Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Now that's IT: Stories of MSP Success dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in the Managed Service Provider industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew, Now, That's IT.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Why Focus Wins: Vinod Paul on Align’s MSP Success
In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Vinod Paul, President of Managed Services at Align, to explore how a bold decision to focus exclusively on one vertical—financial services—transformed the company from a solid MSP into a global leader.
Vinod shares the behind-the-scenes story of walking away from millions in revenue, standardizing their tech stack, and saying no to clients who didn’t fit—all in pursuit of scalable, high-value growth. The result? Align grew from 75 to 300 employees, expanded into 31 countries, and became a trusted name in one of the most demanding industries in the world.
If you're an MSP leader grappling with growth, client fit, or the pressure to do it all, this conversation is packed with real-world strategies, lessons in verticalization, and insights on scaling without compromise.
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
N-able Business Transformation is Expert led and Peer informed.These valuable executive programs are tailored to provide effective guidance and a faster path to a scalable and successful business.
Book a Call with Chris Massey now to learn what Business Transformation can do for you!
'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
One, two, three, four. We invest as much time into understanding the vertical as we do in understanding the MSP space and technology. We're out there understanding the business needs of our clientele and understanding what's the future business needs of our clientele. We understand what are the business processes and the problems that we have to solve and we leverage technology to enable our clients to overcome any business challenge that they have. For us, it's absolutely been an enabler for our success factor. We've been able to grow Fast forward to today. We have clients across 24 states and 31 countries and we've been able to scale without having to throw body after body after body. We've leveraged technology to scale that business. Welcome to Now, that's.
Speaker 1:It stories of MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.
Speaker 2:In 2016, vinod Paul walked into a cigar bar in New York City with a bold idea what if they stopped trying to be everything to everyone and instead became the very best at serving one market financial services? At the time, align was doing well Not great, but well. So that night, everything changed. Vinod and the leadership team made a decision that would define the next chapter of their company. They'd walk away from legacy clients and they'd give up on millions in revenue, depreciate those services that weren't profitable and, in return, build a platform so focused, so scalable and so secure that it would take them from scattered to global. Today, align is one of the most recognized names in the financial services IT space, and Vinod Paul is at the center of them all. Welcome to the Now that's it podcast, vinod.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 2:Such a pleasure we like to always start this session off with. We like to call it the way back machine. So, before Align and before your success in financial services, what first drew you to technology?
Speaker 1:So I had an interesting upbringing, right when I went to school. I actually went to school for biological sciences, believe it or not.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And with the track of okay, maybe I'm eventually going to be going to medicine. And during school, you know one thing fortunate that I was was, you know it was during the dot-com era, pre-dot-com, right 1991, going into school, the students were just getting their first email addresses. And you know, technology was exciting, the world of Bill Gates was happening and at that time if you could have any skills of turning on a computer you had an opportunity. And at the time I had a really good friend that was a year ahead of mine and graduated and he started work for a hot technology company called Alpha Technologies. And you know, in my senior year of college, you know he was talking to me a lot and said hey, why don't you come here for a year? And you know, complete shift to what I thought I was going to be doing. But he gave me an opportunity to interview with the organization and they actually part one of the interview was they gave you a test of, you know, just your aptitude in technology.
Speaker 1:And during college I always played around with technology and, you know, took the test and passed it really well and they said great, you have a job, do you want to? You know you could start, you know, a week after graduation. So I took that route and was fortunate enough to get involved with this organization. That day three of working there they sent me off to AT&T Lucent Technologies, and week one I was doing a mail migration from Microsoft Mail into Microsoft Exchange.
Speaker 1:So at the heart of it, I had a unique start in this industry where I was an engineer first and got to work with some of the brightest in the world. I was working at the Bell Labs in New Jersey, you know, an organization that had 6,000 employees of highly technical individuals and got exposed to a lot of technology very quickly. And from there this organization brought me to Tyco Submarine Systems, which is Global Crossing, and from there I went to Pegna Putnam Publishing. And when I went to Pegna Putnam Publishing I had an opportunity to get a taste of working in New York City. And once I got that taste I said all right, I love this industry, love the city and want to be able to stay here and started looking for an opportunity to stay in New York City. And that's when I got exposed to my first financial services firm and never looked back since.
Speaker 2:That's great Big city guy. I guess I should have known that about you. But I get the occasional trip to NYC and I always say I'm so glad I get to go back to the small town. So you either are a big city guy or you aren't.
