For the record, Nightcrawler is my favorite X-Men character, not Wolverine. But I’ll tell you what: West McDonald, Vice President of Business Development at TigerPaw Software and the spitting image of the superhero I call Johnny Knifehands, is fast becoming one of my favorite people to talk to in the industry.
McDonald, who is the current President of the Managed Print Services Association, describes himself as a near futurist. He’s charismatic and engaging. He has a great sense of humor. And he’s sharp—see what I did there?!
It’s clear that McDonald is also passionate, especially when it comes to the topic of convergence. With a background in working with dealers (he was previously at Print Audit) and, for the last year at Tigerpaw, MSPs, he can speak both at length and in depth on the blurring of the line between print and IT. See, in the quest to broaden its customer base beyond MSPs, Tigerpaw hired McDonald in large part to help bring the company’s business automation software to the dealer channel.
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| West McDonald, Vice President of Business Development at Tigerpaw Software |
Flat-based billing versus seat- or device-based licensing. MPS. Consolidation. Convergence services. We hit on a number of important and intriguing points related to dealers and MSPs, print and IT, and McDonald even delivered a spicy prediction that could very well turn out to be a huge revenue opportunity. Here’s just one thing he had to say…
“Bendix Imaging, it was a partner of mine for a lot of years even in the Print Audit days, is now a partner of mine doing managed services with Tigerpaw … there are so many people out there that say ‘No, no, managed print providers can’t do managed IT services,’ and a company like Bendix, which is knocking it out the park … the real focus, for those that are successful, is that it’s not an experiment. That they are in 100 percent from the beginning and take the learning curve very seriously and make sure they’re investing the time and resources to be successful with what they’re doing.”
Now…sink your claws into the podcast. Snikt!
