MSPmentor 250 List 2014: Honorees S

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 S

Isaac Sajjad, Partner, Middleground Technologies

Sajjad helped build Middleground Technologies, an MSP in Chicago, from 0 to 5 employees in less than 3 years and now has over 75 new customers.

Daniel Saks, President and co-CEO, AppDirect

Saks founded AppDirect with Nicolas Desmarais out of a San Francisco apartment five years ago. Today they employ over 200 people around the globe, have signed strategic deals with companies including AT&T, Comcast, Staples, Samsung and Microsoft and have raised over $60 million in venture capital. AppDirect helps businesses find, buy, use and manage cloud software, as well as offering a thriving ecosystem for resellers, managed service providers (MSPs) and developers to market and sell cloud services.

https://twitter.com/danielsaks

https://www.facebook.com/dsaks

http://info.appdirect.com/blog

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

Ken Satkunam, Owner/President, NorthStar Technology Group Inc

Satkunam has led NorthStar Technology Group to bring the most secure and available technology to the rural hospitals and clinics in the Upper Midwest. These tools built by NorthStar provide rural healthcare providers with the means to meet HIPAA compliance at all stages of technology.

http://www.northstarbusinessessentials.com/computer-networking/

Eric Schlissel, CEO, GeekTek IT Services

Schlissel has grown his company 70 percent in 2014. Eric was ahead of the curve in transforming to managed services and now is a leading force in the embrace of the cloud.

http://www.geektek.com/blog

Jessica Schroeder, Vendor Alliance Manager, MAXfocus

Schroeder is leading the vendor alliance charge for LogicNow’s MAXfocus, which is looking to integrate more services into its remote monitoring and management platform. She previously served as director of marketing and events for The ASCII Group.

www.linkedin.com/in/schroderjessica

Scott Scrogin, President, HTG

Scrogin has overseen HTG’s successful peer group expansion from North America into Europe and Australia. He participated in the HTG/HLG merger to bring coaching, consulting and content to members. He’s also a hands-on presenter who educates MSPs about leadership, personal productivity, business development and service delivery strategies.

https://twitter.com/scottscrogin

https://www.facebook.com/scottscrogin

http://www.htgpeergroups.com/blog.html

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

Nick Sharp, Manager, Partner and Client Engagement, Cloud Specialists Pty Ltd

Sharp has grown his Sydney, Australia MSP by 1,215 percent in new cloud and managed sales in 2014. He regularly coaches and mentors the top MSP organizations in Australia.

www.blog.cloudspecialists.net.au

au.linkedin.com/pub/nick-sharp/13/485/66a

Brian Sherman, Principal Consultant, Tech Success Communications

Sherman works closely with industry vendors and associations and is a strong advocate for the industry. He shares industry best practices through a variety of forums.

https://twitter.com/TechSuccessComm

https://www.facebook.com/brian.sherman.10

www.linkedin.com/in/brianshermantechsuccesscom/

Biren Shukla, CEO, Forum Info-Tech/LevelCloud

Shukla’s company has ranked both on the MSP 501 list and Talkin’ Cloud’s Top 100 Cloud Provider list. More recently he successfully launched LevelCloud, providing a turn-key cloud solution for partners that had no knowledge or desire to build their own cloud. He is on target to profitably transition his entire business from managed services to cloud services by end of 2015.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/biren-shukla/6/a60/22a/

Janice Siddons, Chief Operating Officer, TUC Managed IT Solutions

Siddons has served in senior leadership roles in the managed services industry since 2000. She has served as Channel Chief, VP and GM at N-able and more recently as COO of TUC. She is a graduate in financial management and has been recognized as a CRN Channel Chief, as one of the Top 50 most influential channel executives, and in 2013 named to Ottawa’s Forty Under 40 and MSPmentor Global 250 Executive listing.

Jay Sigler, President, Corporate Strategic Solutions Inc

Last year Jay sold his MSP and started his consulting firm to help other MSPs. He now has clients in over a dozen countries that have experienced 1000 percent growth rates.

https://www.facebook.com/jay.sigler.18?fref=ts

www.linkedin.com/in/jasonsigler/

Brent Simone, President, Stratix Systems

Simone has led Stratix Systems to evolve from a copier dealership into a true business technology and managed services organization. Simone has also complimented Stratix Systems’ organic growth with two strategic acquisitions — Century Office Products in early 2009, and (pending) Keystone Business Products in late 2014. Stratix Systems also been regularly certified and awarded by leading authorities in the business technology industry, including: Microsoft and Dell Partner Certified, Ricoh Service Excellence Certified, Datto Partner Plus Elite Certified, BEI Pros Elite 100 Certified, and imageSource Perfect Image Award for Outstanding Managed Services Program.

http://www.stratixsystems.com/about-us/blog/

Carrie Simpson, CEO, Managed Sales Pros

Carrie has grown Managed Sales Pros, an MSP-specific cold calling lead generation firm from a one person operation to a team of 20 inside sales reps in under one year.  MSPros is currently engaged with over a dozen MSPs in North America, and multiple vendors now use MSPros to connect with the MSP channel.

ca.linkedin.com/in/carriesimpson/

David Sims, Founder, HIPAA For MSPs

Sims has built a much needed resource for MSPs to help them succeed in the healthcare niche. The resource, HIPAAforMSPs.com, brings training, collaboration, audio, videos, vendors, resources and an entire team of professionals to each member to ensure their greatest chance at success.

