On July 28, 2020 E-Tech was named the #1 ranked in Canada and #14 in the World’s premier managed service providers on the prestigious 2020 annual Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings. Our President and CEO, Ian Evans, answered a questionnaire about his company’s accomplishment.

1.) Why are you a business owner instead of working for someone else? What is the allure of entrepreneurship to you?

There are many reasons why I chose to become a business owner, I made the decision to start my own business due to my position becoming redundant 15 years ago, I was the IT Manager for a company specializing in Member Engagement software. At that point, I decided that I had an opportunity to control my own destiny.

My ultimate goal is to help as many people as possible, being able to help people is one of the main benefits of being a business owner, I have hired over 40 people in the past 15 years.

Business owners have the ability to be as creative as their heart desires, it is uniquely satisfying. As an entrepreneur, the actual process of building a business is creative in and of itself. When you own your own business, you get to shape the dreams of yourself and others.

Being your own boss might seem all about you but that isn’t the case.  Firstly, there are your customers who you are helping with your products or services.  Then there are other businesses that you work with – MSP vendors and business partners. The main reason is that I get to hire smart, talented and innovative individuals and get to see them grow over the years, professionally and personally.

2.) How does your experience as a racial minority change your approach to doing business?

As a person of color, I have experienced institutionalized racism in companies I have worked for my entire professional career, especially in the Information Technology sector where there is very little representation of people of color at the most senior levels, including ownership. I am one of a very small minority of Black owned, MSP business owners in Canada.

People of color and Woman in IT for that matter, have to be “twice as good” and work “twice as hard” in many cases to get the same recognition as the bar is much higher. This message is passed down from previous generations, and opportunities have been lost for me personally. With all the protests this year around racial inequality, I am confident that this will change for people of color, and we’re already seeing this as E-Tech was voted the top MSP in Canada for 2020.

3.) What NEW opportunities and challenges came with the global COVID-19 pandemic?

COVID-19 continues to cause tremendous challenges for everyone, it is a global team effort to flatten the curve (Our collective mission: work from home, social and physical distancing and wear a mask in public). This creates a tremendous opportunity for hackers, phishing attacks on small business has quadrupled since the onset of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis is not only forcing organizations to accelerate their digital transformations. It’s also causing a “worker transformation. A part from getting users secure working from home, one challenge has been that many organizations did not have enough laptops or desktops to empower everyone to work from home and supply was immediately reduced for laptop and even webcams. A large majority of organizations were forced to rely on devices the company does not own and can’t manage or trust and they have no idea what’s going on with the home network.

The opportunity was to work with organizations to urgently implement work from home business continuity plans and weaponize the end user, through Cyber Security Awareness Training webinars and eLearning modules, by arming them with the tools to prevent cyber attacks on their business.