MSPmentor 250 List 2014: Honorees K to M

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 K to M

John Kampas, President, Digerati Group

Kampas led Digerati Group to the best year in its history in 2014. The company increased its engineer force by a third and expanded to a new office in Elmhurst, IL and added a NOC in Athens, Greece that is a wholly owned and operated corporate location.

Zak Karsan, VP of Business Development, Strategic Alliances & Channel Development, VaultLogix

Karsan has served as VaultLogix’s channel chief for four years and has built an MSP organization from the ground up increasing the MSP channel partner base 10x.  He implemented software integration relationships with more than 10 strategic vendors including a majority of the leading PSA and RMM software vendors.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/karsan

Martyn Keigher, Systems Engineer, Choice Solutions

Keigher is founder of the LabTech Geek community, a website that enables developers of scripts and add-ons to LabTech Software to share their work and help each other. In his day job he works for Choice Solutions.

https://twitter.com/martynkeigher

Chris Kennedy, CTO, The IT Company

In 2011 Kennedy rebranded CSK Technologies into what is now The IT Company. Over the last three years he has quadrupled the company’s cloud business.

https://www.facebook.com/chris.kennedy.127?fref=ts&ref=br_tf

http://www.theitco.net/blog/

Myles Keough, CEO, Spade Technology

Over the last five years Keough has increased Spade’s topline revenue by an average of over 20 percent year over year, while also being recognized by the media as one of the top 25 IT Consulting firms in Boston each of those five years.

www.linkedin.com/in/myleskeough

Steve King, COO, Netswitch

King created MADROC, a complete managed cyber-security services solution with 24×7 monitoring and full response and remediation available through the cloud and affordable for every business. He is the author of the cyber-security book called BREACH! and is a blogger on information security with thousands of followers.

https://twitter.com/sking1145

https://www.facebook.com/steve.king.9216

Alissa Knight, Senior Partner, Brier & Thorn

Knight is a serial entrepreneur, starting her first company at 17, selling it to a public company at 20. When she was 27, she sold her second successful startup to a public company in the security software space. She now runs her third successful startup, Brier & Thorn, a risk management consultancy providing managed security services to the middle market. Alissa increased sales 300 percent in less than one year since she started the managed services practice at Brier & Thorn, building its new corporate office and Security Operations Center in Tijuana, Mexico and a new office and SOC in London to service the UK market.

@alissaknight

https://www.facebook.com/alissaknight

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alissaknight

Bob Knott, President, SWC Technology Partners

Knott joined SWC in 2002 and rebuilt it following a 2005 management buyout. He has diversified its solution portfolio, and tripled the customer base and workforce. His strategy couples SWC’s legacy application development business with new service lines to optimize customers’ day-to-day.

http://www.swc.com/blog

www.linkedin.com/pub/bob-knott/23/856/571

Colin Knox, CEO, Passportal Inc.

Knox founded and built an MSP business from a one-man operation five years ago, to a company with 20 employees in two cities with revenues of $4 million. Identifying a need within his own MSPbusiness, he also created a Password Management solution vendor Passportal, now in use by nearly 500 partners around the world.

http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/colin-knox/15/986/402/

Jerry Koutavas, President, The ASCII Group

Koutavas has spearheaded initiatives to help IT providers automate many of their marketing functions, including an automated social media service specific to IT providers, allowing for the distribution of quality, vendor-neutral content, which helps increase their brand and expertise among their social networks. He also launched Google Co-Op Adwords initiative, which allows multiple IT providers to join together and co-fund online advertising campaigns.

www.linkedin.com/in/koutavas

Peter Kujawa, President Locknet Division, E O Johnson Business Technologies

Kujawa is the president of EOJ MSP division, ranked as 26 on the 2013 MSPmentor 501. Kujawa’s division has grown at over 25 percent in 2014. He is also a member of MSP Alliance advisory council. He holds a law degree from Marquette University.

Dima Kumets, Sr. Product Manager, OpenDNS

Kumets is the product manager who designed the multi-tenant features, centralized management and channel-focused business processes to take OpenDNS’s enterprise-grade cloud security service to the MSP market for SMB customers, while overseeing integrations with ConnectWise and Autotask. His work has enabled MSPs to quickly and easily bring SMB customers the same advanced security used at large organizations. He is a frequent speaker at MSP events and is also involved in the HTG Vendor Peer groups. He was recently honored with the award for “Best Breakout Session” by IT Nation 2014 attendees for his session “Standardizing and Strengthening Security.”

