Amplix CEO Joe DeStefano Takes Chairman Role; Successor Named

A changing of the guard is taking place at Gemspring-backed technology advisor Amplix, as channel pioneer Joe DeStefano steps back from his CEO role.

DeStefano will now serve as executive chairman of the New England-based company, putting his focus on customer relationships, potential acquisition targets and strategic initiatives. Dan Gill has moved from president to CEO of Amplix. Adam Rennert, who came over to Amplix through its acquisition of Inflow, fills Gill's president role.

Amplix's Joe DeStefano

"I have no doubt that Dan, Adam and the entire Amplix team are poised for great success under their leadership," DeStefano wrote on LinkedIn. "As Amplix continues to grow as a thought and industry leader in our space, I will be serving as an advisor to our executive team, leveraging my many years of experience to support and guide them. Amplix has accomplished so much in its short history, becoming one of the largest platforms in the industry. We also have the sophistication of operators who truly understand what our employees and customers need and want."

Amplix's Dan Gill

A Builder in the Channel

People in the advisory (agent) channel know DeStefano well for his work building Presidio's carrier services practice and forming his own agency, ROI Communications. ROI Communications ultimately merged with two other New England-based advisors, with Gemspring's investment, to form Amplix.

Related:Amplix Acquisition No. 8 Brings in Twin Lights Group

Prior to the merger, DeStefano had built a track record working sourcing IT and telecom solutions from large vendors, including Comcast and AT&T. ROI in 2018 became the 15th platinum sales partner with tech services distributor Intelisys.

"There was a 13-year run leading ROI to being one of the top 1% of TAs in the country and one of the two or three largest in the Northeast," said Gill, who worked as president of ROI prior to the merger. "And he has done an amazing job taking Amplix from the start to where we are today."

Gill said DeStefano will stay with the business but was ready for a change into the chairman role.

"He'll help us continue to help us drive new business and M&A, but step out of some of the other day-to-day grind of being a CEO. We're incredibly grateful and proud of everything Joe's done and what he did to get us here," Gill said.

New Amplix CEO Looking Ahead

Since its initial investment and merger in late 2022, Amplix has been making moves in personnel and M&A, as well as internal builds.

It has purchased a number of companies connected to the technology advisor (agent) model. By Channel Futures' count, Amplix has bought eight companies. Gill said Amplix has been participating in targeted M&A, seeking businesses that are "additive to our value to end users and our capabilities."

Related:Agent Merger: PE-Backed New England Technology Advisor Team-Up Forms Amplix

"Not just additive to revenue and things of that nature, but really to expand what we're able to do and allow us to get deeper with the customers," Gill said. "That's very much a focus for me going forward. I'm very focused on, how do we continue to grow and scale but not lose the identity that we have?"

A highlight of the last year for Gill is the acquisition and integration of InflowCX, which consulted, sourced, implemented and managed contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) and related customer experience (CX) platforms.

"Being able to speak to a full life-cycle support model for a CX journey for a company is really important. This is where their revenue lives. This is where they touch their customers, internal and external. It's so critically important,' Gill said. "And being able to have that transformational consulting upfront, being able to run that great playbook around selection and evaluation of technologies, but then continue to bridge them to their outcomes with really deep implementation services and managed services around tuning and optimization post-implementation has given us the ability to really take somebody through that full life cycle."

Related:What Is a Technology Advisor? Understanding the Role, Scope and Size of the TA Model

CCaaS and CX are one of many areas into which the technology advisor community has expanded. The agent sales model of technology advisors for decades applied to voice and data providers in the telecommunications space. But agents are now helping customers with cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and business applications. Amplix in late 2023 added Dan Frasco as its vice president of solutions engineering, security and infrastructure to shore up its in-house technical expertise.

"We're seeing in our channel that CRM and things in the Microsoft stack are making their way into the portfolios. We're seeing more ability to bring services and vendors to bear for our customers in those areas [and] certainly those are also logical extensions of the CX universe. We're seeing more and more there, and we're starting to help customers in those arenas. We're seeing other trusted advisors do the same," Gill said.