The plethora of IT products on the market has caused market chaos. Between cybersecurity, cloud and data centers, and on-premise IT needs, CIOs and VPs of IT can easily get entangled in a mire of conflicting services that are all apparently “mission critical.”
Competition between vendors complicates things. When things go wrong, it’s easier for suppliers to finger-point when there are other suppliers involved. The result is a lack of accountability, headaches for the CIO, frustration for cloud architects, and a company that limps along because it can’t get its IT act together.
Cybersecurity brings sufficient confusion on its own
Let’s forget all other aspects of IT and just look at cybersecurity. The worldwide estimated cost of cybercrime hit $8.44 trillion in 2022. The complexity of products in this sector went into overdrive as a result of several high-profile attacks, starting with Operation Aurora’s zero-day attack in 2009 that attempted to steal source code from Google, Adobe, and other US tech companies.
More recently, ransomware attacks have threatened to take down key infrastructure, as occurred with the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack.
Crypto hacks, although not particularly relevant to most companies, make major headlines every time they occur. The net result is that cybersecurity sits at top-of-mind for most business owners.
The number of products required for full cybersecurity coverage is immense — everything from XDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) to Identity protection, employee training, response plans, and so on.
Plus the cloud, and things get really complicated
And then there is the cloud, or clouds — plural. Combinations of on-prem and off-prem. The need to not go all-in with a single cloud provider so as to prevent vendor lock-in. So, now you need a tech team for Azure and also one for Amazon. Ah, and let’s not forget Google!
Confusion. Multiple vendors. And we also still have legacy on-prem solutions!
More products. More IT services.
It’s absolute chaos.
Enter the tech broker, or is it an MSP?
Okay, let’s clear up some terms. We have “Technology Broker” and “Managed Service Provider.” What’s the difference?
A technology broker is a company that has built strong networking ties to all relevant sectors of IT and so makes it a breeze for your company to find the solutions it needs. Instead of you hunting through the web for vendors for each aspect of the IT problem you need solved, the technology broker already has their Rolodex of vetted providers — in all sectors.
There’s a popular joke on the internet that goes something like, “the best medical advice on the internet is the one with the best SEO.” In other words, the top of Google’s search results indicates that the company has a great SEO team, not that it has an awesome product.
Now, multiply that Googling time by each of the different sectors of IT that a CIO needs to deal with: It’s a catastrophe.
The technology broker brings all these services under a single umbrella so you only have to deal with one company.
The term Managed Service Provider (MSP) encompasses the fact that the service is managed, i.e., that the service provider will be a buffer between you and the myriad tech service providers it has to deal with. Although this concept is not inherent in the phrase Technology Broker, the tech broker tends to do the same thing, but with a more “hands off” approach.
CoAction differs from the typical tech brokerage because it focuses on bringing further value to whatever tech you have invested in. Some customers want to manage things themselves, others want us to manage it for them. CoAction acts as both a brokerage and as a company that gets its hands dirty and helps with the products themselves.
Why not go in-house?
In-house IT is simply not viable anymore without extra help. The explosion of distributed services, WFH, and remote systems has added far too much complexity. So many tech areas require specialized knowledge that your IT team would end up becoming enormous and eating up the company’s budget.
And the tech sector continues to grow. For example, blockchain alone brought with it a ton of new technologies and skills. More and more companies are now looking at the potential value of running private blockchains to maintain internal transparency for processes. That means more IT employees, but specialized in blockchain.
What happens when the next tech breakthrough hits?
Having an in-house IT team doing all the heavy lifting is a losing battle when it is not supported by a brokerage who:
- Helps disseminate information
- Weed through the noise
- Provide recommendations
- Consults on technology strategy decisions
Who is the Technology Broker CoAction?
CoAction is a Technology Brokerage with the mission to clear technology bottlenecks so your business can accelerate its growth. Our culture is one of passion and determination to help you succeed as easily as possible.
We created CoAction to provide a frictionless approach to IT services, giving you what you need when you need it. As a technology broker company, we offer a Technology Brokerage where there is only one neck to strangle if things go wrong. When it’s our neck on the line, we work our butts off to give you no reason to need to strangle it!
You shake one hand and deal with one supplier for everything from continuous workforce support to cybersecurity, and cloud and data center solutions.
CoAction’s mission is to solve your problems, and keep them solved. Your success is our success. We aren’t a vendor trying to hit Wall Street sales numbers. We’re just a team with years of experience at those big firms. so we know what works and what doesn’t. We can weed through the noise and give you the real answers you need.
We have built a vast network of service providers who have all been vetted by us for quality of service. And if any of the providers we’re using fail to come to bat when they’re needed, we’ll just switch to a different one. There is zero vendor lock-in.
More importantly, there are zero headaches for CIOs and VPs of IT.
Contact us today to learn more about CoAction’s Technology Brokerage services!
