Managed services at its core is is a relationship. Is. It is. And to know that they can count on us and they know that we’ll be taking accountability for our actions and for the things that we’re responsible for. Again, it’s weaved into our name. It’s weaved into the culture. Welcome back to Unraveling IT: Expert Tech Talks, where we explore the strategies, stories, and shakeups shaping the future of technology. I’m Brian Harmison, CEO of Corsica Technologies, and today’s episode is an exciting one. I’m joined by Jim Hertle, Chief Operating Officer of AccountabilIT, to talk about a major milestone in the managed services space, Corsica’s partnership with AccountabilIT. This move brings together two powerhouse teams with a shared mission, protecting, educating, and advancing businesses through smarter, more secure IT. We’ll dive into the story behind the deal, what it means for our clients, and how this partnership is set to define cybersecurity and manage services for the mid market enterprise space. Welcome, Jim. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for joining us today. It’d be great to start off with a little bit about the AccountabilIT story. Yeah. It goes it goes to the, the culture of who we are. Right? When the company was formed in terms of, you know, you can take the slang on AccountabilIT, but really accountability as a partner to our customers. Right? They know they can count on us. It’s kind of the tenant and throughout the, the culture of the people that we tried to hire throughout the organization to propagate that voice to our customers that, they can count on us and we’re accountable for the things that we provide services for so they can count on us. Yeah. That’s great. Mean, managed services at its core is a relationship. It is. It is. That’s a key element of it for sure. Yeah. That trust factor and to know that they can count on us and they know that we’ll be taking accountability for our actions and for the things that we’re responsible for. Again, it’s weaved into our name. It’s weaved into the culture And again, I’m sure we’ll talk about this, but the thing about Corsica, it’s very common. Right? That’s a common tenant in terms of providing managed services and that trusted partner relationship where we’re just not a vendor that they pay an invoice to every month. We’re part of their business. We’re part of their successes. We’re trying to help them out. Yeah. And, and that’s a great point. Do you wanna give a little bit of background on, you know, how Corsica and AccountabilIT got connected and really why partnership and, you know, this blending of the businesses is, is such a good fit. Yeah. It, it makes a lot of sense on a on a on a whole bunch of fronts. I, I think at its core, who Corsica is and who AccountabilIT are, they’re not very different in terms of the culture, the people, the mission, the objectives, the vision from, from a corporate and company perspective. And then you can correlate that to the types of services and the types of technologies that we deploy, very, very similar. Then the diversity of regions where we could play, where AccountabilIT is headquartered in Arizona, Corsica in in the Midwest. So we can now reach multiple clients. We can provide services across the nation rather seamlessly for those that require local presence and things of that nature, so we’re operating within the same time zones and that’s important to some of our customers. Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of customers, know, for both organizations since we’ve grown are multi site, multi region, mid sized businesses that need more geographical coverage and so a business serving them fits better. Yeah. It does. It it provides a lot of value to our customers to where they can continue to grow and scale and we could scale and grow with them. And and do it in a manner such that we’re providing the same value, if not more, to their business to help them scale and become more productive and successful in their businesses. Because as our customers go, we go, for example. Right? We want them to be as successful, we wanna be an enabler for them, even though some of our customers, IT is a necessary evil, right? That has to happen, right? But we believe in our heart that we can enable the the business to be successful and help them achieve their objectives. Right? So IT should be an enabler. And and again, going back to the Corsica theme and tenant, it it technology wise trying to instill customer success, right, is the core component to ensure that the customers are happy, that the services are up to par or exceeding their expectations so that there’s never a doubt as to what they need or when they need it. They could pick up a phone. We’re here to help them in any crisis or to help them grow, you know, as a strategic partner. So Jim, you’ve been with AccountabilIT, AIT, for quite a while, since the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey there and you’re the, the go forward COO for the combined business as well. So we’d love to hear a little bit about your vision Sure. For that. Sure. So CEO and founder of Chuck Vermillion, we’d worked together at another MSP called OneNeck IT Services, so I held a similar role there. And at the time when AccountabilIT was formed, we had a vision that we wanted to get back to the space, but a little bit more a little different than what OneNeck was in terms of hosting and managed services, more cloud based managed services and a focus on cyber security. Yeah. Which kind of was the genesis or the thesis of the company at the