May 22, 2025 • 37 mins
In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Vinod Paul, President of Managed Services at Align, to explore how a bold decision to focus exclusively on one vertical—financial services—transformed the company from a solid MSP into a global leader.
Vinod shares the behind-the-scenes story of walking away from millions in revenue, standardizing their tech stack, and saying no to clients who didn’t fit—all in pursuit of scalable, high-value growth. The result? Align grew from 75 to 300 employees, expanded into 31 countries, and became a trusted name in one of the most demanding industries in the world.
If you're an MSP leader grappling with growth, client fit, or the pressure to do it all, this conversation is packed with real-world strategies, lessons in verticalization, and insights on scaling without compromise.
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
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'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One, two, three, four .
We invest as much time intounderstanding the vertical as we
do in understanding the MSPspace and technology.
We're out there understandingthe business needs of our
clientele and understandingwhat's the future business needs
of our clientele.
We understand what are thebusiness processes and the
(00:21):
problems that we have to solveand we leverage technology to
enable our clients to overcomeany business challenge that they
have.
For us, it's absolutely been anenabler for our success factor.
We've been able to grow Fastforward to today.
We have clients across 24states and 31 countries and
we've been able to scale withouthaving to throw body after body
(00:43):
after body.
We've leveraged technology toscale that business.
Welcome to Now, that's.
It stories of MSP success, wherewe dive into the journeys of
some of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
services into the thrivingsector it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
In 2016, vinod Paul walked into a cigar bar in New
York City with a bold idea whatif they stopped trying to be
everything to everyone andinstead became the very best at
serving one market financialservices?
At the time, align was doingwell Not great, but well.
(01:21):
So that night, everythingchanged.
Vinod and the leadership teammade a decision that would
define the next chapter of theircompany.
They'd walk away from legacyclients and they'd give up on
millions in revenue, depreciatethose services that weren't
profitable and, in return, builda platform so focused, so
(01:42):
scalable and so secure that itwould take them from scattered
to global.
Today, align is one of the mostrecognized names in the
financial services IT space, andVinod Paul is at the center of
them all.
Welcome to the Now that's itpodcast, vinod.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Such a pleasure we like to always start this
session off with.
We like to call it the way backmachine.
So, before Align and beforeyour success in financial
services, what first drew you totechnology?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So I had an interesting upbringing, right
when I went to school.
I actually went to school forbiological sciences, believe it
or not.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And with the track of okay, maybe I'm eventually
going to be going to medicine.
And during school, you know onething fortunate that I was was,
you know it was during thedot-com era, pre-dot-com, right
1991, going into school, thestudents were just getting their
first email addresses.
And you know, technology wasexciting, the world of Bill
(02:46):
Gates was happening and at thattime if you could have any
skills of turning on a computeryou had an opportunity.
And at the time I had a reallygood friend that was a year
ahead of mine and graduated andhe started work for a hot
technology company called AlphaTechnologies.
And you know, in my senior yearof college, you know he was
(03:10):
talking to me a lot and said hey, why don't you come here for a
year?
And you know, complete shift towhat I thought I was going to
be doing.
But he gave me an opportunityto interview with the
organization and they actuallypart one of the interview was
they gave you a test of, youknow, just your aptitude in
technology.
And during college I alwaysplayed around with technology
and, you know, took the test andpassed it really well and they
(03:32):
said great, you have a job, doyou want to?
You know you could start, youknow, a week after graduation.
So I took that route and wasfortunate enough to get involved
with this organization.
That day three of working therethey sent me off to AT&T Lucent
Technologies, and week one Iwas doing a mail migration from
(03:55):
Microsoft Mail into MicrosoftExchange.
So at the heart of it, I had aunique start in this industry
where I was an engineer firstand got to work with some of the
brightest in the world.
I was working at the Bell Labsin New Jersey, you know, an
organization that had 6,000employees of highly technical
(04:17):
individuals and got exposed to alot of technology very quickly.
And from there thisorganization brought me to Tyco
Submarine Systems, which isGlobal Crossing, and from there
I went to Pegna PutnamPublishing.
And when I went to Pegna PutnamPublishing I had an opportunity
to get a taste of working inNew York City.
And once I got that taste Isaid all right, I love this
(04:40):
industry, love the city and wantto be able to stay here and
started looking for anopportunity to stay in New York
City.
And that's when I got exposedto my first financial services
firm and never looked back since.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's great Big city guy.
I guess I should have knownthat about you.
But I get the occasional tripto NYC and I always say I'm so
glad I get to go back to thesmall town.
So you either are a big cityguy or you aren't.
It's in my DNA.
Good for you.
So you've had what many wouldcall, I guess, a hybrid career
Small company energy, but bigcompany scale, right.
(05:18):
I looked at your sort ofbackground.
You talked about a few of thoseplaces.
How do you think that's sort ofshaped the way that you lead
and think today?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So, absolutely, I've had the opportunity to work at
very large organizations, workwith some of the greatest
financial firms in the world,but at the heart of it, I've
always worked at a smallbusiness and one of the things
that's compelled me during myentire career has been the fact
that a small business allows youto follow your entrepreneurial
spirit, and that's the bottomline part of my DNA.
(05:49):
I love trying new things.
Have I failed during my career?
Yes, absolutely, but I've alsohad the opportunity to succeed
and that's because of the teamsthat I've been able to work with
and it's allowed me to comealong in my career to where I am
now, and I've had a lot of funworking with large organizations
(06:10):
but being able to do it from anopportunity where a small
business has been able toapproach a problem and fix it
for the clientele that we workwith.
So it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's great.
You mentioned to us that you'veknown the owner of Align for
over 25 years.
Yes, but what ultimatelyconvinced you to join the
company?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So what I love about Jim Dooling and Align and the
rest of the management team atAlign is they are entrepreneurs,
and Jim started Align 40 yearsago and has built an incredible
organization.
Fast forward to today.
(06:51):
We're on the leading edge ofsome of the exciting things
going on in the data centerworld, as well as the managed
services world, and what reallyattracted me to Jim was the fact
that he gave me a platform tobe able to expand on, and
Alliance always had a greatreputation, and one of the
hardest things in this world isbeing a technology company that
(07:11):
has a good reputation and, atthe end of the day, align had.
Before I joined Align eightyears ago, they had never failed
at a project.
Their clients love Align and Iknew that that would give me a
great foundation to bounce andjump off of, along with the rest
of the team, to build themanaged service provider that we
(07:33):
are now today.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
You talk about the reputation.
That was obviously a pro, butwhat was sort of the state of
Align when you joined eightyears ago?
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So Align had had two iterations of a managed service
provider before I joined and Ithink that what was smart of Jim
and the management team was torealize that you always have to
keep changing your solution,evolving your solution.
(08:06):
Going to that cigar bar with Jim, what I understood is Align had
actually a couple of thingsthat they really hadn't tapped
into which I thought there wasan incredible commercial
opportunity to leverage.
The first thing was Align was atier one Microsoft Cloud
Solutions provider and one ofthe first to really figure that
that's really important to corebusiness offering.
