MSPmentor 250 List 2014: Honorees E to F

Welcome to the seventh-annual MSPmentor 250 list, honoring the world’s top managed services provider (MSP) executives, entrepreneurs and experts. This list is in alphabetical order, split into separate pages.

Background: The list is based on our annual global readership survey plus MSPmentor’s daily coverage of the managed services market. For more information about MSPmentor surveys and lists visit http://www.mspmentor.net/top250 (people) and http://www.mspmentor.net/top501 (companies).

MSPmentor 250 List 2014: Honorees E to F

Christian Ehrenthal, CEO, GridVision

Ehrenthal is the CEO & co-founder of GridVision, which offers enterprise-grade cloud-based IT automation and management capabilities. Prior to co-founding GridVision, Ehrenthal was the founder and CEO of the Blackbird Group, a provider of compliance management software.

http://www.grid-vision.com/blog/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehrenthal

David Eisner, CEO, Dataprise

Eisner created one of the first managed IT services products in 1997. In 2014, Dataprise was honored by Dell as their FY15 Southeast Partner of the Year and Dataprise recently achieved a leading certification under the MSPAlliance’s (MSPA) Unified Certification Standard for Cloud and Managed Service Providers (UCS), given to fewer than 30 MSPs in the world.

http://go.dataprise.com/blog

Andrew Embury, Partner, P&L Technology

Embury’s organization grew revenue 43 percent year over year and just celebrated 10 years in business.  The company has successfully transitioned to the cloud world and also expanded its business to support larger clients. Drew is a frequent guest speaker at industry and business events in the area booking at least 15 appearances in the last 12 months and also sits on two non-profit board of directors.

@AndrewEmbury

http://www.pltechnology.com/blog

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewembury

Ray Engler, CEO, Nomad Technology Group

Engler has continued Nomad’s fast-paced growth exceeding 30 percent in 2014. He is pioneering a hybrid cloud solution to leverage public and private clouds to manage client workloads in the most efficient manner. His virtualized hybrid cloud is changing the ways his clients operate. He participates in multiple industry events each year to train others on how to develop their own systems.

Jason Etheridge, President & CEO, Logic Speak

Etheridge’s mission is to bring customer service back to the managed services industry. He teaches (and speaks on) technology humility – the idea that our industry’s knowledge of technology does not make us better than our clients. Logic Speak has experienced 3 years of 20 percent year-over-year growth with 2015 poised to be even larger

John Fakhoury, CEO, Framework Communications

Fakhoury’s MSP has grown by 1074 percent, which landed Framework Communications on the Inc. 500 list of the Fastest Growing Companies in the United States. He has also focused on hiring, collaborating with a team he created to develop a Veteran On-The-Job Training Program with the Illinois Department of Veterans, an Externship Program with a nonprofit designed to help veterans and others build competitive skills for the new employment marketplace and finally an Internship Program in conjunction with the Chicago Public Schools. Framework Communications was ranked one of the top 101 Best and Brightest Companies to work for in Chicago this year.

http://www.frameworkcommunications.com/blog/

David Farajun, CEO, Asigra

Farajun led the development of the Asigra Recovery License Model (RLM), a pricing option based on the data recovery performance of an MSP’s backup service for greater MSP and end-customer value. He also drove double-digit company growth to more than one million customer site deployments.

http://www.asigra.com/blog

Khaled Farhang, Founder/CEO, eGuard Technology Solutions

Farhang and his team at eGuard had a record year for cloud-related business. Cloud services sales were up 125 percent and net cloud profit increased 50 percent, and monthly recurring Cloud revenue was up over 135 percent from 2012. eGuard also established a partnership last year with Anchor/eFolder to offer a more robust and secure synchronization solution to its SMB clients who employ remote in-the-field workers, and grew this offering by more than 300 percent in just 6 months.

www.linkedin.com/in/khaledfarhang

Joan Fazio, Senior Director, Emerging Channels, Symantec

Fazio focuses on strategy development with platform partners to ensure thousands of Symantec MSPs can efficiently provide reliable managed backup and managed security services to their customers around the globe. Her work includes new Backup Exec, Email Security.cloud, Enterprise Vault.cloud, and/or Symantec Endpoint Protection integrations launched with AppDirect, Kaseya, LabTech Software and Parallels.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/symantec-blogs/partners-community-blog

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joan-fazio/0/225/902

Ryan Ferrel, Vice President of Sales, Managed Solution

Ferrel has increased revenue in the last year by 25 percent and driven new business marketplaces in Los Angeles and Arizona.

http://managedsolution.com/

James Fields, Owner and President, Concept Technology, Inc.

