Talk about disaster recovery.
Eric LaFleur is no stranger to a "Nor'easter," those winter weather systems originating just northeast of the east coast of the U.S. and often reeking sizable havoc -- particularly across New England.
LaFleur's home just outside of Boston has often been in the path of those "Nor'easters," which bring strong winds and frigid artic breezes that create strange patterns of climate change that can affect every aspect of life, including how one does business.
Notwithstanding their sometimes devastating effects, over the years these "wicked" Nor'easters have come to symbolize resiliency and a regional identity, a cultural panache of this part of the country.
It's this provincial pride that was behind the slogan of LaFleur's IT service company, which is "NE tech, NE time NE ware," and behind the company's name as well: NorthEast Computer Services, LLC founded in Haverhill, Mass. in 2003.
According to LaFleur, the basic thinking here, among other factors is "what if a Nor'easter knocked out your power" and services were down, how would you back up your critical data and who would help you?"
"We started the company to fill a somewhat new and growing need and that was to provide Managed Services to the SMB market," said LaFleur. "Managed Services and IT outsourcing have been around for a long time for large companies but it was something that was just emerging into this market segment and we saw the potential and viability of starting a company to service that market."
To LaFleur, business continuity solutions, with backup and disaster recovery as a key component is without a doubt very appealing for clients who face literal and figurative, physical and financial "Nor'easters" that could adversely affect their businesses.
To that end, NorthEast Computer was able to take the capital that would have been needed for hardware, software, bandwidth, etc and instead focus those dollars on marketing to and acquiring customers.
Posted by Jabulani Leffall on August 17, 20100 comments
Even going back to the early 20th century, local developers worked with fervor to bring people and businesses to sunny South Florida.
The pitch was simple: sunshine and tranquility.
The environment was no different in 1994 when IT services firm VirtuWorks was founded in Miami under the name of its parent company, GIS, Inc., which was mainly servicing developers.
The key to the company's rise is the vision of Omar Armenteros, the company's president, having an almost clinical obsession with incorporating the latest business technology and concepts to keep above the competition. Matt Mehler adds 14 years to the equation doubling as both VP and Promotional Czar, and the company's CIO, Otto Ortega, while only with VirtuWorks three years, brings over 15 years of IT experience to the table.
To that end, VirtuWorks counts its technology partners as an integral piece of its expansion and short-term operational needs.
In fact it was in 2005 that VirtuWorks began moving from the hourly service model towards providing flat-rate, Managed IT Services to its customers. In seeking the ability to monitor the health of client networks in real-time, Mehler said many options were considered including taking on technology partners to see the process through and go into managed services full bore.
"Managed services will eventually become transparent as cloud services become more prevalent," Mehler predicts. "Currently, most MSPs charge their customers per user, PC or server for monitoring, maintenance and support. In the Cloud, Managed IT Support is rolled into the cost of services like virtual desktops, hosted applications and hosted storage."
Mehler's assertions match larger industry forecasts which foresee an environment where cloud service providers own the hardware infrastructure on which they deliver services and integrate support into their service offerings.
Posted by Jabulani Leffall on August 16, 20100 comments