Bob Cagnazzi: Presidio Is Ready To Help Customers Weather A Recession

Presidio CEO Bob Cagnazzi tells CRN that the company is ready with a swath of IT solutions and services aimed at helping customers weather a recession.

“A Hero Every Day’

Presidio CEO Bob Cagnazzi says the coronavirus pandemic has shined a spotlight on the unwavering commitment his company’s employees have demonstrated time and time again to help customers get through the crisis.

“There have been people who have not stopped being on-site for different customers like hospitals,” he told CRN. “You hear about tent hospitals—we have been putting those up. You hear about remote [COVID-19] testing centers—we have been working on those. We have put in solutions so COVID-19 patients could speak to their families. Sometimes that may be the last time that they see their loved ones. We have helped health-care institutions in states and cities put together those solutions.”

Presidio, No. 22 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500, began prepping a COVID-19 work-at-home solution set in February and was well prepared for the onslaught from customers, said Cagnazzi. “We had solutions developed, spun up and out to our clients very, very quickly for things they needed as we went into this [pandemic], whether they were for health care or educational clients or just clients looking to fast-track work-at-home,” he said.

Cagnazzi said no matter what the issue has been for customers, Presidio employees have stepped up and delivered. “Things sometimes go wrong and clients need people on-site right away and our folks are responding,” he said. “There is a hero every day.”

What is the next step for Presidio as you come out of this pandemic and start returning people to offices?

We are doing a lot of work with clients to put themselves in a position where, God forbid if COVID-19 or some other pandemic pops up its head again any time soon, they can continue to operate.

Certainly, we are hardening those work-at-home platforms. That continues to be a priority for a lot of our clients. We are providing them with the ability to scale up and scale down their infrastructure on demand for something like COVID-19. Having that agile, secure infrastructure in a hybrid cloud world becomes really important to them. Folks that had been further along were able to sustain applications and services better than others who were not at that same level. Certainly, security around the whole work-from-home environment is an important issue.

This [pandemic] accelerated what I believe was the objective of many of our clients: [digital transformation]. It just pointed out the need to do it sooner rather than later. If you look at this whole digital transformation and the move to a hybrid multi-cloud environment, you can say we were 20 [percent] to 25 percent through that. I think we are going to see the pace of that transition increase dramatically.

Where is Presidio making investments to make sure sure you are delivering for clients on that multi-cloud world?

We have a highly developed cybersecurity practice, and a highly developed work-from-home practice that has certainly been tested in the past few months.

We are one of the largest AWS partners out there with a very well-developed and mature practice helping our clients stand up hybrid clouds with the right type of management and replatforming of applications, the right type of processes so they can truly get value out of a hybrid cloud environment that makes them more agile. Then we are securing that entire foundation.

We have been a leader in software-defined data centers and software-defined networking. That is the foundation of this new multi-cloud world.

Everybody understands now that you need to have a platform-based security solution—one that cares for the fact that you have this convergence around systems, processes and technology that you haven’t had in the past. That, along with our managed SOC [Security Operations Center] services, provides the bedrock for our clients to make these transitions. We are positioned really well. The fastest-growing areas for us have been been cloud, security and managed services, which play right into where folks want to be going right now.

Does Presidio get the recognition it deserves for just how big a force you are as an AWS partner?

I think we are getting more recognition for it than we certainly have. It is a growing base. We are highly, highly certified with 125-plus AWS certifications in the business. We have a few hundred million dollars in backlog on three-year contracts for AWS and services we are providing on AWS. We have found them to be a great partner for us. And they have found us to be somebody that truly understands the hybrid world and understands how to optimize our clients’ investments, performance, security and agility in a hybrid cloud world, which accelerates adoption.

What has surprised you about the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of demand for Presidio services?

We started preparing for this at the end of February. The business was very well prepared. We had solutions developed, spun up and out to our clients very, very quickly for things they needed as we went into this [pandemic, whether they were for health care or educational clients or just clients looking to fast-track work-at-home.

We have done the same thing now through different cycles. We are starting to move now into a bit of a classic recession solution set. So what are solutions that can drive return on investment in less than 12 months or reduce operating expenses? So we have rolled out those solutions.

We have solutions around consolidation of infrastructure, consolidation of maintenance, analysis of telco and cloud spend, analysis on a lot of things where you can start optimizing costs. As we move out of this, we will see an acceleration to a multi-cloud environment.

We have got these solutions. We have been pretty much ahead of this. So it hasn’t really surprised us.

What do you anticipate with regard to a recession and how long it will last?