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

https://www.facebook.com/dkumets

http://blog.opendns.com/

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

Marco LaVecchia, VP Channel Sales, AVG Technologies

LaVecchia helped AVG build a brand new sales team and model in 2014 after the acquisition of Level Platforms.  He grew the sales team from six people to more than 55 people.  He also helped AVG acquire more than 1000 MSP’s in the last 11 months for both Cloudcare and Managed Workplace.

@marcolavecchia

Kathleen Labozzetta, Partner, i3 Business Solutions

Labozzetta supported the transformation of the i3 from a hardware centric ERP sales and consulting firm into a managed services provider. This included implementing a fully staffed support center and dispatcher position.  Year on year growth of managed services revenue exceeded 20 percent annually to more than six figures monthly in 2014. Staff in network services doubled and organizational strength stabilized as revenue flipped to 60 percent services and 40 percent hardware and software products.

https://www.facebook.com/kathy.labozzetta

http://www.i3bus.com/blog/

www.linkedin.com/pub/kathy-labozzetta/4/117/b06

Steve LaPha, VP, Dytech Group

LaPha has converted almost all of his company’s clients to managed service clients and is on place to grow 25 percent over last year.

dytech.com/blog

www.linkedin.com/pub/steve-lapha/

David Lazor, President/CEO, Lazorpoint

Lazor has grown his company to a 24-person team, which provides managed services, strategic technology consulting and custom software development to dozens of midsize businesses across the United States. The company operates offices in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlazor

Joseph Lee, Director of Managed Services and Delivery Operations, SWC Technology Partners

Lee leads and manages SWC’s Managed Services Practice and is directly responsible for operations, service delivery and strategic growth of the practice.  Through his leadership in managed services over the past three years, SWC’s team, service offerings, clients and revenue have doubled in size. Lee has led the reorganization of the managed services practice to create a highly scalable organization with emphasis on organizational effectiveness, proven and repeatable processes and continuous process improvement. SWC Managed Services has maintained best-in-class financial results exceeding industry benchmark of 65 percent gross margins and has appeared on the MSPmentor lists in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

http://www.swc.com/blog

John Lewe, President and Founder, QuoteWerks

Lewe has grown QuoteWerks into a market leading sales quoting and proposal software tool since founding the company in 1993. QuoteWerks has more than 72,000 users in over 101 countries.

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

Jason Lieblich, CTO/Founder, Exoprise Systems Inc

Lieblich’s vision is that the cloud will transform the landscape of RMM tools for MSPs, leading to his creation of CloudReady Monitor to bring end-to-end visibility for all an organizations’ SaaS apps for customers ranging in size from the 50 person SMB to the Fortune 50 global enterprise.

http://www.exoprise.com/news-insights/blog/

Jim Lippie, Chief Executive Officer, Clarity Channel Advisers

Jim Lippie was President/CEO of a top 25 MSP for 7 years (Thrive Networks), where he doubled headcount and tripled revenue. He was the first MSP to sell to a Fortune 100.  He served as president of IndependenceIT, one of the world’s leading DaaS companies, where he grew the partner base 250 percent and grew revenue 340 percent.  Today, he works with leading MSPs to help them transition to cloud offerings as the Founder and CEO of Clarity Channel Advisors.

@jimlippie

Josh Lippy, CTO, America’s Remote Help Desk

Lippy had the technical idea behind America’s Remote Help Desk and was an engineer and a co-founder of the company. America’s Remote Help Desk has grown from 2 employees (founders) to 55 employees today.

http://www.remotehelpdesk.com/blog/

www.linkedin.com/pub/josh-lippy/5/80a/64

Jasmine Lombardi, VP of Partner Success, Intronis Inc.

Lombardi developed and launched Intronis Essentials, a suite of four online tools including: Intronis University, Partner Tool Kit, Onboarding and Knowledge Base.  She also introduced data protection as a service to help MSPs reduce costs and increase profit in selling backup and recovery services by outsourcing the management of backup service to Intronis.  She has been recognized as one of the Mass High Tech’s Top 20 Women to Watch in Mass High Tech.

http://blog.intronis.com

https://www.linkedin.com/jasminelombardi

Amy Luby, SVP Sales & Marketing, JetStream Networks, Inc.

