Thurston Group-Dynascale M&A Forges New Type of MSP

For years, Dynascale CEO Igor Shalkevich has been looking to build what he calls a new kind of MSP. He can now execute that vision following Dynascale’s recent acquisition by Thurston Group, a private equity company.

Shalkevich’s plan is to create a full-service MSP that offers a high level of security and deploys fixed-price, hybrid private cloud services that are tied to co-location facilities and hyperscalers. The model, he said, is more efficient, secure, scalable and less expensive than what most MSPs offer today.

Dynascale’s Igor Shalkevich

“We want to leverage our team’s ability to fill in all the knowledge gaps through a litany of very complicated services,” Shalkevich said, adding that Dynascale plans to eventually provide Kubernetes management and a containerized approach to infrastructure. “There are shops a little bit like us, but no one’s really doing a Lego block approach to this kind of a service where all my servers are exactly the same and ready to go.”

Thurston Group-Dynascale: Vision of a New MSP Takes Shape

For its first acquisition under the Thurston Group umbrella, Dynascale, a cloud-centric MSP, plans to acquire a California-based MSP that specializes in high-level security. Shalkevich has a long relationship with the business and expects to close the deal within the next two months. That acquisition will more than double Dynascale’s headcount from 60 to about 130.

“That will give us the ability to do some high-level security evaluations on organizations and give them near-term, mid and future security analysis,” he said “We’re using all the tools available to help secure organizations, from their mobile phones to their desktops to their infrastructure. That includes annual penetration testing and everything else needed. We want to make sure we’re not just bringing the infrastructure piece, but also the security layer on top of it.”

This is the second MSP M&A deal this month that hinged on a strong security offering.

Shalkevich plans to buy one or two additional MSPs each year for the next two to three years. He’s also looking to buy several software companies. He said it’s too early in the process to disclose more information.

Dynascale is based in California, with a handful of its C-level execs and sales in and around Tennessee. The company started in 1999 with a focus on serving Hollywood-based “.orgs,” many of which are still clients. The MSP uses Switch colocation data centers in California and Nevada, and Equinix services in Dallas and further east, where Dynascale is looking to expand.

New Staff Makes Eastward Push

Dynascale’s David Closson

Shalkevich recently added  new salespeople to help with that push. He also hired David Closson as his CIO. Closson had been working as senior director overseeing the cloud, data center and other areas at ICANN, a not-for-profit that works on keeping the internet secure, stable and interoperable.

Years ago, Shalkevich happened to be working on the same job with Closson and was more than impressed with what he saw. He’s been trying to hire Closson ever since.

“There was a particular incident where he completely learned a whole new system within minutes; he wiped out the firmware and reconnected everything,” Shalkevich said. “Besides being a person who knows the entire network, the entire server infrastructure, the entire software, he’s also an incredible leader. He takes time to elevate the entire team to the next level.”

With Thurston Group’s capital behind him, Shalkevich hopes to do the same with his new MSP.

“It just seems like better way of delivering these services; really thinking about security, performance control and cost control for the (client),” he said. “And then finally wrapping it up with complete knowledge gap fillers. Wherever they’re inefficient, at no additional cost to them, we can just take a look at their diagrams and re-engineer everything to do what we know are the best practices in the market.”