MNJ Technologies Rides Digital Transformation To New Highs

‘It wasn’t enough to be just an MSP anymore. To really help solve our customers business problems, we had to focus on digital transformation,’ says MNJ Technologies COO Ben Niernberg.

MNJ Technologies isn’t content resting on its laurels.

The Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based company, No. 128 on the 2021 CRN Solution Provider 500, in January launched a new business unit called Ignyte that’s already landed 175 customers and is focused on bringing digital transformation to clients and improving their modern IT capabilities, Chief Operating Officer Ben Niernberg told CRN.

MNJ is looking to ride digital transformation to 16.5 percent revenue growth in 2022, with sales expected to increase from $200 million in 2021 to $233 million this year. The company, which also appears on the Elite 150 of CRN’s 2022 Managed Service Provider 500, has 125 employees and more than 3,000 active buying customers all over the nation.

Ignyte is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MNJ, and was formed to meet the demands of mid-market companies that need help in that digital transformation space, Niernberg said.

“Whether that was cloud optimization and billing management, whether that was managed services tied to the edge around SD-WAN and connectivity or all of our products and services that fit within the space of digital transformation, where we see the largest growth right now fall under our Ignyte brand,” he said.

Read on to learn how MNJ plans to solve customer’s digital transformation challenges.

Can you talk about the new platform MNJ launched in January of this year?

Ignyte is the new digital transformation arm within MNJ and really the point of it is as our customers continue to change and pivot, it wasn’t enough to be just an MSP anymore. To really help solve our customers business problems, we had to focus on digital transformation. Everything from cloud optimization to helping move customers to public cloud hybrid workflows.

We’re still focusing on the edge and SD-WAN and connectivity, but just really taking it to the next level. We launched Ignyte in January of this year and our entire practice is built around digital transformation for our end users. It’s pretty exciting times for us. We have an extraordinarily strong outlook and in our expectations in this calendar year.

Can you tell me about the background of the company, how long it’s been around and how it started out?

MNJ was founded and started by Paul and Sue Kozak, back in 2002. This will be our 20th anniversary. Paul was one of the original employees at CDW, and then decided, at one point 20 years ago, to break away. And the goal always was to create an organization that was founded on customer service, solving customers’ problems and adding value. MNJ started at zero and very quickly grew larger and larger. Last year we were just around $200 million in total topline revenue.

Around 2016 we got into the managed services practice mostly around network infrastructure, but also with a heavy practice in SD-WAN and connectivity. And so we‘ve been down that path for some time now.

Can you talk more specifically about the services you provide?

There are four distinct areas. Area number one is obviously our hardware resale business, which still continues to grow and thrive, and that’s the legacy MNJ business and what the company was founded on.

Ignyte focuses on three areas: Number one is cloud billing and optimization with the new JV (joint venture) we formed. Number two is we manage services at the edge. We do managed services and consulting on or around SD-WAN network infrastructure and connectivity, so circuits. And then the third largest practice area we have with Ignyte stems around security, but at the edge and so we have a very large practice in that area too.

Who are some of your clients that you serve?

We have a couple of enterprise clients in the gas and oil space, but most of our clients sit in that mid-market where digital transformation is most underserved. So most of our business, while not vertical, is all over the U.S. sitting around mid-markets companies, anywhere between 500 to 5,000 employees.

What would you say is the secret to your company’s success?

I think many companies say they do this, but the difference between saying you’re a company that focuses on solving business problems through technology and saying that you’re a company that can help bring time, multiplication, anonymity, and organization [is significant]. Saying you’re a company that comes in with an approach that looks at not only the technology but the business stack, a lot of people say that. But I think the difference is that it is who we are and what we do on a regular basis. We demonstrate that it’s in our climate.

It’s in our culture, everyone in the organization focuses on it, so it’s not just writing on a chalkboard as much as holistically who we are at every step of the organization. And I think that’s the key. When you focus on every bit of the organization, whether that person is in accounting or in the warehouse as much as you focus on the people in sales, that creates a different level of customer experience and one that we‘re super proud of.