Winner of MSP of the Year at this year's Channel Innovation Awards, Cascadeo president Jared B. Reimer talks about taking on a new majority investor and going back to its roots as a remote working company.
This article is part of a Meet the Winners Q&A series following Channel Partner Insight's Channel Innovation Awards. Click here to see all of the award winners.
What has been your personal highlight of 2020?
After a year of hard work together, Globe Telecom became the majority investor in the company, catapulting us to the next level in every regard. We managed to consummate a complex international transaction in the middle of a pandemic and the worst economic downturn in history. The new round of funding has allowed us to add two new key executives and to scale our operations in anticipation of a strong economic recovery in 2021. Our partnership with Globe started as a vendor-client relationship and has grown into something much more significant. We were featured together on CNN Philippines recently.
What has been the biggest challenge for your business this year?
Cascadeo started as a virtual company. When the pandemic was upon us, we were able to quickly move our operations to 100% remote. For us, this was far less disruptive than to most other businesses, as we were relatively new to a traditional office environment and have always maintained the capability to run the company from anywhere with functional Internet access.
I think our biggest challenge has been the impact to our clients, among them airlines, manufacturing and other heavily-impacted industries. It has proven hard for companies to make decisions or investments in future infrastructure when they don't have the ability to model the future and to capture the immediate revenue losses.
How has COVID changed your business long term?
Everything old is new again. We started as a virtual company 14 years ago and firmly believed at that time in the model. We opened offices because we needed them, but never lost the ability to return to our roots: a distributed, results-oriented work environment. We are able to find the brightest talent from across the globe, and we provide the highest quality of life that we can offer our team members with unlimited PTO and the ability for our team members to live and work from anywhere they like.
What technology or app has been most valuable to you during the pandemic?
Slack - without a question. We consider Slack to be the central nervous system of our company. It allows us to be in constant communication with our team members worldwide.
We are able to connect and collaborate together, to understand each part of the company as a whole and for each team member to contribute, add value & humor as we continue on our journey.
We've also continued to invest in cascadeo.io - our AIOps-powered, human-supported Managed-Services-as-a-Service solution. We strive to develop features/capabilities to enable the Managed Service business to scale to ~1,000s of Customers while reducing MS headcount ratio and workload as customer population increases.
The combination of Slack and cascadeo.io is a one-two punch that solves the hardest problems in MSP operations. It is the "secret sauce" that makes Cascadeo MSP of the Year!
What are your top predictions for 2021?
We believe there is massive pent-up demand and backlogged work due to the 2020 pandemic. As the vaccine is deployed and proven effective, we expect an incredible economic recovery in Q2, amplified by expected federal stimulus in Q1. In other words, we think 2021 is going to be a fantastic year - both because we will all be vaccinated and free to live our normal lives again, but also because we will be busy with the work that didn't get done in 2020.
What does it mean to you to win the MSP of the Year Award in this year's Channel Innovation Awards?
We are very honored and excited to have been chosen to win this award, as it lets us realize two dreams that are at the core of who we are:
- It allows us to continue to attract the best talent. We strive to provide the best quality of life for our team as they achieve professional and personal growth. We have an amazing clientele that challenges us to deliver cutting edge technology, build our cascadeo.io technology platform and to consistently deliver amazing outcomes for our clients.
- Part of Cascadeo's vision is, "do well by doing good in the world." We take pride in our communities we live in, not only in North America but in those underserved communities in the Philippines and beyond. By building Cascadeo, we are investing in the next generation of young technical talent and building a global workforce of cloud-native geniuses.
Winning this award is a massive honor for Cascadeo! It is validation for our sustained investment in our platform, cascadeo.io, our distributed business model, and our continued investments to upskilling our current and future Cascadeo family members.
