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ECI recently welcomed Jeff Schmidt as our new president and CEO. Jeff comes to ECI most recently from cybersecurity services firm Avertium, where he tripled revenues over five years as founding CEO. Jeff’s earlier roles include senior management positions at SQS, All Covered, and British Telecom. He joins ECI during a time of record client renewals and aggressive new growth targets to leverage his proven track record of managing complex acquisitions and integrations while strengthening sales, profits and customer service.
Jeff is particularly known for leading world-class teams that outperform competitors and drive strong ROI for clients. In fact, his dedication to team excellence extends even to his hobbies and interests outside of work. Look no further than the bookcase behind his desk – where a serious collection of Major League Baseball team memorabilia competes for space with framed artwork of Captain America, Iron Man and other members of Marvel’s Avengers team of superheroes.
Superior teamwork, professional excellence and plans to drive ECI to even further heights as the financial sector’s premier MSP partner were among the themes Jeff covered in a recent conversation about his new role leading ECI.
Q: With baseball or any sport, we hear about the “intangibles” of how a team can perform at the top of its game in ways that go beyond just what batting averages or other statistics might indicate. Do you see any parallels here for achieving excellence as an MSP?
A: Absolutely! Just as batting averages don’t tell the whole story in baseball, industry certifications or qualifications on paper don’t tell the whole story in sizing up an MSP. In baseball, there’s the concept of Wins Above Replacement, which is a way of looking at a player’s true value in actual games. So, for example, you may have someone with an impressive .400 batting average who somehow can’t knock in runs very well when teammates are on base. By the same token, you may have a cloud MSP with the right certifications, but the wrong approach to configuration that leaves systems vulnerable to attack. In each case, the true value is less about certifications and statistics, and more about how you performed at bat with bases loaded, or how you dealt with that DNS attack in real time.
Q: What specifically goes into being a superior MSP with levels of service and security that go above and beyond?
A: The way we conceptualize it at ECI is going “beyond lights on” to manage a wider range of IT services and functions, and do so in a holistic and strategic manner. We certainly cover the table stakes of delivering infrastructure that is always on. But that’s just the foundation for a deeper level of tooling, services and domain expertise from ECI that supports more complex and demanding use cases, user experiences and system requirements. It’s a holistic approach that weighs the entire security and compliance ecosystem in developing MSP services with more redundancy, resiliency and data-driven insights for system visibility and decision support.
Q: What excites you most about heading ECI as a top performing finance-oriented MSP?
A: First, there’s our people and the massive amount of experience they’ve accumulated in cloud, cybersecurity, compliance, risk management and more – all within the uniquely demanding domain of finance. Our pedigree in the financial industry is knowing how private equity and hedge fund organizations work and what their IT systems need to do. And then there’s the fact that we’re excelling at this against the backdrop of tremendous disruption and constant change for financial firms. We’re helping our clients apply IoT, AI/ML Edge and other technologies in ways that make business sense for their mission, and operational sense for the strict security and compliance environments they need to work within.
Q: The way ECI combines a wide range of capabilities and skill sets made me think of the Marvel artwork in your office, and how the Avengers superheroes combine their superpowers to make an unbeatable team. With that analogy in mind, what is the key to combining all the best “superpowers” of an MSP?
A: To be an MSP in the financial sector, you really do need to have a combination of superpowers – from grasping the industry’s unique compliance landscape and business rhythms, to understanding the sector’s most critical security risks and prioritizing the right IT solutions and processes to protect against those risks. All these superpowers need to work together on behalf of the client. And since many MSP clients are smaller firms, these superpowers need to be available at a scale that is both financially and technologically manageable for such firms. That’s where ECI has always excelled, and where we’ll continue to excel as we further build our business and our trend toward growth.
Q: What is your outlook for ECI as you lead the company forward?
A: I’m curious by nature, and ECI has had so many wins over the years. I’m looking for us to dig into every part of how we serve clients and find ways to make our products and services even more effective and easy to use. I want to understand exactly why we win and do it so well in this industry – and continuously apply disruptive technology to help our clients succeed and continue our successful legacy. It’s an exciting time for ECI and the clients we serve; I’m proud to be here!
Read more about Jeff Schmidt’s arrival as ECI CEO here.
