Five Questions With Mark Metz, Optimus Solutions

Optimus Solutions (No. 281 on the 2005 VARBusiness 500) posted its sixth straight year of revenue growth in 2004. In fact, the Norcross, Ga.-based solution provider was the seventh-fastest growing company on the VAR500 list last year. Mark Metz, president and CEO of Optimus, tells VARBusiness how he plans on making it seven years in a row.

You grew 89 percent last year. What's your secret? Security technology has been a huge growth area for us, and it continues to be very strong. Our key expertise is more in the infrastructure space, and we've seen a lot of demand around simplifying and securing those IT infrastructures at the high end with things like backup, server consolidation and virtualization.

Are you seeing a refresh cycle for big enterprise infrastructure? I think customers are looking to simplify what they bought back in 1999 or 2000 when there was a lot more money in the budget, so it's not exactly about buying new equipment. There has also been a lot of mergers and acquisitions since then, which has created a lot of mixed, patchwork IT environments that aren't scalable or reliable.

You have strong partnerships with a lot of top vendors, including IBM and Cisco Systems. Have you seen demand increase around a particular vendor or product? Not really. We've found that customers don't want to be tied to one vendor. They want open environments and solutions, which is why we're not seeing demand for one product or vendor.

Do you feel that Optimus is the real demand generator as opposed to the vendor? We absolutely create demand. IBM does, too. But we've done a real good job at the customer level of going into accounts and communicating the value of IBM technology, as well as other vendors.

Since you still sell a lot of products, are you seeing a lot of pricing pressure, even at the enterprise level? Sure. The technology out there at the high end has come down in price and complexity and is moving down to the midmarket. But we rarely have a customer call us and ask for an IBM mainframe or a Cisco router, which is good and bad. It's good because they want our solutions, not just the product. But it can be bad because the cost of a solution sale is a lot higher than just making a quick hardware sale.