LogicNow CEO Looks Ahead at Partner Summit

Big Data. Security. Best practices and business metrics.

These are but a few of the topics that captivate LogicNow CEO Walter Scott.

In Washington this week at the MAX 2015 conference, LogicNow’s fifth summit for MSP partners in the Americas, Scott took a long view of the current market and the opportunities before his company.

Here this week LogicNow, a leading provider of remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions, outlined its commitment to become a bigger player in the managed security services market and outlined a new push into business analytics. At the event, MSPmentor caught up with Scott and asked about several initiatives propelling the company to new heights. Here’s a snapshot of what the energetic CEO—arguably the man of the moment—had to share. First up: the data that has company has figured out how to put to use on behalf of its partners.

MSPmentor: You’ve democratized big data and extended it to smaller MSPs that will give them the ability to walk into customers and tell them that they have new intelligence to share that will transform their businesses. You’re essentially saying ‘you can be as astute to your customers and provide that same level of value as Andersen Consulting, CapGemini or some of the largest and most capable and biggest thought leaders in the IT services space.’ How does that change the game in your market?

Scott: I would say the value of our data is much more accurate and relevant than any IDC or Gartner data that exists. It’s actionable; it’s real. It’s 2 million devices that are behind the firewall. [The research houses] don’t have access to that in the way that we have been able to anonymize the data to show trends in terms of how you compare what’s normal or something as simple as the age of your machines. We can tell that by the flash data of the BIOS to the individual models.

MSPmentor: What new business models does your push into big data present to you? Why not sell information services like IDC or Gartner? What new go-to-market strategies could this give you?

Scott: If you’re $85 million [in sales] and growing at 40 percent with the kind of partners that we have… don’t change your spots, right? This is a good, scaling, growing business that has customer satisfaction scores that are a really good number for an IT company. For us, our growth is about adding devices and MSPs and additional services. Would it be easy for us to go grab $5 million-$10 million in additional revenue selling some data? Piece of cake. But is the long term value worth the optics of it? I doubt it.

MSPmentor: But you’ve looked at it?

Scott: There are people all day long that will buy data. But to me the MSP market has at least another five years of growth as the VAR channel converts to managed services. I think we are the best positioned [for them]. Right now, we are the largest vendor. We have more MSPs, more scale, etc. Why pollute the message? When I look at what Wall Street wants, they want pure play. When you start converting to a data business model, don’t you destroy that value?

MSPmentor: The fiscal and business discipline is very impressive. Stay the course? Wow. There are temptations aplenty. That said, your market is consolidating. There’s a lot of deal making going on. We have seen it over the last few years. How acquisitive are you now and are there other capabilities that you need so you can broaden the portfolio while staying the course?

Scott: We’ve been pretty acquisitive over the past. We’ve been pretty fortunate with [our investors.] I’ve acquired 30 companies over my career. I consider them friends. So for me getting access to capital to buy things isn’t an issue. I think there is a lot to be added to our portfolio. We’ve just added the PSA functionality. I think there are other things that we have to do in terms of documentation. I think there are some pieces in the security area that can be rounded out. I think there is a lot. My personal belief is mergers don’t work. I’d rather buy smaller things and adapt them into our model. A lot of the times you have a SaaS product, it’s sometimes just easier to build it than integrate it. A lot of this stuff isn’t that hard. It’s just getting the scale to do it. Between development in Minsk, Scotland and Boulder we have nine different development shops right now that all have different swim lanes to add new features. We have 500 people now, so it’s pretty good scale… And good opportunity.