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Columbia Capital-backed Bluewave Technology Group is expanding with the acquisition of iSymplify, the technology advisory firm and contact center expert

St. Louis-based iSymplify has agreed to terms with New Jersey-based Bluewave, marking Bluewave’s sixth acquisition in a year. The agency’s owners, Lorie and Brad Burkemper, have accepted roles as Bluewave managing partners. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.

The deal brings in an established agency that has helped deploy more than 50,000 cloud seats, according to Bluewave. It also cements a foothold in the greater St. Louis area. Bluewave will retain iSymplify’s office, bring its total number of cities with an office up to five. Moreover, it now employs close to 100 people.

For iSymplify, joining forces with Bluewave helps it grow and do more for its customers.

Bluewave’s Lorie Burkemper

“After almost 15 years of growth, we considered many options to expand our capabilities and better support our clients’ evolving technology needs,” iSymplify founder and president Lorie Burkemper said. “Joining like-minded Bluewave allows us to further invest in our team and clients around solution consulting, expense management, and high-touch account management, as well as gain access to more robust processes and systems to provide clients with better insights and data to drive the best technology decisions.”

iSymplify Background

Burkemper founded iSymplify in 2013 following a career on the vendor side of the channel. She worked for seven years in account management at Verizon and three years in client development at Cybera. Her husband Brad joined the company in 2014.

iSymplify has gone on to win awards from vendors like Vonage and Tierpoint. It has also won awards from the tech solutions brokerage Telarus (including a 2021 Platinum Award).

Lorie Burkemper has also earned recognitions in the St. Louis business community, including one of St. Louis Small Business Monthly’s Top Women Business Owners. In addition, she co-founded the St. Louis-based Women in Tech Connect group.

Riding the Bluewave

Bluewave emerged early in 2022 with a $75 million growth investment from Columbia Capital. The company has sought to use M&A to bring together complementary partner types, including a mobility expense management provider, and now a contact center expert in iSymplify.

Bluewave’s Seth Penland

Bluewave intends to unify the acquired companies under a single platform and philosophy that emphasizes managing the customer’s entire technology life cycle.

“Our goal is to help businesses scale their operations efficiently and effectively while seizing innovation with the guidance of our best-in-class industry advisors,” Bluewave founder and CEO Seth Penland said. “We are excited to welcome the iSymplify team and expand our presence in the greater St. Louis area. Together, our joint resources expand our capabilities and emphasize our commitment to clients who need first-class technology advisory services.”

Bluewave has made two options available for owners of companies it requires. Its “ambassadors,” which include the leaders of recently purchased Virtual Telecomm, hold equity in Bluewave but don’t work with it on a day-to-day basis. Its managing partners, which include the Burkempers, will work in a daily role.

Agent M&A

Consolidation is occurring across the technology advisor (agent) channel. For example, Minnesota-based Renodis recently acquired 12 Points Consulting in a move that enhances its hospitality-focused equipment and managed solutions. Then there’s West Coast-based Bridgepointe Technologies with purchases of Canon Group and RealCom. And Upstack, whose backing from Berkshire Partners and other investors has helped it buy more than 25 agencies, continues to announce deals.

Mission Cloud Services is an Amazon Web Services-only partner. Last week, the company contacted us to share an announcement about executive hirings — the same day as news broke that AWS layoffs could lie in the offing alongside thousands of others at parent company Amazon.

That got us thinking. Even though organizations rarely punt their executives amid downturns (Twitter drama notwithstanding), we had to ask Mission Cloud for more insight: How confident is the managed service provider about navigating the downturn now with approximately 10,000 layoffs and contractor reductions in full swing at Amazon? The timing of Mission Cloud’s hiring news struck us as a bit unusual or even bold, especially considering that its Google Cloud-only peer, SADA, just downsized by 11%. In addition, the tech sector as a whole is shedding jobs like it’s once again 1999.

Mission Cloud’s Karoline Saffi, senior vice president of people and culture, agreed to do a Q&A with us. That interview comprises most of the slideshow above. But first, to set the stage, we go a little deeper into the situation at Amazon overall.

Amazon in Chaos

AWS layoffs, if they come to fruition, likely won’t cut as deeply as those within Amazon’s devices and books business (where technologies including Alexa and Luna undergo development). After all, AWS is Amazon’s cash cow. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy finally addressed the rumors of job losses on Nov. 17. Prior to that, Amazon had stayed quiet. Employees reported that they found out about pending layoffs through media, leading to expressions of anger.

“We get news articles on Monday,” one worker wrote, according to Business Insider. “Radio silence from [e]veryone and severance emails late Tuesday night. Very upsetting from our S-team. Lead with empathy, or lead with greed.”

