MSP SUCCESS SPOTLIGHT
Founded : 2000
Headquartered : Boston , Massachusetts Geographical Markets Served : U . S . YoY Percentage of Revenue Growth : 60 % Top Growth Indicator ( for that time period ):
Acquisitions ( BizCompass , InfoHedge ) CEO / President : Rob Stephenson
COMPANY THRIVE NETWORKS
MSP Success Magazine sat down with Rob Stephenson , CEO of Thrive Networks in Boston , to talk about what led to the success of MSPs in 2018 .
MSM : What metrics do you use to measure your business and why ?
Our No . 1 metric is client satisfaction . Every
RS : client ticket includes a smile-back survey that gives us a good understanding of how we ’ re servicing our clients and how good a job we ’ re doing for them . Next , we measure the percentage of next-generation managed services that we sell — things like the cloud , cybersecurity , advanced wide-area networking , SD-WAN , and network management . We ’ re in the process of transforming our business to be more efficient and more responsive to our customers through these services . And then , of course , last but not least is our gross margins .
MSM : What was the most important lesson you had to learn to kickstart your business growth ?
We quickly learned that in order to grow and scale
RS : our business , we had to fundamentally change the managed services model . Most MSPs do a lot of breakfix work , selling hardware and maintenance of that equipment . That ’ s a very difficult model to scale at a high level . Instead , Thrive has moved toward a next-generation managed services path where we build out and manage client infrastructure in our own VMware and Hyper-V Cloud environments , along with Azure , and we then deliver SLA-driven services to our client base . We own the equipment , spec it out , and manage vendor relationships . Everything is uniform , making it much easier and more efficient to scale and provide exemplary service to our customers .
MSM : So , this next-gen managed services model has been the secret to your success ?
Yes . Absolutely . We ’ ve invested a lot in Thrive Cloud .
RS : We ’ ve made multiple million-dollar-plus investments in our Boston , New Jersey , and Dallas data centers with top-tier storage , compute , cybersecurity , SD-WAN , DDoS , and other areas . Thrive now has seven data-center nodes across the country — the latest two are about to go live in Las Vegas and Chicago during Q2 .
MSM : What has been your biggest challenge this past year ?
There ’ s no competition : Our No . 1 challenge is getting
RS : our acquired businesses and new employees to understand and embrace the next-gen managed services model . It can be hard to teach old dogs new tricks , but once they see how we ’ re able to scale and grow at a high velocity and how we can improve response times for our clients , they buy into it . The key is training and education .
18 | MSP SUCCESS • VOLUME 1