The second was that they had agreat cybersecurity offering,
(08:27):
and one thing that wasinteresting was I saw from afar
that Align had a lot ofdifferent clients across a
couple of different verticalsand when me and Jim sat down we
talked about hey, I thinkthere's an opportunity to focus
all this energy into onevertical and I think the results
can be that we can grow thisbusiness through partnerships
(08:50):
with the existing clientele thatare financial service firms,
build upon that, build thatfoundation and, more importantly
, build a stack of technologywhat we call the line IT suite
today into a platform thatscales and be able to do it in a
way that we don't have to throwlabor at all our problems, but
instead leverage the vertical,leverage, the technology that we
(09:11):
built and be able to innovateduring that time.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I love that story about the cigar bar.
I feel like every company hassomething like that.
Maybe it isn't as glamorous asa beautiful cigar bar in New
York City, but that conversationthat you had, you know, in the
back of your mind you felt veryconfidently that going all in on
financial services was theright direction.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Why was that Absolutely so.
I've been fortunate.
For the past 20 years I'veworked at two different MSPs.
The MSP before that also wasfocused hyper-focused in on the
financial services industry.
So what's interesting about thefinancial services industry is
they're results-driven right,and my primary clients today are
the top hedge funds of theworld private equity
(09:56):
institutional family offices.
Interesting enough, anotherside set of clients that we
support also is the serviceprovider community around there.
Set of clients that we supportalso is the service provider
community around there, and youknow, with that industry, what
we've found is financialservices with the results-based
deliveries that they have tomake to their clientele.
(10:17):
They want uptime, they wantgreat client service, they want
high touch, and I knew that wasan opportunity for us to build
on.
At the end of the day, ourclients rely on us to be a part
of their business.
We're a partner, we're not avendor, and we've been able to
demonstrate to our clientelethat we are that partner because
(10:37):
we're helping them withoperational due diligence, we're
helping them deal and navigatewith the regulatory challenges
of the world, but also we areconstantly innovating our
solution.
So it's not just, oh, we'regoing to deliver you a great
Microsoft platform, it's oh,copilot's coming out.
How can you leverage that tomake your business smarter?
Oh, there's a new cybersecuritychallenge that's happening
(10:58):
across the world.
How can we enable you to beprotected, to keep your clients
safe, to keep yourself safe andalso, most importantly, leverage
technology as an enabler fortheir business?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I think that's so fascinating, vinod, you guys
were ahead of the times at thetime, right, that's sort of the
future of the MSP space, talkingabout business outcomes, and
you were doing this years agobecause you knew that space so
well and you know how thetechnology could affect that.
So, obviously, in retrospect,looking back hindsight 2020,
great decision.
But that pivot came with sometough choices.
(11:37):
Right, you deprecated yourprivate cloud.
You told some clients theyweren't a good fit anymore.
What was maybe one of thehardest, what was the hardest
part of that pivot?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You know I'll I'll go back to um.
It absolutely was was hardbecause when you know, when you
have a business that's doingexpander revenue and you've had
clients be a part of that tilluntil some point, it's hard to
make the decision point of, okay, I'm going to completely upend
the model.
And you know, till that point.
Align was always worked withfinancial services but had not
(12:11):
necessarily focused in on onlythe alternative financial
services market.
So the management team kudos tothem, most importantly Jim
Dooling, because it was a harddecision to go to some of those
clients and say this isn't agood marriage for us anymore.
But at the end of the day, jimhad the vision and so did the
rest of the supporting membersto understand, you know, what
(12:33):
these clients aren't asprofitable as what we've been
able to build today has become.
More importantly, we've beenable to deliver and develop
great relationships with ourclientele and I think it's
because of the vertical thatwe've chosen.
It's a difficult vertical,absolutely.
(12:53):
Do our clients expect the best?
Absolutely.
Do they expect high touch, highvalue?
Absolutely.
But I think that ourorganization, especially our
staff, they care about thisindustry.
We understand the ins and outof it.
We understand the serviceprovider community.
We understand all the nuancesthat go along with running
(13:15):
technology for high net worthindividuals, and we've been able
to succeed on that.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
One of the hardest things that I see MSPs either do
or don't do is saying goodbyeto that bad revenue, like making
the decision that not everydollar that comes in is a good
dollar.
You felt very confidently that,yes, revenue is going to dip
but we're going to rebound.
Why was that?
Was it your experience in theMSP space for as long as it was?
(13:42):
How did you know the future?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Absolutely so.
I was a big believer that if wecould build a platform that's
scalable, that it would have thesnowball effect and absolutely
the world that we focus in onthe clientele that we support.
Everyone knows each other.
Your reputation is absolutelythe most important aspect of
(14:09):
your business.
We've been able to deliver upona great chief financial officer
community, chief complianceofficer community.
We've understood the businessproblems and that resonates with
our clientele.
It is great to get the number ofinbound calls that we do,
because some of our competitorshave up to 75 individuals that
(14:31):
are doing sales.
When we share with us thatreally there's one person at our
organization that does salesfull-time and the rest of us do
it as a part-time job on top oftheir full-time job.
It surprises individuals, butwe've been able to leverage
those relationships and we'vemade our clientele part of that
(14:52):
sales community.
Because they're partners, theywant to be able to tell their
best friend oh, we use Align andwe're very proud of the fact
that they helped us withoperational due diligence.
Interesting enough also, we'vealso leveraged the service
provider community that wesupport to be an extension of
our sales team Because thinkabout it they need to keep the
(15:13):
data of their clients secure.
They need to have a greattechnology system to interact
with their clientele and ifthey're using Align as that
platform, they can share thatpositive experience on a
day-to-day basis.
That's highly powerful for usand our clientele.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So one of the things you did something that I see
very successful in the MSP spaceyou verticalized right.
You had this vision.
We're going to focus on thisindustry.
We're going to walk away fromthe rest.
I actually just spoke to apartner just about an hour ago
that did the exactly same thingin the accounting firm right,
and so they found something thatworked for them.
(15:51):
But there's a lot of MSP ownersthat might be fearful to sort
of niche down or focus on onething.
What sort of advice would yougive to an MSP owner like that?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So my advice to them would be it is not high risk,
high reward.
I would say.
You're investing in your futurefor a positive outcome is how I
would frame it to them right.
So for us as an organization, weinvest as much time into
understanding the vertical as wedo in understanding the MSP
(16:26):
space and technology.
So it's just as important, ifnot more important.
So we are out there at everyfinancial services conference.
We're out there understandingthe business needs of our
clientele and understandingwhat's the future business needs
of our clientele.
We understand what are thebusiness processes and the
problems that we have to solveand we leverage technology to
(16:48):
enable our clients to overcomeany business challenge that they
have.
So you know just one exampleright, there are a lot of
regulatory requirements for ourclientele.
There are cybersecuritybarriers that they have to make
sure are not crossed.
They have to make sure theyhave disaster recovery, business
continuity.
Those are all must-haves.
But take it a step further.
They need to pass operationaldue diligence.
(17:11):
That means a potential investorwho might write them a check is
going to come in and do anexamination of their technology
footprint and make sure thatthey have the controls that they
say they do in place and makesure they'll actually go and do
exercise to make sure thetechnology is in place as well.
We've become an important aspectof that and we've been able to
(17:32):
leverage that to enable them tobe successful.
So I would tell any businessowner just to get back to the
original point that youmentioned is don't think of it
as high risk and possibly areward, but more.
I'm investing for a guaranteedsuccess in my business.
For us it's absolutely been anenabler for our success factor.
(17:53):
We've been able to grow Fastforward to today.
We have clients across 24states and 31 countries and
we've been able to scale withouthaving to throw body after body
after body.
