Logically’s New CEO: We Have National Scale But ‘Heart And Care’ Of A Local Team

“I’ll call it being in the second seat to the first seat. In some ways it’s different but in many ways it’s still the same. I’m here to service our employees, our customers and just help us continue to drive awesome service and revenue,” says Michelle Accardi about transitioning from leading a vendor to a solution provider.

Logically, a Portland, Maine-based MSP and MSSP, recently announced Michelle Accardi as its new CEO, and she’s ready to grow into more national markets.

Accardi, who is currently a Logically board member, was most recently the president and chief revenue officer of Star2Star, a Sangoma Company. During her eight years in leadership at Star2Star, she led strategic growth initiatives and was instrumental in the merger with Sangoma, which helped grow the company to 600 employees and millions of end-users globally.

“I’ll call it being in the second seat to the first seat,” she told CRN. ”In some ways it’s different but in many ways it’s still the same. I’m here to service our employees, our customers and just help us continue to drive awesome service and revenue.”

Accardi, who was named to CRN’s Power 100 for 2021 is succeeding Mike Cowles at Logically.

The new CEO spoke to CRN about her vision for Logically going forward and what she wants to tackle in 2022.

You were most recently the president and CRO of Star2Star. How will your experience with a vendor help you in your new role with a solution provider?

I’ve been on both sides of the table. In terms of having to offer a great service as a vendor and offering it through companies that are MSPs, like Logically, it makes me know how important it is that I choose the right vendors for my customers from a product perspective. Quality is everything, so it’s going to ensure that I continue to keep that top of mind for my customers.

What attracted you to step into this role?

It’s one of the fastest growing managed service providers and it has a specialty managed security service provider as part of its business unit. Cybersecurity is so hot. It’s a huge challenge and the fact that we have the leading MSSP in the industry makes this super exciting. Not only are we providing the best overall network managed service and support services, we now can ensure security. We back it up with capabilities that others don’t have with our manage sock that small MSPs just simply can’t provide because they don’t have the resourcing. We’ve got national scale with the heart and care of a local team.

As you step into to your role, what is your vision for Logically going forward into 2022?

We’ll have growth, growth is what we’re all about. We understand that people want to be able to still have local service in their regions, but they need to have the expertise of a national brand. Growing our capabilities and growing our revenue are all cornerstones and the only way you do that is providing the very best quality service. My vision is to truly put the heart and care of the local MSP but at the national capability level and really being able to help customers coast to coast wherever they are.

What’s your strategy for M&As for Logically going forward?

We like to look for healthy managed service providers that are providing great service into midmarket accounts and that are in regions that are close to the regions that we’re supporting so that we’re getting good national footprint. Not necessarily right on top of each other but in the next markets over, so we’re just growing our footprint nationally. We’re also looking for a technology specialization that adds additional value to our customers. Halski Systems, who we just acquired, has a great telecom practice so you can codify communications as a service practice.

With security being top of mind for everyone how do you plan on capturing more of that market for it with Logically?

Because we’ve been in this market we’re now going to be able to provide the next level of service to them on security, so that it’s 24-by-seven threat control. It’s not just simply set up a firewall and set up rules, this is really about true managed cybersecurity threat management.

What are some challenges you’re seeing in the channel right now and how do you expect to tackle them as CEO?

I think it’s an opportunity. To me, there are many personal MSPs out there that are struggling because they don’t have all the different capabilities that Logically has. So we’re happy to partner with MSPs, happy to acquire MSPs. With the new technology brokerages we’re known as master agents, we’re building out an entire channel program for those technology brokers to be able to resell Logically’s services. Both our managed services and our managed security services sell through brokerages so that we can really help those agents own the entire part of a customer, not just a piece, but be able to know that they’re doing that with a partner that they can trust who’s going to provide really great quality service.

How are you dealing with the hiring shortage right now?

We’re trying to be a brand that everyone wants to be a part of. I’m trying to make it fun to be an employee at Logically. I think we reward well, we have good benefits. But ultimately, we’re an organization that invests in people. We have tuition reimbursement capabilities. There’s a lot that we’ll do you in terms of investing in our employees if they invest in themselves by coming to work with us and looking to continually upgrade their skills.