In 2014, channel veteran Luby helped launch a startup cloud services automation platform vendor and acquired 132 new partners in 7 months since the vendor launched.  She is also a proven entrepreneur and pioneer in the IT services industry for 20 years having founded and built one of the first true managed services providers (MSPs) in the country, and then expanding that into the first Master MSP, defining that business model in the process. 

www.linkedin.com/in/amycluby/

Jens Lund, Founder / Managing Director, IT-Serve.com

Since Lund founded IT-Serve.com in 2001 in Dubai, he has transformed it IT support services business to a leading MSP in the Middle East. The company has grown its clientele by 300 percent.

http://ae.linkedin.com/in/jensmlund

Bonny MacInnis, Backup & Disaster Recovery Specialist, The Walker Group

MacInnis monitors and maintains over 150 servers across 60-plus different Datto BDR implementations. She migrated all Zenith Infotech BDR organizations over to Datto devices for the company, and she has grown the company’s disaster recovery department single-handedly, from a tiny group of 10 clients to close to 100 managed backup clients.

www.linkedin.com/pub/bonny-macinnis/23/4aa/1b4

Marc Malizia, CTO, RKON Technologies

Malizia created the vision for RKON’s cloud offering and sold the idea of a multi-tenant environment to our clients 8 years ago before the concept of cloud computing hit the mainstream. RKON has since grown to manage more than 50,000 users on that environment.

Stephanie Martin, CEO, Exigo Group

Martin is a veteran in sales and marketing in the IT channel, having participated in two startup ventures and subsequent acquisitions, Everdream Corp. to Dell in 2007 and Mobile Armor to Trend Micro in 2010. At  Exigo Group she applies her IT expertise to introduce automated, cloud-based solutions for business processes to clients.

www.linkedin.com/in/smartinrocks/

Timothy Martin, President / CEO, Neoscope

Martin’s pure managed IT services company has doubled revenue for many consecutive years. His early adoption of managed services tools allowed him to capture a significant market share of the New England market.

www.facebook.com/timothyrogermartin

http://www.neoscopeit.com/articles/blog/

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=19511732&trk=spm_pic

Shannon Mayer, Channel Engagement Manager, LogMeIn

Mayer developed and launched LogMeIn’s first channel program, converted over 300 customers into the program, introduced a mobile app to increase engagement and communication with partners and helped the company win over 20 industry awards. Mayer regularly speaks at IT conferences and is actively working on cultivating a channel community at LogMeIn.

@shannonkohn

Jay McBain, Co-founder, ChannelEyes

McBain led Lenovo’s entry into managed services. He has also served as senior VP of communities for Autotask and as chairman of the managed services community at CompTIA.

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

http://www.facebook.com/jaymcbain

http://www.youtube.com/user/jmcbain

http://channeleyes.com/blog_home

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymcbain

Joe McCusker, Group Head of Managed Services, Digicel Group

McCusker built Digicel’s MSP organization since he joined the company 18 months ago. The group now supports end customers of the Digicel group throughout 26 countries in the Caribbean and soon in Asia Pacific. Group revenues for managed services now stand at over $90 million with expected increases of over 46 percent year on year for the next 3 years. He has written for newspapers and tech blogs and recently completed a thesis on managed services, ITIL and their effect on customer satisfaction.

http://www.digicelbusiness.com/jamaica/en/about/management/joe-mccusker

Kent McNall, CEO, Quosal

McNall has presided over the growth of Quosal and its commitment to sales process automation. His vision has won investment from ConnectWise capital. The company has created deep integrations with ConnectWise, Salesforce and other platform-focused sales tools.