We've leveraged technology toscale that business.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's great.
Let's talk about the growth.
So from 75 to 300 employeesfrom clients all over different
industries to 100% financial,from high 300s to number 31 in
the MSP 501, congratulations onthat.
Is there one thing inparticular that sort of moved
that hockey puck the directionthat it went, or is it a couple
(18:28):
of things?
I don't think it's one thing inparticular that sort of moved
that hockey puck the directionthat it went, or is it a couple
of things?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I don't think it's one thing, but I think it's.
If you think about you knowwhat are the core pillars that
we run our business on.
The first one is you know and Ithink business owners often
forget this it's hard to win anew client right.
It's harder to maintain themand keep them as a client.
So we put a lot of emphasis onclient retention.
(18:53):
Our clients have become ourpartners and it's really
important for us to keep them onas partners, and that helps out
and creates good outcomes.
Next is new client acquisition.
Think about how that rollsright into that.
Another pillar that's reallyimportant to us is innovation,
constant innovation.
So we created a line IT suitein 2017.
(19:17):
And if you fast forward totoday, the line IT suite has
innovated so much.
Right, we've reiterated thatproduct, we've made it better,
we've enhanced it for thebenefit of the clientele, and
one thing we've been able to dois do it in a predictable model.
So most of our services aredriven on a per user, per month
(19:38):
basis.
We were one of the firstmanaged service providers to do
that in the space.
We upended the solution becausemost MSPs they'll charge XYZ
for one service, they'll chargelabor for another.
They'll charge licensing asanother bucket, and you know
your invoices are going up anddown, up and down peaks and
valleys and it's a complaint wehear a lot when we're doing
(19:59):
takeaway business.
We've been absolutely able todeliver a predictable IT model
while at the same timeinnovating and delivering good
services.
So I would tell you, thosethings as a foundation have
helped us, but also constantlyimproving customer service,
having that white glove service,which is hard to do, right, but
(20:22):
we've been able to do it withthe pod structure that we have.
I think a lot of managedservice providers underestimate
the power of a good clientrelationship manager and we've
been able to build a great teamthat's been able to do that.
Another, I think, absolutelysuccess factor for us has been
(20:43):
we developed a platform and wedo not deviate from that
platform.
So we can configure theplatform for your business needs
, but we will not customize.
So one example you know, justfoundationally speaking, we are
complete Microsoft shop.
If someone comes to us and saysI want to use G Suite or be on
Gmail or, you know, I want tohave XYZ in Amazon, it's not a
(21:08):
good fit for us.
I will also say you know, thepower of no is strong right.
So if a client comes to us andsays you know, we want to take
half the product or we want tonot take cybersecurity solutions
as part of your offering, we'llactually say you're not a good
fit for us and that's helped usbecause, at the end of the day,
(21:28):
we want to keep our clients safe.
We want to keep them all in thesame platform because it helps
us support them.
We're not learning new systemsevery day and it also helps us
to scale the business.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
It just shows your experience in the MSP space.
The decisions you've made, thechanges you've made are
foundational MSP maturity steps.
You've focused on an industryyou standardized.
You said no.
I actually had a conversationwith a partner earlier and I
said if you don't say no, youwon't grow.
(22:03):
And I'm like you're going totrademark that and I'm like, but
that power for you to be ableto say that's not the right fit,
that's not the client we'regoing to go after.
If you're not going to takewhat we believe right, we're the
experts.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Then you're not a good fit for us.
How hard was that?
Listen, the sales part of you.
It's hard, absolutely it's hardto say no to an opportunity
that's going to bring yourevenue.
But fortunately I work with amanagement team that is
incredible.
And I think another successfactor to our business is we are
rowing the boat in the samedirection.
Our chief operating officer,our managing director of sales,
(22:41):
every one of my managers atAlign, the you know the
individuals running our NOC, theindividuals running our service
desk, our project managementteam we are all rowing the boat
in the same direction and that'shugely powerful and me saying
no, and you know my colleaguessaying no to the wrong
opportunities.
That trickles down to the restof the team because they know
(23:03):
that we are supporting them andthey know that we have their
back to make sure that no one'scutting a corner.
We're going to make their liveseasier at the end of the day
from a support functionality.
And it's been hugely powerfulfor us.
And you know it's exciting whenwe win a new client.
We, you know we send thatmessage out to the whole team
and you know everyone's on board, everyone's like excited about
(23:25):
it, um, even all the way down toour interns that come on board.
You know it's a, you know, thiscoming summer we're excited.
We have a class of eight internscoming on board as a managed
service.
It's unique because we'reexposing them to an incredible
market of financial services but, more importantly, to a great
industry.
You've probably heard the statthe managed services industry is
(23:48):
going towards a trilliondollars this coming year.
I absolutely believe that,because think about every small
to medium business.
They're not going to run IT ontheir own, and even enterprises
now they're not going to run ITon their own.
There are aspects that theyhave to leverage a managed
service provider to besuccessful at, and we've been
able to leverage all thosevariables in the industry and
(24:11):
use it to leverage growth forourselves.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
That's great, all right.
You guys are absolutely cookingright now.
Things are really really well.
But was there ever a pointwhere you looked at you looked
at the in the mirror or whateverand said, boy, this might not
work.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So, listen, uh, maybe it's a little bit of arrogance,
but, uh, you know, I, uh, I wasa believer from day one and
fortunately I have an incredibleteam that I've worked with and
they were all believers day oneand we had support from the
management team.
Was it hard?
(24:47):
Yeah, absolutely it was hard.
Were there days where we'relike, wow, we've made a hard
decision, we got rid of payingclients that were outside of the
vertical.
Why do we do that?
Our profitability is going togo down before it goes back up.
Those are hard days, but we knewthat we could have an effect on
(25:08):
the organization where, if wehit the model the right way, we
could build upon thatreoccurring revenue and, more
importantly, we could build asustainable future for the
company.
And, thankfully, with all thatsupport and the believers I'll
go back to the believers thatbelieved in the model and knew
that we could scale there was aday when the snowball started to
(25:31):
get bigger and that was theexciting day, right?
Was it hard when the snowballwas getting small and you
thought it was all going to turnto water?
Yes, absolutely.
But we've been fortunate thatwe were able to show that
snowball effect and grow theorganization and we built a
sustainable future for ourorganization.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
That's awesome, vinod .
I tell you what I've seenthousands, hundreds of thousands
of MSPs.
Something that really stood outabout Align was your brand.
You guys have you said itearlier.
The financial industry knowswho Align is.
You personally drive thego-to-market strategy right.
(26:09):
You're involved in themarketing, you're involved in
client relationships.
How do you manage that todaywith everything else you have on
your plate?
And what do you believe aresome things that leaders should
never delegate?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So I'm a big believer that leaders should never
delegate the marketing of theirorganization and I'm passionate
about marketing.
Right, I call and our head ofmarketing is wonderful.
But I like to think of myselfas the head of marketing for the
line of business of AlignManaged Services Because, at the
(26:42):
end of the day, I'm apassionate engineer.
That's how I started.
Foundationally, I'm passionateabout the industry we service
and, at the end of the day,we're telling the story to any
potential prospect and at theend of the day, I also want to
deliver upon that story.
I want them to believe thatvision but also exceed their
(27:03):
expectations and if we can dothat, then we're going to retain
them as a client.
They're going to be happy to gotell all their friends about
Align as their partner.
