Thursday, November 17, 2011

Occupy Wall St Journal

Brian occupied the Online Wall Street Journal last week. 

LiftOff Teaches Clients to Fish in the Cloud [WSJ - 11.10.11]
Case Study: LiftOff

It has been said that "If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime." LiftOff, LLC, a Mid-Atlantic-based professional services firm, is taking that philosophy to the IT world with great effect. By deploying cloud-based systems with an educational approach, LiftOff is teaching clients a brand-new way to tackle technology altogether...

"The role of the IT Professional is changing. No longer does a company need to employ IT people to manage and watch servers. The days of monitoring blinking lights will soon be behind us all," said Brian Reilly, senior consultant at LiftOff. "The good news is that the role of the IT Professional is now elevated. IT pros know how systems work and can focus on deploying workflows that have a greater impact on operations. These workers are becoming more visible in the workplace and contributing to the bottom line."...

"It is all about empowering the customer," Reilly said. "We want them to understand what they have, how to deploy it and how to use it. The model doesn’t mean we are onsite doing all of the work. We have trained them and then we've gotten out of their way so that they can do it themselves with the confidence that they are going to do it right."

All organizations have a need for some level of security, scalability and reliability. Mobile connectivity is a critical component for many as well. "Office 365 is great for users that travel," Reilly said. "Not only can can they check their e-mails, but they also can access documents and collaborate with colleagues through SharePoint."

LiftOff has realized incredible success in the cloud and anticipates that businesses will continue to migrate away from self-hosted and self-managed systems.

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