25 New Solution Providers That Are Making Their Mark

The New Kids On The Block

The evolution toward cloud computing, digitization, big data and a number of other hot technologies are luring entrepreneurs to start new channel businesses.

Whether they're channel stalwarts like Cisco and Microsoft, big-data players like Splunk, or managed service providers looking to capitalize on the promise of recurring revenue, a number of new solution providers are forging partnerships with vendors to plant their stakes in the ground.

Who are they? CRN reached out to a number of solution providers that opened their doors within the last two years. Here are 25 of them.

1+1 Technology

Location: San Francisco

Top Executive: Joey Tinker, co-founder and president

1+1 Technology, a VAR founded in 2015, is a veteran-owned solution provider, certified as both a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (DVOSB) and a Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise (DVBE.)

Those certifications allow 1+1 to potentially streamline purchasing for federal, state and local governments and help federal clients meet a mandate to spend at least three percent of their contracts with DVBE-certified firms.

1+1 offers hardware, software, services, staffing and training for Bay Area businesses, and will soon introduce its first managed service offering.

Founded by former U.S. Marine Joey Tinker and Vice President Jake Solis, 1+1 works with over 30 different vendor partners, including Lenovo, Dell, Cisco, Xerox, Microsoft, Carbonite and Kaspersky Lab to offer a variety of data center, wireless networking and security solutions.

Accelerite

Location: Santa Clara, Calif.

Top Executive: Nara Rajagopalan, CEO

Accelerite broke onto the scene in 2014 when IT services provider Persistent Systems created the company as its products unit.

Accelerite delivers enterprise solutions for endpoint management, cloud and mobility to organizations ranging in size from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises through its technology partnerships with HP, Dell and CenturyLink.

The company has a staff of about 8,000 worldwide.

Agitare Technologies Inc.

Location: Redmond, Wash.

Top Executive: Jim Palmeri, CEO

Founded in 2014, Agitare is a big data and cloud consultant that helps clients migrate to the cloud, assisting small-to-medium sized companies with affordable options while focusing on migrating large enterprise customers to modern, data-driven services.

Agitare focuses on making big data less complex for its clients, leveraging its experience with Hadoop and utilizing partnerships with both Microsoft and end-to-end analytics platform Datameer.

CEO Jim Palmeri has worked as a management executive for over 25 years at such tech giants as Microsoft and Oracle.

Aponia Data Solutions

Location: New York

Top Executive: Jason Juliano, managing partner and CEO

Since its founding in 2014, Aponia has focused on providing partial or complete turnkey solutions for companies looking to leverage big data and analytics from its partnerships with IBM and Amazon.

Aponia offers products from IBM, including the analytics, commerce, financing, MobileFirst Talent Management and Systems Middleware offerings.

Jason Juliano, managing partner and CEO, has over 20 years of IT experience in the banking, healthcare, insurance and financial industries with companies like The Royal Bank of Scotland and The Bank of New York.

AximCloud

Location: Cranford, N.J.

Top Executive: Jack Ryan, co-founder and president

Founded in 2014, AximCloud is a cloud-centric solutions provider that partners with Amazon Web Services.

The company offers big data and disaster recovery solutions through AWS, enterprise search and eDiscovery services with X1 Discovery, and business process automation solutions through Fujitsu RunMyProcess.

AximCloud serves businesses of all sizes, as well as education and government clients.

Jack Ryan has worked in the IT industry for the better part of two decades. In 2012, he became president of Bridgewater, N.J.-based channel company LTech in 2012, two years before launching AximCloud.

BisonTech Consulting

Location: York, Pa.

Top Executive: Evan Henry, owner and president

Launched in 2014, BisonTech helps clients design websites, manage their data with a number of cloud solutions and BisonTech’s own managed service offering.

BisonTech partners with such companies as Google, HP Inc., KBase, Citrix, Datto, Dell, Microsoft, Kaspersky Lab and Box to deliver cloud-based computing service, website design, system virtualization, hosted infrastructure and business continuity services for all its clients.

Henry started the company just one year after finishing his service in the Army National Guard. Just before launching BisonTech, he was an account manager for SotirIS Information Strategies, a solution provider based in nearby Mechanicsburg.