And it's been a lot of fun, Iwill tell you, even coming to an
event like this where Enable'sholding their Empower event.
It gives me great ideas, youknow, and you know I think that
(27:26):
where I'm different from otherMSP owners out there is you
don't need to have a team of 10people in marketing.
You just need to be able toleverage the partnerships that
you have, as well as the smallresources that you have to get
(27:46):
the most value out of everydollar spent, and we've been
able to do that and achieve that.
A lot of that is throughthought leadership.
So we will interact with ourclients quite a bit kind of find
out what their problems arethat they're trying to solve,
and we'll leverage that for thepositive.
We are very keen to understandthe future of our industry, so
we're on the cutting edge ofchanging regulation and we
collaborate with many of theservice providers out there as
(28:09):
well as our clientele.
You know, just last year weheld a market event that we
hosted ourselves.
It was called the EmergingManagers Seminar.
We had about 150 attendees atthat seminar and one thing that
was powerful for that seminarwas we had two panels just
around operational due diligenceand some of the new
cybersecurity regulation that'scoming up, but we had clients on
(28:31):
that panel.
That's hugely powerful becauseyou know, the prospects that are
sitting in the audience wereable to hear just wow, I started
a.
You know this person started ahedge fund and they this is the
real world that they went on.
It wasn't a commercial for aline, but it was more leadership
, thought leadership about thethe someone else up here doing.
You know what I'm about to do,so it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
That's awesome.
So talk.
So you talk a lot about solvingbusiness problems, right?
I mentioned earlier that I feltlike you were a little bit
ahead of your time and not justdelivering tech.
Is that something that you tryto teach to the technical teams?
And is that hard?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yes, absolutely.
And this is something that Ilove our engineers right.
I love them to death.
But sometimes engineers willget and listen I'm guilty of
this myself.
You'll solve an engineeringproblem and say this is the best
solution.
You know, everyone should buythis when you know.
(29:30):
At the end of the day, what Itry to get the engineers to
understand is, if we can solve abusiness problem, that's the
better way to get a positive.
To understand is, if we cansolve a business problem, that's
the better way to get apositive, achievable result.
And Align's been able to dothat with different products.
And the way we frame ourproduct delivery to our clients
is helping them solve businessproblems.
(29:52):
And you know, for engineers, youknow they'll often you go back
to you gravitate towards whatyou're comfortable with.
Right, an engineer wants toconfigure things.
They want to show that, oh,this cybersecurity solution,
nothing can break it.
Or they want to show that, oh,this data replication software,
it's the best At the end of theday.
No, our clients want to hearthat, oh, my data is getting
(30:13):
backed up X amount of days.
You have perpetual backups.
That's phenomenal.
Okay, if I need to go backthree years and go grab X amount
of data.
That's what they want to hear.
They don't want to hear aboutthe technology that's
accomplishing it or the cogsbehind it or what gear is moving
where they want to know.
Can I get my data?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yes, I'm really happy about all the success for Align
.
Really, congratulations on allthat.
Talk a little bit about thefuture.
Do you see right now you'reprivately held.
Do you see sort of M&A in thefuture, both on the sort of
acquisition and you guys looking?
What does the future look like?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It's a great question , right?
So, especially in the managedservices space, there's been a
lot of activity around M&A andfrom day one, Align has always
been privately held.
I actually think right now itis a differentiator for us,
because we are dictating whatthe solution should be.
I don't have someone telling mehow to dictate.
(31:14):
Oh, you should put theresources here.
You can bring your labor down.
X, Y, Z.
Use this technology because it'scheaper than what you're using
today We've actually stayed awayfrom outside capital on purpose
, and you know, I don't knowwhat the future will bring, you
know, but for the immediatefuture that is not on the
horizon for Align, because uptill this point it's been an
(31:36):
enabler for us to run Align inthe best interests of Align and
the best interests of ourclientele.
In terms of acquisitions, youknow there hasn't been one
that's made sense to us.
And it's been interestingbecause you know we actually had
a competitor of ours, muchsmaller, come to us and say, hey
(31:56):
, what do you think about uspossibly becoming part of the
Align family?
And for us it didn't make sensebecause we've delivered an
incredible product and to us welooked at that and we're like,
oh, this is possibly a downgradeand so it hasn't made sense for
us as an organization.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So let me ask you this what sort of keeps you up
at night, Vinod about sort ofthe future of this business, and
then what excites?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
you the most.
So what excites me the most isall the innovation that's
happening from a technologyaspect.
Right, If you just look at eventhe AI and cybersecurity
forefront, we've been able to beon the forefront of the changes
in that.
If you just look at even the AIand cybersecurity forefront,
we've been able to be on theforefront of the changes in that
.
And let's fast forward.
Three years from now, the worldis going to look so different.
(32:46):
Just think about AI and howmuch.
I don't know how much you use itpersonally, but I've started to
use it almost inherently in alot of the business aspects that
I leverage, and a year ago itdidn't really exist, so it's a
little bit scary out there.
I think everyone's jobs aregoing to change, but we're
embracing that, we're embracingchange and we're embracing all
(33:08):
the innovation that's going on.
What keeps me up at night isreally I'm a big proponent that
we will only be as successful asevery other team member.
So we constantly push that, andmyself and all of my fellow
management team members they'rewonderful at pushing that
message out, trying to eventeach the intern who's just
(33:32):
starting day one of work all theway through every employee
that's starting his or her firstday of work, the importance of
customer service, all the waythrough every employee that's
starting his or her first day ofwork, the importance of
customer service and at the endof the day it's about every
client relationship interactionthey have with the line.
We can have the best technologyright and nine out of ten times
when we're taking over anotherMSP's client it's because of a
(33:55):
bad service interaction thatthey've had.
And you can't teach that, right,you can't teach good manners.
But what we can do is we cangive them the formula and the
recipe to be successful, todeliver good customer skills,
and that we can teach.
You know, I can't teachtemperament, but I could teach.
(34:15):
Here's the recipe that where wecan react to giving positive
results.
No one's calling the help deskto say, hey, everything's
working today.
And I always try to tell theservice desk members that
they're calling you at a painfulmoment.
It's because they can't loginto their machine or there's
(34:36):
something happening that theyneed help log into their machine
or there's something happeningthat they need help.
And so keep that in the back ofyour head when you're
interacting with them so thatyou give them a positive
experience.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's great.
Thank you for that.
That's good advice, all right.
So one last question.
We call this podcast the Nowthat's it podcast, and so I'd
like to ask you, vinod, when didyou know?
Now that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I knew.
Let's see, I think in 2003,2004, I had the opportunity to
you know, the organization I wasworking at was Avar and we were
going through thattransformation of becoming a
managed service provider.
And the moment came when, youknow, we were doing like three
(35:21):
or four go lives in one nightand just a lot of positive
momentum.
And the Monday came along whereall four clients went live at
the same time and I saw thepower of being able to be a
managed service provider,deliver the same platform across
multiple different clients.
Everyone would be happy,Everyone was trading, and I was
(35:43):
like, wow, there's a realformula up here and the clients
are willing to pay a premiumprice for a great solution.
Everyone's happy.
And it was an eye-openingexperience for me and fun,
exciting.
The team was all excited.
We went through a weekend ofworking together, almost 48
hours together, of puttingsystems in place, and back then
(36:04):
there were a lot of servers thatyou had to carry and put in
place and we were able toachieve it and that was the
moment.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
That's great, vinod.
