May 3, 2022

‘John McCarthy took a business that had a bad portfolio of services and products and dramatically improved it,’ says martinwolf M&A Advisors founder and Managing Partner Martin Wolf. ‘Strategically he was a genius.’ May 03, 2022, 12:47 PM EDT Mainline Information Systems President and CEO John McCarthy, who over the past 13 years built the one-time primarily IBM shop into a $1 billion-plus cloud best-of-breed solution powerhouse, has unexpectedly left the company. Mainline announced the sudden change in a terse four paragraph release that did not mention McCarthy, a highly respected 33-year IT industry veteran. Mainline Chief Operating Officer Jeff Dobbelaere, a nearly 20-year Mainline veteran, has assumed the interim CEO position, serving as the company’s executive business leader to “both set and execute strategic direction,” said Mainline. Mainline Chairman Rick Kearney, who founded the company 33 years ago, remains as chairman and will “work closely with Dobbelaere on the future vision of Mainline,” said the company. “I hope that John was compensated to leave because he sure created a lot of value for Rick over time,” said Martin Wolf, managing partner and founder of martinwolf M&A Advisors of Scottsdale, Arizona, one of the top technology services investment advisory deal-makers. “Let’s be clear here. John McCarthy took a business that had a bad portfolio of services and products and dramatically improved it. Strategically he was a genius.” CRN reached out to McCarthy, Kearney, and Dobbelaere but had not heard back at press time. McCarthy- a 14-year former EMC top North America sales executive and a board member of cloud storage standout Nasuni, is one of the most respected CEOs in the IT industry, said Randy Seidl, a 30-year channel veteran, former Hewlett Packard Enterprise Americas senior vice president and founder and CEO of The Sales Community, which mentors top sales executives. “I don’t know what’s going on at Mainline, all I can tell you is John is one of the best CEOs in the industry,” said Seidl. “His ability to improve people, processes and go to market to drive revenue gains is unparalleled.” Among McCarthy’s career highlights are a stint as president and CEO of StorageApps, where he engineered the sale of the company to Hewlett Packard for $350 million. In a prepared statement, Kearney said the current “economic times require continual reacting and adaptation to changes in the business world in order to provide our customers the high value IT solutions they expect from Mainline.” He said Dobbelaere’s “leadership abilities, industry knowledge, and proven business success will drive Mainline’s ability to evolve and prosper.” Dobbelaere, for his part, said in a prepared statement that he was looking forward to “guiding the next phase” of Mainline’s strategy. Related Topics: