Who knew being bored as an extra in Hollywood would lead to building an outstanding career in technology? Evidently, Nathan Esposito did. A true Renaissance Man with a wide array of talents, Nathan left college with a degree in performance arts and moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at acting. He even landed a role as an extra in the popular series “Gilmore Girls” before finding his true passion for technology.

When he started out as a networking tech at CompUSA in St. Louis, he discovered his stellar problem-solving skills. Before long, he was the networking lead. But it seemed to Nathan that his tech job was asking him to solve the same set of problems repeatedly. With boredom creeping in again, he jumped to a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to support the IT needs of small and large companies. The variety of challenges to solve kept him on his toes. He enjoyed the rollercoaster called “IT Support” so much that he spent the next 18 years working with two leading MSPs in the St. Louis area, where he quickly learned that each company and market had different technology problems. As he explored the tech side of problem-solving, he began delving into business-oriented issues as well. During this time, Nathan gravitated to increasingly more complex IT problems and discovered that leaving a client’s IT system in better shape than how he found it fueled his professional satisfaction.

“The end result of my work is that I improved a client’s life in some way,” said Nathan. “How many people can say that? I love finding a technical or business mess and leaving it all neat and tidy.”

This ability to grow in multiple areas led Nathan to IT Solutions as a Strategic Advisor five years ago. Currently, he serves as the Manager of Customer Success on the Client Success Team at our St. Louis, MO office. Nathan’s value to his customers comes from his deep knowledge of technology, coupled with a strong sense of business. He easily transitions from technology to business, which makes his solutions more effective from a technical standpoint as they improve business operations.

As the Manager of Customer Success, Nathan moves easily between industries. “I have found that operational issues are pretty similar from one industry to the next,” said Nathan. “My fascination with this high level of client support feeds my drive to solve new, more complex problems. I’m never bored because no day is like the previous one.”

After hours, Nathan uses his expert cooking skills (no recipe needed!) to prepare exotic, themed meals for his family, which includes his wife and two daughters. He also plays guitar and serves as the “go-to” fixer for all the devices around the house. St. Louis may be a long way from Hollywood, but Nathan’s clients are glad he made the move.

IT Solutions Consulting is honored to be named a 2023 Most Promising Microsoft Solutions Provider! In a recent interview, our CRO, Robert Adams, and VP of Sales, Jim Higgins, shared how we’re transforming the managed services landscape. With nearly three decades of solutions excellence and a talented team of over 250 experts, we remain dedicated to providing IT support that evolves with you.

Read the full interview below:

IT Solutions Consulting is a full-service IT company that, over the last 30 years, has earned a legacy of proactively catering to every aspect of its customers’ IT service needs. With a growing talent base of over 250 employees across its East Coast and Midwest branches, it is one of the country’s most sought-after managed services providers across domains.

“There is no environment, project, or challenge we have not been able to tackle,” says Jim Higgins, VP of Sales, IT Solutions Consulting.

IT Solutions’ support, security, and technical project personnel are its most valued assets in delivering client-centric solutions, including infrastructure, support, cybersecurity, strategy, Microsoft 365 development consultation, and application development. Through and through, IT Solutions provides a full-service offering that caters to every aspect of clients’ needs, focusing on clients’ long-term success. As an established MSP, the highlights are its dedicated proactive services, professional services, and help desk personnel, who strive to address most queries in the first call.

Since the early 2000s, IT Solutions has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with its dedicated professional services team specializing in countless Microsoft cloud migration projects. Today, IT Solutions is also a Modern Work Microsoft Solutions Partner and manages multiple companies looking to move from on-prem to Microsoft Office 365 Suite and other custom projects with Microsoft web development and ongoing support for users of Microsoft Azure. Its brand stewardship and partnership with Microsoft continue to foster long-term customer relationships and solve unique business challenges to maximize productivity, reduce downtime, and optimize clients’ IT budgets, making IT Solutions one of the Most Promising Microsoft Solutions Providers in 2023.