Speaker 2:It's in my DNA. Good for you. So you've had what many would call, I guess, a hybrid career Small company energy, but big company scale, right. I looked at your sort of background. You talked about a few of those places. How do you think that's sort of shaped the way that you lead and think today?
Speaker 1:So, absolutely, I've had the opportunity to work at very large organizations, work with some of the greatest financial firms in the world, but at the heart of it, I've always worked at a small business and one of the things that's compelled me during my entire career has been the fact that a small business allows you to follow your entrepreneurial spirit, and that's the bottom line part of my DNA. I love trying new things. Have I failed during my career? Yes, absolutely, but I've also had the opportunity to succeed and that's because of the teams that I've been able to work with and it's allowed me to come along in my career to where I am now, and I've had a lot of fun working with large organizations but being able to do it from an opportunity where a small business has been able to approach a problem and fix it for the clientele that we work with. So it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:That's great. You mentioned to us that you've known the owner of Align for over 25 years. Yes, but what ultimately convinced you to join the company?
Speaker 1:So what I love about Jim Dooling and Align and the rest of the management team at Align is they are entrepreneurs, and Jim started Align 40 years ago and has built an incredible organization. Fast forward to today. We're on the leading edge of some of the exciting things going on in the data center world, as well as the managed services world, and what really attracted me to Jim was the fact that he gave me a platform to be able to expand on, and Alliance always had a great reputation, and one of the hardest things in this world is being a technology company that has a good reputation and, at the end of the day, align had. Before I joined Align eight years ago, they had never failed at a project. Their clients love Align and I knew that that would give me a great foundation to bounce and jump off of, along with the rest of the team, to build the managed service provider that we are now today.
Speaker 2:You talk about the reputation. That was obviously a pro, but what was sort of the state of Align when you joined eight years ago? What was going on?
Speaker 1:So Align had had two iterations of a managed service provider before I joined and I think that what was smart of Jim and the management team was to realize that you always have to keep changing your solution, evolving your solution.
Speaker 1:Going to that cigar bar with Jim, what I understood is Align had actually a couple of things that they really hadn't tapped into which I thought there was an incredible commercial opportunity to leverage.
Speaker 1:The first thing was Align was a tier one Microsoft Cloud Solutions provider and one of the first to really figure that that's really important to core business offering. The second was that they had a great cybersecurity offering, and one thing that was interesting was I saw from afar that Align had a lot of different clients across a couple of different verticals and when me and Jim sat down we talked about hey, I think there's an opportunity to focus all this energy into one vertical and I think the results can be that we can grow this business through partnerships with the existing clientele that are financial service firms, build upon that, build that foundation and, more importantly, build a stack of technology what we call the line IT suite today into a platform that scales and be able to do it in a way that we don't have to throw labor at all our problems, but instead leverage the vertical, leverage, the technology that we built and be able to innovate during that time.
Speaker 2:I love that story about the cigar bar. I feel like every company has something like that. Maybe it isn't as glamorous as a beautiful cigar bar in New York City, but that conversation that you had, you know, in the back of your mind you felt very confidently that going all in on financial services was the right direction.
Speaker 1:Why was that Absolutely so. I've been fortunate. For the past 20 years I've worked at two different MSPs. The MSP before that also was focused hyper-focused in on the financial services industry. So what's interesting about the financial services industry is they're results-driven right, and my primary clients today are the top hedge funds of the world private equity institutional family offices. Interesting enough, another side set of clients that we support also is the service provider community around there. Set of clients that we support also is the service provider community around there, and you know, with that industry, what we've found is financial services with the results-based deliveries that they have to make to their clientele. They want uptime, they want great client service, they want high touch, and I knew that was an opportunity for us to build on.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, our clients rely on us to be a part of their business. We're a partner, we're not a vendor, and we've been able to demonstrate to our clientele that we are that partner because we're helping them with operational due diligence, we're helping them deal and navigate with the regulatory challenges of the world, but also we are constantly innovating our solution. So it's not just, oh, we're going to deliver you a great Microsoft platform, it's oh, copilot's coming out. How can you leverage that to make your business smarter? Oh, there's a new cybersecurity challenge that's happening across the world. How can we enable you to be protected, to keep your clients safe, to keep yourself safe and also, most importantly, leverage technology as an enabler for their business?
