Nicholas Salem
Fractional CIO
I learned this trade building an IT department from scratch as the IT director of a Boston nonprofit, where the job was as much budgets and forecasting as it was servers. That experience became Boston Managed IT in 2015, and Southwest Florida IT in 2024. Both now operate under The Cyber Harbor Group, where I lead acquisitions.
Today I work with leadership teams as a fractional CIO. Most engagements start the same way, with a lot of listening: what led you to start looking, what keeps breaking, and what the business actually needs technology to do over the next few years. Then we build the roadmap and I stay on to see it through.
Experience
The Cyber Harbor Group
A consortium of private owners rather than a private equity fund, formed so independent managed IT firms can compete with the PE-backed national providers without running their clients off a template. Boston Managed IT and Southwest Florida IT are its operating companies.
Lead acquisitions and the shared technology platform the group runs on, which puts me on the buying side of the same diligence and integration work I have run for clients.
Southwest Florida IT
Founded to serve organizations on Florida’s Gulf Coast, running the same stack and standards as Boston Managed IT.
Boston Managed IT
Built and lead a managed services and cybersecurity firm serving organizations in biotech, insurance, legal, nonprofit, and veterinary care, from ten-person offices to companies with global footprints.
Responsible for service delivery, security posture, vendor relationships, and the technology roadmap across every client environment.
Run the company on an agent-driven operating model, including a custom-built PSA and automated helpdesk analysis, which is where a lot of my current AI strategy work comes from.
Work, Community, Independence, Inc. (WCI)
Built the IT department from scratch for a nonprofit supporting individuals with mental and physical disabilities, across administrative offices and residential programs.
Owned the IT budget and forecasting alongside infrastructure, which is where I learned to translate a business need into a number a board will approve.
Mergers and acquisitions
When a client is acquired, technology shows up in diligence early and the answers have to hold up. The buyer wants an accurate asset and license inventory, a clear account of security controls and where they fall short, contracts with their renewal and assignment terms, and an honest read on technical debt. Assembling that while the business keeps running is most of the work.
A publicly traded acquirer raises the bar. Their auditors ask for evidence rather than assurances, which means documented access reviews, change management with a paper trail, and retention and legal hold you can demonstrate. Integration follows: moving identity, mail, and files into the acquirer’s tenant and standards, on their timeline, usually while a transition services agreement is still running and the team is being onboarded to new systems.
- IT diligence and integration for more than 50 client transactions.
- Acquisition of managed IT firms through The Cyber Harbor Group, on the buying side of the same process.
- Localytics, a Boston mobile analytics company, through its 2020 acquisition by Upland Software.
- NanoSemi, an MIT spinout building signal processing IP for 5G and AI systems, through its 2020 acquisition by MaxLinear.
What I'm brought in to do
- IT strategy and multi-year roadmaps
- IT budget ownership, forecasting, and board-level reporting
- Vendor selection, contract review, and oversight
- Security posture, policy, and compliance readiness
- AI and automation strategy
- M&A technology diligence, integration, and carve-outs
- Interim and fractional IT leadership
Industries
- Biotech and life sciences
- Insurance
- Legal
- Nonprofit
- Veterinary care
Scale
- More than 50 client organizations served since 2015
- Roughly 1,500 devices across client environments
- Client sizes from ten-person offices to companies with global footprints
Certifications
- MCSE, Microsoft
- Network+, CompTIA
- Security+, CompTIA
Education
- Information Technology certificate program, Harvard Extension School, 2014
Writing
I write about IT leadership, security, and running a company on AI. Read the essays →