to deliver personalized omnichannel customer service through various digital channels using Teams-based video communications in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. It also supports key social messaging platforms, he noted.

Furthermore, Microsoft is emphasizing the security capabilities offered in the new customer service platform. It uses biometrics to authenticate customers for all interactions to prevent unauthorized interactions and fraudulent activity.

Understanding Customer Intent

The customer service platform also uses analytics to display a customer’s interaction with a brand. According to Microsoft, it can understand the reason a customer is reaching out using “AI intent prediction.”

Microsoft is also including Context IQ, a set of features that the company introduced last fall. Context IQ integrates collaboration into all work functions, allowing individuals to find information in real time within a task’s context. Now in preview for Dynamics 365 Sales, Field Service and Customer Service, Context IQ makes suggestions to resolving specific cases.

Microsoft also designed the platform to help agents resolve inquiries using AI to provide relevant knowledgebase articles. Further, Microsoft claims it can automate the resolution of cases through intelligent case swarming. Customer agents can just click to collaborate with an expert that has specific skills, according to Microsoft.

Contact Center Launch Partners

Microsoft said Accenture and its Avanade practice will offer its own customer engagement offerings that are based on the new Digital Contact Center platform. Among other launch partners are systems integration giants, EY, HCL, Hitachi, KPMG, PwC, TCS and TTEC.

Two leading contact center providers, Genesys and NICE, are also enabling integration with their respective platforms, according to Microsoft. The two companies, along with Accenture and Avanade, HCL and TTEC, plan to provide compatibility with their respective offerings.

Mergers and acquisitions are still happening left and right, with the strong pace set earlier in the year not slowing. In 2021, deals topped $5 trillion, reaching new records, and 75% of global dealmakers predicted that this space will remain hot in 2022. 

Well, it has indeed.

Beyond M&A activity, the amount of private investment pouring in continues to surge. Private equity firms and other investors are seeing the value of the channel like never before.

Deals have spanned the gamut, from names like Vendasta and Dataprise to players such as Cerberus Sentinel and Charles IT.

Scroll through the images above to see a sampling of the latest and mergers and acquisitions and investment deals in the IT/MSP channel in 2022.

Welcome to the last day of the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

Back in June, Channel Futures announced the winners of its annual MSP 501 list. The 2022 MSP 501 was a whole new ballgame. This year’s winners speak to the rapidly evolving IT channel ecosystem and the diversity of business models and specialties our managed-service-provider (MSP) community serves. With our new judgement criteria and methodology, it also speaks to the modern, mature channel.

Now it’s time for the MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

These lists show the top-ranking 501 MSPs in various geographies around the world. This helps MSPs see who their biggest competition is in their geography and where they ranked on the 501.

Channel Futures is proud to present the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings. We started with North America — the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Our international regional rankings followed. Today’s APAC rankings are our 11th and final regional list.

Click through the gallery above to see today’s featured winners, companies in the APAC region. This ranking is of companies in Australia and Malaysia.

Did you miss a previous reveal? Click on the links below to see the winners that have already been announced.

Ensono has named Howard Malloy as its new senior vice president and managing director (MD) for Europe. His job is to grow the Ensono brand in the European market.

Malloy’s appointment, said Ensono, is part of its commitment to invest in the U.K. and wider European market.

Ensono’s Howard Malloy

Malloy replaces Hannah Birch, who the company appointed to the role in June 2021. Malloy most recently served as the global VP of client success, and prior to that, as managing director for India.

There, said Ensono, “people, culture and mentorship were at the top of the agenda.” Ensono said that the focus on diversity and equality within the workplace will be replicated in the U.K.

“Malloy hopes to lead with that same mentorship, creating a culture where employees feel welcome and empowered to give back to the community,” it said.

Ensono said Birch has left the company to pursue other opportunities.

“Hannah fully supports Ensono, its associates and the potential of the company, but she determined that the MD role and responsibilities are not aligned to her longer-term career goals. Hannah assisted with the transition to Howard,” the company said.

Potential for European Market Growth

Hannah Birch

Prior to Ensono, Malloy had nearly 25 years of leadership experience within a range of blue-chip firms. These include AT&T, CenturyLink and New York Life Insurance.

“Howard is the perfect person to fill the European MD role,” said Ensono president Marc Capri.