Speaker 2:I think that's so fascinating, vinod, you guys were ahead of the times at the time, right, that's sort of the future of the MSP space, talking about business outcomes, and you were doing this years ago because you knew that space so well and you know how the technology could affect that. So, obviously, in retrospect, looking back hindsight 2020, great decision. But that pivot came with some tough choices. Right, you deprecated your private cloud. You told some clients they weren't a good fit anymore. What was maybe one of the hardest, what was the hardest part of that pivot?
Speaker 1:You know I'll I'll go back to um. It absolutely was was hard because when you know, when you have a business that's doing expander revenue and you've had clients be a part of that till until some point, it's hard to make the decision point of, okay, I'm going to completely upend the model. And you know, till that point. Align was always worked with financial services but had not necessarily focused in on only the alternative financial services market. So the management team kudos to them, most importantly Jim Dooling, because it was a hard decision to go to some of those clients and say this isn't a good marriage for us anymore. But at the end of the day, jim had the vision and so did the rest of the supporting members to understand, you know, what these clients aren't as profitable as what we've been able to build today has become.
Speaker 1:More importantly, we've been able to deliver and develop great relationships with our clientele and I think it's because of the vertical that we've chosen. It's a difficult vertical, absolutely. Do our clients expect the best? Absolutely. Do they expect high touch, high value? Absolutely. But I think that our organization, especially our staff, they care about this industry. We understand the ins and out of it. We understand the service provider community. We understand all the nuances that go along with running technology for high net worth individuals, and we've been able to succeed on that.
Speaker 2:One of the hardest things that I see MSPs either do or don't do is saying goodbye to that bad revenue, like making the decision that not every dollar that comes in is a good dollar. You felt very confidently that, yes, revenue is going to dip but we're going to rebound. Why was that? Was it your experience in the MSP space for as long as it was? How did you know the future?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. I was a big believer that if we could build a platform that's scalable, that it would have the snowball effect and absolutely the world that we focus in on the clientele that we support. Everyone knows each other. Your reputation is absolutely the most important aspect of your business. We've been able to deliver upon a great chief financial officer community, chief compliance officer community. We've understood the business problems and that resonates with our clientele.
Speaker 1:It is great to get the number of inbound calls that we do, because some of our competitors have up to 75 individuals that are doing sales. When we share with us that really there's one person at our organization that does sales full-time and the rest of us do it as a part-time job on top of their full-time job. It surprises individuals, but we've been able to leverage those relationships and we've made our clientele part of that sales community. Because they're partners, they want to be able to tell their best friend oh, we use Align and we're very proud of the fact that they helped us with operational due diligence. Interesting enough also, we've also leveraged the service provider community that we support to be an extension of our sales team Because think about it they need to keep the data of their clients secure. They need to have a great technology system to interact with their clientele and if they're using Align as that platform, they can share that positive experience on a day-to-day basis. That's highly powerful for us and our clientele.
Speaker 2:So one of the things you did something that I see very successful in the MSP space you verticalized right. You had this vision. We're going to focus on this industry. We're going to walk away from the rest. I actually just spoke to a partner just about an hour ago that did the exactly same thing in the accounting firm right, and so they found something that worked for them. But there's a lot of MSP owners that might be fearful to sort of niche down or focus on one thing. What sort of advice would you give to an MSP owner like that?
Speaker 1:So my advice to them would be it is not high risk, high reward. I would say. You're investing in your future for a positive outcome is how I would frame it to them right.
Speaker 1:So for us as an organization, we invest as much time into understanding the vertical as we do in understanding the MSP space and technology. So it's just as important, if not more important. So we are out there at every financial services conference. We're out there understanding the business needs of our clientele and understanding what's the future business needs of our clientele. We understand what are the business processes and the problems that we have to solve and we leverage technology to enable our clients to overcome any business challenge that they have.
Speaker 1:So you know just one example right, there are a lot of regulatory requirements for our clientele. There are cybersecurity barriers that they have to make sure are not crossed. They have to make sure they have disaster recovery, business continuity. Those are all must-haves. But take it a step further. They need to pass operational due diligence. That means a potential investor who might write them a check is going to come in and do an examination of their technology footprint and make sure that they have the controls that they say they do in place and make sure they'll actually go and do exercise to make sure the technology is in place as well.
Speaker 1:We've become an important aspect of that and we've been able to leverage that to enable them to be successful. So I would tell any business owner just to get back to the original point that you mentioned is don't think of it as high risk and possibly a reward, but more. I'm investing for a guaranteed success in my business. For us it's absolutely been an enabler for our success factor. We've been able to grow Fast forward to today. We have clients across 24 states and 31 countries and we've been able to scale without having to throw body after body after body. We've leveraged technology to scale that business.
