Solution Provider Trace3 Rides Cloud, Big Data For Monster Growth
Insightful analytics, cloud mastery and a unique venture capital program are driving massive growth for solution provider Trace3 in 2015.
Sales are up more than 20 percent over this time last year, with the Irvine, Calif.-based company -- No. 68 on the 2015 CRN Solution Provider 500 -- expected to reach $500 million by the end of 2015. And in just the past 60 days, Trace3 has added 32 new engineers to its workforce of nearly 300, roughly 20 of whom will be focused on the cloud or big data integration.
"We can't staff engineers fast enough for our customers," Trace3 CEO Tyler Beecher told CRN. "Our demand is so high."
[RELATED: Trace3 Looks To Grow, Bolster Customer Experience Under New CEO]
Beecher also has scrapped Trace3's vendor-oriented sales model since starting as CEO in August, returning the solution provider to a geographically based sales structure to minimize travel time, improve response time and ensure customers have a single point of contact.
"We've done a really great job of unifying everyone around a regionalized go-to-market play," Beecher told CRN. "Our innovation is red-hot right now."
The solution provider also has deepened its relationship with Cisco, which is poised to soon become Trace3's largest vendor given the impressive growth in business.
That alliance has been bolstered by the company filling its vice president of sales position in March by hiring Mike Fitzgerald, who spent 12 years at Cisco as a major account manager and regional manager.
Cisco, for its part, hasn't been shy in its praise of Trace3, awarding the solution provider its Innovation Partner of the Year Award in 2014. Specifically, Beecher said Cisco told him that Trace3 is one of only two reseller partners with a mature big data integration offering in the marketplace.
Beecher said Trace3 is two to three years ahead of its competition in terms of architecting, building out teams, and going to market with cloud and big data integration.
"A lot of people are talking about it," Beecher said. "Very few are putting their money where their mouth is."
Specifically, Trace3 excels at proactively identifying situations where big data and analytics can address higher-level business problems, such as the best sites to drill for oil, locations to open up new retail locations or how clothing prices should vary based on the time of day or day of the week. Trace3's approach has attracted new Fortune 500 clients, such as Nordstrom, Verizon Wireless and Vizio.
"The data is overwhelming to the old guys in the boardroom," Beecher said. "The rate of change is so fast right now that none of these businesses can make smart decisions unless they can mind their data."
Part of Trace3's secret sauce are the meetings the solution provider sets up between chief information officers (CIOs) or other end-user executives, and members of the venture capital (VC) community.
The VCs can educate businesses on where technology money is flowing over the next three to five years, enabling CIOs to figure out what technology adaptations will be feasible for their businesses. And Beecher said the VCs are interested in what end customers and major companies are looking for, along with getting feedback from clients on their existing portfolios.
"Nothing is as accurate to me as the guys betting the big dollars," Beecher said.
Trace3 had built a relationship with VCs over the years as a result of the solution provider being ahead of the curve on many emerging vendors such as Data Domain, F5 Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Riverbed Technology. The solution provider's VC Briefing program has grown to include more than 150 CIOs from the Global 2000 in its first three years.
Trace3 is primarily interested in leveraging its growth to improve its unification and execution in existing markets, Beecher said. While the solution provider would consider entering some new local markets, Beecher said Trace3 has no interest in expanding its footprint beyond the Southwest and West Coast.
PUBLISHED JUNE 10, 2015