Incoming SADA CEO Berg: ‘We’re Only Beginning To Scratch The Surface’

Dana Berg plans 'to further embrace the brand that we have with (parent company) Insight,' he said.

SADA’s incoming CEO promises customers that he will stick to the mission of serving as Google’s most dominant solution provider while navigating SADA through new ownership and a new technological era of artificial intelligence, infrastructure and security.

SADA Chief Operating Officer Dana Berg will take the top job at the Los Angeles-based company–No. 108 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 and a member of CRN’s 2024 MSP 500–upon the retirement of current CEO Tony Safoian on Oct. 17 at age 46.

Berg (pictured) plans “to further embrace the brand that we have with (parent company) Insight and to further exploit the unique capabilities that we have at SADA,” he told CRN in an interview Tuesday. “We're only beginning to scratch the surface, and now all efforts will be on that endeavor as we go into the next fiscal year and beyond.”

Changes At Google Partner SADA

In a statement to CRN, Dee Burger, North America president for Chandler, Ariz.-based Insight–No. 17 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500–said that Insight is “excited that Dana Berg will continue to lead our Google Cloud business into the future as a key piece of our ambition to become the leading solutions integrator and a multicloud powerhouse.”

Burger added that “Tony has established SADA as a premier provider of Google Cloud solutions, and his passion for delivering tangible business value to our clients will be greatly missed at Insight.”

Berg will report to Burger, whom Safoian has been reporting to since the acquisition by Insight.

SADA CEO Transition

SADA customers should expect a smooth transition, said Berg, who joined the company in 2018 as COO after about four years with Hitachi Consulting, according to his LinkedIn account. Hitachi Consulting merged with Hitachi Vantara in 2020.

Berg sees more ways to grow within Insight’s tens of thousands of customers and that the outgoing CEO’s retirement is unrelated to continued integration of SADA and Insight.

When asked if acquisitions are part of SADA’s growth strategy, Berg said that he always considers strategic acquisitions but declined to comment on whether any purchases were coming soon.

For the next several weeks and months, Berg will be talking to customers and partners about continuity within the business, he said, “to really make sure that our customers continue to get the great service that they've always expected from us and gotten from us for many, many years.”

“Business as usual,” he said.

No other executives are leaving SADA with Safoian’s departure, Berg said. And multiple SADA employees have been recently promoted to the executive management team.

Those executive changes include:

Ferhan Zaki was promoted from VP of sales to SVP of sales for North America, leading the enterprise professional services sales business in August
John Campbell was promoted from vice president of commercial sales and customer experience to senior VP of Google solution sales in July
Jana Jensen was promoted from business operations managing director to VP of business operations in March
Peter FitzGibbon was promoted from vice president of professional services to SVP of professional services in March

Berg said he sees positive signs looking ahead for technology services. “We are seeing in the market a growing optimism,” he said. “We're beginning to see, as we look to growing levels of pipeline, that the signs are better than they were a year ago for this work. And we'll continue to ride that and exploit that and take advantage of that going into next year.”

The incoming CEO said he sees AI projects getting “to more sizable magnitudes” and from the proof-of-concept (POC) stage to the production implementation into the fourth quarter and into the next fiscal year.

“That's a great, great sign that we move from hype into reality,” he said.

SADA customers can look forward to a continued close relationship with Google, with co-strategizing around AI and new products. “A lot of planning on that as we speak,” he said.

Maintaining Family Business Touch

Safoian, son of the company’s co-founders Hovig and Annie Safoian, has led SADA for almost 24 years as CEO, from four employees in a garage to 800-plus employees worldwide and through its $410 million acquisition by Insight.

Regarding Safoian’s departure, Berg said that everyone at SADA feels “immensely proud of his accomplishments and what he and this company have meant to so many people over half a lifetime.”

“He is a dear friend and an amazing brand ambassador in the ecosystem,” Berg said. “We take such pride in the fact that he's going to be able to go and now spend more time with his family and his friends.”

To SADA co-founders Hovig and Annie Safoian–who came to the U.S. in 1987 from Armenia and founded the solution provider in 2000–Berg said he wants them to know “we feel just as much responsibility to carry on the legacy that the entire Safoian family has built.”

“It's not something that will ever leave the fabric of our culture,” Berg said. “The impact that Annie, Hovig and Tony have had on (not only) this organization, but all the people in this organization, is immeasurable and an infinite, in my view, in terms of its long standing nature.”

Hovig Safoian retired from the company April 30. Annie Safoian plans to retire as treasurer at the end of the SADA fiscal year Dec. 31.

SADA’s birth as a family-owned business and quality of its employees in technical knowhow and customer service have been part of its differentiators over the years, Berg said.

“The ambition that we have is that the characteristics that have made this company so great for so long never ever go away,” he said. “Those characteristics are one built of transparency, trust and empathy. And that was something that this wonderful Safoian family has lived and breathed from day one. And under my leadership, that will remain so.”