ITsavvy
ITsavvy Uses Virtualization to Take Clients from Chaos to Confidence

In 2015, Jim Arrigo was at a crossroads. As President of one of Florida’s largest car dealerships, Arrigo understood the importance of an efficient organization. Yet the operating system that ran his entire company, Windows XP, was nearing its end-of-life. Arrigo had nearly 300 individual desktops running the outdated software at three facilities along Florida’s southeastern coast. The upgrade was going to be an impossible manpower burden for the company’s sole IT manager. Yet, without ongoing Microsoft support, Arrigo knew his operation would be in a vulnerable position. He discussed the dilemma with Mike Theriault, President and CEO of ITsavvy, who immediately understood the solution: desktop virtualization.

“Virtualization would become a game changer for Arrigo,” Theriault recalled. ITsavvy’s virtualization engineers developed a combination of XenDesktop, VMware ESX 6, and Microsoft Server 2012 R2 for the Arrigo operation. Overnight, 300 virtual desktops were fired up. Now, the dealership’s one-man IT department can easily upgrade software, update virus protections, onboard new users and ensure data security all from a single dashboard. “The atmosphere has gone from crisis to confidence,” Theriault said. For many clients, the impact of desktop virtualization on the bottom line can be significant, not only in reduced manpower but also in improved user productivity, business continuity and data security.

The larger part of the virtualization story, though, lies in the cloud. A virtualized environment can better embrace the cloud, and a cloud-first approach to IT service delivery can significantly transform the organization. ITsavvy believes standalone on-premise infrastructures will soon be a thing of the past, particularly for small to medium sized companies.

In fact, ITsavvy often encourages start-ups to go cloud-first as much as is feasible.“It’s exciting to be a part of the cloud and virtualization spheres,” Theriault said.

Maybe Not Everyone Is Ready To Make A Big Leap, So We Customize, Hybridize And ‘Right Fit’ Our Solutions

“We understand a new vision will require a fundamental shift in how IT services are procured and deployed. We are ready for this revolution.”

As part of its commitment to this future, ITsavvy recently opened a brand new Network Operations Center in New York and a state-of-the-art data center in New Jersey. The NOC is staffed 24x7x365 with a US-based team. The data center was custom designed and built by ITsavvy engineers in a facility that is 100 percent compliant for HIPAA, HITECH, SSAE 16, PCI DSS 3.0, and is certified Safe Harbor and SOC 1 & 2. The two facilities, along with another data center in the Midwest, form the hub of virtualization and cloud activities for ITsavvy clients in North America and Europe. This allows ITsavvy to bring cutting edge technologies to organizations of all sizes, helping them utilize the cloud to move from CapEx to OpEx business strategies. “Maybe not everyone is ready to make a big leap, so we customize, hybridize and ‘right fit’ our solutions. And even if the client’s business needs dictate a CapEx purchase, we can help to translate that into an OpEx model,” Theriault said.

ITsavvy knows that virtualization and cloud might be trending today on technology forums, but what really matters is a client’s bottom line. Increasingly, ITsavvy is asked to translate its solutions into ROI. Today’s CEOs and CIOs want to know how VDI, virtualized storage & backup, and the cloud ultimately will help them implement their business objectives. So the discussion often turns to what ITsavvy can do to help turn critical business indicators. “We are pros at utilizing technology as a strategic tool. We are more than ready to have those kinds of higher-order discussions,” Theriault said. “We know the value that we bring to the table. That’s when our expertise shines.”