From Firewalls to a Thriving MSP Business – 15 Years of Growth and Success Together for PCA Technology Group and WatchGuard
PCA Technology Group and WatchGuard Technologies
The business partnership between PCA Technology Group, Inc. and WatchGuard Technologies began 15 years ago and was founded on the premise that WatchGuard’s platform approach would enable the company successfully to evolve over time to always meet the latest cybersecurity threats. WatchGuard has delivered on this promise throughout this relationship, and most recently, helped PCA grow it’s MSP business by 56% in the last 18 months. This growth was fueled by their adoption of WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform® framework.
“WatchGuard has been PCA’s trusted security vendor for nearly 15 years. We have seen WatchGuard develop from a firewall manufacturer to a leading cybersecurity platform company. As WatchGuard has increased its breadth of products throughout the years, PCA has leveraged these new offerings to grow our business. Today, WatchGuard is PCA’s sole provider of firewalls, multi-factor authentication products, and endpoint security. Partnering with WatchGuard has enabled PCA to become a leading managed security services provider in our market,” said Mike Olfano, CEO of PCA Technology Group, Inc.
The Beginning of a 15-Year Partnership
PCA Technology Group, Inc. is an MSP that has been operating in the Buffalo, NY area for over 30 years. Throughout their history they have served local businesses with IT services in not-for-profit, manufacturing, construction, and other industries. Fifteen years ago, as a managed service provider interested in business growth, PCA could see that the pace of cybersecurity threats was outpacing their current security offerings, and that this trend would continue. They wanted to partner with a new security vendor that was agile and innovative; one that could quickly adapt to the evolving cybersecurity landscape. They also needed a vendor that understood the needs of mid-sized businesses.
“At that time, we had a mix of brands in our portfolio, but we weren’t confident about the vendors’ ability to transform their offerings with the times, and we also wanted to consolidate our offering to simplify management and drive efficiency. WatchGuard’s approach and offering met our needs then, and because their platform was built to be easily updated with new security services, we were confident they would continue to work well for us in the years to come. At that point, we consolidated our portfolio down to purely WatchGuard,” said Stephen Neuss, Director of Sales at PCA Technology Group, Inc.
Using WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform® Approach to Meet Today’s Challenges
In today’s landscape, where multiple layers of protection are required to proactively fight the various threat vectors, PCA’s continued partnership with WatchGuard continued to evolve as both companies began to expand and grow their offering to meet the ever-expanding security challenges.
“Having that partnership and strengthening it with WatchGuard has allowed us to have that agility to grow faster, better, and quicker. I can challenge our organization. My peers come on calls, and their operations are telling their salespeople ‘time out we can't take on more business.’ My team’s operations say, ‘Bring it on, you can't bring it on fast enough.’ And we grew 56% in the last 18 months in our managed services program. We've just become efficient and able to be agile because of a great vendor relationship, and great technology that allows us to scale at that pace and have fun doing it,” said Neuss.
“We appreciate the ease of communication throughout WatchGuard’s organization. To be able to connect all the way up to the CEO is pretty profound, and it doesn't happen in most vendor relationships,” said Neuss. “Adopting the technology was also very quick. We made it a part of our fabric very fast, felt strong in it, not on shaky grounds, and made it happen seamlessly for the end user experience, while also providing the greatest value.”
Referring to the unified security platform® approach to business, Neuss said, “WatchGuard carries a high bar across the security platforms, which makes it very comfortable to participate in and adopt the unified security platform approach. And it’s not like we're giving up features somewhere or having a risk of the relationship somewhere, or ‘you get these great technologies, but you don't have the support infrastructure’ attitudes. Our security capabilities are trustworthy with WatchGuard. Our clients know that too. They know the value and the depth of our relationship, and they know what we have the capability of collectively delivering strong security. So, from our technology delivery with WatchGuard it keeps that bar high.”
Building Skills and Security Sophistication Using WatchGuardONE Program
PCA’s staff is always striving to enhance their service offerings for their customers. Therefore, the MSP chose WatchGuardONE to train for higher certification levels, as it made it easier for them. By training with one vendor instead of multiple vendors, they have been able to reach higher levels of sophistication and better service enhancement capabilities more quickly. This has ultimately transformed PCA into a top-notch service provider while also improving their customer satisfaction through enhanced service offerings.
“We're on a path together because of your WatchGuardONE program. The objective, the features, and the capability, the partner enablement are all so critical to us. To be able to sit here and have a very fluid relationship with our security vendor, a very team-oriented, purposeful, and ‘we can do this thing together’ kind of relationship is amazing. I get excited. I'm going to get to this $1M mark with this relationship,” said Neuss.
“Innovation and creativity are some of the most important qualities to be successful and especially in our digital world. I’ve always felt that with WatchGuard. It could be through interaction with the team members, or even just leveraging the WatchGuardONE portal. There's always new information! It feels like WatchGuard is constantly moving the needle forward,” concluded Jenna Chouinard, Marketing Consultant at PCA Technology Group, Inc.