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The Oldest Paradigm in IT is Now the Newest

Back in the 1960’s long before even PC’s, what existed for a small number of companies that could afford them were “jumbo sized” computers called “mainframes”. IT staff would run data processing jobs (apps) off dumb terminals with all the storage, all the processing (thinking), the orchestration of everything being performed centrally on the mainframe itself. Back then, the only IT was mainframe IT.

The 1970’s ushered in the PC era and by the 1980’s, PC’s enjoyed presence within most small-to-medium-sized organizations (SMO’s) and medium-sized organizations (MSO’s) alike. Later in the 90’s servers were added to accommodate client-server applications and to provide centralized print/storage/backup.

From the late 90’s to today, however, the exponential growth of data, server-centric apps and complexity in general has in many ways pushed the limits of capacity, time, budget and the technical skills of IT support ‘generalists’. As sure as most SMO’s/MSO’s still largely depend on IT support models developed nearly two decades ago, organizational agility and staff efficiency are severely limited and most are ill prepared for what’s coming.

Since the mid 2000’s dozens of key innovations lead first to mobile computing, then cloud computing and in parallel an off the charts explosion of apps / choices / devices, of data, and of data islands. All of this has been followed closely behind by a parallel explosion of regulation, litigation, insurance, compliance and security needs that each day push SMO’s/MSO’s closer and closer toward the needs and exposure of their Fortune 1000+ peers. Some in the big thinker, futurist and industry analyst communities see clearly the exponential expansion of all of this as being analogous to the expansion of the universe itself.

What’s clear is from all sides the IT needs of SMO’s / MSO’s is increasing at a rapid pace and at many levels traditional IT models fall woefully short of addressing ‘real’ needs. What’s required today must be the kind of model that can handle the old world, the new, manage what’s on premise across all locations, what’s in the cloud and what’s mobile, and which can quickly scale/provision up/down throughout. In simple terms the kind of IT support model today’s SMO’s/MSO’s need to thrive in an ever increasingly complex world must be something we call Radically Better™.

History

MainFrameIT, LLC launched in 2008 and began helping SMO customers benefit from a bit of the original ‘mainframe’ concept, only instead with Microsoft Windows PCs/servers/networks all running centrally from the cloud. Customers were liberated from having to purchase and maintain heavy infrastructure such as servers and all the tech, expense and headaches that went along with them. Staff were no longer shackled to a single PC as each users “Windows” was able to follow them from PC to PC to Mac to device resulting in a workforce that was more agile, more mobile and more productive. Customers with multiple locations and/or remote staff could work as if all were in one office in the cloud.

Today’s MainFrameIT turns the many IT service and support needs of SMO’s into sweet music both directly and through a network of trusted partners. For empowered SMO’s IT spend is converted from cost to strategic investment and as growth and external forces drive need, those are easily addressed at incremental cost.

For MSO’s MainFrameIT resolves the budget and manpower limits imposed on in-house IT staff and among other things simplifies the complexity of licensing, cloud procurement, migration and implementation. IT staff retain the control they need while C-Level’s realize massive ROI, gain better control over IT spend, enjoy a vastly better risk posture and finally, an easy path to full cloud should the day come where they desire it.

In some context’s MainFrameIT is a 4.0 Managed Services Provider (MSP), in others a Cloud Services Broker (CSB) and in all cases Managed IT. Backed by a thoroughly vetted network of partners and data centers, each with deep expertise in their discipline, and orchestrated with our own in-house developed layers of tech, architectures and practice disciplines across the areas of cloud migration, customer support, security, licensing/contracts, and project management, MainFrameIT is able to provide customers with massive ROI at every level of the IT stack that traditional models simply cannot touch.