Changing The Way Small Businesses See Managed Services

Michael T. Carey started IT Systems Group (www.itsystemsgroup.com) in 1987 as a service and support organization for small and medium businesses. Back then, Carey focused solely on networks and, at the time, evaluated Novell as the best networking provider. He actually had the distinction of becoming Long Island's first CNE (certified Novell engineer). And in 1991, IT Systems Group won an award for completing the most Novell upgrades in the entire Northeast.

But fast-forward to 2006 when IT Systems Group landed knee-deep in the managed services space for the SMB market. So deep in fact, that it has focused exclusively on that market since that time. In 2006, the company had to shift all its service models from break/fix and hardware/maintenance agreements strictly to managed services and pay-by-device service models. Carey elaborates, "We've done small projects and large migration projects, sometimes up to 15,000 seats. We've worked with big law firms and multinational firms in 40 different countries. We cover the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and distribution market segments, as well as the professional services space."

Because of the managed services movement, IT Systems Group went through an interesting transition by converting to a completely virtual operation. "Our office is essentially everywhere," Carey says. "But, we always have our phones manned. In addition, all of our engineers are actually dispatched from their homes. We're honestly never really in our fixed offices, but we're available when needed. We're also 100% Citrix and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol)-based as well."