Update: N-able Shuffles Execs After CEO Resigns

Scott, who served as president and CEO, will remain on board of directors, said Gavin Garbutt, who co-founded the Ottawa-based managed services company with Scott and most recently served as chairman of the board.

Garbutt said he has stepped down as chairman to assume the role of president and CEO while the company searches for Scott's replacement. N-able board member Rob Rose, who is chief strategy officer at business intelligence software vendor Cognos, Ottawa, was named chairman Monday.

Scott's resignation was a decision made by the board of directors in an effort to take N-able to "the next level" as a company, according to an e-mailed resignation letter from Scott to N-able colleagues obtained by CRN. N-able representatives confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail from Scott.

Garbutt declined to offer additional specifics about the changes but noted that Scott may be starting a new technology company. Scott did not issue a formal public statement and was unavailable for comment at press time.

Tommy Wald, president and CEO of Riata Technologies, an MSP and N-able partner in Austin, Texas, said Scott had a broad vision to diversify N-able further away from its core strength as an MSP platform provider, and this vision likely ran headlong at where the board as a whole wanted the company to go.

"Mark was going more towards diversification, and there may have been a difference in strategic visions," said Wald.

No timetable has been set for hire a new president and CEO, according to Garbutt. Scott's replacement will be "somebody with exceptional experience in the channel," and skills to quickly grow N-able's business, said Garbutt.

The decision to give chairmanship to Rose was based on Rose's record of helping grow Cognos from a $30 million company to a $1 billion company, he said.

During Scott's tenure as president and CEO of N-able, he took the company through six years of growth that were not without occasional growing pains. Under his watch, N-able added hosted MSP services to lower the cost of entry to N-able's MSP platforms. Scott also helped drive a change in N-able's product strategy to a more platform-oriented approach, a move that addresses criticism from a group of organized, disgruntled customers who complained publicly that N-able's products were too complicated to implement, even though the vendor billed them as simple to deploy.

N-able's approach to offering managed services was one of the first to incorporate in its partner training the cultural effect of transitioning from a traditional project-based VAR to a services-oriented MSP.