time. And, you know, as we’ve progressed and matured, we’ve gone through or AccountabilIT’s gone through some acquisitions, some, some M&A activities over the time until this point, strategically integrating those firms with a common vision and thesis of spreading out the geography, whether it was in the Southeast or in the Rocky Mountain area, acquiring companies and expanding the geo presence and regional presence for managed services and then scaling the platform, which in this particular instance is somewhat similar but a little bit different because technology, I believe, will play a key and vital role in the platform of the future. Yeah. Whether we leverage AI for ourselves as well as offer that to our customers, taking advantage of the technology transition to better automation. So these opportunities when companies come together present a really there’s things that both companies do really well that you can kind of bring together Yeah. And pick the the best of breed of whether it’s a process, a system, a tool, whatever it may be. So you get an opportunity to evaluate that and then you have legacy systems or tools that aren’t just meeting expectation, you have an opportunity to re-swizzle that, leverage new technology, so there’s a nice inflection point. And what that does, I find is that it makes the combined entity operate more efficiently, which can result in better service to our customers, more efficient processes, better resolutions, the things that our that our customers are looking for. So, you know, opportunities combined entity leveraging the forefront of technology, AI and automation on the back end, as well as what we can bring to our customers in terms of what their IT challenges are. I, I think that’s such a great point. It gives us an opportunity to, to maybe address some of the things that that we’ve let linger and And we see the strengths in the other organization. We can bring those together. That’s been really fun in Yeah. In this process so far as we’ve looked at some of the the strengths of both organizations and even the the different approach that maybe lets us expand what we can offer To our existing customer base. And, you know, that that makes me think of the the Microsoft partnership That AIT has. Can can you talk to me a little bit about what that looks like and and what some of the the advantages are maybe for for some of the the Corsica customers going forward? Yeah. So AccountabilIT, one of the initial strategies was to really dive into the Microsoft ecosystem. And we started with the security products and services. And when we had done that, we realized that we needed to skill up our staff. We had to commit to the channel. We had to learn about the products and services. One of the acquisitions that we had done had it kind of seeded a Microsoft practice, a company called ClearPoint Technologies, we had an MVP that is based still with AccountabilIT and with a new company that’s based in Arkansas. And he’s had an opportunity to participate in some product and services at Microsoft that allowed us to kind of create the palette of services that we wanted to choose from, from security services, cloud services, end user services. So we focused initially on the security services. So we went through accreditation within Microsoft, became a solution partner. We have a solution partner designation for three particular work streams within Microsoft. Okay. Focusing in on security. And within that, there’s four different specializations that allows us the opportunity with our expertise to help deploy some of the more advanced and common subscriptions and services within Microsoft. So Microsoft looks at us as a partner that’s a specialized partner that has expertise that Microsoft brings us into talks to customers. And other customers, we found where they have they’re already paying for some Microsoft subscriptions where they haven’t been able to exploit all the features and functionalities of those subscriptions or licenses, where we’ve come in and been able to educate them on what they can do. Okay. And really optimize. Yeah. Optimize some of the spend that they’re already doing. People are spending a lot of money on their licensing already with Microsoft. They might not realize all the features and functionalities there. So by unlocking those and presenting those back to the customers that they’re already paying for, brings immense value in right away. And it’s Yeah. Not a lot of time to try to take advantage of Yeah. And that’s a really high value service because the Microsoft subscription model’s not going anywhere. Right. So how do we get the most out of that? I I think that’s really good. And and Sentinel is another part of that. So so Microsoft’s security platform. Correct. Do do you wanna talk a little bit about, you know, where you see that being adopted and and what some of those those use cases are? Yeah. So so Sentinel is is Microsoft SIEM product. They have a huge security suite of products and Sentinel is is their SIEM. And what we see happening in the landscape now is, you know, many, many years ago when, you know, in the 2015, 2016, a decade ago that there was a philosophy around best of breed technologies. Yeah. Whether it was for Yeah. A lot of mix and Yeah. Content filtering Yeah. Or different kinds of things. And what we’re seeing in the landscape in terms of security is that people are starting to leverage best of suite in that terminology. So Microsoft has a suite of security products and there’s other security vendors out there, know, CrowdStrike, great platform. Yeah. Right? And