Jassy and team seemed to get the message, responding at last.

AWS’ Andy Jassy

“We are in the middle of our annual operating planning review where we look at each of our businesses and make decisions about what we believe we should change,” Jassy wrote. “Leaders across the company are working with their teams and looking at their workforce levels, investments they want to make in the future, and prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. This year’s review is more difficult due to the fact that the economy remains in a challenging spot and we’ve hired rapidly the last several years.”

Again, the bulk of the cuts appear to be happening outside of AWS. AWS layoffs could hit, though. It’s simply unclear to what extent and to which roles. Last month, Business Insider reported that AWS managers had been tasked with stopping hiring and stack-ranking team members to force out the lowest performers.

More to Come

Regardless, wider Amazon job losses will continue.

“Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments,” Jassy said. “Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023. We haven’t concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know that there will be reductions in our Stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down. And, as has been the case this week, we will prioritize communicating directly with impacted employees before making broad public or internal announcements.”

With all that as background, then, we return to the Q&A with Mission Cloud, a top AWS partner. See the slideshow above for insight.

Columbia Capital-backed Bluewave Technology Group is expanding with the acquisition of iSymplify, the technology advisory firm and contact center expert

St. Louis-based iSymplify has agreed to terms with New Jersey-based Bluewave, marking Bluewave’s sixth acquisition in a year. The agency’s owners, Lorie and Brad Burkemper, have accepted roles as Bluewave managing partners. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.

The deal brings in an established agency that has helped deploy more than 50,000 cloud seats, according to Bluewave. It also cements a foothold in the greater St. Louis area. Bluewave will retain iSymplify’s office, bring its total number of cities with an office up to five. Moreover, it now employs close to 100 people.

For iSymplify, joining forces with Bluewave helps it grow and do more for its customers.

Bluewave’s Lorie Burkemper

“After almost 15 years of growth, we considered many options to expand our capabilities and better support our clients’ evolving technology needs,” iSymplify founder and president Lorie Burkemper said. “Joining like-minded Bluewave allows us to further invest in our team and clients around solution consulting, expense management, and high-touch account management, as well as gain access to more robust processes and systems to provide clients with better insights and data to drive the best technology decisions.”

iSymplify Background

Burkemper founded iSymplify in 2013 following a career on the vendor side of the channel. She worked for seven years in account management at Verizon and three years in client development at Cybera. Her husband Brad joined the company in 2014.

iSymplify has gone on to win awards from vendors like Vonage and Tierpoint. It has also won awards from the tech solutions brokerage Telarus (including a 2021 Platinum Award).

Lorie Burkemper has also earned recognitions in the St. Louis business community, including one of St. Louis Small Business Monthly’s Top Women Business Owners. In addition, she co-founded the St. Louis-based Women in Tech Connect group.

Riding the Bluewave

Bluewave emerged early in 2022 with a $75 million growth investment from Columbia Capital. The company has sought to use M&A to bring together complementary partner types, including a mobility expense management provider, and now a contact center expert in iSymplify.

Bluewave’s Seth Penland

Bluewave intends to unify the acquired companies under a single platform and philosophy that emphasizes managing the customer’s entire technology life cycle.

“Our goal is to help businesses scale their operations efficiently and effectively while seizing innovation with the guidance of our best-in-class industry advisors,” Bluewave founder and CEO Seth Penland said. “We are excited to welcome the iSymplify team and expand our presence in the greater St. Louis area. Together, our joint resources expand our capabilities and emphasize our commitment to clients who need first-class technology advisory services.”

Bluewave has made two options available for owners of companies it requires. Its “ambassadors,” which include the leaders of recently purchased Virtual Telecomm, hold equity in Bluewave but don’t work with it on a day-to-day basis. Its managing partners, which include the Burkempers, will work in a daily role.

Agent M&A

Consolidation is occurring across the technology advisor (agent) channel. For example, Minnesota-based Renodis recently acquired 12 Points Consulting in a move that enhances its hospitality-focused equipment and managed solutions. Then there’s West Coast-based Bridgepointe Technologies with purchases of Canon Group and RealCom. And Upstack, whose backing from Berkshire Partners and other investors has helped it buy more than 25 agencies, continues to announce deals.

Although one-half of millennials and GZ adults are interested in the metaverse, only 12% of business leaders in North America say they will offer augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) solutions by 2024, according to TD Synnex. That statistic aside, forecasts suggest the global metaverse market will total $800 billion in the next 24 months.

These are among the findings outlined in the recently released inaugural TD Synnex Ecosystem Benchmark Report. Technology market analyst firm Canalys also contributed to the report.

Beyond the metaverse, the report also addresses trends in professional services. Almost three in four respondents anticipate increased revenue from this solution area. The same number expect to sell more professional services in the next three years.

