Fusun Bubernack, co-president of ET&T, has over 25 years of experience leading the multigenerational, family-owned business through rapid shifts in the technology and communications industries. Under her leadership, ET&T has evolved from a traditional telecommunications provider into a full-service managed service provider (MSP) supporting hundreds of businesses across Eastern Pennsylvania.
LVB: ET&T is a family-run business. Tell me a little bit about how you got started.
Bubernack: ET&T is a generational family business. It was started by my father-in-law in 1968 out of a garage, providing sound systems. Over the years, the company grew its portfolio of products and services by offering premise-based business phone systems, becoming the first Mitel Phone Systems dealer in Eastern, PA.
In 2000, my husband Michael, who had been working for his father for many years, and I had the opportunity to buy the business.
As Co-Presidents, we weathered many new opportunities, some challenges, and the inevitable change that comes with running a small but mighty organization.
Traditional business phone systems were still our primary business offering, then, but we quickly identified the fast pace of technical innovation that was impacting our clients. Customer service has always been at the core of what we do, and around that time, we started hearing requests from our long-time partners for expanded support in areas beyond just their phone systems. Now they had computers, servers, and networks that needed management as well.
In 2002, we officially launched our managed IT services division. Today, the two divisions – IT and telephones – make up the majority of our business, though our security surveillance and structured cabling projects are quickly growing as well.
Despite nearly six decades in business, countless tech fads, flops and seismic shifts, we’re proud to still be a trusted all-encompassing technology provider.
LVB: Technology has evolved a great deal since your company first began. What were some of the big changes you had to adapt to?
Bubernack: Technology has changed dramatically since ET&T was founded over 50 years ago and continues to evolve daily. The nature of our work requires us to stay informed, adapt to, and consult on the latest cutting-edge technologies. Of course, the audio systems we first delivered are mostly obsolete today.
We were actually the first Mitel Private Branch Exchange (PBX) in PA in 1979. While we still have many traditional PBX’s in operation across the state, much of our client telecommunications have actually migrated to voice-over-IP or hosted platforms.
Especially during COVID, the ability to make and receive calls remotely and to communicate across multiple channels, regardless of location and network infrastructure, became extremely important.
Over the last ten years, the biggest adjustment has been our focus on cybersecurity and business technology resilience. Simple computer maintenance and break-fix support is no longer acceptable.
With the constant changes in cyber threats and attacks, even on small and medium businesses, we’ve had to invest in continuous education for both our clients’ staff and our own.
LVB: How does a company like ET&T stay ahead of changes in technology?
Bubernack: At ET&T, staying ahead means always learning and adapting. We invest heavily in training and certifications for our technicians, and we regularly evaluate and test new tools before bringing them to clients. Our team attends industry conferences, participates in peer groups, and keeps a close eye on cybersecurity frameworks and compliance requirements that are shaping the market.
LVB: I’m sure the evolution of technology isn’t slowing down. What do you see on the horizon?
Bubernack: Of course, it wouldn’t be a conversation about technology evolution without recognizing the profound impact artificial intelligence is having and will continue to have on how we work, communicate, and live. ChatGPT became the fastest growing consumer software application in history, attracting 100 million monthly active users in just two months. It would be a disservice to our clients not to stay afloat on the innovations, practical business applications, and compliance requirements associated with AI usage in the workplace.
Some in our industry actually posit that we’re on the cusp of becoming not just managed service providers, but managed intelligence providers. This would require us to deliver value through outcomes, serving as architects of intelligence infrastructure, builders of agentic systems, and orchestrators of AI for curious SMBs. ET&T is quickly adapting its workforce development to stay ahead of these impending solutions.
Besides AI, we also expect to see continued evolution in cybersecurity.
A recent Mastercard Cybersecurity report found that 39% of US small and medium businesses have experienced a cyberattack that resulted in 29% losing customer trust, 29% experiencing revenue loss, and 12% closing their business. We never want to see our customers become a statistic like this, thus we’re continually advising on and implementing new best practices. One framework we advise, which originally evolved in the enterprise space but is quickly becoming standard for SMBs, is zero-trust by default. This assumes that no device, user or application should be trusted without continuous verification. Thankfully, this is becoming easier and easier to implement with tools that many businesses already use like Microsoft 365.
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