Some of Trustmarque Ultima’s (TMU’s) competitors have become “inward-looking”, a trio of its top executives claimed as they laid out four “big bets” following its rebrand.
Having merged to create a 1,000-employee VAR-MSP last October, Trustmarque and Ultima in September unveiled their full rebrand.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen at Canalys Forums EMEA last month, CEO Simon Williams said the keynotes at the event cemented his view that the enlarged business has a fully rounded offering.
“Jay McBain’s [keynote] was my favourite. I was sitting there going, ‘yep, we’re doing that; yep, we’re doing that’,” he said.
“You need to do [AI] internally first, tick; from an MSP perspective we’ve moved very far in terms of automation and have plans to move even further, tick.
“We talk about adoption, we talk about governance, security and data, we talk about FinOps and tokenomics – Livingstone is number one in the world. So Jay’s one I liked, because I was like, ‘yes’!.”
Big bet bonanza
TMU is now ready to place four “big bets” after spending the early part of the year getting its combined teams in place, Williams said.
“From 1 January, everyone knew what their job was and who their boss was – but it’s now about going, ‘these are the big bets; let’s turn the volume up on those ones,” he added.
These comprise AI, cybersecurity, networking and the tokenomics capabilities associated with its Livingstone business, Williams said.
“But we need to do more across the board,” he said.
The Microsoft, Cisco, Sophos, IBM and Hitachi Vantara partner has also this year moved to run its VAR and MSP businesses separately, Williams said.
“There’s a relationship between the two. But I really like that model where we can look at them differently, and we can start to run them as friends,” he said.
While TMU isn’t the only channel partner to house a sizeable VAR and MSP business, its competitors lack an overlap in the customer profiles between the two activities, Williams claimed.
“We have the same ICP [ideal customer profile], whereas with some of the competition their VAR business is in the small medium business, and their MSP business is in the sub-enterprise, large corporate,” he said.
“That VAR-MSP messaging is really important, because it gets washed down,” Chief Revenue Officer Tanaz Gould added.
“When you look at our competitors in this space, there is no clear positioning. Some are very clear VARs, and others are MSPs, but very few are actually really good at both.
“We want to be really good at both at scale.”
“The one thing we wanted to avoid”
TMU’s first year post merger has been about focusing on staff and retaining top talent to “ensure the customer experience isn’t diminished”, COO Stuart Daley said.
“Without naming competitors, it’s very easy to take your eye off the ball in the market,” he said.
“We’re confident we’ll be double-digit growth this year, alongside bedding in the model for the joint organisation.”
“We have seen competitors where the organisation becomes inward-looking – they’re worried about their jobs and the hierarchy,” Gould added.
“That’s the one thing we wanted to avoid happening, because at that point you basically free up your customer base for others to come in.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