I tell you what I reallyappreciate you being here today.
You're a flag bearer, anadvocate for the MSP industry.
I love listening to you talkabout things MSP and
congratulations on all thesuccess.
Can't wait to see how much moreAlign grows and how you guys
continue the success.
(36:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Appreciate it.
One, two, three, four .
We invest as much time intounderstanding the vertical as we
do in understanding the MSPspace and technology.
We're out there understandingthe business needs of our
clientele and understandingwhat's the future business needs
of our clientele.
We understand what are thebusiness processes and the
(00:21):
problems that we have to solveand we leverage technology to
enable our clients to overcomeany business challenge that they
have.
For us, it's absolutely been anenabler for our success factor.
We've been able to grow Fastforward to today.
We have clients across 24states and 31 countries and
we've been able to scale withouthaving to throw body after body
(00:43):
after body.
We've leveraged technology toscale that business.
Welcome to Now, that's.
It stories of MSP success, wherewe dive into the journeys of
some of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
services into the thrivingsector it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
In 2016, vinod Paul walked into a cigar bar in New
York City with a bold idea whatif they stopped trying to be
everything to everyone andinstead became the very best at
serving one market financialservices?
At the time, align was doingwell Not great, but well.
(01:21):
So that night, everythingchanged.
Vinod and the leadership teammade a decision that would
define the next chapter of theircompany.
They'd walk away from legacyclients and they'd give up on
millions in revenue, depreciatethose services that weren't
profitable and, in return, builda platform so focused, so
(01:42):
scalable and so secure that itwould take them from scattered
to global.
Today, align is one of the mostrecognized names in the
financial services IT space, andVinod Paul is at the center of
them all.
Welcome to the Now that's itpodcast, vinod.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Such a pleasure we like to always start this
session off with.
We like to call it the way backmachine.
So, before Align and beforeyour success in financial
services, what first drew you totechnology?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So I had an interesting upbringing, right
when I went to school.
I actually went to school forbiological sciences, believe it
or not.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And with the track of okay, maybe I'm eventually
going to be going to medicine.
And during school, you know onething fortunate that I was was,
you know it was during thedot-com era, pre-dot-com, right
1991, going into school, thestudents were just getting their
first email addresses.
And you know, technology wasexciting, the world of Bill
(02:46):
Gates was happening and at thattime if you could have any
skills of turning on a computeryou had an opportunity.
And at the time I had a reallygood friend that was a year
ahead of mine and graduated andhe started work for a hot
technology company called AlphaTechnologies.
And you know, in my senior yearof college, you know he was
(03:10):
talking to me a lot and said hey, why don't you come here for a
year?
And you know, complete shift towhat I thought I was going to
be doing.
But he gave me an opportunityto interview with the
organization and they actuallypart one of the interview was
they gave you a test of, youknow, just your aptitude in
technology.
And during college I alwaysplayed around with technology
and, you know, took the test andpassed it really well and they
(03:32):
said great, you have a job, doyou want to?
You know you could start, youknow, a week after graduation.
So I took that route and wasfortunate enough to get involved
with this organization.
That day three of working therethey sent me off to AT&T Lucent
Technologies, and week one Iwas doing a mail migration from
(03:55):
Microsoft Mail into MicrosoftExchange.
So at the heart of it, I had aunique start in this industry
where I was an engineer firstand got to work with some of the
brightest in the world.
I was working at the Bell Labsin New Jersey, you know, an
organization that had 6,000employees of highly technical
(04:17):
individuals and got exposed to alot of technology very quickly.
And from there thisorganization brought me to Tyco
Submarine Systems, which isGlobal Crossing, and from there
I went to Pegna PutnamPublishing.
And when I went to Pegna PutnamPublishing I had an opportunity
to get a taste of working inNew York City.
And once I got that taste Isaid all right, I love this
(04:40):
industry, love the city and wantto be able to stay here and
started looking for anopportunity to stay in New York
City.
And that's when I got exposedto my first financial services
firm and never looked back since.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
That's great Big city guy.
I guess I should have knownthat about you.
But I get the occasional tripto NYC and I always say I'm so
glad I get to go back to thesmall town.
So you either are a big cityguy or you aren't.
It's in my DNA.
Good for you.
So you've had what many wouldcall, I guess, a hybrid career
Small company energy, but bigcompany scale, right.
(05:18):
I looked at your sort ofbackground.
You talked about a few of thoseplaces.
How do you think that's sort ofshaped the way that you lead
and think today?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So, absolutely, I've had the opportunity to work at
very large organizations, workwith some of the greatest
financial firms in the world,but at the heart of it, I've
always worked at a smallbusiness and one of the things
that's compelled me during myentire career has been the fact
that a small business allows youto follow your entrepreneurial
spirit, and that's the bottomline part of my DNA.
(05:49):
I love trying new things.
Have I failed during my career?
Yes, absolutely, but I've alsohad the opportunity to succeed
and that's because of the teamsthat I've been able to work with
and it's allowed me to comealong in my career to where I am
now, and I've had a lot of funworking with large organizations
(06:10):
but being able to do it from anopportunity where a small
business has been able toapproach a problem and fix it
for the clientele that we workwith.
So it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's great.
You mentioned to us that you'veknown the owner of Align for
over 25 years.
Yes, but what ultimatelyconvinced you to join the
company?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So what I love about Jim Dooling and Align and the
rest of the management team atAlign is they are entrepreneurs,
and Jim started Align 40 yearsago and has built an incredible
organization.
Fast forward to today.
(06:51):
We're on the leading edge ofsome of the exciting things
going on in the data centerworld, as well as the managed
services world, and what reallyattracted me to Jim was the fact
that he gave me a platform tobe able to expand on, and
Alliance always had a greatreputation, and one of the
hardest things in this world isbeing a technology company that
(07:11):
has a good reputation and, atthe end of the day, align had.
Before I joined Align eightyears ago, they had never failed
at a project.
Their clients love Align and Iknew that that would give me a
great foundation to bounce andjump off of, along with the rest
of the team, to build themanaged service provider that we
(07:33):
are now today.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
You talk about the reputation.
That was obviously a pro, butwhat was sort of the state of
Align when you joined eightyears ago?
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So Align had had two iterations of a managed service
provider before I joined and Ithink that what was smart of Jim
and the management team was torealize that you always have to
keep changing your solution,evolving your solution.
(08:06):
Going to that cigar bar with Jim, what I understood is Align had
actually a couple of thingsthat they really hadn't tapped
into which I thought there wasan incredible commercial
opportunity to leverage.
The first thing was Align was atier one Microsoft Cloud
Solutions provider and one ofthe first to really figure that
that's really important to corebusiness offering.
The second was that they had agreat cybersecurity offering,
(08:27):
and one thing that wasinteresting was I saw from afar
that Align had a lot ofdifferent clients across a
couple of different verticalsand when me and Jim sat down we
talked about hey, I thinkthere's an opportunity to focus
all this energy into onevertical and I think the results
can be that we can grow thisbusiness through partnerships
(08:50):
with the existing clientele thatare financial service firms,
build upon that, build thatfoundation and, more importantly
, build a stack of technologywhat we call the line IT suite
today into a platform thatscales and be able to do it in a
way that we don't have to throwlabor at all our problems, but
instead leverage the vertical,leverage, the technology that we
(09:11):
built and be able to innovateduring that time.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I love that story about the cigar bar.
