Life changes when you become the chief executive says Bill Wagner, the CEO and President at remote access company LogMeIn. “I now spend thirty percent of my time with investors,” he says
Wagner, previously the company’s Chief Operating Officer, took over the leadership at LogMeIn last September after founder Michael Simon stepped down.
The company is in the midst of a major change as Simon steered the company toward the Internet of Things in response to the shift away from desktop personal computing that had been the business’ core market.
LogMeIn’s IoT strategy is around being a trusted platform for controlling the myriad household, CEcommercial and industrial devices that want to connect to the internet, with Wagner only seeing AWS as being their main competitors that has seen a range of companies entering in the last few years.
“I don’t think IoT will be a wave, it’s more like a rising tide,” Wagner says.
Wagner is one of the IoT’s enthusiasts citing applications ranging from the insurance sector through to connected clothing as being potential markets, although industrial application may be the earliest adopters of LogMeIn’s services. “The more industrial the industry, the more mature is M2M to IoT adoption,” he observes.
That adoption though is tempered by the presence of industry groups where Wagner maintains LogMeIn’s hostility towards slower moving associations such as the Industrial Internet Alliance and proprietary platforms like Google Nest.
An advantage Wagner sees in his taking over as LogMeIn’s Chief Executive Officer is his experience with the company, “I don’t know how externally recruited CEOs manage it,” he observes.
With LogMeIn facing a continued transition into uncertain markets, the company needs a steady vision. It may be that internal recruitment is an important strategic move.
