Jon Roskill Joins Acumatica as CEO
Jon Roskill, former Microsoft worldwide channel chief, is joining SMB-focused cloud ERP vendor Acumatica as CEO.
Acumatica is a fast-growing, channel-focused, 7-year-old company with about 100 employees. It has its headquarters in Kirkland, Wash., with other offices in Washington, D.C., Russia, Mexico and Singapore. Its major products are organized into four suites: Financial Management, Distribution Management, Project Accounting and Customer Management.
"It's very much a disruptive play," Roskill said in an interview about Acumatica and his new role there. The company closed a $10 million Series C funding round in November 2013 led by Runa Capital and Almaz Capital. At that time, company executives said Acumatica was on track for 350 percent revenue growth in 2013 and Almaz Capital investor Alexander "Sasha" Galitsky predicted the company would reach $1 billion in revenue within 10 years.
The company's partner focus was key for Roskill. "The part which really closed the deal for me is that everything that this company is doing is with and through partners," Roskill said, who ran Microsoft's channel for three years.
"It's a fairly sophisticated partner model for a company this size," Roskill said, referring to Acumatica's mix of VARs, ISVs, OEMs and hosting partners.
In November, Acumatica claimed about 250 partners. "My goal is to double and triple that this year, and literally start to fill out the map. Some places are really well-covered, like Minneapolis, but if you look at places like Southern California, we're not as well-covered," Roskill said. In addition to North America, Acumatica has also been expanding aggressively in Asia and Europe.
During Roskill's tenure at Microsoft, the base of Office 365 resellers expanded dramatically, and he hopes to persuade some of those partners to add Acumatica to their solutions. "For a partner that has started a cloud practice, or the new born-in-the-cloud guys, it's very easy for them to pick up Acumatica, hire a CPA, get into the business if they want to and expand their business," he said.
Roskill left Microsoft Sept. 20, 2013, after nearly 20 years there in a variety of product and business roles. He was corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group from July 1, 2010, to Aug. 29, 2013.
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 05, 2014