Future Now: Innovation

Greg Gurev, Head Sherpa

Greg Gurev, Head Sherpa

Innovation

As technology guides, our clients look to us for direction on how to get the most return on their IT spend.  They want to stay current, use proven technology and improve their business productivity. How do we manage all these needs and wants? Through embracing, not rejecting, innovation.

The proliferation of technology breakthroughs is ushering in a new era of business tools and advancement such as like cloud services, virtualization, and hosted applications. We already accept many mobile solutions as a given part of business, not to mention daily interaction with products armed with sensory intelligence.

In order to maintain our relevance and stay true to our mission as Business Technology Guides, we continue to innovate, sometimes on a daily basis.  Since one size definitely does not fit all, rarely does a single technology answer our of our client needs.  Although we maintain a healthy skepticism towards new and unproven technology, we’re often the first company to deploy new tools in the field, treating each one as a opportunity for our clients to learn and gain solid information with us. This is a challenging task as we must always consider the individual client’s needs, unique operating environment and business applications.  But we must prove out different sets of technology for many scenarios, and MySherpa likes to keep a full roster of customized solutions ready for any situation.

For example, we have been advocating eliminating servers and reducing complexity for clients who do not rely on local server based applications.  Connectivity, reliable – high speed Internet and hosted applications have made it possible for some to reduce their computer footprint by eliminating extraneous equipment (see my last post about Low Tech Triumphant). This can be a great boon for companies with limited expansion space.

We also provide innovation for our clients that have demanding on-premise applications.  For these cases we look to provide low cost options for secure anywhere access.  Our private MySherpa® Cloud allows us to restore a client’s complete work environment in a server farm we control, in just a few hours.

New technology is great but adds complexity!

Much of this new technology augments existing systems but rarely does it replace the technology in place; it is a net add.  Really? Yes. New technology is primarily additive and, unless you’re considering a massive, expensive infrastructure overhaul, does not eliminate the legacy technology.

I have a couple of examples to highlight my point:

  • iPhones may be the communication device du jour but there are still millions of BlackBerry  users out there.  Now many companies are running two mobile email systems and not one.  Twice the administration; and we are just getting started!
  • How about virtualization technology?   It’s (mostly) free, offers the promise to do more with less and is definitely cutting edge.  However, most clients right now will opt to keep newer servers in place and not virtualize them because they are new, healthy and functional.  So there is more of a mix of traditional and virtual architecture which adds complexity when troubleshooting or planning for expansion.

We surveyed our clients and learned they wanted more strategic guidance for long term planning coupled with weekly contact for continuous improvement.  In short, we have innovated our company structure and functions by defining new dedicated roles to serve our clients.

 

Best regards from the summit!

 

Greg

 

For weekly sneak peeks, check out our Facebook page and follow us on TwitterYou can also find Greg on LinkedIn.

 

 


Leave a comment!

You must be logged in to post a comment.