There has been so little visibility from an economic standpoint on what the shape of this COVID-19 recession is going to be that you do play it a little bit week by week from an economic standpoint. You don’t know when you are going to start to see an upturn. Does it happen when New York City opens? But if New York City opens, is L.A. still closed or is Dallas still closed? The way that COVID-19 is rolling out it is not hitting everybody equally at the same time. There continues to be uncertainty as to when the upturn is going to be.

How have you structured Presidio to deal with the pandemic?

What we have done is prepared the business to be really agile so we can quickly respond. We have kept all our employees. We didn’t lay anybody off. Our employees have been phenomenal about this.

We have prepared the organization from a cost standpoint, process standpoint and a systems standpoint. We said we weren’t going to let anybody go because we believe that when the upturn comes all of the great people we have at Presidio, we are going to need them even more and so are our customers. Clients are going to want to invest. There are going to be pent-up projects. There is going to be pent-up demand and we want to be ready to respond.

What kind of impact did Presidio employees have with regard to helping customers get through the pandemic?

The most satisfying thing is how Presidio employees have responded, not just to the things we had to do to prepare for the downturn and upturn, but the things they have done for our clients has been incredible.

There have been people who have not stopped being on-site for different customers like hospitals. You hear about tent hospitals—we have been putting those up. You hear about remote [COVID-19] testing centers—we have been working on those. We have put in solutions so COVID-19 patients could speak to their families. Sometimes that may be the last time that they see their loved ones. We have helped health-care institutions in states and cities put together those solutions.

We have made sure our clients could get educational materials out and that students have the equipment and infrastructure they need so they can learn remotely.

We have also been putting in video visitation for prisoners so that people can see their family members. As you know, prison is one of the areas where COVID-19 has hit the hardest.

It has been amazing what our people have done to go above and beyond for our clients. It is heartening to see.

What are the cases that have hit home emotionally for you?

Knowing that we have helped create the infrastructure and the endpoint solution so that lower-income patients who are in New York City health care suffering from COVID-19 have an opportunity to speak via video to their families is really heartening. The family may not have an opportunity to ever see that person again.

We helped rapidly expand capacity for the Department of Labor in Florida so they could respond to all the unemployment requests. Knowing that our solution sets and our people were involved in making sure that some folks who were struggling could get the benefits that they need to feed their families and pay their rent was great to see too.

What has been the key to Presidio’s success helping customers get through the pandemic?

We talk a lot about teamwork at Presidio and how important teamwork is and how important being part of the team is and playing a role.

We talk a lot about teamwork because the success that anybody has in our business is based upon a lot of other people. Our industry has changed so much in 10 years: A successful account manager is still a great account manager. But they are successful beyond any scope that they may have imagined because they get to work with a really great team and they understand how to be a really good teammate to that team.

We talk a lot about being there for each other and the satisfaction that one gets from the success you create as a team. This is part of that. Sometimes those that can make more sacrifices will make more sacrifices for the good of the team.

Attrition traditionally has been very low at Presidio. It is next to nonexistent now. So people are staying here. I have heard from some of our leading account managers and leading engineers and architects how much they really want to be part of Presidio and they want to participate and help in any way that they can. They are all doing their part.

What was it like for the Presidio team when the pandemic broke out?

As we went into this crisis, we saw our engineering team step up in a big way. They were helping clients like hospitals, higher education and K-12 do business. Our engineering and architecture team were just flat out getting it done every day. The people in our warehouse and staging center were almost 24/7. They were piling stuff in their trucks to get it delivered to clients who needed to turn up their infrastructure right away. What they did was amazing.

Then I look at our back office. It has probably been more productive than it even was when we were all sitting in offices. These people have done amazing work. Our recruiters moved over to the collection side to help our AR collections team. We have people saying, ‘Where can I help? What can I do?’

Now that we are in a period where it is all about pipeline development, you can see our salespeople just stepping up to the plate— talking about the cool, innovative solutions that we can provide, getting the right people involved from their teammates and really showing value to our clients. They are thinking of ways to engage with our clients that are different than they were in the past because you just can’t go on-site. They have been incredibly effective. I am so lucky to work with these people.

What are you seeing in terms of clients’ ability to pay bills in the wake of the pandemic?

Certainly, there are a lot of clients that just need a lot longer time to pay. There are clients that needed solutions [put in really quickly] and the paperwork was not done. Things sometimes go wrong and clients need people on-site right away and our folks are responding. There is a hero every day.

Is there a lesson from this pandemic that you take away as the CEO of Presidio?

I think from a pandemic standpoint the lesson is, ‘Don’t equivocate. You need to move quickly. You need to communicate. You need to have transparency. You need to understand that the situation is going to impact a lot of people in a lot of different ways.