How MSPs Can Help Clients Manage Risk and Modernize Infrastructure

In this episode of Channel Insider: Partner POV — your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the IT channel — host Katie Bavoso spoke with Gotham Technology Group CTO Ken Phelan about how MSPs can support their clients to manage risk while modernizing their infrastructure.

Phelan explained Gotham’s focus on helping customers determine if they need new technology or better processes as they face new cybersecurity risks and undergo IT modernization.

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About Gotham Technology Group

Gotham Technology Group is navigating ongoing economic uncertainty, where customers must do more with fewer resources, by building on its decades of relationships and client-first approach to delivering solutions. As customers increasingly shift to managed services, they are seeking unbiased guidance amid changing priorities among IT vendors that are dropping products and modifying long-standing licensing terms.

Founded just weeks before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Gotham has served New York City metropolitan area customers that span industry sectors, including healthcare, financial services, retail, and manufacturing, all of which have business-critical IT and cybersecurity needs.

Gotham’s broad IT services include cloud migration and management, end-user computing, data center infrastructure, and application development and integration. It also has a significant cybersecurity portfolio consisting of Security Operations Center (SOC) as a Service, ransomware protection, monitoring, and assessment services.

Providing resources to a local clientele with a global footprint

Having clients based in the New York City metropolitan area means serving the largest local market in the world. As would be expected, many of Gotham’s clients have offices, facilities, and other resources throughout the United States and beyond.

“I might wake up with engineers in Budapest or an engineer in Singapore for jobs around the world,” Phelan said. “I could be working with a hospital in the morning, and a bank in the afternoon, and on all kinds of different things. It’s the same elephant with lots of different pieces that you could look at.”

Taking on cybersecurity with a wide range of global threat actors and attack vectors

Regardless of industry, data protection and availability are the most paramount requirements among prospects and existing clients. Gotham’s broad cybersecurity services include its managed 24×7 SOC Concierge Service.

Gotham can manage on-premises and cloud infrastructure with ArcticWolf for Managed Service Providers. It also works with various data protection and cybersecurity tool providers, including Carbon Black, CheckPoint, Code42, ProofPoint, Sentinel One, and Veeam. Asked to call out any of its partners, Phelan pointed to Rubrik for data protection and Wiz for security posture management.

Helping customers determine if they need new technology or better processes

Gotham doesn’t presume customers need new technology or upgrades from the outset of a meeting. Instead, its architects decide after evaluating their existing infrastructure and what they are trying to achieve, according to Phelan.

“I think people have a tendency to overbuy products and underestimate the process and people it’s going to take to make that all happen,” Phelan said. Gotham seeks to avoid unnecessary capital purchases or embark on major projects, which is especially important in the current economic environment, especially for projects that may not have an immediate payoff.

“Time to value is so critical,” Phelan said. “A lot of people don’t want to rip and replace, because embarking on a 36-month program and telling people in a down market that we’re going to do this [but] it’s not going to pay off for another three years is a really tough conversation to have in a space where budgets are already constrained.”

Searching for alternatives to incumbent solutions amid unfavorable vendor moves

Another measure of the current economic climate is a spate of mergers and acquisition activity in the IT industry in the past two years. Among them, acquisitions of VMware by Broadcom and Citrix by private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital have resulted in many products’ deprecation and licensing changes of others — mostly notably, the end of VMware’s Partner Connect program that so many MSPs depended on.

“That’s their strategy, but at the same time, I’ve got a bunch of customers that are shifting more heavily to cloud faster and making different changes, trying to adjust their business with those platform challenges,” Phelan said.

Helping customers cover IT skills shortages with staffing services

Customers’ shrinking IT budgets have created more demand for managed services, but many can’t find or retain staff for existing internal positions. Gotham is addressing that with its staffing service, leveraging its experience recruiting and interviewing people to fill its own technical staffing needs, including measuring and vetting their qualifications and certifications.

“Providing the people with the solution so they can be successful is a critical part of owning the solution,” Phelan said. “We also have this great team of recruiters and staffing people who can help fill in the right people on-site, whether it’s temp or permanent, to make sure everything is working.”

Reassessing the cost of cloud infrastructure

Phelan said that customers should also be reassessing their use of cloud services. “The cost models have shifted pretty considerably, as those platforms have changed their models, and again,” he said.

Gotham recommends customers undergo those assessments. “I think we all should be thinking about this,” he said. Phelan said Gotham is also seeing a strong uptick in customers reevaluating their certifications and whether they should consider alternatives to their VMware infrastructure.

These issues, in addition to the ever-present ransomware concern, are where he sees Gotham focusing most closely in the coming year.

Tune in to the video or podcast above for more insights from Katie Bavoso and Gotham’s CTO Ken Phelan — and be sure to like and subscribe for future interviews with solution providers and thought leaders, plus special episodes and opportunities!

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