SP500 Power En Pointe Names President
Well-known West Coast solution provider En Pointe Technologies has appointed Michael Rapp to the role of president, part of what En Pointe has described as a bigger strategic plan to support its next phase of growth.
Rapp, a 10-year En Pointe veteran and most recently senior vice president of sales and professional services, will lead En Pointe's sales, services and marketing as the day-to-day head of the company. He'll serve alongside Bob Din, who was president and CEO of the company for 19 years and will retain the CEO title.
"We're at one of the most exciting times in the company since I've been here, and everyone is pretty fired up about the offering," Rapp told CRN Monday. "The overall business is doing pretty well, and the investment we've made in cloud and what we've focused on our services side has given us more opportunity and significantly higher margins. We're increasing revenues and able to invest some of that money back into the business. It was the goal to not just be another 'me too' player."
[Related: CRN's 2012 Solution Provider 500 List ]
Rapp has been a channel-facing executive for more than a quarter century. He was formerly CEO of Admor Memory and for the past 10 years has been at En Pointe, where among previous roles he was vice president of software sales, having grown En Pointe's software business from $30 million to $350 million within five years.
He's credited with the successful build-out of En Pointe's cloud services portfolio, including its dinCloud services subsidiary, dinHVD cloud hosted virtual desktop, ECS hosted collaboration offerings and NetApp-based backup and disaster recovery services. En Pointe now has what Rapp said is the strongest engineering team since he joined the company, and the solution provider is also hiring, particularly in engineering and sales.
Din described Rapp as a "change-driver within our organization."
"He helped the company become a customer-centric organization and has led our transition to a solutions provider," Din said in a statement emailed to CRN.
Gardena, Calif.-based En Pointe ranked No. 48 on this year's Solution Provider 500 list with 2011 revenue of about $545 million. Rapp credits the past few years' worth of investments En Pointe made in cloud services, data center and other branded offerings as fueling its growth now. He didn't specify how often En Pointe is bringing in those services to customer accounts but said the number is "considerable."
"A few years ago we were still transactional, but we went to a point where our sales are multisolution -- where they have four or five different products tied to an overall solution," Rapp said. "That's adding more value to your customers and for your partners."
NEXT: En Pointe M&A Potential
Many of En Pointe's SP 500 peers have bought fellow solution providers during the latest and ongoing cycle of channel consolidation. En Pointe's Rapp said the company isn't closed to M&A -- "To say we don't get approached by people on a regular basis isn't true," Rapp said -- but isn't actively seeking deals, either.
Several other nationally-known solution provider organizations have added to their top-level executive teams in recent months, too.
Presidio, Greenbelt, Md., named Bob Cagnazzi CEO following its acquisition of Cagnazzi's former company, BlueWater Communications Group, while Logicalis U.S., Farmington Hills, Mich., promoted Vince DeLuca to succeed Terry Flood, who stepped down as CEO after a decade.
Meanwhile, Denver-based Accuvant named Dan Burns its first-ever CEO back in May, and NACR, the Eagan, Minn.-based operating company of ConvergeOne, recently tapped John Lyons as its new chief executive. And San Jose, Calif.-based AdvanTel named a new CEO in Dan Ferguson, who originally joined that company 26 years earlier as a summer intern.
PUBLISHED SEPT. 10, 2012