Speaker 2:That's great. Let's talk about the growth. So from 75 to 300 employees from clients all over different industries to 100% financial, from high 300s to number 31 in the MSP 501, congratulations on that. Is there one thing in particular that sort of moved that hockey puck the direction that it went, or is it a couple of things? I don't think it's one thing in particular that sort of moved that hockey puck the direction that it went, or is it a couple of things?
Speaker 1:I don't think it's one thing, but I think it's. If you think about you know what are the core pillars that we run our business on. The first one is you know and I think business owners often forget this it's hard to win a new client right. It's harder to maintain them and keep them as a client. So we put a lot of emphasis on client retention. Our clients have become our partners and it's really important for us to keep them on as partners, and that helps out and creates good outcomes. Next is new client acquisition. Think about how that rolls right into that.
Speaker 1:Another pillar that's really important to us is innovation, constant innovation. So we created a line IT suite in 2017. And if you fast forward to today, the line IT suite has innovated so much. Right, we've reiterated that product, we've made it better, we've enhanced it for the benefit of the clientele, and one thing we've been able to do is do it in a predictable model. So most of our services are driven on a per user, per month basis. We were one of the first managed service providers to do that in the space. We upended the solution because most MSPs they'll charge XYZ for one service, they'll charge labor for another. They'll charge licensing as another bucket, and you know your invoices are going up and down, up and down peaks and valleys and it's a complaint we hear a lot when we're doing takeaway business. We've been absolutely able to deliver a predictable IT model while at the same time innovating and delivering good services. So I would tell you, those things as a foundation have helped us, but also constantly improving customer service, having that white glove service, which is hard to do, right, but we've been able to do it with the pod structure that we have. I think a lot of managed service providers underestimate the power of a good client relationship manager and we've been able to build a great team that's been able to do that.
Speaker 1:Another, I think, absolutely success factor for us has been we developed a platform and we do not deviate from that platform. So we can configure the platform for your business needs, but we will not customize. So one example you know, just foundationally speaking, we are complete Microsoft shop. If someone comes to us and says I want to use G Suite or be on Gmail or, you know, I want to have XYZ in Amazon, it's not a good fit for us. I will also say you know, the power of no is strong right. So if a client comes to us and says you know, we want to take half the product or we want to not take cybersecurity solutions as part of your offering, we'll actually say you're not a good fit for us and that's helped us because, at the end of the day, we want to keep our clients safe. We want to keep them all in the same platform because it helps us support them. We're not learning new systems every day and it also helps us to scale the business.
Speaker 2:It just shows your experience in the MSP space. The decisions you've made, the changes you've made are foundational MSP maturity steps. You've focused on an industry you standardized. You said no. I actually had a conversation with a partner earlier and I said if you don't say no, you won't grow. And I'm like you're going to trademark that and I'm like, but that power for you to be able to say that's not the right fit, that's not the client we're going to go after. If you're not going to take what we believe right, we're the experts.
Speaker 1:Then you're not a good fit for us. How hard was that? Listen, the sales part of you. It's hard, absolutely it's hard to say no to an opportunity that's going to bring you revenue. But fortunately I work with a management team that is incredible.
Speaker 1:And I think another success factor to our business is we are rowing the boat in the same direction. Our chief operating officer, our managing director of sales, every one of my managers at Align, the you know the individuals running our NOC, the individuals running our service desk, our project management team we are all rowing the boat in the same direction and that's hugely powerful and me saying no, and you know my colleagues saying no to the wrong opportunities. That trickles down to the rest of the team because they know that we are supporting them and they know that we have their back to make sure that no one's cutting a corner. We're going to make their lives easier at the end of the day from a support functionality. And it's been hugely powerful for us. And you know it's exciting when we win a new client. We, you know we send that message out to the whole team and you know everyone's on board, everyone's like excited about it, um, even all the way down to our interns that come on board. You know it's a, you know, this coming summer we're excited.
Speaker 1:We have a class of eight interns coming on board as a managed service. It's unique because we're exposing them to an incredible market of financial services but, more importantly, to a great industry. You've probably heard the stat the managed services industry is going towards a trillion dollars this coming year. I absolutely believe that, because think about every small to medium business. They're not going to run IT on their own, and even enterprises now they're not going to run IT on their own. There are aspects that they have to leverage a managed service provider to be successful at, and we've been able to leverage all those variables in the industry and use it to leverage growth for ourselves.