Fields’ company was named one of the Best Places to Work by the Nashville Business Journal in 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2009. His company has also been listed on Inc.’s 500/5000 list each year since 2011 and Fortune’s Inner City 100 list of the fastest growing inner city businesses in America in 2014, 2012 and 2011. James himself was named to the Nashville Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 in 2011 for his success serving small- and medium-sized businesses in Middle Tennessee. In the last year he founded Scout Staffing, a recruiting firm built off of his methods for hiring tech talent with both strong technical and communication skills

http://www.concepttechnologyinc.com/blog/

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-fields/4/89/42a

Tim FitzGerald, VP of Cloud Solutions, Avnet

FitzGerald has built a cloud practice within Avnet that supplies channel partners with strategic guidance, resources and packaged offerings to quickly build and grow an off-premise, annuity-based cloud computing business.

http://www.twitter.com/#!/FitzAZ

http://blogging.avnet.com/ts/advantage/

www.linkedin.com/in/fitzaz

Ryan Flynn, President, Network Data Services Inc.

Flynn took over at Network Data services in 2012 and turned around the company which had been deeply in debt and nearly out of business. Two years later, without any cash infusion, the company’s billing is up 40 percent and it is operating in the black.

Alistair Forbes, General Manager, LogicNow

Originally trained as a research scientist, Forbes has extensive technology leadership experience in both SMB and large corporate environments, defining and delivering high tech solutions for over 20 years in a number of vertical markets. As an entrepreneur, Alistair made his first trailblazing moves by co-founding HoundDog Technology Limited as its CTO in 2004, delivering a disruptive solution that provided MSPs, VARs and IT support organizations with a dramatically easier and more affordable way to monitor and manage their clients’ networks. After a period of rapid international growth and widespread adoption by MSPs, HoundDog Technology was acquired by LogicNow (formerly GFI MAX) in 2009.  He now serves as General Manager of LogicNow, including the MAXfocus brand.

https://twitter.com/alistairforbes

https://www.facebook.com/alistair.forbes.92

http://www.maxfocus.com/blog/

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/alistairforbes

Rodney Foreman, C&SI WW Channels Sales Director, IBM

Foreman leads the MSP team for IBM C&SI and has been a thought leader in developing and nurturing this business in IBM.

https://twitter.com/rodneyforeman

https://www.facebook.com/rodney.foreman2?fref=ts

Sitima Fowler, Co-CEO, Capstone Information Technologies Inc.

Fowler has grown Capstone 30 to 40 percent year over year for the last 3 years by selling managed services to small and medium businesses in western New York. Capstone has been named on the Rochester Top 100 list and the Inc 5000 list multiple times.

http://www.capstoneitinc.com/blog/

Thomas Fox, President, Tech Experts

Fox leads an MSP organization supporting more than 1,000 endpoints at small businesses and not-for-profit agencies that posts over 30 percent margins. Fox also works with other MSPs to define and implement B2B marketing strategies to help grow their MSP businesses. He also is a supporter of his community, donating free computers and support to families who lost their homes in a devastating apartment complex fire. He also funds and manages the Thomas Fox Scholarship program, offering scholarship assistance to Monroe County high school seniors who are pursuing a degree in a computer science related field.

https://twitter.com/tlfox

https://www.facebook.com/tlfox

http://www.mytechexperts.com/blog

https://www.linkedin.com/in/foxthomas

Rex Frank, President, Sea-Level Operations

Rex Frank marks his third time on this list in 2014. He has spent career evangelizing the operations side of managed services and for the last 4 years, he has owned Sea-Level Operations, a company focused solely on one-on-one coaching of service managers on achieving operational excellence at MSPs.  He currently has 48 active coaching clients and has coached well over 100 companies.

https://www.facebook.com/Steven.Rex.Frank

www.linkedin.com/in/rexfrank/

Paul Franks, CEO, ThinkGard LLC

Franks is a serial entrepreneur, having built one MSP from the ground up, selling it, and then building another that grew 32 percent from 2011 to 2012.

@pjfranks1509

http://www.thinkgard.com/category/blog/

Kevin Fuller, CTO, ThinkGard

As COO at US Teks, Fuller helped increase MRR by 10 fold in 5 years and helped market and sell the business in 2013.  As CTO of ThinkGard, he is revolutionizing DRaaS by leveraging his 15 years of experience with DR.

http://www.thinkgard.com/category/blog/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinfuller

Karl Fulljames, VP of Operations, Nucleus Networks Inc

Fulljames has helped grow Nucleus Networks from a small firm with good people, to a great organization that is now vying for Best Small Business Workplace in BC. He has overseen the integration of two acquisitions and successfully handled the integration of company cultures.

https://twitter.com/kfulljames

http://yournucleus.ca/blog/

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kfulljames/

Craig Fulton, Sr. Product Manager, ConnectWise

Fulton is responsible for the development and release of the ChatAssist chat and remote control product in under a year, and it currently has 1,100 users. ChatAssist dynamically captures SLAs and puts the help desk a click away from customers. Thanks to Fulton’s work, ConnectWise currently holds a patent for the unique chat-to-ticketing ChatAssist integration.

http://www.connectwise.com/blog