I feel like every company hassomething like that.
Maybe it isn't as glamorous asa beautiful cigar bar in New
York City, but that conversationthat you had, you know, in the
back of your mind you felt veryconfidently that going all in on
financial services was theright direction.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Why was that Absolutely so.
I've been fortunate.
For the past 20 years I'veworked at two different MSPs.
The MSP before that also wasfocused hyper-focused in on the
financial services industry.
So what's interesting about thefinancial services industry is
they're results-driven right,and my primary clients today are
the top hedge funds of theworld private equity
(09:56):
institutional family offices.
Interesting enough, anotherside set of clients that we
support also is the serviceprovider community around there.
Set of clients that we supportalso is the service provider
community around there, and youknow, with that industry, what
we've found is financialservices with the results-based
deliveries that they have tomake to their clientele.
(10:17):
They want uptime, they wantgreat client service, they want
high touch, and I knew that wasan opportunity for us to build
on.
At the end of the day, ourclients rely on us to be a part
of their business.
We're a partner, we're not avendor, and we've been able to
demonstrate to our clientelethat we are that partner because
(10:37):
we're helping them withoperational due diligence, we're
helping them deal and navigatewith the regulatory challenges
of the world, but also we areconstantly innovating our
solution.
So it's not just, oh, we'regoing to deliver you a great
Microsoft platform, it's oh,copilot's coming out.
How can you leverage that tomake your business smarter?
Oh, there's a new cybersecuritychallenge that's happening
(10:58):
across the world.
How can we enable you to beprotected, to keep your clients
safe, to keep yourself safe andalso, most importantly, leverage
technology as an enabler fortheir business?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I think that's so fascinating, vinod, you guys
were ahead of the times at thetime, right, that's sort of the
future of the MSP space, talkingabout business outcomes, and
you were doing this years agobecause you knew that space so
well and you know how thetechnology could affect that.
So, obviously, in retrospect,looking back hindsight 2020,
great decision.
But that pivot came with sometough choices.
(11:37):
Right, you deprecated yourprivate cloud.
You told some clients theyweren't a good fit anymore.
What was maybe one of thehardest, what was the hardest
part of that pivot?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You know I'll I'll go back to um.
It absolutely was was hardbecause when you know, when you
have a business that's doingexpander revenue and you've had
clients be a part of that tilluntil some point, it's hard to
make the decision point of, okay, I'm going to completely upend
the model.
And you know, till that point.
Align was always worked withfinancial services but had not
(12:11):
necessarily focused in on onlythe alternative financial
services market.
So the management team kudos tothem, most importantly Jim
Dooling, because it was a harddecision to go to some of those
clients and say this isn't agood marriage for us anymore.
But at the end of the day, jimhad the vision and so did the
rest of the supporting membersto understand, you know, what
(12:33):
these clients aren't asprofitable as what we've been
able to build today has become.
More importantly, we've beenable to deliver and develop
great relationships with ourclientele and I think it's
because of the vertical thatwe've chosen.
It's a difficult vertical,absolutely.
(12:53):
Do our clients expect the best?
Absolutely.
Do they expect high touch, highvalue?
Absolutely.
But I think that ourorganization, especially our
staff, they care about thisindustry.
We understand the ins and outof it.
We understand the serviceprovider community.
We understand all the nuancesthat go along with running
(13:15):
technology for high net worthindividuals, and we've been able
to succeed on that.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
One of the hardest things that I see MSPs either do
or don't do is saying goodbyeto that bad revenue, like making
the decision that not everydollar that comes in is a good
dollar.
You felt very confidently that,yes, revenue is going to dip
but we're going to rebound.
Why was that?
Was it your experience in theMSP space for as long as it was?
(13:42):
How did you know the future?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Absolutely so.
I was a big believer that if wecould build a platform that's
scalable, that it would have thesnowball effect and absolutely
the world that we focus in onthe clientele that we support.
Everyone knows each other.
Your reputation is absolutelythe most important aspect of
(14:09):
your business.
We've been able to deliver upona great chief financial officer
community, chief complianceofficer community.
We've understood the businessproblems and that resonates with
our clientele.
It is great to get the number ofinbound calls that we do,
because some of our competitorshave up to 75 individuals that
(14:31):
are doing sales.
When we share with us thatreally there's one person at our
organization that does salesfull-time and the rest of us do
it as a part-time job on top oftheir full-time job.
It surprises individuals, butwe've been able to leverage
those relationships and we'vemade our clientele part of that
(14:52):
sales community.
Because they're partners, theywant to be able to tell their
best friend oh, we use Align andwe're very proud of the fact
that they helped us withoperational due diligence.
Interesting enough also, we'vealso leveraged the service
provider community that wesupport to be an extension of
our sales team Because thinkabout it they need to keep the
(15:13):
data of their clients secure.
They need to have a greattechnology system to interact
with their clientele and ifthey're using Align as that
platform, they can share thatpositive experience on a
day-to-day basis.
That's highly powerful for usand our clientele.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So one of the things you did something that I see
very successful in the MSP spaceyou verticalized right.
You had this vision.
We're going to focus on thisindustry.
We're going to walk away fromthe rest.
I actually just spoke to apartner just about an hour ago
that did the exactly same thingin the accounting firm right,
and so they found something thatworked for them.
(15:51):
But there's a lot of MSP ownersthat might be fearful to sort
of niche down or focus on onething.
What sort of advice would yougive to an MSP owner like that?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So my advice to them would be it is not high risk,
high reward.
I would say.
You're investing in your futurefor a positive outcome is how I
would frame it to them right.
So for us as an organization, weinvest as much time into
understanding the vertical as wedo in understanding the MSP
(16:26):
space and technology.
So it's just as important, ifnot more important.
So we are out there at everyfinancial services conference.
We're out there understandingthe business needs of our
clientele and understandingwhat's the future business needs
of our clientele.
We understand what are thebusiness processes and the
problems that we have to solveand we leverage technology to
(16:48):
enable our clients to overcomeany business challenge that they
have.
So you know just one exampleright, there are a lot of
regulatory requirements for ourclientele.
There are cybersecuritybarriers that they have to make
sure are not crossed.
They have to make sure theyhave disaster recovery, business
continuity.
Those are all must-haves.
But take it a step further.
They need to pass operationaldue diligence.
(17:11):
That means a potential investorwho might write them a check is
going to come in and do anexamination of their technology
footprint and make sure thatthey have the controls that they
say they do in place and makesure they'll actually go and do
exercise to make sure thetechnology is in place as well.
We've become an important aspectof that and we've been able to
(17:32):
leverage that to enable them tobe successful.
So I would tell any businessowner just to get back to the
original point that youmentioned is don't think of it
as high risk and possibly areward, but more.
I'm investing for a guaranteedsuccess in my business.
For us it's absolutely been anenabler for our success factor.
(17:53):
We've been able to grow Fastforward to today.
We have clients across 24states and 31 countries and
we've been able to scale withouthaving to throw body after body
after body.
We've leveraged technology toscale that business.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's great.
Let's talk about the growth.
So from 75 to 300 employeesfrom clients all over different
industries to 100% financial,from high 300s to number 31 in
the MSP 501, congratulations onthat.
Is there one thing inparticular that sort of moved
that hockey puck the directionthat it went, or is it a couple
(18:28):
of things?