Speaker 2:That's great, all right. You guys are absolutely cooking right now. Things are really really well. But was there ever a point where you looked at you looked at the in the mirror or whatever and said, boy, this might not work.
Speaker 1:So, listen, uh, maybe it's a little bit of arrogance, but, uh, you know, I, uh, I was a believer from day one and fortunately I have an incredible team that I've worked with and they were all believers day one and we had support from the management team. Was it hard? Yeah, absolutely it was hard. Were there days where we're like, wow, we've made a hard decision, we got rid of paying clients that were outside of the vertical. Why do we do that? Our profitability is going to go down before it goes back up.
Speaker 1:Those are hard days, but we knew that we could have an effect on the organization where, if we hit the model the right way, we could build upon that reoccurring revenue and, more importantly, we could build a sustainable future for the company. And, thankfully, with all that support and the believers I'll go back to the believers that believed in the model and knew that we could scale there was a day when the snowball started to get bigger and that was the exciting day, right? Was it hard when the snowball was getting small and you thought it was all going to turn to water? Yes, absolutely. But we've been fortunate that we were able to show that snowball effect and grow the organization and we built a sustainable future for our organization.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, vinod. I tell you what I've seen thousands, hundreds of thousands of MSPs. Something that really stood out about Align was your brand. You guys have you said it earlier. The financial industry knows who Align is. You personally drive the go-to-market strategy right. You're involved in the marketing, you're involved in client relationships. How do you manage that today with everything else you have on your plate? And what do you believe are some things that leaders should never delegate?
Speaker 1:So I'm a big believer that leaders should never delegate the marketing of their organization and I'm passionate about marketing. Right, I call and our head of marketing is wonderful. But I like to think of myself as the head of marketing for the line of business of Align Managed Services Because, at the end of the day, I'm a passionate engineer. That's how I started. Foundationally, I'm passionate about the industry we service and, at the end of the day, we're telling the story to any potential prospect and at the end of the day, I also want to deliver upon that story. I want them to believe that vision but also exceed their expectations and if we can do that, then we're going to retain them as a client. They're going to be happy to go tell all their friends about Align as their partner. And it's been a lot of fun, I will tell you, even coming to an event like this where Enable's holding their Empower event. It gives me great ideas, you know, and you know I think that where I'm different from other MSP owners out there is you don't need to have a team of 10 people in marketing. You just need to be able to leverage the partnerships that you have, as well as the small resources that you have to get the most value out of every dollar spent, and we've been able to do that and achieve that. A lot of that is through thought leadership. So we will interact with our clients quite a bit kind of find out what their problems are that they're trying to solve, and we'll leverage that for the positive.
Speaker 1:We are very keen to understand the future of our industry, so we're on the cutting edge of changing regulation and we collaborate with many of the service providers out there as well as our clientele. You know, just last year we held a market event that we hosted ourselves. It was called the Emerging Managers Seminar. We had about 150 attendees at that seminar and one thing that was powerful for that seminar was we had two panels just around operational due diligence and some of the new cybersecurity regulation that's coming up, but we had clients on that panel. That's hugely powerful because you know, the prospects that are sitting in the audience were able to hear just wow, I started a. You know this person started a hedge fund and they this is the real world that they went on. It wasn't a commercial for a line, but it was more leadership, thought leadership about the the someone else up here doing. You know what I'm about to do, so it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So talk. So you talk a lot about solving business problems, right? I mentioned earlier that I felt like you were a little bit ahead of your time and not just delivering tech. Is that something that you try to teach to the technical teams? And is that hard?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. And this is something that I love our engineers right. I love them to death. But sometimes engineers will get and listen I'm guilty of this myself. You'll solve an engineering problem and say this is the best solution. You know, everyone should buy this when you know. At the end of the day, what I try to get the engineers to understand is, if we can solve a business problem, that's the better way to get a positive. To understand is, if we can solve a business problem, that's the better way to get a positive, achievable result. And Align's been able to do that with different products. And the way we frame our product delivery to our clients is helping them solve business problems.
Speaker 1:And you know, for engineers, you know they'll often you go back to you gravitate towards what you're comfortable with. Right, an engineer wants to configure things. They want to show that, oh, this cybersecurity solution, nothing can break it. Or they want to show that, oh, this data replication software, it's the best At the end of the day. No, our clients want to hear that, oh, my data is getting backed up X amount of days. You have perpetual backups. That's phenomenal. Okay, if I need to go back three years and go grab X amount of data. That's what they want to hear. They don't want to hear about the technology that's accomplishing it or the cogs behind it or what gear is moving where they want to know. Can I get my data?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm really happy about all the success for Align. Really, congratulations on all that. Talk a little bit about the future. Do you see right now you're privately held. Do you see sort of M&A in the future, both on the sort of acquisition and you guys looking? What does the future look like?