Cover-4 Solutions

Location: San Diego

Top Executive: Brett Sagaser, managing partner

Cover-4 Solutions, an enterprise-focused IT solution provider launched in 2014, is a Premier reseller partner of big data analytics platform Splunk. It offers pre-sales support, licensing, professional services and customer care for clients looking to leverage the Splunk platform, and has partnerships with a number of other players in the Splunk ecosystem, including managed security service provider Hurricane Labs and appliance maker SBOX.

Cumberland Group

Location: Atlanta

Top Executive: Patrick Hiller, CEO

Abacus Solutions split into six different companies in 2014, creating an umbrella firm, Cumberland Group.

The six businesses focus separately on cloud services, software-defined technology, converged infrastructure, data center services, disaster recovery, and computing and mobility.

CEO Patrick Hiller, who co-founded both Cumberland and Abacus, has over two decades in IT, having started in sales with IBM.

E2 Networks Inc.

Location: Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario, Canada

Top Executive: Raguthas Ramachandran, founder

E2 Networks offers a range of solutions that include managed services, cloud, unified communications, consulting and support, partnering with vendors that include Cisco, Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware.

E2 focuses on serving small and mid-sized businesses around the Toronto area and says it differentiates itself with affordable, competitive pricing.

E2 was founded in 2014 by Ragu Ramachandran, who has over 15 years of experience as a senior IT consultant to several top-level IT vendors.

EZ Servers

Location: Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada

Top Executive: Alexander Schmautz, president and CEO

EZ Servers is a hosting platform provider initially launched by Alexander Schmautz in 2014 as Elixant Technology, before it rebranded in January.

EZ Servers has offered virtual server hosting, SSL certificates, domain registration and dedicated servers since its founding, but has since expanded into cloud offerings with Linux, Windows, and OpenVZ-powered virtual private servers.

EvoTek Solutions

Location: Encinitas, Calif.

Top Executive: Didi Gur, president

Founded in 2014, Evotek provides data center, networking and risk management solutions.

The company, which works with more than 20 vendor partners, including NetApp, Red Hat, Cisco, EMC and VMware, is also an AWS premier partner and leverages its solutions to assist businesses when they migrate to new technologies.

GlassFire Inc.

Location: Greenwood, Ind.

Top Executive: Dave Pickens, founder and technology director

GlassFire, founded in 2014, is a consultancy that works with clients of all sizes to transform data centers to hyper-converged infrastructures.

Leveraging technology from vendor partners 6SigmaDX, Acuative and Nutanix, GlassFire creates turnkey hyper-converged solutions that simplify storage infrastructure to enable increased application mobility.

Through its partnership with Nutanix, GlassFire also provides automation and analytics services.

Great Divide IT Consulting LLC

Location: Reno, Nev.

Top Executive: Tim Albertson, owner and manager

Managed services provider Great Divide IT was founded in 2014 to provide Reno-area small businesses with communications solutions, as well as security and business continuity services.

Great Divide offers a range of services, including IT outsourcing, data backup and recovery, cloud, mobile device management, VoIP and security, on top of reselling software and hardware.

Hero Digital

Location: San Francisco

Top Executive: David Kilimnik, CEO

Founded in 2014, HERO Digital is a digital consultancy that provide analytics-based platforms to help clients understand and use the data they collect to improve their businesses.

CEO and founder David Kilimnik has been a services executive for over 18 years, working with systems integrators, software solution providers and digital consultancies.

Hero partners with such vendors as Looker, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Stream and PireStorage to create digital marketing campaigns for clients, then helps them understand the data that come from those digital marketing platforms.

LD&J Consulting Services LLC

Location: Akron, Ohio

Top Executive: Denise Levine, partner

LD&J, founded in 2014, provides cloud support to small and mid-sized businesses.

As a Cisco Meraki and Google for Work partner, LD&J aims to help clients save money on IT by replacing software with Google Apps, for business collaboration, and Meraki, for cloud-managed networking. LD&J also supports clients on those platforms.

Founding partner Denise Levine has over a decade of experience in IT consulting and marketing, most recently as controller with IT services company Mirifex.

MAGTEK Consulting Group LLC

Location: Allenwood, N.J.

Top Executive: Michael Friedman, founding partner and CEO

Founded in 2014, MAGTEK provides a wide range of services for medium-sized businesses in New Jersey.

MAGTEK partners with such vendors as Microsoft, Carbonite and VMware to offer managed services, cloud computing, data backup and recovery, virtualization and remote IT services.

