Winslow Technology Group’s CTO On Nutanix’s Future, Cloud Spending And Other Tech Trends In 2023

Top of mind for 2023: The solution provider all-star is looking at how market consolidation, a flight to the cloud, and the push for recurring revenue will play out next year.

Rick Gouin

Systems integrator Winslow Technology Group has seen massive growth this year, thanks to surging annual recurring revenue rates among its core customers with security products leading the way, company executives told CRN.

In conversations with CRN, the company’s president and founder Scott Winslow, as well as its chief technology officer Rick Gouin, talked about how the integrator has driven double-digit revenue growth year-over-year, how important security is going to be to its future, and how they are driving increased SaaS revenue, partially through Dell. Company founder and president Scott Winslow told CRN it can only work as long as the company can wrap solid support around the deal.

“One of the things that’s working for us is driving much more recurring revenue and having very good net retention rates on that, which takes into account people that don’t renew the subscriptions versus the people that do, and then the added seats,” Winslow told CRN in an interview. “The fact that we’ve been able to drive so much recurring revenue makes it a much more stable business with fewer ups and downs.”

The Waltham, Mass.-based company is one of Dell Technologies’ top system integrator partners from New England to Texas, but Winslow Technology Group is also partnered with technology newsmakers like VMware, and Nutanix — giving the 19-year-old solution provider a unique insight when helping its customers design digital solutions around current market conditions.

Gouin said security is seeping into all areas of the business from software to hardware, as OEMs are bombarded by requests from end users about component sourcing, which has been a big opportunity for Winslow Technology Group’s Dell business, Gouin said.

The Waltham, Mass., based company is a Dell Platinum Partner, has a VMware Master Services Competency, and is a Nutanix Cloud Champion Partner, CRN Triple Crown Winner in 2022, CRN Tech Elite 250 2022, and No. 310 on the 2022 CRN Solution Provider 500.

As the company begins planning for next year, here are five trends that Gouin said Winslow Technolgoy Group is looking at in 2023:

Several analysts think the way Nutanix is moving with regards to board governance changes is getting it set up to be bought. What do you think?

Nutanix will be acquired. HCI is one of the fastest growing segments of the data center infrastructure marketplace, and Nutanix has one of the strongest technical offerings. Nutanix has been lowering its operating costs recently, and the potential Vmware acquisition by Broadcom places Nutanix in a unique position. Our guess is that their partner Bain finds a buyer for Nutnanix in 2023.

Where do you see cybersecurity going with some of the larger hardware vendors in 2023?

Instead of being a product category, cybersecurity becomes a lens through which every infrastructure decision is made. Large tech providers like Dell, HPE, Cisco, and others establish major security focused practices to cast their traditional infrastructure products into a cybersecurity light. Cybersecurity becomes a key differentiator between IT commodities such as servers and laptops. We see industry consolidation as some growing cybersecurity companies are acquired, and their products become integrated into larger product suites as features rather than standalone products.

Winslow has been at the front of this trend where business decisions are often revolving around a secure supply chain, and parts sourcing. Can you talk about that?

There is a renewed interest in supply chain transparency. From supply chain attacks at major software providers to global concerns about what countries various companies operate in, we will see supply chain used as a differentiator in technology purchases. Companies will favor suppliers that make customers feel safe about their supply chain. This will lead to enhanced reporting and transparency about the supply chain as part of the sales campaign. Customers will become concerned with the optics of using various technologies based on the global origins of those technologies. We will see more of an emphasis on making responsible technology decisions from a humanitarian and ecological perspective.

On the software side, what changes, or will there be changes in how Winslow’s customers buy business applications?

SaaS adoption is only going to accelerate next year. This comes as a reaction to ransomware, the remote workforce, difficulty hiring talented engineers, and the ever-cyclical pendulum swinging between centralized and de-centralized technology architectures. This drives improvements in data protection for major SaaS offerings as well as an increased reliance on connectivity. This trend will likely be tempered sometime during the year by a major outage or the breach of a large SaaS provider.

Where do you see cloud spend going next year?

I think 2023 is the year of the intentional hybrid cloud. For the last several years, many companies have set out to eliminate their on-premises footprint only to bring certain services back in after encountering various challenges from cost to security to performance. In 2023, we see the hybrid cloud elected as the ultimate destination, and not simply as a stepping stone to an environment entirely in the public cloud. This further increases the need for reliable connectivity, and drives improved technological solutions for workload mobility and platform integration across public, private, and hybrid architectures.