Kent Plunkett Joins Intronis as CEO
Plunkett Brings Experience from Salary.com to Intronis Online Backup and Recovery
New Intronis CEO Kent Plunkett says the online backup company grew about 50 percent over the past year, thanks to deep channel relationships with managed services providers (MSPs). Plunkett’s background includes building and growing Salary.com, which he eventually took public. So is Plunkett planning an IPO at Intronis? Not so fast. In this MSPmentor FastChat video, Plunkett describes a long-term view for Intronis and its managed services partners.
Publicly, Intronis confirmed Plunkett as CEO on November 17, 2010. But privately, Plunkett settled into the job at least several weeks ago. In fact, Plunkett attended the CompTIA Breakaway conference in August 2010 in order to more closely study the channel and the MSP business model. Former Intronis CEO Sam Gutmann and Channel Chief Ted Roller also attended Breakaway. Gutmann, whom Plunkett praises, remains chairman of Intronis.
Previously, Kent founded Salary.com—an early mover in the SaaS industry. According to his bio, Kent grew Salary.com to $40 million in annual revenues and he led a successful $59 million initial public offering (IPO). That begs the question: Are venture capitalists hoping Kent can also lead Intronis to an IPO? Kent downplays such talk, noting that Intronis was founded in 2003 and in his mind, it takes 15 years to build a really great technology company.
FastChat Video
Still, venture capitalists are surely counting on Kent to drive growth at Intronis. Kent, in turn, is counting on MSPs for help. He explains more in this MSPmentor FastChat Video. The video covers:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 0:15 – What attracted Kent to Intronis?
- 1:12 – How will Kent leverage his Salary.com SaaS experience at Intronis?
- 2:30 – Will Intronis remain a channel-led company working with MSPs?
- 2:47 – Will Kent lead Intronis to an initial public offering?
- 3:15 – Conclusion
Next Moves
Like I said: Kent is taking a long-term view at Intronis. Off camera, Kent spent several more minutes describing the value of MSPs to the Intronis business model… so it’s pretty clear to me that he doesn’t have any direct sales ambitions.
Where could Intronis possibly head next? Watch for Channel Chief Ted Roller to potentially pursue some strategic partnerships. Also, there’s been some talk about Intronis opening up its APIs. We’ll be listening closely to see where Kent takes the company next.