Kantata has finally filled the post of CTO six months after Mavenlink founder Roger Neel left the post in June 2022. They have named Ken Ringdahl as the new Chief Technology Officer. He will be responsible for Kantata’s end-to-end software development, product operations and technology strategy. The last is probably the most important aspect and sees a neutral between Kantata OX and SX take the helm. The strategy of these two, and possibly more PS tools, and how they develop them on synergistic yet separate paths will be intriguing.
Ringdahl joins from Datto, where he led a team of 600 engineers following its acquisition by Kaseya in 2021. He previously held the role of VP of Engineering at the company. Before Datto, Ringdahl held engineering leadership roles at Veeam Software, VMWare, and Desktone. He began his career after graduating from Brandeis University and held several engineering roles. His experience integrating the Datto engineering teams into the wider Kaseya organisation will help with the newly merged Mavenlink+Kimble Applications).
Ringdahl commented, “It’s clear that organizations need purpose-built, vertical technology to address their specific needs. Kantata provides professional services organizations with the clarity, control and confidence needed to make better business decisions. As someone with a passion for building high-quality cloud-based software products, I’m excited to join Kantata at an important time for the company and the entire professional services industry.”
Speranza gets his man
It has taken several months, but Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, has now hired a CTO independent of the two former organisations. This is important. It will allow the company to remove more potential walls across the development teams and means that the product marketing functions have a referee on development priorities.
Ringdahl is also someone Speranza can trust to build out the engineering team further as he attempts to grow the organisation.
Speranza commented, “Ken’s customer-centric mindset, deep engineering experience, and proven record of building and leading world-class, global software organizations made him a perfect fit for Kantata. Ken will be instrumental in ensuring Kantata’s continued leadership position in the market. We are thrilled to welcome him into our organization and can’t wait to see what we can accomplish in 2023.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
In Ringdahl, Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, has found a very experienced technology leader who has worked across several industry sectors. He will have some experience in the sector through his experience with Autotask PSA, a Datto solution that allows MSPs to manage their people, processes and data in a single pane of glass. The question is whether this will signal another path for Kantata to take in the MSP PSA sector.
It will be interesting to hear how Ringdahl talks about the overall technology strategy for Kantata. It is sometimes confusing which application of the two it resells it is talking about. This creates confusion about what each application is best at doing. Kantata argues that it allows it to bring a best of breed solution to each customer, but does that remove the customer choice? It will be interesting to see how he evolves the development function and how the three yearly updates from Kantata SX balance against the continuous agile production f Kantata OX.
