Joe DeStefano put his competitors on the same team

Joe DeStefano went to a holiday gathering with competitors and came away with the beginnings of a company. Before the event in 2021, the leaders of three New England technology advisory firms sat down to talk business. They knew the territory, knew one another, and could see their industry changing around them. A room full of competitors can produce many things. Agreement is generally among the less predictable.

ROI Communications, the business DeStefano had founded, was one of the three. Blue Front Technology Group and allConnex were the others. Their discussion turned toward combining their companies, pooling expertise and drawing up an organization. The proposed business would eventually become Amplix. DeStefano would become its founding chief executive. The acquaintances across the table would become colleagues with actual jobs to do together.

“We decided to meet up prior to the event to talk shop,” he recalled. There is something pleasingly ordinary about that beginning. No elaborate origin mythology is required. People who understood the same market compared notes and decided that their separate businesses might work better under one roof. The holiday calendar supplied the occasion; years of acquaintance supplied a reason to keep talking.

Before Amplix had a name

DeStefano arrived at that conversation with a career in the practical business of connecting organizations to technology. Before ROI, he helped build Presidio’s carrier services practice. That experience placed him in the world of telecom providers, customer requirements and the relationships that sit between the two. Later, at ROI, he built a business around advising customers and sourcing the services their organizations needed.

By 2018, ROI had a particularly tangible reason to celebrate. Intelisys named it the distributor’s fifteenth Platinum Sales Partner. DeStefano and chief operating officer Jeff Groves accepted the recognition at ROI’s Wrentham office. The team had been an Intelisys sales partner since 2012. This was a milestone in a commercial relationship that had already lasted several years, rather than an introduction dressed up for a photograph.

The accompanying prize was a trip for two to anywhere in the world, with expenses paid. Intelisys also designated February 12 as ROI Communications Day. Business recognition rarely manages to combine a calendar entry with a suitcase quite so neatly. DeStefano credited the whole ROI team for the achievement. Voice, data, cloud computing and network services may sound impersonal; his response to the award put the people doing the work back into the picture.

Three firms, one set of keys

The transaction that created Amplix closed on November 15, 2022. In December, Gemspring Capital announced that an affiliate had acquired a majority interest in the combined business. The new firm was headquartered in Norwood, Massachusetts, and served more than 2,000 customers. DeStefano took the CEO role as three established organizations began operating within a shared structure.

The work was distributed among people who brought their own histories. Dan Gill, previously ROI’s president, became Amplix’s president. Blue Front’s Dan Passacantilli became chief strategy officer. From allConnex, Steve King became chief development officer and Jamie Kuzman became chief administrative officer. This was a combination in which the earlier businesses remained visible through the responsibilities of their leaders.

The customer proposition extended across connectivity, cloud telephony, security, managed services and data centers. Baseline IT, a proprietary software platform, provided tools for managing matters such as orders, inventory, contracts and costs. For DeStefano, the combination promised more resources across the life of a customer’s technology investment. The useful question behind the transaction was concrete: what could the combined team now help a customer accomplish?

Friendship still needed a back office

Familiarity helped the founders begin. It did not make the operational differences disappear. In a July 2023 interview, DeStefano described a group whose leaders had known one another for about two decades and encountered one another at industry conferences. They could enter the merger with existing relationships. They still had to decide how their organizations would actually function together.

The businesses had different back-office cultures and procedures. Their leaders had to choose which practices to carry into Amplix. A friendly conversation could establish intent; a shared policy required more deliberate choices. For anyone tempted to regard a merger as complete when the announcement goes out, the distinction is useful. Employees and customers encounter the working arrangements long after the celebratory language has been filed away.

DeStefano also recalled how quickly the group could assemble a pro forma balance sheet: less than two hours. That detail gives the origin story a second, rather different kind of charm. Alongside the holiday meeting sits an accounting exercise. Both belong in the story. One opened a conversation about working together. The other helped the leaders examine what a combined organization might look like on paper.

“We have much to celebrate and new targets to hit.”Joe DeStefano · ROI’s 2018 Platinum recognition

The next additions had jobs to do

Amplix’s early acquisitions gave the combined organization more capabilities to put behind that proposition. Net7 joined at the beginning of 2023, bringing technical and sales talent along with its Total Care technology lifecycle management practice. Its founders, Chris Checksfield and Cary Stallings, took on customer acquisition and sales engineering responsibilities. The new arrivals had specific contributions to make, as well as customer relationships to bring.

