‘We’re always trying to look ahead into the next 12 to 24 months in terms of where is this market going? How do we differentiate ourselves? We understand a lot of the services that we provide become commoditized over time, and that it’s not a bad thing. But you have to look for services and skill sets that are going to bring value to the market. And that’s one of the things we’ve done with Agio and what they’ve been building,’ says Netrio CEO Mark Clayman.
Managed service provider Netrio this week unveiled the acquisition of Agio, a fellow MSP focused on providing cybersecurity and other services targeting the financial services market.
With the acquisition, New York City-based Agio also brings Netrio an expanded northeastern U.S. market, a ServiceNow relationship, as well as AgioNow, its proprietary GenAI-powered IT delivery platform. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
McKinney, Texas-based Netrio is focused on bringing managed services to small and mid-market customers as well as small enterprises up to a billion dollars in revenue, said CEO Mark Clayman.
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Netrio has two go-to-market channels, Clayman (pictured above) told CRN. The first is a direct selling force focused on specific geographies such as Minneapolis, the Dallas area, and Western New York including the Buffalo and Rochester area. Agio brings Netrio markets in New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut, he said. Netrio also has an agent business to help businesses working with companies like Avant Communications and Bridgepoint Technologies to help those companies deliver services, he said.
Agio brings Netrio a number of ways to expand its business, Clayman said.
The first is an expanded base in the New York City area, northern New Jersey, and western Connecticut, he said.
The second is a heavy focus on the financial services space, with clients including hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment bankers in and around the New York area, he said.
The third is the AgioNow GenAI-powered IT delivery platform, Clayman said.
“Agio has done a very interesting initiative and effort over the past two or three years: building a platform that’s not only in and around ServiceNow for their ITSM system, but building a lot of what I would say generative AI functionality, automation, self-service automated response for a lot of the work efforts they do for their customers,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that really attracted us to Agio. We’ll take advantage of what they’ve built from a platform standpoint to then build it into the rest of our services and then deliver to our customers.”
Agio also brings Netrio its first ServiceNow relationship, Clayman said.
“If you think about a lot of traditional MSPs that I would say are on the smaller side, maybe anywhere from $5 million to $50 million in revenue, that market is dominated by ConnectWise,” he said. “And a lot of the products they use integrate with ConnectWise as well. We always thought that as we grow, there needs to be a better solution from a scale standpoint, a functionality standpoint, and user experience standpoint that we really haven’t seen the MSP market invest in. And Agio has done that. We think they’re probably a year and a half to two years ahead of where other MSPs could or should be going.”
Netrio is backed by L Squared Capital Partners, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based private equity company. L Squared made its first investment in Netrio in January 2024, Clayman said.
“They then invested in a company called Success Computer Consulting, a managed service provider based in Minneapolis which sold direct to the Minneapolis market,” he said. “We then did two more acquisitions after that. The first one was Netrio. We kept that brand for the company. Netrio had a direct selling market to the Dallas area, as well as an agent market. And the third company that we acquired was in Buffalo, New York, PCA Technology Group. Agio is our fourth acquisition.”
Clayman hesitated to call Netrio a platform MSP, which is an private-equity-based MSP formed specifically for the purpose of acquiring other MSPs to build a national presence, but he did say his company is open to making further acquisitions.
“We’ve got the ability to do that because of the backers that we have from an investment standpoint,” he said. “Look, we’re a good-sized MSP today. We’re over $100 million in revenue. But regarding acquisitions going forward, I think they’ll be a little bit more on the strategic side in terms of looking for services that we don’t have today and skill sets that we can bring to our customers that’ll be good cross-sell opportunities into our customer base. We’re not so much looking for acquisitions that will simply add scale.”
Netrio’s future growth will depend on staying ahead of the competition in terms of the services it offers, Clayman said.
“A lot of the folks on the management team have been in the managed services space for a long time,” he said. “We like what we do. We like to interact with customers. We’re always trying to look ahead into the next 12 to 24 months in terms of where is this market going? How do we differentiate ourselves? We understand a lot of the services that we provide become commoditized over time, and that it’s not a bad thing. But you have to look for services and skill sets that are going to bring value to the market. And that’s one of the things we’ve done with Agio and what they’ve been building.”
