Networking, data storage, and servers are the building blocks of your IT infrastructure. If any part of your system goes down, the results for your business can be catastrophic. In the past, the end of a hardware lifecycle meant making the tough decision between costly hardware upgrades or costly support. Smart 3rd Party ends that debate with a third option: third party maintenance as a safe, smart, price-minded choice.
What Smart 3rd Party does:
S3P is an IT hardware maintenance and support company. We provide an alternative to costly manufacturer maintenance to support your IT assets beyond their warranty or service agreement. Smart 3rd Party can offer a customized solution to extend the life cycle of your hardware while protecting your bottom line.
Why Choose Us?
In business for more than a decade, Smart 3rd Party consistently beats OEMs and other third party maintenance providers at value pricing. That’s how we built our business, and we are proud of it. If money is no object, it’s certainly an option to stay with the manufacturer’s support team. But few IT managers operate businesses where the budget isn’t top of their minds.
Making the right choices to keep your company up and running day-to-day is critical. We understand the concerns involved with making a move away from the manufacturer to third party maintenance and support. S3P is the safe, smart choice for budget-minded decision-makers who are looking for quality support & maintenance while reducing costs.
As companies explore alternative service options outside traditional OEM service agreements, third party maintenance is a smart business decision. It may appear that remaining with the manufacturer is the “perceived” safe choice when, in fact, it is the costliest one. S3P can help you achieve your goal of reduced cost and help eliminate your risk concerns.
Leadership
Ken Peck
President
Ken Peck joined Smart 3rd Party as President in 2013. As part of the changes he led at the time, the name of the company was changed from IT Network Security to better reflect the goals of the revitalized organization. ITNS primarily provided backline Cisco support to third party maintenance providers such as Delta Computer Group.
With the name change, the direction of the company changed to become a full-service TPM offering maintenance and support for servers, storage, and networking. Under Ken’s leadership, Smart 3rd Party has experienced an annual growth rate of 62%. His key objectives were to provide high-quality TPM services by eliminating all of the confusing layers of technical support and optimizing the existing ecosystem that exists in the support and maintenance space. Inspired by the Amazon approach to business of being a low-cost leader while providing great value, Ken felt he could deliver outstanding service at a lower cost.
As President, Ken now leads the daily operations of Smart 3rd Party as well as creating and executing go-to-market strategies, sales and marketing plans, and getting the right people in the right roles. Before joining Smart 3rd Party, Ken served in IT sales and management for hardware, software, and services for companies including Unisys, Motorola, London Bridge Group, and Dickens Data for 30 years. It was at Unisys that Ken had his first entry into TPM in 1986 long before Gartner started referring to third party maintenance as TPM. He gained further TPM experience at Motorola who was closely aligned with Interlogic Trace an early TPM pioneer. Ken attended the University of Alabama where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Finance. A more complete biography can be seen here.
Warren Turner
CFO
Warren joined Smart 3rd Party’s Advisory Board in 2013 and has been involved in the strategic direction of the company ever since. After years of successful stewardship on the board, Warren moved into the CFO role in 2019.
Warren has a passion for education and has authored, developed, and taught certain education, methodologies, and tools to help global businesses grow.
He began his career with Arthur Andersen & Co. (Big Eight) in the mid-1980s, working with both publicly owned and privately held clients in the high technology, manufacturing, and distribution industries.
In 1993, he left Andersen as an Enterprise Group Manager to join Dickens Data Systems, Inc., as its Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President. There, he helped transform Dickens from a small high-tech manufacturer to the leading IBM distributor of Mid-range Systems, and, in 1998, he helped Dickens realize its exit strategy of being acquired by a large public company.
In 2000, he founded the Andersen Alumni Association. Today, it is the most extensive social network dedicated to helping Alumni and Retirees of Arthur Andersen & Co, Andersen Worldwide, Arthur Andersen LLP, collectively Andersen, reconnect and stay in touch. A more complete biography can be seen here.
Rob Muse
Executive Vice President of Operations
Rob began his career in 1998 and has since accrued 20 years of IT experience, spending the last 15 years focusing on Third Party Maintenance (TPM).
After working with three startup companies in the Atlanta area — two of which were TPM providers and one was a traditional OEM VAR — Rob gained a strong understanding of what it takes to get a company up to speed operationally as well as how to implement the right processes, procedures, and personnel for long-term stability and continued growth.
Rob joined Smart 3rd Party in 2013 and has since helped build out the back-line support team, including engineering, technical case managers, and field service technicians. Rob is credited with the development of the smart delivery supply chain for parts and the implementation of the 24/7/365 global help desk.
In 2018, Rob was named Executive Vice President of Operations for Smart 3rd Party and continues to improve and oversee the internal daily operations of the service delivery team as well as product support, contracts, and pricing.