I don't think it's one thing inparticular that sort of moved
that hockey puck the directionthat it went, or is it a couple
of things?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I don't think it's one thing, but I think it's.
If you think about you knowwhat are the core pillars that
we run our business on.
The first one is you know and Ithink business owners often
forget this it's hard to win anew client right.
It's harder to maintain themand keep them as a client.
So we put a lot of emphasis onclient retention.
(18:53):
Our clients have become ourpartners and it's really
important for us to keep them onas partners, and that helps out
and creates good outcomes.
Next is new client acquisition.
Think about how that rollsright into that.
Another pillar that's reallyimportant to us is innovation,
constant innovation.
So we created a line IT suitein 2017.
(19:17):
And if you fast forward totoday, the line IT suite has
innovated so much.
Right, we've reiterated thatproduct, we've made it better,
we've enhanced it for thebenefit of the clientele, and
one thing we've been able to dois do it in a predictable model.
So most of our services aredriven on a per user, per month
(19:38):
basis.
We were one of the firstmanaged service providers to do
that in the space.
We upended the solution becausemost MSPs they'll charge XYZ
for one service, they'll chargelabor for another.
They'll charge licensing asanother bucket, and you know
your invoices are going up anddown, up and down peaks and
valleys and it's a complaint wehear a lot when we're doing
(19:59):
takeaway business.
We've been absolutely able todeliver a predictable IT model
while at the same timeinnovating and delivering good
services.
So I would tell you, thosethings as a foundation have
helped us, but also constantlyimproving customer service,
having that white glove service,which is hard to do, right, but
(20:22):
we've been able to do it withthe pod structure that we have.
I think a lot of managedservice providers underestimate
the power of a good clientrelationship manager and we've
been able to build a great teamthat's been able to do that.
Another, I think, absolutelysuccess factor for us has been
(20:43):
we developed a platform and wedo not deviate from that
platform.
So we can configure theplatform for your business needs
, but we will not customize.
So one example you know, justfoundationally speaking, we are
complete Microsoft shop.
If someone comes to us and saysI want to use G Suite or be on
Gmail or, you know, I want tohave XYZ in Amazon, it's not a
(21:08):
good fit for us.
I will also say you know, thepower of no is strong right.
So if a client comes to us andsays you know, we want to take
half the product or we want tonot take cybersecurity solutions
as part of your offering, we'llactually say you're not a good
fit for us and that's helped usbecause, at the end of the day,
(21:28):
we want to keep our clients safe.
We want to keep them all in thesame platform because it helps
us support them.
We're not learning new systemsevery day and it also helps us
to scale the business.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
It just shows your experience in the MSP space.
The decisions you've made, thechanges you've made are
foundational MSP maturity steps.
You've focused on an industryyou standardized.
You said no.
I actually had a conversationwith a partner earlier and I
said if you don't say no, youwon't grow.
(22:03):
And I'm like you're going totrademark that and I'm like, but
that power for you to be ableto say that's not the right fit,
that's not the client we'regoing to go after.
If you're not going to takewhat we believe right, we're the
experts.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Then you're not a good fit for us.
How hard was that?
Listen, the sales part of you.
It's hard, absolutely it's hardto say no to an opportunity
that's going to bring yourevenue.
But fortunately I work with amanagement team that is
incredible.
And I think another successfactor to our business is we are
rowing the boat in the samedirection.
Our chief operating officer,our managing director of sales,
(22:41):
every one of my managers atAlign, the you know the
individuals running our NOC, theindividuals running our service
desk, our project managementteam we are all rowing the boat
in the same direction and that'shugely powerful and me saying
no, and you know my colleaguessaying no to the wrong
opportunities.
That trickles down to the restof the team because they know
(23:03):
that we are supporting them andthey know that we have their
back to make sure that no one'scutting a corner.
We're going to make their liveseasier at the end of the day
from a support functionality.
And it's been hugely powerfulfor us.
And you know it's exciting whenwe win a new client.
We, you know we send thatmessage out to the whole team
and you know everyone's on board, everyone's like excited about
(23:25):
it, um, even all the way down toour interns that come on board.
You know it's a, you know, thiscoming summer we're excited.
We have a class of eight internscoming on board as a managed
service.
It's unique because we'reexposing them to an incredible
market of financial services but, more importantly, to a great
industry.
You've probably heard the statthe managed services industry is
(23:48):
going towards a trilliondollars this coming year.
I absolutely believe that,because think about every small
to medium business.
They're not going to run IT ontheir own, and even enterprises
now they're not going to run ITon their own.
There are aspects that theyhave to leverage a managed
service provider to besuccessful at, and we've been
able to leverage all thosevariables in the industry and
(24:11):
use it to leverage growth forourselves.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
That's great, all right.
You guys are absolutely cookingright now.
Things are really really well.
But was there ever a pointwhere you looked at you looked
at the in the mirror or whateverand said, boy, this might not
work.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So, listen, uh, maybe it's a little bit of arrogance,
but, uh, you know, I, uh, I wasa believer from day one and
fortunately I have an incredibleteam that I've worked with and
they were all believers day oneand we had support from the
management team.
Was it hard?
(24:47):
Yeah, absolutely it was hard.
Were there days where we'relike, wow, we've made a hard
decision, we got rid of payingclients that were outside of the
vertical.
Why do we do that?
Our profitability is going togo down before it goes back up.
Those are hard days, but we knewthat we could have an effect on
(25:08):
the organization where, if wehit the model the right way, we
could build upon thatreoccurring revenue and, more
importantly, we could build asustainable future for the
company.
And, thankfully, with all thatsupport and the believers I'll
go back to the believers thatbelieved in the model and knew
that we could scale there was aday when the snowball started to
(25:31):
get bigger and that was theexciting day, right?
Was it hard when the snowballwas getting small and you
thought it was all going to turnto water?
Yes, absolutely.
But we've been fortunate thatwe were able to show that
snowball effect and grow theorganization and we built a
sustainable future for ourorganization.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
That's awesome, vinod .
I tell you what I've seenthousands, hundreds of thousands
of MSPs.
Something that really stood outabout Align was your brand.
You guys have you said itearlier.
The financial industry knowswho Align is.
You personally drive thego-to-market strategy right.
(26:09):
You're involved in themarketing, you're involved in
client relationships.
How do you manage that todaywith everything else you have on
your plate?
And what do you believe aresome things that leaders should
never delegate?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So I'm a big believer that leaders should never
delegate the marketing of theirorganization and I'm passionate
about marketing.
Right, I call and our head ofmarketing is wonderful.
But I like to think of myselfas the head of marketing for the
line of business of AlignManaged Services Because, at the
(26:42):
end of the day, I'm apassionate engineer.
That's how I started.
Foundationally, I'm passionateabout the industry we service
and, at the end of the day,we're telling the story to any
potential prospect and at theend of the day, I also want to
deliver upon that story.
I want them to believe thatvision but also exceed their
(27:03):
expectations and if we can dothat, then we're going to retain
them as a client.
They're going to be happy to gotell all their friends about
Align as their partner.
And it's been a lot of fun, Iwill tell you, even coming to an
event like this where Enable'sholding their Empower event.
It gives me great ideas, youknow, and you know I think that
(27:26):
where I'm different from otherMSP owners out there is you
don't need to have a team of 10people in marketing.
