From Startup to Scale: A Career in Managed IT
Nineteen Years. One Direction.
Ian Rimmer joined what would eventually become Abacus in 2007. He was the third person through the door at Tribeca Technology, a specialist MSP serving the alternative investment sector. Seventeen years later, Tribeca became part of Abacus, and Ian was excited to make the move with it.
The firm he works for today looks nothing like the one he joined. The headcount has grown from three people to over eight hundred. The services are broader, the processes more defined, and the reach genuinely global. What has not changed is the sector, the clients, or the standard expected of the people serving them.
“During these nineteen years, it feels as though I have worked for a number of different companies. From the small startup I joined, to the twenty or thirty person firm that succeeded due to having really strong individual contributors, through to the much larger, more mature and process-defined business that we are today.”
Built by the Work Itself
Ian does not describe a career he planned. He describes one that grew because the business around him kept growing and kept demanding more.
“I am very fortunate to have joined a company that provided so much blue sky above me to develop my career without having to leave and join another company.”
That blue sky is not a given in managed services. Many firms reach a size where the structure stops creating opportunity and starts limiting it. The fact that Ian has spent his entire career within one organisation, moving through roles as the business evolved, says something about how that growth was managed.
What the scale of Abacus brought, that Tribeca at its earlier stages could not, was specialisation. Teams dedicated to specific disciplines rather than a group of generalists covering everything between them.
“We have teams of people delivering specific services whereas previously we were very much a team of generalists.”
For clients, that shift matters. For the people delivering the work, it matters just as much.
The Responsibility of Access
Ian’s perspective on the managed IT and cybersecurity landscape is shaped by nearly two decades of watching it change. The cyberattacks have not fundamentally shifted in type. What has changed is the sophistication, the frequency, and the environment in which they occur. Cloud computing expanded the threat surface, and AI has expanded it further.
His view on where MSPs sit in that picture is direct.
“For most of our clients, their MSP is their most critical service provider from a cyber perspective. Very few other vendors will have the level of access into their environment that their MSP does, and therefore they are their biggest risk.”
It is not a comfortable thing to say about your own industry. It is also exactly the kind of honest assessment that earns trust with clients who understand their own risk environment. At Abacus, Ian says, that responsibility is taken seriously in both directions: advising clients on their security posture and continuously reviewing Abacus’ own.
One shift he has seen at the leadership level with clients gives him confidence. Five years ago, cyber risk was still largely treated as an IT question. That has changed.
“Prior to COVID we were still seeing cyber risk being seen as a technology question for the IT teams. Now it is a board level item being managed in the same way as other risks within their business.”
What Good Service Actually Looks Like
Ask Ian what gives him a genuine sense of pride, and the answer is not a project or a technical achievement. It is unsolicited positive feedback from a client.
“We are in the business of problems. Our team are helping clients with issues on a daily basis, so when a client provides unsolicited positive feedback, it goes a long way and is a real reward for our teams.”
That framing matters. The default measure for success in managed services is often SLA compliance or ticket resolution time. Ian’s measure is whether the people on the receiving end of the service feel the benefits, even if the benefit is an absence of problems. Whether they go out of their way to say so.
His view on what regulated clients actually need beneath the stated requirements reflects the same clarity.
“Our clients demand robust, scalable and secure systems. In addition, they value relationships, and therefore positive human interaction is a core part of what we look to deliver.”
At Abacus, technology and managed services are the product, but relationships are what make our partnerships with our clients work.
What Comes Next
Ian is precise about what he is looking forward to. Not AI in the abstract, not growth as a concept, but the specific experience of operating at a scale he has not worked at before.
“From joining Tribeca as a three-person organisation to now working at Abacus as part of an eight-hundred-plus strong team, I am looking forward to the challenge of working for a much larger organisation as we continue to grow and increase our delivery capability both locally and internationally.”
For someone who has watched the same business transform multiple times over nineteen years, that is not a small thing to say. It means the journey still feels like it is going somewhere.
“I don’t think we have ended up anywhere. One of the most challenging and exciting things about working for Abacus is that we are focused on growth. What that growth provides is opportunity, for our team members to develop their careers, and to provide more and better services to our clients.”
Nineteen years in. Still looking forward.
Want to learn more about what it is like to be part of the Abacus team? Explore our culture and open positions.