they’re starting to model, you know, they’re integrating a scene with an EDR solution and all of these products to try to develop this best of suite approach. So we’re seeing that landscape and with Sentinel, Sentinel being the seam of Microsoft, you know, it’s it’s seamlessly integrated with their M365 tenants and identity and Azure and all of the things that are people that are inside the Microsoft ecosystem, they kind of are now the security, telemetry and fidelity is all there Yeah. Within the ecosystem and that’s all surfaced up and that allows Sentinel to consume that. So it’s the product is matured, they work on multiple cloud connectors, so it’s cloud agnostic. People have workloads in in AWS or in Google, you know, the connectors are seamless such that they can ingest into the seam. So Microsoft’s done a really good job to try to develop the seam to be agnostic, but it works really well within the Microsoft ecosystem. Yeah. I think that’s great. And the best of suite concept, we’re seeing, you know, really across technology. We’re seeing these businesses acquire adjacent technologies Correct. Start to build their own suite. And and I think one of the the exciting things that that we have now is we we have that Microsoft Toolkit. That’s not always the right one for everyone. That’s correct. And so we can offer the full suite of Microsoft tools, which is not something Corsica did previously. Or we can can offer another suite of tools that maybe fits the business goals a little bit differently. And having those options really let us tailor those solutions for the the vertical, for the size of business, and for those business cases. I’m, I’m really excited about that because I, I think that brings the best of both worlds together. I, I completely agree. I, I think that that’s one of the things that AccountabilIT rate when we talked briefly about the, the combined entity and and some of the pros and offering some of the services AccountabilIT, some of the customers, that particular security offering didn’t quite fit well. Right? And and as you try to, you know, try to force fit that in there, it’s just not as seamless as possible. And I know that Corsica has a nice suite of products, right, that fit within that customer base that I think could be really bring a lot of value to some of the existing AccountabilIT customers, whereas some of the enterprise or different kinds of solutions could help out some of the Corsica. So that marriage and that fit is is really good. So that is Yeah. A really good component in terms terms of the combined entity going forward. Yeah. Yeah. I I think so too. It’s it’s, you know, geography, it’s technology, it’s expertise, lot of opportunities for our existing clients. And when I think about, you know, who we wanna work with, you know, we also had very similar target customers. So, you know, we’re going after the same the same groups. You know, one one area that AccountabilIT has a lot of vertical expertise in is is the AEC industry. So there’s an opportunity I think there around, you you know, the way that an AEC firm operates that really, you know, makes us a a really good fit. Do you want you wanna talk about that a little bit? Yeah. You you know, I guess there was some initial strategic push towards that industry. And then organically, it kind of fell that way, where we became, you know, a lot of those particular clients were in the Microsoft ecosystem. Right. Have, there’s some regulatory or compliance requirements and there They work with governments a Yeah. Work with yeah. Their contracts. City, county. Yeah. That’s correct. So there’s some requirements for some of the high end government clouds from Microsoft. There’s not a lot of partners out there that can provide the level of service that Yes. Yep. That can adopt that. So our portfolio of services matched their need organically. Right? It wasn’t we, we kind of thrusted towards that, but then as we kind of got together, we said, oh, this is a, a really good natural fit. And then it started exploding through word-of-mouth, through from some conferences. We have some of our greatest clients that are, you know, within that vertical that are, you know, evangelists for AccountabilIT that will be evangelists for, for the combined enterprise. Yeah. And the technology stack is really good. It’s a good fit. We understand how they conduct their business. Now, we have a a pretty big base of it. We know what their needs are. We can anticipate that so new customers that come on board, could already solve problems that they don’t even know exist based on our all of our experience and and know how within the space. Yeah. That’s great. That’s an area that that we see growing as well. You know, these firms are getting larger. They have a large geographic footprint typically as as they serve multiple cities and counties, and and they like to be present in each of those. Right. So that’s great. Do you see any other, you know, kinda common verticals between the organizations? I I think manufacturing, we have Yeah. A bunch of manufacturing entities at various different scales. We have some some of our largest customers, our manufacturing companies. Yeah. And also in health care. I I think health care and IT and security is is another really big vertical for us to stay in in close contact with the applications that healthcare providers provide in, our expertise and guidance around that, the security controls, the day to day administration. Yeah. And and talking that language, whether it’s with our service desk or our security teams, they have