TD Synnex surveyed partners of midsize technology ecosystems, defined as technology companies with 1,000 seats and fewer. Projecting out two to three years, the report identified four themes for the technology partner ecosystem. These include professional and managed IT services expansion, high-growth technology investments, as-a-service consumption model adoption and AR/VR opportunity gap.

What’s Driving Growth?

More than three in four (77%) North American partners say expanding technology solution offerings is important or very important. They are focused on solutions directly linked to cloud capabilities by applying consumption-based models and ensuring solutions are secured. Within two years, partners say they will offer technology solutions such as device as service (31%) and IoT (23%). Security came in at 22%, cloud integration at 20% and cloud deployment at 20%.

Also, partners will make room for professional and managed IT services in their future business mix, anticipating the most increase over three years. Every category of services – from product life-cycle services to packaged services – is likely to grow. Partners indicate a 74% increase in professional services.

What’s in Decline?

Partners see the largest decrease in reselling hardware in the next three years. Still, hardware resale will be fundamental to business solutions, as most North American partners (78%) forecast.

Networking (18%), endpoint (16%) and services and storage (10%) represent three of the top five revenue drivers for partners. Networking came in as the single most profitable technology for North American partners.

Canalys’ Alex Smith

Respondents indicate hardware categories represent the opportunity to attach services, and hardware-based programs –such as device as a service – creating a virtuous cycle of revenue. Partners are prioritizing this as part of their portfolio offerings within the next two years.

“Channel partners are actively developing their services businesses,” said Alex Smith, vice president of channels at Canalys. “We see that partners are looking to invest across the technology ecosystem.”

Secureworks has launched its partner-first strategy across North America and all new Taegis business will be sold in collaboration with partners starting Dec. 1.

The partner first strategy is the next step in the evolution of Secureworks’ global partner program. The strategy is expected to accelerate Secureworks’ market share. It also signals a milestone in Secureworks’ transformation from MSSP to a cybersecurity provider of managed detection and response (MDR) and extended detection and response (XDR) products via Taegis, its cloud-native platform.

In the second quarter of Secureworks‘ fiscal 2023, over 75% of new Taegis business was conducted in conjunction with partners. The next stage in the partner first go-to-market (GTM) strategy will focus on investing in strategic partners that are best placed to deliver on the Secureworks growth plan.

Secureworks should roll out partner first globally in early 2023.

Partners Are Critical to Secureworks’ Business

Secureworks’ Chris Bell

Chris Bell is Secureworks‘ vice president of strategy, corporate development and strategic alliances.

“We’ve known since we first launched our Taegis XDR platform that partners would be critical to our business,” he said. “Since launching the global partner program in May 2020, our vision has always been to become a partner first company.”

Partner first is the natural evolution and next phase of Secureworks’ GTM strategy, Bell said. It will broaden Taegis XDR adoption and ensure customers can work with their trusted advisors in the partner community.

In the past year, Secureworks has seen significant growth and sales traction through the channel, Bell said.

“The accelerated growth of Taegis XDR, combined with the growth of our channel business, meant that we knew it was the right time to become a partner first organization,” he said. “For partners, working with a channel-centric organization helps them deliver even better outcomes for customers, and build long-term profit for their own business, through dedicated resources and GTM support.”

Taegis ‘Force Multiplier’ for Partners

Secureworks expects Taegis to be a force multiplier for its partners’ business based on the triple-digit Taegis growth Secureworks has seen year over year, Bell said.

Secureworks believes the shift to channel first will be a “significant” competitive advantage for its partners, Bell said.

“They will be at the forefront selling an industry-leading MDR and XDR offering that is growing significantly faster than the market,” he said. “We have designed the program to help our partners maximize their margins, we believe, above industry norms. We will continue to enable our partners with the knowledge we have about the adversary and experience as a leader in the cybersecurity space so we can GTM and win together.”

ThreatLocker has experienced massive growth in the MSP industry as zero trust security is catching on among organizations of all sizes, including small businesses.

ThreatLocker’s Danny Jenkins

That’s according to Danny Jenkins, ThreatLocker’s CEO. This week, ThreatLocker announced its first acquisition. It has acquired Third Wall, allowing MSPs to better secure Windows operating systems.

Third Wall is an automated lockdown security plug-in for ConnectWise Automate users. With the addition of Third Wall’s lockdown policies to existing ThreatLocker solutions, MSPs can harden Windows operating systems. That will ensure end-users comply with government regulations. Furthermore, it will strengthen their overall security.

“Given the current cyber landscape, it is crucial to keep ahead of the curve through constant innovation,” Jenkins said. “ThreatLocker’s acquisition of Third Wall reinforces its commitment to providing enterprise-level cybersecurity tools to MSPs.”

