Data Storage Corporation (NASDAQ:DTST) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And for – and everything that goes along with that, with the staff, watching that equipment and managing it and doing the backups versus coming to us where I believe we do a better job at disaster recovery than someone that’s doing an on premise, unless you – talking about Citibank, Deutsche Bank and, and firms like that they do fantastic jobs. But for that mid-range customer, we do an unbelievable job for them for disaster recovery, cybersecurity, and they don’t have to spend the money. We charge an implementation fee. That’s kind of very reasonable. And we keep them we have a 94% renewal rate. So we’re doing something right with that.

Matthew Galinko: Thanks and one more for me before I jump back in the queue, and I probably have more after that. But I’m still don’t want to horn the line. I guess with respect to the funnel for cloud deals, and you mentioned the, I guess the funnel and the leads that you’re generating? How confident are you that you’re canvassing and finding customers when they’re getting to that decision point of, hey do we migrate to cloud or do we do another premise purchase? Do you feel like you’re touching all in the cloud opportunities and migration opportunities there are in IBM power or do you feel like there’s more you can be doing to further expand that net?

Chuck Piluso: I’m, frankly, I’m never happy and it’s never enough. It just my personality, Matt, and I know you follow us and write about us. I will say that we’re not doing enough. I think there’s tremendous opportunity out there. Cable companies today, the only service they’re eventually going to end up with is the internet. And with that internet, they’re looking for increased revenue per customer for businesses like hospitals, financial firms, and all businesses they serve. So there is tremendous opportunity, I think, still to increase, and we’re only touching on it. We’re in the process of hiring some folks, the people that we are hiring though, and where we’re getting most of our business today, other than the lead flow, is we work with managed service providers that have sold that equipment, and that they know us, the managed service provider is the trusted advisor for that client.

They typically have multiple clients because they have a business. And then with that when the client is ready to look at it, the MSPs are prepared folks that we call channel partners that have been trained by us have the marketing materials from us and with us. We do join calls with us, our sales engineering group and our sales teams. But is it enough? It’s never enough we – but we are deploying that capital, the $11 million, we are deploying that so that we can increase our sales organization and also reach into Canada as well on that. Recently, our partner Able-One in Canada was acquired by Quadbridge, which is a much larger organization. We met with them, during an October fest, we were invited up, and they’re having all of their folks trained on our services.

So that’ll increase our reach plus other plans we have in Canada, but we’re not doing enough. Frankly, there’s just a lot more to touch on. And we have to get it to the point where it’s not just the folks that sold the equipment, but companies like a cable company that has these customers, and they can go out and layer off services on to their internet. I don’t know if that answers it, but the answer is we’ll never do. We’re never going to do enough it’s just a personality thing for me.

Matthew Galinko: Thank you. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Operator: Your next question for today is coming from .