IT Solutions strongly attributes its operational maturity and growth as a national provider as its core defining feature. It prioritizes proactivity and responsiveness when addressing managed service-related queries from prospective clients, which gives them a significant leg-up in competitive environments and fosters strategic and ongoing partnerships. For instance, a large oral healthcare practice based out of Colorado and with offices in the Midwest and the West approached IT Solutions when their local managed services provider was unable to meet their expectations. The client was looking to acquire many smaller practices and concurrently grow its IT bandwidth while maintaining a lean internal team to manage resource scalability needs and an expanding customer base.

IT Solutions helped handle the client’s exponential growth of over 200 offices in four years while keeping internal teams small, onboarding thousands of users, achieving hundreds of Microsoft Office 365 migrations and integrations, and leveraging Microsoft 365 platform in a continuum.

“The project’s success has brought us many customer referrals for our ability to work in a fast-paced environment with high scalability requirements,” says Robert Adams, Chief Revenue Officer, IT Solutions Consulting.

Another unique strategy offering is its dedicated Strategic Advisors that oversee projects from start to completion and holistically safeguard clients’ entire technology journeys, aligning IT with business outcomes. In addition, IT Solutions has experienced cybersecurity and incident response teams that dive deep into clients’ networks and environments to detect and resolve threats. These strategic approaches go beyond simply managing a client’s endpoint security and are comparable to extensive in-house security teams.

IT Solutions attributes its success to its Recruitment Team, which strives to onboard the best of the industry’s talent and provide world-class training to drive a culture of dynamic growth. Its dedicated team is in for the long haul, underpinning its growth as a nationally recognized business.

Recently, the company has been leveraging its national reach and aligning its network of teams and expertise to successfully augment many high-growth, private equity-backed companies. Its vision for the future is to bolster IT within the platform companies of PE firms, ensuring seamless IT support and service scalability, all while driving strategic and impactful business outcomes.

IT Solutions is cementing its lead through full-service offerings under one roof and a fervent commitment to providing enterprise-level expertise while ensuring client-centric, white-glove support.

This broadcast journalism graduate wasn’t sure what an MSP was when she joined her first one as a temporary dispatcher. However, her ability to analyze a situation and discover a workable solution quickly propelled her into a client-facing role. Now, with two years of Strategic Advisor experience under her belt, Julissa Ortiz credits working with market-leading clients as the catalyst for her evolution into a dedicated client advocate.

Julissa’s clients include financial services companies, law firms, media companies, and construction entities, as well as non-profit organizations. While the business type varies, the challenge is the same: bring structure to chaos—both the client’s and her own. “I like to tackle smaller tasks first and work up to larger parts of the problem,” Julissa noted.

She was attracted to IT Solutions for its progressive approach to diversity and inclusion, and the fact that the company has women in leadership. “I was thrilled to see that IT Solutions has women in leadership,” she shared. “Women in technology are few, and it is not too common to see a Hispanic woman of my age working as a Strategic Advisor.”

While serving her clients well is Julissa’s top priority, she is committed to expanding her IT knowledge as well. For example, she is currently pursuing two industry certifications: one concentrating on how to build shareholder value and a second focused on security. “My clients are constantly looking for ways to deliver more value to their stakeholders and to protect themselves against escalating security risks,” she explained. “I want to be ready with the answers when these questions come up! My success totally depends on my clients’ success, and I like it that way.”

Outside of work, Julissa uses her unending stream of energy to stay extremely busy. Her latest project involves producing a podcast on culture and life issues for young professionals aged 25 to 30. She continues to advance her skill in a lifelong passion—dancing. The name of this practice perfectly describes it: participants execute sharp, precise movements, with a focus on body control, while wearing high heels.

“As soon as I master something, I start thinking about what’s next.” It’s no wonder Julissa is so perfectly suited for the Strategic Advisor role; she craves a constantly changing set of challenges!

New to our team as part of IT Solutions’ acquisition of CHIPS Technology Group, Paul Girgenti is an experienced managed IT services leader, ready to put out fires and fill in gaps—all in the name of client success!

An IT professional for nearly 18 years, Paul began his career at Wheelhouse IT, where he worked for 14 years as a project leader and lead engineer before making a career pivot to professional services. The Strategic Advisor role gives him an opportunity to do what he loves most—strategize with clients on how to fill the holes in their IT service that they don’t even know they have.

