Work From Anywhere with INNO-I

1. What is the new service that Innosphere is offering?

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a seismic shift in the way we work. Seemingly overnight, millions of people across Canada (and the world) began working from home. This is a trend that has continued well into 2021 and is expected to be here to stay. Prior to the pandemic Innosphere was an on-premise software and managed services business with all of our IT infrastructure located in our Guelph office. To improve working conditions for employees and allow them to conceivably work anywhere with little to no performance drop, we migrated our internal IT infrastructure to a cloud-based system. This dramatically improved system performance and the employee feedback was resoundingly positive with staff appreciating the simple, streamlined, and secure solution.

It turns out that the issue we faced was not unique to us – there are thousands of businesses with legacy systems that could benefit from migrating to the cloud. After successfully migrating our own systems, we made the decision to offer this service to our customers; we call it Inno-I. The technical experience our team provides is based on decades of experience in the IT and systems architecture space. Although there are other players in the industry with similar offerings, our simple and streamlined approach with a focus on the cloud are key differentiators for any business looking to take their IT infrastructure to the next level.

2. Why do you feel like this service is needed?

Traditionally, managed IT service providers will support an existing IT environment, which includes inherited systems that they didn’t design or build. They may gradually improve the systems over time, but the client will still be left with issues and inefficiencies because it wasn’t designed to be a cohesive solution from the outset. In addition, traditional support companies must support a long list of vendors, products, and services. As a result, support staff become jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none. This means that the client will always receive support, but it may lack technical expertise in certain areas. To solve this problem, support companies need to hire more support technicians to service their clients, with these increased overhead costs generally being passed on to the client. Finally, with so many different systems being supported, the company lacks the bulk purchasing power on licenses and hardware.

With Inno-I, we flip the script and only use a single stack of products – the same products that we use internally. Our technicians are therefore experts on these tools since they use them on a daily basis. Being experts, we need less technicians to service our clients - a cost saving we pass on to our clients. We also leverage bulk purchasing power to provide better pricing on resale items (licenses, hardware, etc.) to our clients.

3. What are the benefits to using this service?

a. Transition to a state-of-the-art, highly integrated, and secure system.

b. Save money on an equivalent solution because our cloud solution has no hardware and upgrade costs. This means both upfront and ongoing cost savings.

c. Better support, from experts who work with these systems every day.

4. Who would be the best candidate for this service?

The systems we implement are designed to integrate well with one another and will fit most potential clients. Most clients will be delighted with the savings and service we provide. The few exceptions we cannot service would be those with deep ties to legacy applications that we are unable to transition to our stack due to client-related restrictions. Our solution is not designed to be everything for everyone, but for the vast majority of potential customers it will provide a higher degree of service at a lower price point.

We are targeting this offering at professional organizations (accountants, architects etc.) where the IT function is critical, but staff may not have deep expertise in the area. They want it to function like a utility (power, water, and gas) where it works well and they don’t have to think about it. In some situations, the entire IT function may even be handed over to us to manage. We will provide detailed reporting on the state of the business (support ticket turnaround times, for example) but the intent it to make IT as painless as possible for the client.

5. How does the process work?

If you’re not happy with your current IT service provider, systems or support we’d love to chat. During this conversation we want to understand what your business does, what you’re trying to achieve, your pain points and budget.

If it seems like a fit – great! We will run some diagnostic tools to collect information about the current systems (remotely, where possible) including how many devices access the network, various products, applications, etc. We will compile the information and create a proposal with options that are tailored to you

Once you select the option that’s right for you and your business, the contract is signed and we use the previously gathered information to begin migrating your business into the cloud with a new infrastructure.

6. Is there anything else you think people should know about this service?

While the software stack and support are tightly integrated, the setup and data is still owned by the client. If you want to leave the Inno-I family for any reason we are happy to help transition you to a different service. We believe it is important that all our clients understand that we are here to help but not to lock them in to an onerous contract.

In addition to Inno-I, Innosphere also offers managed software development services (Inno-S) and recruitment services (Inno-R) to help clients in other facets of IT.