The acquisition of Intervale Technologies’ advisory practice followed in May 2023. Intervale continued its structured cabling and audiovisual business and became a preferred supplier partner for those services. The arrangement is a useful example of the distinctions inside DeStefano’s expansion strategy. A transaction could move one practice into Amplix while leaving another business operating alongside it as a partner.

In June, Corporate Accessories Group added mobility services, including wireless plan management, spending optimization and device preparation. DeStefano already knew its founder, Peter DiNatale, through years of working together. ROI had referred customers to CAG since 2011. Bringing that expertise inside Amplix extended a relationship that had previously operated across company boundaries. The pattern was becoming familiar: people with an established working connection found a different way to organize it.

Expansion also reached beyond Massachusetts. The October 2023 acquisition of nQuery Communications assets strengthened Amplix’s Florida presence. In January 2024, Go2 Communications brought expertise in complex enterprise infrastructure deployment. These additions made the question of integration increasingly important. The larger the range of expertise, the more the customer experience depended on people inside the business knowing how to draw on one another.

A different chair at the table

In September 2024, DeStefano announced another change in working arrangements, this time his own. After a thirteen-year run as CEO across ROI and Amplix, he moved to executive chairman. Gill became chief executive. Adam Rennert, who had joined through the InflowCX acquisition, became president. The handoff placed colleagues with experience inside the organization in its principal operating roles.

DeStefano’s remit shifted toward relationships with customers and partners, potential acquisitions and strategic advice. His public announcement expressed confidence in Gill, Rennert and the wider team, while describing his continuing role as an adviser. For a founder, changing titles can make an interesting test of what he wants to keep contributing. In this case, the announced responsibilities kept him involved in the conversations surrounding the business’s future.

The company continued adding capabilities after that transition. In July 2026, Amplix announced OneConnect as its fifteenth acquisition since the platform’s formation in 2022. At that point, it described approximately 275 employees across more than twenty states and Canada, serving more than 3,500 clients nationwide. Those figures belong to the company under Gill’s leadership, with DeStefano continuing as executive chairman. The distinction matters in a story about how responsibility passes between colleagues.

The wrestler with a volunteer whistle

Outside the acquisition announcements, DeStefano’s biography takes a sporting turn. At Springfield College, he earned a bachelor’s degree in sports management with a business minor and competed in varsity wrestling. The combination offers a more personal introduction than a list of executive titles: a student studying the organization of sport while participating in its very direct, very individual form of competition.

He later volunteered as a coach for local wrestling and lacrosse teams, supporting his son Jackson. Alongside his wife, Erin, he has supported Big Brothers Big Sisters and local food banks. These are specific commitments, with people and places attached. They give the portrait something an organizational chart cannot supply: a view of where his attention goes beyond the company.

His sporting interests extend to skiing, golf and boating with his family. His connection with Joe Andruzzi began on a racquetball court, an encounter that led to involvement with the Joe Andruzzi Foundation. The foundation now lists DeStefano as its board chair. A court is an informal place to begin a relationship that eventually comes with governance responsibilities. His biography seems unusually comfortable with that sort of progression.

A longer round

Golf supplies another concrete glimpse of the person behind the title. DeStefano’s 2026 fundraising page set out a plan to play one hundred holes in a day. The page lists him alongside Chris Checksfield on the same team. Checksfield had joined the Amplix story through Net7; here the shared undertaking involved a golf course and fundraising rather than technology advisory services.

The published total on DeStefano’s page reached $12,900. A hundred holes is an agreeably literal way of putting time into a commitment. It also offers a lighter counterpoint to the formal language of company expansion: the executive chairman, a golf bag, and considerably more course than an ordinary round requires. The photograph on his fundraising page puts him outdoors in a cap, far from the conventions of a corporate headshot.

The people recur as the settings change. Gill appears at ROI and later takes over as Amplix CEO. Checksfield joins through a business combination and appears again on a fundraising team. DeStefano’s college sport turns up in his volunteer coaching. His career is full of new arrangements built around existing connections. The story began with competitors finding a reason to sit together. It continues with a founder making room for others to lead.