Paul’s background in engineering allows him to help guide and answer client questions when they aren’t sure how to proceed (or where to start). He understands the lingo and can often find a quicker way to communicate service needs and wants in a digestible manner. Additionally, this knowledge helps him recognize other confounding factors that may influence the successful implementation of service solutions.

Paul helps bridge the gap between clients and IT, providing clarity and peace of mind. His ability to quickly assess a situation, provide a solution, and help with implementation stems from earlier in his career. Throughout his experiences in IT, Paul has demonstrated his commitment to clients come first: Paul was tasked with migrating from an inefficient email and server platform to Azure. However, the server migration required a virtual firewall to properly migrate the servers, but his client was unable to pay for it. Paul negotiated a one-month trial of the virtual firewall and completed the conversion on time and within budget, assuming the responsibilities of multiple individuals. While this was more than should have been expected from one person, Paul delivered and continues to deliver for ITS.

Paul lives in Long Island with his wife and two children. During his time away from the office, he is an avid video game player and a music aficionado, with over 1,000 records ranging from hip hop to heavy metal to jazz!

At IT Solutions, providing exceptional client support is always at the forefront of our business. To elevate your support experience, new help desk support teams have been in place for several months, and client satisfaction scores have exceeded our goals throughout this period. The support teams, which are based on the industry-best-practice Pod system, form a client-centered IT support structure that consolidates client-specific infrastructure and line-of-business expertise.

Pods Centralize Client-Specific Knowledge

Each Pod focuses on a set group of clients with similar business interests and infrastructure (e.g., Pods are grouped by client industry), and each Pod member volunteers for their Pod assignment. Additionally, each Pod includes an IT Solutions subject matter expert for the Pod’s market focus.

Whenever a client calls the help desk and their issue requires Level 2 or 3 support, they are routed to their designated Pod to receive remediation from the same group of technical consultants, building familiarity and streamlining support. The service engineer who takes the call is familiar with the customer’s technology infrastructure, line-of-business applications, and other company-specific details. This streamlined approach helps ensure faster and more complete issue resolution. These efficiencies have already helped IT Solutions virtually eliminate backlogged requests and consistently deliver issue resolution in under a day for most clients.

Using the Pod approach helps our engineers proactively identify common issues and apply best practices to the entire Pod.

Pods Scale Up as Client Base Grows

Pods will scale and continue to improve as IT Solutions expands. For instance, if IT Solutions onboards several new clients who serve the same market, we can staff a new Pod with a mix of veteran engineers and newly hired specialists who have market-specific expertise. Additionally, as IT Solutions acquires other MSPs, in some cases, their help desks will be adapted into our Pod system, allowing for more specialization and ensuring that Pod-based advantages propagate from day one.

All Pod team members are cross-trained on support processes and procedures, which allows IT Solutions to combine, collapse, and expand Pods with the confidence that comes from plug-and-play redundancy.

Our teams report that they are already seeing shorter response times, more issue resolutions, and higher customer satisfaction scores. Moreover, as IT Solutions grows, the Pods system maintains personalized, white-glove client support and agility.

For more information on our new Pods client service system or how we can improve your IT experience, please get in touch with your Strategic Advisor or call 866.742.5487.

In just the first half of 2022, cyberattacks increased by 42% globally, with ransomware being the most common threat. As cyberattacks continue to proliferate, we’re vigilant of evolving threats and are committed to protecting you.

2022 Cybersecurity Trends

User Training & Awareness: A Critical Safeguard
95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error. With increasingly sophisticated attacks targeting your staff, it’s essential to provide training so employees can identify phishing, socially engineered attacks, and other threats. Need help figuring out where to start? Check out these Common Cybersecurity Myths and share them with your team!

Cyber Insurance Changes
Business leaders are turning to cyber insurance as financially motivated cyberattacks are on the rise. However, premiums are quickly increasing, and policies are becoming stricter. Companies are largely uninsurable without security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), endpoint detection and response (EDR), and employee training. Additionally, insurance companies are adopting tools and services to examine company security measures and assess your risk. Fortunately, there are ways to protect your business and keep premiums affordable. Tune into our Cyber Insurance Session with Johnson, Kendall, & Johnson, a local insurance broker, to learn more about safeguarding your business and your wallet.

