Glackin Joins Cinven-Backed Nitel, Eyes MSP Partner Growth

Jim Glackin will lead the channel for Nitel as the Chicago-based technology services provider harnesses a private equity investment from Cinven.

Glackin, who is also based in the Chicago area, will work as executive vice president of channel sales for the company. Glackin is entering a newly created role at Nitel that focuses on the channel. The company recently promoted executive vice president of sales and marketing Mark Dickey, who previously oversaw channel, to chief revenue officer. Nitel drives approximately 40% of its revenue through wholesale and 60% through channel partners. Glackin is taking responsibility for the latter market route.

Jim Glackin

“We’ve never had a leader solely dedicated to channel, so this is a major investment by Nitel into the channel,” Glackin told Channel Futures. “It’s a significant investment to broaden our reach and commitment to the channel.”

New Role

Glackin said he’ll work to promote Nitel’s efforts to move beyond broadband aggregation and into cloud enablement, security and other managed solutions. He’ll work to identify and engage with new partners as well as expand existing relationships. One such area of new partners is MSPs. While Nitel will be doubling down on the “white-hot” traditional agent model, Glackin said he sees major opportunity to sell with MSPs.

“I think that the MSP channel, which has traditionally stayed out of selling the traditional products and services of this channel, are actually now looking to jump in with both feet,” he said.

However, Glackin said Nitel needs to work with MSPs in the way MSPs feel most comfortable.

“The key to engaging with the MSPs where we’ve traditionally failed in the traditional telecom channel is that we’ve tried to force the MSPs to operate the way we operate,” he said. “And if you really want to be successful in that space, you’ve got to be able to fit into the selling motion of the MSP.”

To that end, Glackin said Nitel is looking to engage with the traditional IT distributors. Glackin said he has already started reaching out to some of the top players.

He also said wants he wants to grow the channel on an international basis.

Nitel Investment

Nitel last November announced its acceptance of funding from London-based private equity firm Cinven. The firm said it was helping Nitel tackle a total addressable market of more than $28 billion. That comes from the vendor efforts in managed internet connectivity services (which includes SD-WAN) and managed security.

A couple of months after announcing the investment, Nitel announced that it had promoted Dickey to chief revenue officer and promoted Margi Shaw to CEO. Nitel founders Rick Stern and Ron Grason moved into board observer roles.

Scroll through the images above to read comments from partners and friends of Jim, as well as news of Nitel’s new DDoS mitigation offering.