“He has a reputation for excellence at the company, bringing growth and positivity wherever he goes,” said Capri. “With many sectors following consumer demand for a more flexible, personalised and tech-driven experience, I have no doubt that Howard will lead his team to meet the challenge ahead of us. I am excited about what the future holds for our European colleagues. There are so many incredible opportunities ahead to forge new partnerships and expand our influence as businesses’ trusted ally to make better happen.”

“Ensono provides a phenomenal service in both the UK and Europe more widely,” said Malloy. “There is huge potential for growth right now, especially in the UK market, with the vast majority of firms running on hybrid infrastructure and going through a process of digital transformation. Ensono is well-placed to be a trusted partner to many organisations on their technology journey.”

Moving forward, he said his goal is to create “a diverse, equal, talented workplace in which we can mentor and develop the next generation of talent.”

Acquiring UK Tech Firms

Ensono was acquired by global investment firm KKR in June 2021. Since then it says it has been “hyper-focused” on expanding into new markets.

The company also has a history of investing in UK technology firms. It acquired IT services provider Attenda in 2016, and Microsoft Azure expert Inframon in 2017. Last year it snapped up cloud-native consultancy Amido.

Elsewhere, in February Ensono announced it would pay out more than $90 million to employees under a new Associate Equity Appreciation Program.

Multinational software company IGEL Technology is pushing back on allegations that it used stolen trade secrets to recruit its competitor’s employees, partners and customers.

The Germany-based thin client software provider has clashed with rival German vendor Unicon GmbH in court battles over the last year. Unicon, which initiated the proceedings, asserts that IGEL and its leadership illegally disseminated and leveraged Unicon’s trade secrets. Unicon has filed multiple cases, both criminal and civil, against IGEL and former Unicon managing director Niels Keunecke in the Munich I Regional Court and Bremen Regional Court. It alleges that Keunecke, a former Unicon managing director, unlawfully took Unicon files and brought them to IGEL. IGEL counters that Keunecke’s deeds don’t fall into the category of a trade secrets violation. IGEL’s legal counsel also rejects the claim that other members of IGEL used the Unicon files that Keunecke took.

The controversy has functioned as a test for Germany’s trade secrets laws and perhaps serves as a cautionary tale for executives planning to move to a new company.

Unicon GmbH’s Philipp Benkler

Keunecke joined IGEL in 2021 as senior vice president of enterprise sales for EMEA, following an attempt to purchase Unicon from its parent company with an investor. Following Keunecke’s departure from Unicon, more than 12 Unicon employees moved to IGEL.

IGEL’s Niels Keunecke

“Last year, there were initial indications that data and documents had been copied and left the company,” Unicon CEO Philipp Benkler said. “We suspected that they might contain strictly confidential Unicon trade secrets. Since then, there have been indications that some of these documents have found their way to IGEL Technology.”

Benkler cites a large number of Unicon files – as many as 27,000 – that Keunecke copied onto his personal drive while working at Unicon.

Jens Matthes, partner at Allen & Overy and IGEL’s lawyer, however, alleges that Keunecke was well within his rights to take the data and that IGEL leadership did not access or use any of it. He pointed to legal rulings that have cleared IGEL leadership of wrongdoing. A judge on May 2 dismissed an injunction Unicon applied for against two IGEL managing directors.

“They put down in writing that they don’t see the slightest hint of any unlawful behavior of the managing directors,” Matthes told Channel Futures.

Allen & Overy’s Jens Mathes

However, IGEL and Keunecke face many more legal challenges. The criminal complaint Unicon filed against Keunecke for infringement of trade secrets more than a year ago remains an ongoing investigation. Investigation is also pending for Unicon’s criminal complaint filed Feb. 14, 2022, against IGEL. In addition, a civil lawsuit against Keuenecke is awaiting a hearing.

Background

Unicon, based in Karlsruhe, Germany, provides endpoint operating systems and endpoint management focused on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) use cases. IGEL, headquartered several hundred kilometers north in Bremen, Germany, similarly provides operating systems for cloud workspaces. IGEL has seen strong revenue growth over the last few years, and its recent expansion included a new office in Unicon’s hometown of Karlsruhe.

Keunecke, a nine-year managing director at Unicon, approached Unicon’s parent company, Fujitsu, in May 2020 to offer a management buyout through an investor. Fujitsu, according to Matthes, had already indicated its interest in selling Unicon.

However, Fujitsu rebuffed the offer. Benkler said Fujitsu determined Unicon’s value to be twice as much. Fujitsu would go on to seek other suitors. According to Benkler, Keunecke announced to Unicon that he would not extend his contract shortly before Unicon and its investment partner made its first of eight presentations to interested parties in October 2020. Keunecke also informed Fujitsu that he might face a conflict …

A new Trellix threat report shows companies providing IT, finance and other types of consulting and contract services are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals.