a comfort. We’re used to operating within that realm. So I think those are, you know, healthcare and manufacturing are really, really important. And continue to to Yeah. Growing industries in in the regions in which we’re operating in. Yeah. Growing and and seeing an increase in compliance even within manufacturing. Yes. Most manufacturing companies have requirements from their customers about how they need to handle things like cyber security. And that’s an emerging theme as we talk, which is, you know, the companies that that fit best aren’t the ones necessarily that have IT because they have to. They they really look at IT strategically and and it’s a key part of the way their business operates And that fits our our standards well Yeah. Also. Yeah. And and I, you know, previously, you had mentioned, you know, inner fit and our culture is that sometimes some of our customers are all I’ll say not in customers yet, but prospects. Right? They’ll be looking for solution in in through our conversations and through the company, we might not be the best fit, and that’s okay. And and customers, they appreciate that. Yeah. They don’t want us to be everything to everybody. We we’ll do this and we do it really well. And there’s a laundry list of customers and clients that support that. And I think that’s how we grow through our relationships. Right? Yeah. And if we don’t wanna be somebody that we’re not. And I think that that’s really important. I see that a, you know, from you down throughout the organization from the people I talked to you that, hey, we’re really good at this and our customers really count on us for this, but something comes up, we’re not afraid to tell them that, yeah, we’ll do everything we we don’t wanna do cause we them to fail. Yeah. Totally. And and, you know, I see a lot of managed services firms that wanna just say, we’ll make your wildest dreams come true. And Yeah. The reality is they can’t. Right. But what we can do is the the things that we know and can do really repeatable and really well. And for us as a managed services company, that’s the way we have to look at the world. We have to look at it in terms of what can we do on a repeated basis with high quality and get really good results. And that was one of the things that that excited me about this as well is we both view the world that way Yes. And that we wanna be really you know, how do you become an expert? Well, by doing the same thing and doing that over and over again. Yeah. And that’s a good opportunity because it also brings some integrity to that sales process. Yes. Yes. We want we want businesses to work with us because we’re the right fit, not just because we said yes to to hope and a dream. We’re not a transaction. Right? This is gonna be a relationship. We wanna make sure that our customers business is successful and that IT is truly an enabler to that. In order to do that, we need to have the integrity to tell them what we can and what we can’t do and what we’re really good at. So I think that’s good. And the other thing that I think is, you know, when we look at the combined entity is so far the people. Right? I mean, that that’s what kind of makes us go. Yeah. Right? So so knowing all the people and my interactions with the people at Corsica, it’s it’s been great. Yeah. The the people are very open, willing to you know take technology, willing to look at things with different lens, looking to try to make things better, all with the tenant of, hey, how can our customers be happier? Yeah. How can we provide better service and all of that stuff? So, you know, not only having the strategy and the vision, but seeing the back end support from the people all the way out through the systems, very important. I agree. That’s very that’s very exciting. And and seeing how people are aligned right from the leadership down into some of our engineers and and technicians that are providing the day to day support. Yeah. And, and ultimately, we, we don’t have a, you know, we don’t have a tangible widget that we We, you know, what, what we’re selling is that relationship and it starts with our people and you know, I, I firmly believe that our customers work with us because of the people. Yes. Their relationship matters at the business level as well, but we have to have people that are culturally aligned and and that care about improving the quality of somebody’s day and and work experience through technology. Yep. It’s it’s exciting to see our teams come together with that common goal. Yes. Yeah. That’s great. Well, Jim, thanks for for being here today. I’m sure it won’t be the last time that we’ve talked with you. Thanks for having me, Brian. I’m excited. I think it’s a, it’s a great opportunity. It’s a really good combination of a bunch of different people that all have common goals, so I think it’s, you know, it’s gonna be a lot of success. Forward to it. Me too. Thanks, Jim. Thank you. Thanks again to Jim for joining on this episode and sharing his perspective on this exciting new chapter. It’s clear that the fusion of Corsica and AccountabilIT is more than just a business move. It’s a strategic leap towards smarter, more secure IT partnerships. To our listeners, if today’s conversation sparked ideas or questions about your own tech strategy, don’t let them sit idle. Subscribe to the podcast, share this episode with your team, and leave us a review. It helps more leaders discover the show. I’m Brian Harmison, and this has been Unraveling IT: Expert Tech Talks. Until next time, remember, technology moves fast. Your strategy should move faster.
