Five Questions With Gregg Tushaus

The company may sound like your typical mom-and-pop store, but Milwaukee-based Tushaus Computer Services is anything but. Founded in 1993 by current president Gregg Tushaus, it has grown into a $20 million-a-year solution provider, debuting on the VARBusiness 500 last year at No. 497. Tushaus talks about how his business is moving up.

You attended CMP's XChange Solution Provider event recently. What was your takeaway from the show? The thing that is really valuable for us at conferences is finding new vendors and technologies that are off the radar. We know all about the top vendors we work with, like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and others. We go to events to find the smaller, lesser-known vendors, and there were some interesting ones at the event.

Any technologies or vendors that struck you more than others? We're an SMB-oriented VAR, and we've been looking at the managed-services space, so we found Level Platforms [LPI] interesting. We've been following N-able in the managed-services software space, too. I think it's an area that holds a lot of promise for us.

Hewlett-Packard is your biggest vendor. What are your thoughts on the company's current state? Obviously, they've had some execution issues there, but I really feel that Carly did take HP's sales and marketing to another level. I think HP did a good job with its partner show in the aftermath of Carly's departure. I'm concerned about HP, but there's very little I can do about the situation. I'm hoping the board won't split the company up. It's valuable for us and the rest of the channel to have a company like HP with a broad portfolio.

Is competition with other solution providers higher or lower today than a year ago? There's less competition. We don't see very many large integrators moving down successfully into the SMB market; we know some of the national SIs are trying, but it's difficult for them. I think that's because there has been a lot of consolidation in the channel with acquisitions and mergers, so that has created some share shift. But that has also created some new VARs in the market.

What's your outlook for 2005? My sense is that things are continuing to improve, and demand is picking up. Our sales grew about 15 percent last year, and it was spread evenly throughout all our products and services. We're moving in the right direction, but we're not having any parties just yet.