“You have no idea how excited I am”: Maria Padisetti CEO at Digital Armour on rebranding her business

The founder and CEO tells CRN Australia the decision behind the rebrand.

Digital Armour has made a major brand pivot, transforming from an MSP to a business and technology consultancy.

This wasn’t done overnight, Maria Padisetti, CEO and founder of Digital Armour told CRN Australia that she was in constant communication with clients to understand what they wanted from the former MSP.

One the word that kept on coming up was “outcomes”.

Speaking to a third party agency that conducted customer satisfaction surveys, Padisetti said many of their customers loved the consultancy side of the business.

“That's why they chose us, there's so much trust, and we've had customers for a decade plus, in many cases,” she said.

“We've helped them grow, and that's and we're now even more integrated to do that.”

Discussing this new venture Padisetti said, “You have no idea how excited I am, because I've been wanting to make an impact.

“As an MSP, yes, you do make an impact, because you help keep the lights on, without us, things can fall apart. When a server goes down, you know, you lose business. All of that is cool, but this stuff is next level.”

With rebranding comes new objectives, Padisetti explained how the goal posts have moved.

“It's very business outcome focused, whereas in a traditional MSP, what you've got is SLAs, we will respond by 24 hours,” Padisetti said.

“Yes, that part of our business exists. But what we're leading with is whatever we're doing in the back end, it has to lead to this measurable bottom line impact, which is where the consultancy comes in, as opposed to an MSP.”

Impact40

Not only did they rebrand to a business and technology consultancy, but Digital Armour launched Impact40, its specialised managed services arm.

“We launched a program called Impact40, which in essence guarantees an uplift in productivity and efficiency using AI or emerging tech o their productivity and efficiency,” she said,

“When we do that, we're putting our backside on the line. I truly believe that in this current landscape, using things like AI can make that difference to customers.

“It's not just speaking and selling them a Copilot license or selling them multiple AI tools. We start with your business, and we will make an impact, otherwise we won’t do it.”

The reaction from customers has been positive, Padisetti said her clients have loved Impact40 and already have quite a few businesses signed up to it because “they could see the magic in it”.

“It feels like we've done the right thing. Sometimes in that moment in business, when you know you got it right, we've got it right,” she said.

Still need MSPs

Digital Armour may have ditched the MSP title, but it hasn’t ditched its MSPs. Padisetti noted that MSPs are “still important” to the organisation.

“We can't spin up an Azure instance in Microsoft with business consultants. We still need MSPs help to build those things,” she noted.

“Cyber is a critical piece of AI. We will still need to know the governance around AI, because AI without governance is a nightmare.”

But Padisetti wants to be realistic about what the future holds and a big chunk of that includes AI.

“The industry can see it coming. We don't know how much of what we do today will be done by AI,” she said.

Her staff is becoming more curious and willing to learn about the technology.

“From a staffing perspective, some of them who are interested are learning. We get customers who have IT departments come to us go, how much of this could an agent do? How much of this could we automate?”

Padisetti noted she is “optimistic, but pragmatic” about implementing AI.

“Automation has been in MSPs forever. It's not a new thing, but, how could it be done better? There'll always be a human in the loop. I'm not one of those people who's going to replace, [my staff with AI],” she stated.

Trust

One of the reasons Padisetti believes she’s been in business for so long is because her clients trust her.

"I'm about getting results for customers, right or for clients. It's not about getting carried away with tech. I am not one of those people,” she explained.

“This is why there's so much trust that our clients give us, because we don't get carried away. When we say something, they listen, because there's enormous trust.

She added, “To survive in the sector for as long as we've survived, it's because of trust and the integrity that we have. When we speak, people do listen.”