Thousands of MSP Partners

ThreatLocker grew 530% last year in the MSP industry and it now has thousands of MSP partners, Jenkins said.

“We protect close to 30,000 businesses,” he said. “The consequence of the problem of malware running in machines has gotten much worse now in that it’s no longer benign viruses that show you pop-ups and things like that. Now it’s ransomware, data theft, things like that. And the antiviruses constantly fail. Endpoint security has constantly failed to detect threats. So we made it very simple.”

ThreatLocker only allows what’s needed and everything else gets blocked, Jenkins said.

“And then we’ve made that really viable to partners,” he said. “We’ve gone into the MSP industry and we’ve helped the MSP industry, and we’ve educated the MSP industry and said this is what you need to do. And then suddenly these MSPs that previously had no control have control over their customers’ environments. These environments are now secure and that good news spreads fast. People are like this is an awesome product and a lot of our growth is through referral. I’d say probably two thirds of our growth is through referral.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Jenkins and more cybersecurity news.

Barracuda channel partners have a new global leader. The company has hired Jason Beal, previously AvePoint’s first-ever channel chief, as its new vice president of worldwide partner ecosystems.

Barracuda’s Jason Beal

Beal left AvePoint in July. At Barracuda, he’ll lead global channel strategy and development. He’ll have a strong focus on driving growth across the Barracuda global partner ecosystem.

Beal will also help Barracuda channel partners further capture opportunities in the market with its technology solutions.

Beal brings more than 20 years of channel leadership experience, with a focus on channel ecosystem launch, and development and expansion in cybersecurity businesses. At AvePoint, he focused on implementing global channel strategy and their first global partner program.

Prior to AvePoint, Beal held channel leadership roles at both Palo Alto Networks and Ingram Micro.

Focusing on Growth Acceleration

Chris Ross is Barracuda’s CRO.

“We are happy to welcome Jason to Barracuda,” he said. “Bringing Jason into this role is a key part of our ongoing commitment to invest in our channel partner go to market (GTM). We’re looking forward to his focus on continuing the growth acceleration across our partner ecosystem and to drive innovation within our business model. He will also play an integral role in continuing to build and grow a world class channel go-to-market strategy and partner program for our business.”

Beal said he looks forward to the impact he can bring to the team as Barracuda executes its growth plans, while meeting the needs of partners and customers with its integrated suite of advanced security solutions.

This month, Barracuda expanded its European data protection reach to Sweden and Switzerland. This means customers can now choose from 13 Azure regions for the storage of data backed up via cloud-to-cloud backup.

See our slideshow above for our Q&A with Beal on his plans at Barracuda.

Dell Technologies has agreed to a $1 billion settlement to settle an investor lawsuit. It stems from the 2018 stock deal that returned the company to public trading.

The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial next month in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Dell announced the settlement in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

The dispute arose from a $23.9 billion conversion of Dell stock in a 2018 deal. In that transaction, Dell’s controlling investors, including Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake, authorized the payment of cash and issuance of shares of new Class C common stock in exchange for Class V tracking shares. Dell’s Class V stock then stopped trading. And Dell’s Class C common stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Dell had previously gone private, but created the tracking stock to finance its 2016 acquisition of EMC Technologies. The tracking shares were meant to mirror the value of VMware, a publicly traded entity in which Dell acquired a majority stake via the EMC purchase.

Dell sent us the following statement:

“We were informed that the parties have reached a settlement agreement. An independent special committee of the board has approved the settlement payment by the company. The settlement remains subject to court approval.”

Investors Claim Stock Swap Shortchanged Them

According to Dell’s SEC filing, the plaintiffs claimed the stock swap offered “a transaction value that was allegedly billions of dollars below fair value.”

In the Delaware lawsuit, the Dell shareholders alleged the 2018 swap deal shortchanged them by about $34 per share.

Quinn Emanuel subsequently filed suit in 2019 with co-counsel on behalf of Dell shareholders. It claimed the transaction was not a fair exchange of value.

In 2020, the Court of Chancery rejected a bid to dismiss the suit, paving the way for trial in 2022. In addition, the lawsuit added Goldman Sachs as a defendant.

Quinn Emanuel’s Silpa Maruri

Quinn Emanuel partner Silpa Maruri led the plaintiffs’ legal team along with partner David Cooper.

“Today is a great day for Dell shareholders,” Maruri said. “This settlement underscores a landmark victory, as one of the largest cash settlements in Delaware Chancery Court history on behalf of shareholders. We were ready to bring this case to trial next month and are confident that our strong pre-trial position helped secure this historic settlement for the class.”