Technology Innovator Awards 2017

64 Corporate Vision / Technology Innovator Awards 2017 , ITsavvy is an innovative solutions integration firm that has catapulted fromaMidwest start- up to a national leader in IT products and solutions, very rapidly. We invited President and CEOMike Theriault to tell us more about the history of this dynamic firmand the innovations it offers. Best for Technology Solutions Integration Services – USA & Best IT InfrastructureManagement Solution: savvyGuard ® Organizations can no longer ignore the fact data is their most valuable resource. Without confidence in and consistent access to its data, an operation will come to a halt. In 2014, ITsavvy understood and predicted the critical role data would play when they transitioned from an IT products reseller to an end- to-end products and advanced solutions provider. “When we first started ITsavvy, we saw the wave, but we weren’t content to merely ride it. We wanted to get in front of it and lead. And we did,” explains Mike. Through a series of calculated investments in capabilities and technologies, ITsavvy now is recognized as an industry leader in integrated IT services. Theriault co-founded ITsavvy with Chris Kurpeikis, the company’s Executive Vice President. Headquartered in Addison, Illinois, ITsavvy has offices in downtown Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio and California. They operate Tier 3 data centers in Illinois and New Jersey, and they partner with 46 distribution centers around the US with a growing global presence. Their success comes from a unique ability to combine a thorough level of knowledge with state-of- the art delivery of IT products and solutions. “At the end of the day, that’s what today’s IT director really wants,” said Theriault. Together, Theriault and Kurpeikis have put ITsavvy on a steep trajectory, and the company regularly shows up on fast-growth lists. Yet, that doesn’t mean they are willing to sacrifice client service. “We’re in a highly competitive industry. We differentiate ourselves through a thoughtful, intelligent, relationship-driven approach to IT solutions,” said Theriault. That means spending a good amount of time ahead of a proposal identifying the root cause of a prospect’s problem. ITsavvy’s comprehensive discovery process and vendor-neutral approach provide a tremendous amount of value, and may lead them to an entirely different, but more appropriate, solution. Theriault provided a recent example. “During an outreach call with an insurance company, we learned that they were struggling to find a new Unified Communications solution that would satisfy their long list of requirements. Since we partner with multiple UC vendors, we had a lot of options available to us. We analyzed the alternatives and proposed RingCentral, one of our newest vendor partners,” Theriault explained. “While RingCentral is lesser-known in the US, only RingCentral had all of the compliance prerequisites required by the client. It was the ideal fit.” Another differentiator for ITsavvy is their ability to visualize the interconnections between IT systems in an age of increasing complexity. “Data centers are no longer solely a room full of Dell or HP,” said Theriault. “They are highly complex organisms with a mixture of new and legacy hardware and software. It’s not always apparent how everything is connected.” A holistic view of an organization is particularly important as IT operations move some or all of their operations to the cloud. “When you start pulling out pieces of your IT infrastructure you begin to affect the integrity of the system as a whole. We have advanced certifications on all of the manufacturers that may be represented in an operation’s data center. We can work in and around legacy systems.” This elite status often helps them win deals. Recently, when a records management company needed an IT provider who had advanced knowledge in Dell EMC Isilon, they turned to one of the few IT providers with Isilon experience: ITsavvy. This kind of industry recognition has opened up new opportunities for ITsavvy. While the company built its business within a regional SMB market, it is now expanding geographically and in sector size.