Following ATSG’s merger with Evolve IP in October 2024, the new entity has announced a new senior management structure. Key to this new set-up, in the UK, Paul Harrison will continue in his role as managing director of Evolve IP, EMEA, with Leon Schuurmans, managing director, ATSG EMEA, and a 74-person team reporting into him.
The rest of the executive leadership team (pictured below) will be led by Russ Reader, president and CEO of ATSG. The full team will be comprised of Marc Lacroix, senior vice president, professional services; Katie Lukens, senior vice president, people; Eric Stockton, chief marketing officer, Christian Teeft, chief technology officer; Walt Walker, chief revenue and product officer; Jeanne Walters, chief financial officer; and Ron Zampolin, president, corporate development.
The merger combines ATSG’s MSP and Evolve IP’s contact centre-as-a-service and unified communications-as-a-service capabilities. Together, the two companies will look to provide a full suite of managed services, security and flexible cloud options, with expanded geographic reach to 73 countries.
The new entity has combined revenues of $230 million, a global customer base of 1,700 organisations and a team of skilled professionals.
“By creating this new entity with a wider portfolio, we will able to offer a host of products and technologies to our customers that we didn’t necessarily have before,” said Harrison. “This will give us tremendous scale and opportunities to cross-sell and bring in new business and customers.
“Essentially, we will be coupling market-leading products with our own IP. That means we can now start providing services such as cybersecurity; managing people’s networks and using AI voice biometrics.”
Harrison said that, by having a wider global reach under the new entity, it can serve as a one-stop-shop for companies with worldwide operations, rather than them using independent providers in each country. He added that Evolve IP’s white label products will be key to expanding in the EMEA market.
“It enables us to find the right partners to work with and get into verticals which are notoriously hard to get into,” said Harrison. “But we are also leveraging the Evolve IP brand, which has got a good reputation among partners.”
New opportunities
In terms of new opportunities, Harrison said that the company is targeting voice-as-a-service. He said that MSPs traditionally struggle with such products because it isn’t a core offering, but there is a big opportunity to not only provide them with a global carrier grade service, but also to deploy, support and bill it for them, thus enabling them to sell more services to their customers.
“In this way, we can provide the MSP with a compelling suite of services,” said Harrison. “This is already proving to be a successful route to market for us and is going to be the way forward as voice becomes ever-more important to the end user.”
Other key areas that Harrison sees trending are collaboration platforms such as Teams and Webex, and mobile eSIMs, as well as Payment Card Industry-compliant solutions. As a result, he said that the company has stepped up to provide those services.
Moving forward, Harrison said that the new entity will be investing in the public cloud to bring services such as cybersecurity and data monitoring to the European market. It will also invest in recruiting and training employees to ensure that it has the right skillset to deliver those solutions, he said.
Added to that, Harrison said that the company will look at products offered in the various markets and see if they can be applied to new markets. One example of this, he said, is the desktop-as-a-service offering, which has already been hugely successful in the US, but may also have an audience in Europe.
Providing the right tools
The one constant, said Harrison, will be the company’s focus on its channel partners. To that end, he said that it will host its annual partner day at the National Space Centre in Leicester in April.
“We are keen to talk with them about the exciting new portfolio of products that we have to offer,” said Harrison. “The focus will be on MSPs, as they will stand to benefit the most from all these services, from the voice and call centre to the cybersecurity side.
“By educating them and providing them with the right tools, particularly through AI and automation, we can enable them to deliver an optimal service for their customers. By harnessing these latest technologies, they can reduce their end user’s opex, increase their productivity and ensure that they never miss a call.”
Harrison said that in an increasingly competitive market, particularly with many providers in a race to the bottom on price, it’s key for the company to keep focused on leading from the front and providing a quality product. Another of its core strengths, he said, is the ability to pivot in order to remain relevant to the customer.
“It’s a highly competitive and challenging market right now,” said Harrison. “So we have to ensure that we keep innovating and finding new opportunities moving forward in order to remain a frontrunner.”
This interview was included in our March 2025 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.