Gaining Reliable Engineering Support with MicroAge Managed Services

A CTO’s Search for Quality Support.

When an overworked CTO at a SaaS cloud provider reached out to MicroAge, he was looking for laptop imaging. He was managing a small IT department serving a couple of hundred users, and had his hands full. After discussing his situation with Max Myers and learning about MicroAge’s full portfolio of end-to-end services, he began reassessing his current offshore support arrangement.

“The original conversation was just the tip of the iceberg,” said MicroAge’s Max Myers. “He didn’t realize MicroAge offers such a broad portfolio of services that go way beyond traditional data center and hardware. MicroAge is a total technology solutions provider, including end-to-end services and areas like security, cloud, collaboration, and managed services.”

“This CTO is not only in charge of IT, he also has responsibility for the organization’s cybersecurity. In an industry like cloud provisioning, maintaining a secure environment is absolutely critical,” added Max.

In discussing their needs and their current resource and service strategy, Max realized the CTO and his organization were not well-served by their current arrangement and could benefit from the engineering support that MicroAge offers.

He immediately turned to MicroAge Director of Technical Solutions Wyatt Bowman to craft a services solution that would best suit the organization’s needs.

“They took their time in assessing our credentials and service offering,” said Wyatt. “And rightly so—they are in a highly regulated industry in which security and compliance are essential. They are the keepers of huge amounts of sensitive, proprietary data. They need to trust that their partners are established and qualified.”

MicroAge and the client selected Fortinet’s Fortigate VM02V firewall to deliver both physical and virtualized security. The appliance mitigates blind spots and quickly provisions security infrastructure.

The Benefits of Engineering Support.

In addition to MicroAge’s quality standards and achievements, the CTO appreciated that MicroAge provides highly trained and certified engineering support.

“Their current support provider was just not meeting their requirements,” said Max. “The response time was painfully slow. The offshore support techs were not qualified for the needs of this client and would sometimes take a couple of weeks to get answers from Microsoft.”

Scoping out the project included correcting some of the first provider’s missteps in areas like Intune set up and enhancing the firm’s O365 security posture.

Budget Concerns: Hire or Outsource?

Budget was another area of concern for this client.

“They toyed with the idea of hiring a senior network and Windows admin, but after running the numbers for one qualified, full-time admin, they realized that the managed services route was a better one for their bottom line,” said Wyatt. “Plus, when you consider that IT admin would be just one person, who cannot always be available, versus the team of service engineers with broader skills that come with a MicroAge managed services engagement, the answer usually becomes pretty clear.”

MicroAge U.S.-Based Engineering Support Meets the Challenge.

Once the CTO fully vetted the MicroAge managed services proposal, he was ready to start immediately. Max and MicroAge Systems Engineer Sean Philips took part in numerous calls and planning sessions to work through the complex schematics of the client network to gain access, deliver services, and align with the security and separation of duties requirements to meet FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) policies.

“The CTO tells me that working with MicroAge is a huge upgrade in IT support and cybersecurity over his previous IT provider,” said Max. “He says he would be so much further ahead if he had started with MicroAge from the beginning.”