Today, within the enterprise IT environment, we are all being forced to do more with less. It’s just how it is. Budgets are shrinking or flat and, in many cases, IT is still looked upon as a liability as opposed to the strategic asset. Gone are the days where IT dictated the types of technology and how it’s to be used. We all know that this isn't a new trend or change; it's been happening for a while, albeit slowly and steadily. Current trends, such as Consumerization of IT, have brought this out to the forefront of the business world and out to the public in a more visible way. In many cases firms don't even realize that this has happened—how the use of technology is driven outside of IT--it just sort of happened. And in the end it’s a good thing.
It’s the business side of the organization that decides what, why and how IT will used to provide value and this can be seen across firms of all types and sizes—from smaller SMB's to the largest Fortune 100 companies and everything in-between. When technology is embraced to help elevate and grow the organization, people think differently and react differently. When firms realize the value IT can be bring strategically, IT will buy in—which is good—but is still stuck with the same resources and budget. This unfortunately puts IT in the unenviable position of having to do more with less; less people, fewer resources, less time and less budget dollars available.
This is precisely the reason Vicom's customer’s reach out with the following question: How can we fill in the gaps we have within our IT environment? And this was the genesis of Vicom's Gap Services offering. Our customers are in constant need of filling in the gaps within the IT organization and these gaps can be around skills sets, resources (or lack thereof) or simply time constraints.
Our customer’s use this service for their few times a year (critical) firmware updates to the server and/or storage environment—paid for and booked months ahead of time so it gets done. Others need a storage engineer once a week for a day or half day to fine-tune the storage environment. Others require a Virtualization engineer (VMware, Citrix, or Unix) onsite 1-2 days a month to help ensure that the Virtualization environment so heavily invested in is adhering to best practices. And the list goes on and on…
In this constantly changing industry that continues to challenge, stretch and reward us on a daily basis, we all remain cognizant to the fact that sometimes we can't do it all on our own. Sometimes we need help in filling in the gaps.
Andy