“Like John Farnham, I’m back”: Former ITtelligent owner Robert Adelman launches MSP Black Lantern

Speaks to CRN Australia about why he is back in MSP land after swearing he’d never come back.

After three and a half years of being out of the MSP game, Robert Adelman, former ITtelligent owner, is back with a new cyber-focused firm, Black Lantern.

“I was running ITtelligent for about 16 years, sold it three and a half years ago. I wasn't looking to sell it, but I got an offer I couldn't refuse, and said ‘that's it, I am out of the MSP game for good, never going to go back ever again’.

“But, like John Farnham, I’m back,” he told CRN Australia exclusively.

For the past three years, Adelman has been running his business coaching brand and socks subscription company, Get Socked. But all it took was for a former client to plant a seed that would begin the inception of Black Lantern.

A former ITtelligent asked Adelman what would it take for him to get back into managed services.

“I said there's not enough money in the world to do it,” he said.

However, after some thought, Adelman began to like the idea. "I currently I coach 16 clients, and they all work with different MSPs, and to be honest, most of them are really bad.

“I don't try and step on their toes. I try and work with them, and they're just ripping off my clients. I saw an opportunity, particularly with this big client coming on board, to restart an MSP.”

Black Lantern is solely focused on delivering cybersecurity services to small and medium businesses. Adelman has seen a gap in the market where SMEs need cyber but have several hurdles in the way to obtaining it.

“Cybersecurity for small to medium businesses, they know they need it, they don't necessarily can afford it. So how can we deliver it in such a way that it protects them?

"That's what Black Lantern is about. How do we treat clients the way we would want to be treated? How can we put a cybersecurity element on there so they can sleep at night,” he explained.

Adelman said the whole cybersecurity game has changed over the past three years, and small businesses are still struggling to understand cyber.

"They just don't get it, they don't understand it. They don't understand that it's so easy for the majority of people to break into your systems,” he said.

“It's about education, how do we educate them and not put the fear of that in them. How do you make sure you've got the right people in your organisation that are doing the right thing?”

Adelman noted that they’re an MSP that does MSSP, as he believes the clients won’t know the difference between the two.

“The clients don't know, they just say ‘you're an IT support company’, they can't differentiate between MSP or MSSP,” he said.

Adelman explained that his experience at ITtelligent will set himself and his clients up for success.

“ITtelligent never lost clients, I know I can provide really exceptional service. It's now trying to deliver it purely because there's so many bad players out there, so it makes me look good,” he added.

Black Lantern is still in its infancy, with only being six weeks old and half a dozen clients signed, Adelman is more focused on aligning internal process, procedures and integrations. But growth is always a long-term fixture.

“As for goals of growth, I want to grow it, but I'm not going to be aggressive about it,” he explained.

"But again, just picking those clients that just don't want to worry about IT. Give us your money and we'll manage your whole IT, and you don't have to worry about IT, you can sleep at night because we don't.”

And his final message to the channel community?

“I’m back. Tere's nothing trivial or complex about what we're doing, just what we're doing, we are doing really well.”