Founding partner and CEO Michael Friedman has nearly 30 years of tech industry experience, including 20 at publishing solutions provider ViaTech, which he left in 2014 after serving as its president.

MaxNet Security

Location: Dallas

Top Executive: Steve Lopez, founder and vice president of sales and marketing

MaxNet, founded in 2014, is a network security provider that partners with about 30 vendors, including Cisco, EMC, Fortinet, Symantec, Kaspersky and Barracuda.

The company provides mobile, network, cloud, data, virtual and host security solutions in sandboxing, authentication, data loss prevention, encryption, SaaS, next-gen firewall and security information event management products.

Steve Lopez has worked in the security business for over a decade, most recently as director of inside sales for Dallas-based M&S Technologies.

Meteor Managed Inc.

Location: New York

Top Executive: Mike Kozak, founder and CEO

Mike Kozak founded Meteor Managed Inc. in 2015. It's a managed services provider for businesses of all sizes, offering managed help desk, scaling services, backup and disaster recovery services, as well as remote and on-site support.

Kozak and his team boast over 30 years of experience in managed IT, with Kozak himself having worked in IT support and services over the last decade, most recently as CTO of managed IT solutions company Computer Resources of America.

Nortpoint

Location: New York

Top Executive: Maciej Kalkowski, CEO

Founded in 2015, Nortpoint provides a number of services and solutions, spanning from consulting to 24/7 monitoring. The company also offers server management and support, hosting and software development. It's currently looking to add partners and clients across New York state.

CEO Maciej Kalkowski has over a decade of experience in IT services, and also serves as president of the board for Polish IT services provider Centuria.

Phonami Inc.

Location: Wayzata, Minn.

Founder: Mike Leuthner

Telecommunications application provider Phonami was founded in 2014. It offers an automated call analytics application that provides real-time data to clients, and manages call analytics in Salesforce.com and on the Salesforce1 mobile app.

Leuthner has been in the IT services business for nearly a decade, most recently as a regional director at Salesforce consulting partner StonyPoint, where he currently works.

RMD Strategy LLC

Location: Austin, Texas

Top Executive: Oscar Dominguez, managing principal

Founded in 2014, RMD is a veteran-owned service and equipment provider that partners with vendors, distributors and others to work on government contracts.

Through its partnerships with such vendors as IBM, AWS, Cisco and Google, RMD provides cloud services, IT equipment and cybersecurity.

RMD was founded by Army veteran Oscar Dominguez, who has more than a decade of government experience with the Texas Department of Transportation.

Veneratus

Location: Cranford, N.J.

Top Executive: Devin Vignali, co-founder and client solutions director

Veneratus was launched in 2014 by the husband-and-wife team of Devin Vignali and Wendy Hsiao Vignali. Through partnerships with such vendors as Microsoft, Nutanix, communications vendor Nextiva, Datto and Veeam, Veneratus offers managed IT, disaster recovery and cloud services to small business and enterprise clients.

Devin Vignali has worked in the IT business for over two decades.

ZenTek Data Systems

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Top Executive: Brandon Bowers, CEO

Managed services provider ZenTek Data Systems was founded in 2014 with services aimed at the SMB market in and around Miami.

The company partners with such vendors as Cisco, Lenovo, Citrix, Sophos and Veeam to provide backup and recovery, cloud computing, virtualization, security and hardware-as-a-service solutions.

Brandon Bowers launched ZenTek after more than a decade of experience in IT services, most recently as a systems engineer at private equity software company SunGard Investran.

Alderbest Solutions

Location: Atlanta

Top Executive: Michael Trow, president

Customer relationship management service provider Alderbest Solutions was founded by Michael Trow in 2014 to assist small businesses in leveraging CRM technology.

Partnering with CRM vendors such as Salesforce and AWeber, Alderbest takes the analytics and data gathered from CRM platforms and assists businesses in reading, analyzing and utilizing the data to improve their businesses.

Trow has a marketing and IT background, and also ran his own marketing company, MichaelTrow Enterprises.

Trinity3 Technology

Location: St. Paul, Minn

Top Executive: David Hoeffel, president

Trinity3 was founded in 2014 to bring technology to the education space. It resells hardware from major vendors such as Dell, Apple, Lenovo, IBM and Cisco. The company also offers services such as repairs and installations.

Company President David Hoeffel has nearly three decades of IT experience, including nine as a manager with education technology provider PartStock, now part of BlueRange Technology.