You just need to be able toleverage the partnerships that
you have, as well as the smallresources that you have to get
(27:46):
the most value out of everydollar spent, and we've been
able to do that and achieve that.
A lot of that is throughthought leadership.
So we will interact with ourclients quite a bit kind of find
out what their problems arethat they're trying to solve,
and we'll leverage that for thepositive.
We are very keen to understandthe future of our industry, so
we're on the cutting edge ofchanging regulation and we
collaborate with many of theservice providers out there as
(28:09):
well as our clientele.
You know, just last year weheld a market event that we
hosted ourselves.
It was called the EmergingManagers Seminar.
We had about 150 attendees atthat seminar and one thing that
was powerful for that seminarwas we had two panels just
around operational due diligenceand some of the new
cybersecurity regulation that'scoming up, but we had clients on
(28:31):
that panel.
That's hugely powerful becauseyou know, the prospects that are
sitting in the audience wereable to hear just wow, I started
a.
You know this person started ahedge fund and they this is the
real world that they went on.
It wasn't a commercial for aline, but it was more leadership
, thought leadership about thethe someone else up here doing.
You know what I'm about to do,so it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
That's awesome.
So talk.
So you talk a lot about solvingbusiness problems, right?
I mentioned earlier that I feltlike you were a little bit
ahead of your time and not justdelivering tech.
Is that something that you tryto teach to the technical teams?
And is that hard?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yes, absolutely.
And this is something that Ilove our engineers right.
I love them to death.
But sometimes engineers willget and listen I'm guilty of
this myself.
You'll solve an engineeringproblem and say this is the best
solution.
You know, everyone should buythis when you know.
(29:30):
At the end of the day, what Itry to get the engineers to
understand is, if we can solve abusiness problem, that's the
better way to get a positive.
To understand is, if we cansolve a business problem, that's
the better way to get apositive, achievable result.
And Align's been able to dothat with different products.
And the way we frame ourproduct delivery to our clients
is helping them solve businessproblems.
(29:52):
And you know, for engineers, youknow they'll often you go back
to you gravitate towards whatyou're comfortable with.
Right, an engineer wants toconfigure things.
They want to show that, oh,this cybersecurity solution,
nothing can break it.
Or they want to show that, oh,this data replication software,
it's the best At the end of theday.
No, our clients want to hearthat, oh, my data is getting
(30:13):
backed up X amount of days.
You have perpetual backups.
That's phenomenal.
Okay, if I need to go backthree years and go grab X amount
of data.
That's what they want to hear.
They don't want to hear aboutthe technology that's
accomplishing it or the cogsbehind it or what gear is moving
where they want to know.
Can I get my data?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yes, I'm really happy about all the success for Align
.
Really, congratulations on allthat.
Talk a little bit about thefuture.
Do you see right now you'reprivately held.
Do you see sort of M&A in thefuture, both on the sort of
acquisition and you guys looking?
What does the future look like?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It's a great question , right?
So, especially in the managedservices space, there's been a
lot of activity around M&A andfrom day one, Align has always
been privately held.
I actually think right now itis a differentiator for us,
because we are dictating whatthe solution should be.
I don't have someone telling mehow to dictate.
(31:14):
Oh, you should put theresources here.
You can bring your labor down.
X, Y, Z.
Use this technology because it'scheaper than what you're using
today We've actually stayed awayfrom outside capital on purpose
, and you know, I don't knowwhat the future will bring, you
know, but for the immediatefuture that is not on the
horizon for Align, because uptill this point it's been an
(31:36):
enabler for us to run Align inthe best interests of Align and
the best interests of ourclientele.
In terms of acquisitions, youknow there hasn't been one
that's made sense to us.
And it's been interestingbecause you know we actually had
a competitor of ours, muchsmaller, come to us and say, hey
(31:56):
, what do you think about uspossibly becoming part of the
Align family?
And for us it didn't make sensebecause we've delivered an
incredible product and to us welooked at that and we're like,
oh, this is possibly a downgradeand so it hasn't made sense for
us as an organization.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So let me ask you this what sort of keeps you up
at night, Vinod about sort ofthe future of this business, and
then what excites?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
you the most.
So what excites me the most isall the innovation that's
happening from a technologyaspect.
Right, If you just look at eventhe AI and cybersecurity
forefront, we've been able to beon the forefront of the changes
in that.
If you just look at even the AIand cybersecurity forefront,
we've been able to be on theforefront of the changes in that
.
And let's fast forward.
Three years from now, the worldis going to look so different.
(32:46):
Just think about AI and howmuch.
I don't know how much you use itpersonally, but I've started to
use it almost inherently in alot of the business aspects that
I leverage, and a year ago itdidn't really exist, so it's a
little bit scary out there.
I think everyone's jobs aregoing to change, but we're
embracing that, we're embracingchange and we're embracing all
(33:08):
the innovation that's going on.
What keeps me up at night isreally I'm a big proponent that
we will only be as successful asevery other team member.
So we constantly push that, andmyself and all of my fellow
management team members they'rewonderful at pushing that
message out, trying to eventeach the intern who's just
(33:32):
starting day one of work all theway through every employee
that's starting his or her firstday of work, the importance of
customer service, all the waythrough every employee that's
starting his or her first day ofwork, the importance of
customer service and at the endof the day it's about every
client relationship interactionthey have with the line.
We can have the best technologyright and nine out of ten times
when we're taking over anotherMSP's client it's because of a
(33:55):
bad service interaction thatthey've had.
And you can't teach that, right,you can't teach good manners.
But what we can do is we cangive them the formula and the
recipe to be successful, todeliver good customer skills,
and that we can teach.
You know, I can't teachtemperament, but I could teach.
(34:15):
Here's the recipe that where wecan react to giving positive
results.
No one's calling the help deskto say, hey, everything's
working today.
And I always try to tell theservice desk members that
they're calling you at a painfulmoment.
It's because they can't loginto their machine or there's
(34:36):
something happening that theyneed help log into their machine
or there's something happeningthat they need help.
And so keep that in the back ofyour head when you're
interacting with them so thatyou give them a positive
experience.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's great.
Thank you for that.
That's good advice, all right.
So one last question.
We call this podcast the Nowthat's it podcast, and so I'd
like to ask you, vinod, when didyou know?
Now that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I knew.
Let's see, I think in 2003,2004, I had the opportunity to
you know, the organization I wasworking at was Avar and we were
going through thattransformation of becoming a
managed service provider.
And the moment came when, youknow, we were doing like three
(35:21):
or four go lives in one nightand just a lot of positive
momentum.
And the Monday came along whereall four clients went live at
the same time and I saw thepower of being able to be a
managed service provider,deliver the same platform across
multiple different clients.
Everyone would be happy,Everyone was trading, and I was
(35:43):
like, wow, there's a realformula up here and the clients
are willing to pay a premiumprice for a great solution.
Everyone's happy.
And it was an eye-openingexperience for me and fun,
exciting.
The team was all excited.
We went through a weekend ofworking together, almost 48
hours together, of puttingsystems in place, and back then
(36:04):
there were a lot of servers thatyou had to carry and put in
place and we were able toachieve it and that was the
moment.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
That's great, vinod.
I tell you what I reallyappreciate you being here today.
You're a flag bearer, anadvocate for the MSP industry.
I love listening to you talkabout things MSP and
congratulations on all thesuccess.
Can't wait to see how much moreAlign grows and how you guys
continue the success.
(36:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Appreciate it.
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