MSPs See Record Sales In Pandemic IT Boom, Excited To Be Back In-Person At XChange+ 2021

‘We are running an IT business in the hottest industry at the hottest time,’ said Pegasus Technologies CEO Matthew Tucker. ‘Somebody asked me if I would consider selling the business now and I said : “Why would I get out of this business now? There is still a lot of runway for MSPs to continue to grow.”’

Matthew Tucker, the CEO of Pegasus Technologies, a managed service provider (MSP) in Kennett Square, Pa., could not be more excited about the record sales growth his company has seen in the wake of the pandemic and the future growth ahead.

“We are running an IT business in the hottest industry at the hottest time,” said Tucker (pictured right), speaking on Sunday in the midst of a crowd of several hundred MSP colleagues at the opening reception of XChange+ 2021 at the JW Marriott Resort in San Antonio, Texas. “Somebody asked me if I would consider selling the business now and I said – ‘Why would I get out of this business now? There is still a lot of runway for MSPs to continue to grow.’”

Tucker said Pegasus Technologies had record sales growth last year of 25 percent and he expects sales growth for his 26-employee firm of 35 percent this year.

“The pandemic forced companies to take a hard look at how they work internally,” he said. “All these technologies we had shown clients before, and [with] the efficiencies they could gain, they were forced to quickly adopt with the pandemic.”

Pegasus has moved dozens of clients into the cloud full force with a suite of Microsoft products including Microsoft Teams that has become a staple of business of all sizes, said Tucker.

Tucker is not alone. John Head, chief evangelist for PSC Group LLC, Chicago, Ill., said his company has also experienced record sales growth in wake of the pandemic.

“In the last 18 months we have seen the largest growth in technology sales by far since the dot.com era in the late ‘90s,” he said.

Head (pictured left) said PSC Group’s sales were up 132 percent last year and he expects 150-percent sales growth this year. PSC Group moved 150 customers into the cloud in the wake of the pandemic, he said.

“Companies were doing absolutely no automation of their internal business processes before the pandemic,” Head said. “Most businesses before the pandemic ran their business on Excel. When you are doing work from home, you can’t run your business on Excel. When businesses were forced home by the pandemic and realized they couldn’t have water cooler talks over how an order gets done, they had to automate! If you asked a Fortune 1000 executive what their IT spend was three years ago and what it is today, they will tell you it is drastically higher now.”

Head said workflow around sales and operations with Teams, Azure and Office 365 are driving sales growth. “Teams has become the new end-user desktop,” he said.

Head recalled that he and Tucker were at XChange 18 months ago, just before the pandemic shut the country and the world down. “It feels incredible to be back at XChange,” he said.

Chad Hodges, president of HSB Solutions, an MSP in Rancho Cordova, Calif., said it’s “exciting” to be back at XChange+ 2021 sharing views on the latest and greatest technologies in person rather than via Zoom or a phone call.

“I have not done an event like this since COVID-19 [began] with real interaction with real people,” he said. “I’m a people person. It’s great to be able to interact with people, hear their stories and get the emotion of it. There is a buzz in the air. Everyone is really excited.”

Hodges is looking forward to taking a close look at the products and services from the more than 100 vendors at the show. “I am curious to see what new products are out there, what has been working during COVID 19 and what other cool innovative ideas are out there for telework, security and enabling more human interaction with work at home,” he said.

Hodges is also expecting a “record” year with 20 percent sales growth this year. “MSPs are really shining in the middle of this pandemic,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a banner year for growth. Security breaches keep occurring. We have a workforce that is more distributed than it has ever been. There are all these multiple points of failure. We as consultants and MSPs have to shore those up and to do our best to stop these breaches.”

Blake Schwank, CEO of Colorado Computer Support (CCS), Colorado Springs, Colo., which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, said it is “awesome” to be back at XChange.

“It’s like a big family reunion seeing people we haven’t seen for 18 months,” he said. “It’s great to reconnect with the community!”

Schwank said the business is growing and thriving with cybersecurity as a top sales driver. “We are providing cybersecurity managed services,” he said. “The breaches that are happening are because people are not managing the technology that is out there.” Among his key security vendors are Webroot, Datto and Blackpoint Cyber.

Joe Svoboda, CEO of The Miller Group, St. Louis, Miss., said it feels great to get back to the in-person XChange+ event, speaking with colleagues about what works and what doesn’t in order to solve customer problems.

“Everybody is excited to get back,” he said. “Everybody is warm and welcoming and wanting to talk. You can tell they haven’t been out socializing in this type of environment for a while, so everyone is eager to do it.”