Loftware had the sort of problem a software company might welcome until the invoice arrived. As it moved toward cloud-based product delivery, its Amazon Web Services costs were rising 20–40% a year. Growth was working. The bill needed attention. Blue Mantis entered through a wonderfully unglamorous door: billing.
- Blue Mantis runs, secures, and modernizes IT for midmarket and enterprise clients.
- Its Loftware case reports an 8–10% AWS discount through a five-year agreement.
- The business has shifted from selling technology toward recurring responsibility for operating it.
The relationship began in 2017. Working with Loftware’s AWS account manager, Blue Mantis identified an Enterprise Discount Plan, secured the discount, and took on deployment management. The customer’s IT and finance people could spend more time on strategic work. There was no requirement in this story for a dazzling new application. The intervention was purchasing discipline plus somebody watching the machinery.
“Partnering with Blue Mantis since 2017 has saved us significant money on our cloud spend.”
Joel Reilley / Global IT Manager, Loftware
The bill that kept growing
That case is a useful introduction to a company whose service menu can otherwise resemble the contents of an entire IT department. Blue Mantis handles cloud, cybersecurity, infrastructure, networks, employee technology, strategic advice, and specialist staffing. The connection is operational: each purchase creates work that continues after installation. Somebody must inspect permissions, answer users, investigate alerts, and explain spending.
The discount is also worth reading carefully. An 8–10% reduction on a hypothetical $100,000 monthly bill equals $8,000–$10,000 before service fees. That is arithmetic applied to the reported range, rather than Loftware’s disclosed spending. Buyers should compare the contract term, eligible consumption, commitments, and management fees. A discount attached to the wrong commitment can become an expensive souvenir.
Illustration using the Loftware case’s reported discount range. Before service fees; eligibility and commitments vary. No savings guarantee.
The catalog got too small
Blue Mantis began as GreenPages in 1992, supplying technology products. Its old name nodded to the Yellow Pages. In July 2023, that directory-era identity gave way to an insect: the mantis, chosen for its precision and deliberate movement. Brand agency Tank helped develop the identity. A business once associated with finding and supplying equipment wanted customers to recognize a broader role.
The financial mix makes that change more interesting than a naming exercise. In a May 2026 interview, CEO Josh Dinneen said resale had represented more than 85% of revenue when he joined in 2018. By that interview, it was below 30%, even as the resale business continued growing. These are management-reported figures, but they describe a substantial change in what customers pay for.
Resale as a share of revenue. CEO account, May 2026; bars mark the reported boundaries.
Dinneen did not found GreenPages. He founded Norwell Technology Group, an IT and security advisory business acquired by GreenPages in 2018, and became Blue Mantis CEO in November 2023. His account of the transformation includes a less photogenic ingredient: aligning compensation, bonuses, and objectives across a fragmented organization. A new message needed different internal incentives to become believable.
What broke was the operating model
There is a revealing parallel inside the company’s own technology. An OpsRamp case study describes Blue Mantis outgrowing a heavily customized management platform. It monitored systems, but supporting newer enterprise technologies and basic operational work required additional customization. The company wanted a shared, cloud-based platform that could coordinate monitoring, remote access, patching, and governance.
The reported result was fewer separate toolsets and lower operational complexity. This was a vendor-published account, so it deserves that context. Still, the underlying problem is specific: a service provider promising to simplify customers’ environments had accumulated complexity of its own. Its answer was to consolidate the operating layer and give customer teams visibility into the work.
Security with someone on the other end
Blue Mantis Protect, launched in September 2025, packages that preference for ongoing ownership into a cybersecurity subscription. Its services include managed detection and response, threat hunting, vulnerability management, dark web monitoring, and governance support. The intended customer is a midsized organization that needs continuous security operations and has limited appetite for building and staffing everything internally.
In October 2026, Mantis Genius added an assessment service for AWS and Microsoft Azure. It examines security, configuration, and spending together, then brings in experts to prioritize the findings. An assessment becomes useful when somebody can explain what to fix first. Cloud economics and security often meet in the same neglected resource.
- 01 / AssessInventory the environment.
Find gaps and costs. - 02 / ModernizePrioritize changes.
Improve the systems. - 03 / ManageAssign ownership.
Keep checking.
Buying a wider bench
The company reports more than 2,500 midmarket and enterprise clients, spanning sectors including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and education. Its partner roster includes AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Fortinet, and Arctic Wolf. The competitive proposition is breadth: customers can put advisory work, implementation, and continuing operations into the same relationship. Specialist consultancies and internal teams remain plausible alternatives, depending on the job.
For The Channel Company, acquisitions and a pandemic-era move to remote work created a different version of that problem. Its workforce stretched across seven countries and four continents. The response began with a NIST assessment to identify gaps and regulatory requirements. That sequence matters: expansion changed the environment, so the company first needed to understand what its security program now had to cover.
Private equity has helped expand that bench. Recognize announced a majority investment in September 2024, with Abry Partners remaining a minority investor. In 2025, three Vermont acquisitions added networking and carrier capabilities; Coreio brought Canadian reach and ServiceNow expertise. The Coreio announcement put recurring services above 60% of the business.
The lesson readers can copy is procedural. Inventory what exists, decide which problems matter, and name the person responsible for each next step. For a small, simple environment, a broad managed-services relationship may be unnecessary. For a larger one, the test is whether the contract gives the business better visibility and clear ownership. Even a mantis needs a job description.