Mike Meloy, CEO and founder, Data Recovery Services

Meloy has grown his company to more than 100 employees with three state-of-the-art data centers that include a full service NOC and help desk, co-location services and over 5500 miles of dark fiber through out Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.  Meloy has helped create a private/hybrid cloud practice that has made it possible for over 100 businesses in the region to upgrade their IT backbones.

http://drsllc.net/en/blog

Chad Menard, Director Managed Services, GadellNet IT Consulting

Menard built GadellNet’s managed services offering from just 4 people to 40 people over 4 years. GadellNet’s growth made it a Time Inc. 5000 winner and got it ranked as the 7th fastest growing private company in St. Louis. 

www.linkedin.com/pub/chad-menard/a/989/bb

Rob Merklinger, VP of Sales, Intronis Inc.

Merklinger has helped hundreds of MSP partners successfully sell cloud BDR as part of their service model. He provides help with best practices including pricing your BDR services and selling to vertical markets including healthcare.

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rob-merklinger/0/467/777

Rene Miller, CEO, Ener Systems LLC

Miller grew Ener Systems’ monthly recurring revenue 150 percent from 2013 to 2014.  He conducts monthly cybersecurity seminars for clients. He is involved with TruMethods’ Winner’s Circle.

http://www.businesstechnologyminute.com

www.linkedin.com/in/renemmiller

Mark Miller, Senior VP, Sales and Operations, All Covered, IT Services from Konica Minolta

Mark leads an IT Services team of more than 500 engineers and 125 sales people servicing more than 3,000 clients. He has built the All Covered IT Services division of Konica Minolta into a national leader. 

Barry Monies, CEO, Computronix LLC.

Computronix lead Computronix to a more than 50 percent revenue increase through expanded services options including managed antivirus, managed spam, managed mobile, multiple backup/disaster recovery management options, and managed phone services.

www.linkedin.com/in/barrymonies

Lief Morin, President, Key Information Systems

Morin has led Key Information Systems from a little known regional value-added reseller into a leading IT Systems integrator and MSP.  The company has recently doubled its size with the recent acquisition of a data center company in Los Angeles.

@LiefMorin

www.linkedin.com/pub/lief-morin/0/21/3a5

Frank Motta, Executive VP, CAI Managed IT

Motta has been instrumental in transitioning a 35-year old software company to a full-service provider of state-of-the-art managed IT services.    As EVP of CAI Managed IT, the managed services division of Computer Associates (CAI) in Smithfield, Rhode Island, Frank manages a team of eight Microsoft-certified IT professionals who provide both fully managed and ad-hoc IT support services to hundreds of companies across the United States.

www.linkedin.com/in/frankemotta

Ian Moyse, Sales Director, Workbooks

Moyse, an active member of the cloud and MSP space for more than 10 years, runs one of the largest global channel groups on Linkedin He has built channels for three cloud/MSP providers in the UK and across the globe. He sits on the board of Eurocloud and the Cloud Industry Forum.

@imoyse

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

Marya Munir, Sr. Channel Marketing Manager, Webroot

Munir quickly re-established Webroot’s dormant channel program since joining the company 18 months ago and turned Webroot’s channel partners into the leading revenue generator for SMB sales. The result is a 315 percent revenue growth since the beginning of 2013, led by MSPs rapidly adopting Webroot SecureAnywhere Business – Endpoint Protection and SecureAnywhere Business – Mobile Protection to provide remote security management and administration to their clients. Munir re-designed the Webroot Channel Edge Partner Program and has grown Webroot’s transacting MSP partners nearly 300 percent year over year.

https://twitter.com/maryamunir

http://www.linkedin.com/in/maryamunir/

Gina Murphy, EVP Sales Enablement and Strategy, TriCore Solutions

Murphy is laser focused on customer satisfaction, which includes surveys, quarterly business reviews, and touch points. She turns feedback into actionable programs to deliver improvements that take the company to the next level. That’s driven 30 percent year-over-year revenue growth for TriCore.

http://www.tricoresolutions.com/resources/blog/

https://www.linkedin.com

Tyler Murphy, Business Development Manager Hosting & Managed Services,  NA & EMEA, Intel Security / McAfee

Murphy is the manager for McAfee’s top 15 SMB-focused Hosting and Managed Services providers in North America. In January, 2014 Tyler’s position was expanded to include overseeing the expansion of McAfee’s Cloud Security products into Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

https://twitter.com/denvervip

https://www.facebook.com/worldwidevip

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRyZi4Zo-jJzgz1DBX_O0w/feed

http://blogs.mcafee.com/category/business

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