http://www.hipaaformsps.com/

Mark Slaga, CEO, Dimension Data Americas

As CEO of the Americas region of Dimension Data ($7 billion global MSP organization), Slaga provides the company’s strategic leadership and direction in five countries: the United States, Canada, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, and is leading its transformation journey to triple revenue by 2018 and double down on investments in key growth areas of the business

http://twitter.com/Mark_Slaga

http://blog.dimensiondata.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-slaga/3/782/869

Adam Slutskin, Sr. Vice President of Worldwide Sales ConnectWise, ConnectWise

Slutskin was instrumental in growing ConnectWise, LabTech Software, and Quosal’s partner bases from a couple hundred each to 6,500, 4,200, and 2,000 respectively. More recently he has expanded the account manager team — the frontline for the customer experience -— from 1 representative to 30-plus members and the overall sales team to 135 colleagues. Slutskin also created two new teams, Business Success and Business Excellence, which help partners increase profitability and get the most out of their investment in the ConnectWise family of products. Slutskin is also responsible for opening regional offices in London and Sydney to support the growing international customer base, and he’s dramatically expanded the company’s reach through the development of partnerships with technology distributors Tech Data and Ingram Micro.

http://www.connectwise.com/blog

Doug Smith, President, Computer Troubleshooters NRD

Smith is part of the Computer Troubleshooters franchise and was one of the early adopters (2005) of the MSP model. He has helped drive and formulate how the master franchise implemented managed services. He has been able to grow his company at a steady 10 percent or better rate every year, even in the worst economic times, and is on target for a 20-plus percent growth this year.

Daniel Smith, Peter Stanley Ltd

Smith has continued to build on his work at London DaaS pioneer Nasstar and now is working with Poctser bringing managed services into the telco community through work with Daisy Wholesale’s 1,500 partners. This is helping to transform traditional voice and calls and lines resellers into managed service providers. 

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/dan1969smith/

David Sobel, Director of Partner Community, LogicNow

Sobel’s sole focus is building and educating the MSP community on the newest technology and tools available to achieve positive growth, enhance offerings and become best-in-class solution providers. He began his career founding his own MSP, Evolve Technologies, and built to a successful exit at 15 employees, with $1.4 million in annual revenue, serving more than 100 customers in the Washington, D.C. Metro area.

https://www.facebook.com/djdave

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

Yoshi Sommer, Director of Sales, Excel Micro

Sommer has lead the Excel Micro sales team through a year of transitioning Postini accounts for 3,500 partners to alternative solutions while he grew the user base to over 2 million accounts globally.  Yoshi’s leadership played a large part in the recent acquisition of Excel Micro by j2 Global.

Paul Sponcia, CEO, The IT Company

Sponcia has successfully completed four acquisitions including the purchase of local Tier 3 data center, Digital Crossing Networks. With 18 years of experience in information technology, Paul has led his company to rank on the MSPmentor Top 100, MSP Mentor Top 250 people, and a variety of local and regional honors including Future50 awards for fast growing companies in their markets.

http://twitter.com/PaulSponcia

https://www.facebook.com/paulsponcia

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

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

David Stokes, VP Managed Services, Greystone Technology Group

Stokes has guided Greystone from $1 million to $5 million in annual revenue in the past four years. He is the leading coach for a 35-person service team focused on redefining the leadership approach to IT. Greystone enjoys a 97 percent annual client retention rate.  Greystone has landed on numerous prestigious lists including the Inc5000 and the MSPMentor Top 501 in both of the past two years.

http://www.greystonetech.com/blog

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-stokes/13/558/27b

Bill Stucklen, CEO, Stack Advisors

Stucklen’s company completed multiple custom ISV integration projects for Inc. 5000 companies this year and saw a 45 percent increase in revenue over the first half of 2014 compared to the same timeframe in 2013. Stucklen is also the co-founder/president of Marathon Consulting and presented two breakout sessions at the 2014 IT Nation conference.

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

Eric Sugar, VP Sales and Marketing, ProServeIT Corporation

Sugar led ProServeIT’s sales organization to more than double managed services sales over the last 18 months. Leading over 100 customers to Microsoft cloud-based managed services solutions.

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

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

Richard Swaisgood, Technical Account Manager, Managed Solution

Swaisgood has been a technical leader in improving customer efficiencies and processes with a 95 percent customer retention rate. He is in the top 3 percent of Managed Solution’s most certified engineers.  He quickly moved from customer service desk to technical account manager and is known throughout the organization as a knowledgeable and skilled resource. He has helped implement new managed service practice core competencies such as Mobile Device Management, Vipre, Postini, Reflexion, and many other technical solutions by researching and presenting the solutions to executive management.

Darrin Swan, Director WW Sales & BD, Dell Software

Swan built Dell’s service provider program channel business from the ground up. Starting at Quest, which was acquired by Dell, he expanded the capabilities and now is planning to launch a new Dell-Powered Cloud Partner Program and Network that will enable a global network of MSPs. Under Swan’s leadership, the Dell’s program has grown more than 3-times to over 2000 partners under management and 60 percent in year over year recurring revenue from MSP partners.

www.linkedin.com/in/darrinswan/

Peter Sweetbaum, CEO, ITLab

As joint CEO of Wavex, and now as IT Lab CEO, Sweetbaum has personally overseen the growth of over £30 million of premium MSP revenues. He has won and successfully delivered against hundreds of managed services contracts. Sweetbaum is working to create a platform-agnostic cloud computing service and customer-focused service and application integration.

https://www.facebook.com/peter.sweetbaum

http://www.itlab.com/our-blog/

uk.linkedin.com/pub/peter-sweetbaum/0/2b9/a51