Targeting the Healthcare Industry
Cyber threats have only exacerbated the pandemic’s toll on the healthcare industry; over the last three years, there has been an 84% increase in healthcare data breaches. Healthcare organizations are a primary target for cybercriminals due to sensitive personal information and the array of medical equipment and systems that may have vulnerabilities. As a result, the healthcare industry has doubled down on digital security and is driving sector-specific cybersecurity growth.

The Growth of Security as a Service
With complex IT infrastructures and security threats, companies are gravitating towards advanced security solutions over traditional ones. Security as a Service (SECaaS), a cloud-delivered model for outsourcing cybersecurity services, allows companies to leverage top-tier technology and expertise. Security as a Service eases the in-house security team’s responsibilities, provides scalability as businesses grow, and eliminates costs and maintenance of on-premises alternatives. Companies are also embracing SECaaS to maintain compliance requirements and align with NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) best practices. Valued at $9.16B in 2020, the SECaaS market is expected to reach $22.67B by 2026.

Enhancing Client Security

Microsoft has recently changed its End-User License Agreement (EULA), which now holds customers responsible for any end-user compromises within their Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, like Office and Microsoft 365.

To further safeguard our clients’ assets, we will be implementing a new software package called SaaS Alerts, which allows ITS to see security alerts for online Microsoft applications in real time and remediate threats detected in their environment. SaaS Alerts will serve as another layer of security and help ensure clients are protected, insurable, and in compliance.

IT Solutions Recognized in 2022 MSP Rankings

Thanks to the support and commitment of our team, clients, and partners, we are honored to have been recognized among the top MSPs in these 2022 rankings. Never content with resting on our laurels, we continuously strive for excellence. Supporting clients and employees is always our first priority, and we recognize that we could not succeed without their dedication.

In striving to provide stellar client service and continuous innovation, we are always looking for ways to offer you even more value. We recently sent information about our upgraded Client Service Portal for Users, which equips your end users with an array of “self-service” options designed to make the workday easier. (If you missed the article, you can check it out here.)

As a portal admin, more features and functionality are now available to streamline your company’s operations. The client portal updates available to admins simplify overseeing IT and administrative matters (licenses, service feedback, project quotes, etc.) and provide an enhanced level of visibility.

Following are additional highlights of our client portal. Although personnel across your organization can benefit from the client portal, we have highlighted staff who may find these admin features especially invaluable.

For Your Client-Facing Teams: Service Feedback
Tracking feedback by ticket ID, this feature reports on the IT Solutions team member with whom your user interacted, the feedback they provided, the issue to which it pertained, and the user’s satisfaction rating. It reassures you and your team that we are addressing your concerns and maintaining our commitment to user satisfaction.

For Finance and Planning Teams: Block Report
This section provides project visibility and is designed to help clients with budgeting as it relates to their prepaid blocks. The report presents IT Solutions’ activity billed against those blocks of time within a specified date range, making it easy for the Finance team to keep tabs on our billing.

For Your IT Team: Online Account Data Breaches
This report lists employees and their associated email addresses that may have been exposed in one or more data breaches. It also lists the number of potential breach attempts and the attack vector, e.g., LinkedIn Scrape (a data scrape of LinkedIn data), so your team can act swiftly or request security assistance from IT Solutions.

For Planning and Procurement Teams: Project Quotes
Extremely useful for project tracking and recordkeeping, this overview provides updates on project quotes you have requested from IT Solutions. Information includes the date and the order status—whether the order is still open or has been approved by your designated decision maker.

For Procurement and Marketing Departments: Licenses
This report lists Microsoft 365 licenses we have on record for your company, with details on how many have been allocated or used and how many are still available. For budgeting and planning purposes, this report is essential.

This list is only a summary and doesn’t detail one of our most informative new portal features, dashboards, which will be explored in a future article. From cybersecurity to compliance reporting, these client portal upgrade provides robust resources to leverage. Don’t forget to browse our earlier piece on user-focused functions and self-service through the client portal, which you can explore here.

The redesigned client portal is already available to you; simply log in to your account. If you have issues gaining access or wish to request a demo of the portal, please reach out to your Strategic Advisor or call 866-PICK-ITS (866-742-5487).