Channel News
CJ Fairfield
‘As a services company, we are here to advise and consult on new strategies and plans for our client. We are here to help integrate and operate new converged technology solutions and we are here to deliver in our strategic intent to help our clients transform their businesses and grow,’ says Rich Fennessy, Trace3 CEO.
Between investing in data and analytics, AI, M&A and growing its team and customer base, Trace3 wants to make sure it’s “always evolving and growing faster” than the industry.
In fact, CEO Rich Fennessy plans to almost double the company’s revenue in three years.
Today, the technology consultancy generates $2.5 billion in revenue and plans to grow that to $4 billion by 2026. In the last year alone the company has grown by more than 30 percent and added about 300 new clients.
It added about 150 employees in the last year and has more than 3,750 clients across all 50 states.
“All possibilities live in technology,” Fennessy said at Irvine, Calif.-based Trace3’s Evolve conference in Las Vegas in September. “This is a mindset that fuels us each and every day.”
The company has a five-year roadmap, which it kicked off in 2021, that includes growing in four key areas: client engagement, services maturity, talent and expertise and geographic reach through M&A.
[Related: Trace3 CISO Says 2023 Security Sales On Track To Hit $1B]
“This plan is designed to provide us clarity in our strategies for growth and also to provide alignment across our company,” he said. “The goal of this plan is very simple. It’s to ensure that Trace3 is always evolving and growing faster than the industry.”
It also plans to develop a more efficient backend to support integrated technology and enhance service-based solutions and partnership relationships as well as its emerging tech value proposition.
“At a high level, we see this next phase focused on significantly expanding our services and consulting capabilities to help our clients modernize their IT environment,” he said. “We believe it’s through a services-first approach that we can deliver the biggest value to our clients, especially given today’s industry dynamics.
“To grow our services capabilities, we are making internal investments every day to grow our expertise, to grow our maturity and to accelerate our path towards a services-first approach,” he added. “[We’re] also very focused on acquiring cool companies with great capabilities.”
In April, Trace3 acquired Houston-based Set Solutions, which allows the combined company to deepen cybersecurity capabilities in turn driving greater success for commercial and enterprise clients.
Trace3 has even taken a step back this year to refocus on the capabilities that it can bring to the table for its customers around data and analytics, according to Asher Lohman, VP of data and analytics at Trace3.
“So how do we go about understanding the data landscape with a customer, understanding their challenges and solving those use cases,” Lohman told CRN.
Trace3 is now working across “the gamut of data and analytics” from data strategy, building a modern data platform, solving challenges with AI or machine learning and moving into the generative AI landscape.
“It’s how do we help our customers navigate that so they can have a successful outcome,” he said. “A lot of what the challenges are is that the foundations of what you build for taking advantage of the data are not there for a lot of companies. They want generative AI, they want AI, they want ML but they haven’t spent the time to actually build a solid foundation where they have quality data. They need a partner like Trace3 to come in and help them decode that. It’s about fixing and cleaning up potentially decades of legacy infrastructure.”
But the growth isn’t only around data and analytics. Trace3’s cybersecurity business grew more than 70 percent over the last year, according to Fennessy.
“Our industry is in the midst of a significant transformation,” Fennessy said. “Organizations are accelerating or moving towards a hybrid cloud environment while at the same time increasing their commitment to data-driven decision making. Yes, securing the enterprise continues to be a top priority. In the past, many IT organizations looked at these three topics of data, cloud and security through the creation of unique, siloed strategies and plans. I’ll tell you in today’s marketplace these topics are quickly converging and require an integrated strategy. It’s now a must-have versus a nice-to-have given the speed of innovation.”
He said as generative AI “has the opportunity to be a huge game changer,” companies must realize all the benefits of it and have a converged IT strategy around it.
“As a services company, we are here to advise and consult on new strategies and plans for our clients,” he said. “We are here to help integrate and operate new converged technology solutions and we are here to deliver in our strategic intent to help our clients transform their businesses and grow.”