Speaker 1:It's a great question, right? So, especially in the managed services space, there's been a lot of activity around M&A and from day one, Align has always been privately held. I actually think right now it is a differentiator for us, because we are dictating what the solution should be. I don't have someone telling me how to dictate. Oh, you should put the resources here. You can bring your labor down. X, Y, Z.
Speaker 1:Use this technology because it's cheaper than what you're using today We've actually stayed away from outside capital on purpose, and you know, I don't know what the future will bring, you know, but for the immediate future that is not on the horizon for Align, because up till this point it's been an enabler for us to run Align in the best interests of Align and the best interests of our clientele.
Speaker 1:In terms of acquisitions, you know there hasn't been one that's made sense to us. And it's been interesting because you know we actually had a competitor of ours, much smaller, come to us and say, hey, what do you think about us possibly becoming part of the Align family? And for us it didn't make sense because we've delivered an incredible product and to us we looked at that and we're like, oh, this is possibly a downgrade and so it hasn't made sense for us as an organization.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this what sort of keeps you up at night, Vinod about sort of the future of this business, and then what excites?
Speaker 1:you the most. So what excites me the most is all the innovation that's happening from a technology aspect. Right, If you just look at even the AI and cybersecurity forefront, we've been able to be on the forefront of the changes in that. If you just look at even the AI and cybersecurity forefront, we've been able to be on the forefront of the changes in that. And let's fast forward. Three years from now, the world is going to look so different. Just think about AI and how much.
Speaker 1:I don't know how much you use it personally, but I've started to use it almost inherently in a lot of the business aspects that I leverage, and a year ago it didn't really exist, so it's a little bit scary out there. I think everyone's jobs are going to change, but we're embracing that, we're embracing change and we're embracing all the innovation that's going on. What keeps me up at night is really I'm a big proponent that we will only be as successful as every other team member. So we constantly push that, and myself and all of my fellow management team members they're wonderful at pushing that message out, trying to even teach the intern who's just starting day one of work all the way through every employee that's starting his or her first day of work, the importance of customer service, all the way through every employee that's starting his or her first day of work, the importance of customer service and at the end of the day it's about every client relationship interaction they have with the line. We can have the best technology right and nine out of ten times when we're taking over another MSP's client it's because of a bad service interaction that they've had.
Speaker 1:And you can't teach that, right, you can't teach good manners. But what we can do is we can give them the formula and the recipe to be successful, to deliver good customer skills, and that we can teach. You know, I can't teach temperament, but I could teach. Here's the recipe that where we can react to giving positive results. No one's calling the help desk to say, hey, everything's working today. And I always try to tell the service desk members that they're calling you at a painful moment. It's because they can't log into their machine or there's something happening that they need help log into their machine or there's something happening that they need help. And so keep that in the back of your head when you're interacting with them so that you give them a positive experience.
Speaker 2:That's great. Thank you for that. That's good advice, all right. So one last question. We call this podcast the Now that's it podcast, and so I'd like to ask you, vinod, when did you know? Now that's it.
Speaker 1:I knew. Let's see, I think in 2003, 2004, I had the opportunity to you know, the organization I was working at was Avar and we were going through that transformation of becoming a managed service provider. And the moment came when, you know, we were doing like three or four go lives in one night and just a lot of positive momentum. And the Monday came along where all four clients went live at the same time and I saw the power of being able to be a managed service provider, deliver the same platform across multiple different clients. Everyone would be happy, Everyone was trading, and I was like, wow, there's a real formula up here and the clients are willing to pay a premium price for a great solution. Everyone's happy. And it was an eye-opening experience for me and fun, exciting. The team was all excited. We went through a weekend of working together, almost 48 hours together, of putting systems in place, and back then there were a lot of servers that you had to carry and put in place and we were able to achieve it and that was the moment.
Speaker 2:That's great, vinod. I tell you what I really appreciate you being here today. You're a flag bearer, an advocate for the MSP industry. I love listening to you talk about things MSP and congratulations on all the success. Can't wait to see how much more Align grows and how you guys continue the success. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the opportunity. Appreciate it.