The Trellix summer 2022 threat report analyzes cybersecurity trends and attack methods from the first quarter of 2022. It also features research from Trellix Threat Labs into connected health care and access control systems.

Key findings from the Trellix report include:

• Business services accounted for 64% of total U.S. ransomware detections and was the second most targeted sector behind telecom across global ransomware detections, malware detections and nation-state backed attacks in the first quarter.
• Following the January arrests of members of the REvil ransomware gang, payouts to attackers declined. Trellix also observed ransomware groups building lockers targeting virtualization services with varied success. Leaked chats from the quarter’s second most active ransomware gang, Conti, publicly expressed allegiance to the Russian administration. This seems to confirm the government is directing cybercriminal enterprises.
• Telemetry analysis revealed phishing URLs and malicious document trends in email security. Most malicious emails detected contained a phishing URL used to steal credentials or lure victims to download malware. Trellix also identified emails with malicious documents and executables like infostealers and trojans attached.

Surprising Findings

Christiaan Beek is Trellix‘s lead scientist and senior principal engineer.

Trellix’s Christiaan Beek

“The persisting success of living off the land (LotL) and email attacks that use vulnerabilities that have been known for years surprises me,” he said. “Many businesses ignore suggested expert guidance, opening the door to preventable attacks. The consequence of such outdated strategies is further reflected in our findings.”

Additionally, the aftermath of the Conti group’s internal communications leak provided surprising data, Beek said.

“While the group’s initial reaction was to doubledown, there was a notable overall drop in activity from the largest ransomware gangs in this latest report,” he said. “This decrease was contextualized by a new trend: ransomware gangs publicly aligning themselves with nation-states to target critical infrastructure. In tandem, we have seen increased activity from groups that make use of the focus on Ukraine to infiltrate Russian companies and governments, contributing to a shocking 490% increase in incidents targeting Russia.”

One of the biggest impacts criminals can have on a business services organization is shutting down their clients’ operations, Beek said.

“We saw this with the attack on Kaseya when a number of grocery stores had to shut down,” he said. “This causes loss of income for the business, but also has potential for resounding effects to the public’s daily lives. Another example is the increasing attacks on health care providers. Health care is a non-stop operation with a focus on patient health. Disrupting hospital systems impacts care, treatment and
scheduled surgeries, creating the potential for literal life-and-death situations.”

MSPs, MSSPs Need Cyber Incident Response Plans

MSPs and MSSPs can’t let the weight of their responsibility to keep their clients operational impact their ability to mitigate an attack quickly and strategically, Beek said. It’s table stakes to have a cyber incident response plan.

“Supply chain attacks have been a tremendous focus since some major attacks resulted in the breach of critical infrastructure,” he said. “MSPs should be aware that they are an interesting target through which threat actors can access multiple victims; similar to the movie Lord of the Rings, one ring rules them all.”

Although financial sanctions due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict slowed down some ransomware operations, several groups are ramping up their attacks and new groups are surfacing, Beek said. Additionally, with cryptocurrency prices on the low end, cryptocurrency mining and attacks related to gaining cryptocurrency are increasing.

“It’s like buying stock when prices are low and aiming for the near future to expect the value to go up — like a short-term investment,” he said.

It’s encouraging to see ransomware rates and payouts to gangs declining, Beek added.

“This signals a few things,” he said. “The public and businesses are getting more confident in reporting ransomware activity rather than paying out, and law enforcement actions against cybercriminals deters activity.”

Welcome to the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

Back in June, Channel Futures announced the winners of its annual MSP 501 list. The 2022 MSP 501 was a whole new ballgame. This year’s winners speak to the rapidly evolving IT channel ecosystem and the diversity of business models and specialties our managed-service-provider (MSP) community serves. With our new judgement criteria and methodology, it also speaks to the modern, mature channel.

Now it’s time for the MSP 501 Regional Rankings.

These lists show the top-ranking 501 MSPs in various geographies around the world. This way, MSPs see who their biggest competition is in their geography and where they ranked on the 501.

Channel Futures is proud to present the 2022 MSP 501 Regional Rankings. Click through the gallery above to see today’s set of featured winners, companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Did you miss our previous reveals, including the U.S., by region (and state), and Canada? Click on the links below to see the rankings that were already announced.