A Central Ohio cybersecurity firm acquired two years ago now has provided the top leadership, home office and main strategic focus of one of the country's largest outsourced IT providers.
Logically LLC moved its headquarters to Dublin after two decades in Portland, Maine, shortly after promoting the CEO and COO from within the office. The firm announced Tuesday they are leading a strategic shift to specialize in protecting data and operations as remote work makes businesses increasingly vulnerable.
"The smaller businesses, they often can't afford enterprise-level cybersecurity – but they need it – and now we’re able to bring that to market for them," new CEO Joshua Skeens told Columbus Inno.
"I have lofty goals: We're going to be exponentially bigger," Skeens said.
Skeens and COO Keith Johnson, both promoted at the beginning of the year, were longtime employees of the former Cerdant, which added a cybersecurity specialty when the managed services provider acquired it.
That specialty now is how Logically plans to stand out in a disjointed, commodified field of some 70,000 MSPs.
Security today makes up about 30% of Logically's business compared to general IT services, but the specialty grew by 40% last year, Skeens said. Revenue is not disclosed.
"Anybody can buy any software product off the shelf," Skeens said. "What's the differentiator in the market? For us it's cybersecurity. Logically delivers those services day-in, day-out, 24/7, 365, with our own employees and our own expertise."
At some 400 employees nationwide, Logically already is much bigger than the typical MSP with fewer than 10 people.
Private equity firm Riverside Company, which acquired Logically five years ago, has backed about a dozen acquisitions since then.
Besides adding customers through those mergers, the company has kept up about 7% to 12% organic sales growth, Skeens said. It has customers in every state and about a dozen other countries. The "sweet spot" is middle market, but clients range from a handful of people to enterprises with 400,000 computer users.
That growth combined with the pandemic shift to hybrid and remote work led Logically to close six physical offices last year.
“We had offices where we didn’t have a single employee going in for months," he said.
It kept sites where a majority of local employees expressed a preference for in-office work. Besides Dublin, with about 45 employees, the company has offices in Northeast Ohio's Mentor, Minneapolis, Raleigh, Reno and Danbury, Connecticut.
Fast-growing Dublin and Central Ohio are the right spot for the hub, he said.
"It's fantastic. It's true-on Midwest," he said. "There's so many opportunities here, personally and professionally, for people."
Promoted from COO, Skeens succeeds Michelle Accardi, who led Logically for two years. In April she was named CEO of Houston-based Liongard, according to a release; the company provides security software as a service to MSPs.
Skeens joined the former Cerdant as a security engineer in 2004, the fourth employee. He was acting CTO and COO when it was acquired, then acting Cerdant CEO as founder Mike Johnson retired in the deal. Also a Cerdant veteran, Johnson was Logically's chief security officer before the promotion to COO.
Logically also recently named its first chief revenue officer, Steve Rivera, previously sales chief at CynergisTek, a cybersecurity consulting firm.
Security was easier when businesses could protect on-premises networks with firewalls and control the PCs and laptops, Skeens said – there was little chance a kid would grab an idle laptop to download a game.
"You had a moat and you had a drawbridge; you had all these layers of defense," he said. "You don't have that anymore."
Logically is more actively promoting security to its existing 3,000 customers and all new ones, Skeens said – first making sure day-to-day operations are protected and then setting three-year plans to upgrade.
"We don't always go in and sell things to people; a lot of times it's just about education," Skeens said. "We're creating and fostering a relationship there, ... and we're setting them up for future success."
