ATSG is a proven leader in providing our clients with innovative Technology Solutions as a Service offerings, which we thoughtfully customize while maintaining our best practices and proven industry standards. To ensure our clients always have access to the latest, pervasive technologies that enable digital transformation, ATSG partners strategically with other industry leaders. This collaborative approach to evaluate clients’ needs ensures their business priorities are properly addressed, along with an optimal range of the technology choices often required.
One of our most robust strategic allies is Microsoft Corporation. In the enterprise space, Microsoft currently commands 80% to 85% of the market share in the critical solution space they occupy. ATSG, in partnership with Microsoft, has enabled many of our clients migrate hundreds of thousands of PC’s from Windows XP to Windows 7, and now to the Windows 10 operating system; especially important and timely, as enterprises all over the globe prepare for end of life of the Windows 7 operating system after January 14, 2020.
In fact, ATSG was involved with the first wave of Windows 10 deployment, as part of an early adopters program for large enterprises like Mars, Incorporated, the well-known American manufacturer of everything from candy bars, food and snacks to pet care and nutrition products. Microsoft partnered with (VDX, now part of ATSG since October of 2018) to leverage our deep expertise in large scale device deployments that delivers exceptional end user experiences and business results in a highly secure environment, while keeping deployment costs in line with budgets.
ATSG has now become an integral part of a new team at Microsoft in the product-engineering group that interfaces directly with a small set of partners, which gives us direct access to Microsoft product roadmaps and lead engineers, providing them feedback from our clients and getting a first look at new technologies. This alliance helps to ensure that ASTG is best prepared in the market to help our client organizations, of all size and across diverse industries, adopt that technology.
From our viewpoint, the ever-accelerating pace of business change and new challenges dictates the need for enterprises to align with a tech-enabled IT managed service provider like ATSG. By driving continual technological innovation and quality of service improvements in partnership with leading companies like Microsoft, ATSG helps our clients understand and take advantage of the business benefits of adopting that new technologies and service delivery paradigms. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for organizations to do this on their own.
For Enterprises Still Grappling With What’s Next After Windows 7, What Will a Move to Windows 10 Give Them?
Improved security is the number one positive benefit that clients are seeing from a move to Windows 10. As a fully cloud-enabled operating system, Windows 10 is designed with security in mind. On the cloud services side, clients have come to realize cloud service providers like ATSG & Microsoft can help keep their corporate data much safer and more secure than it would be if they relied solely on in-house, on-premise IT solutions.
In the managed IT services world, we like to say: There are two kinds of customers – those who have been hacked and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked. Whether a victim of a known cyber-attack or unaware one that is in play, the number one incident all clients are looking to avoid is a very public compromise of their sensitive internal, information, intellectual property and/or their customers’ data.
To strengthen preventative measures, Microsoft Defender ATP has the ability to bring the tracking of minor security incidents together across an enterprise’s devices and cloud services into a single place, while also enabling tracking of all the red flags and follow-up on them as immediately as possible, preventing major security issues causes an incident that makes news.
If you look at enterprises that are running Windows 7 today, they often have ‘security tools on top of security tools’ to protect their devices. Not only does this approach give end users a terrible experience, the entire configuration is very difficult to manage for IT organizations. Windows 10 has so much capability out-of-the-box that we see clients dramatically simplifying the security profile of their desktops, mobile and intelligent devices and their management of them. Plus, the enhanced end user experience is better than it’s ever been before.
How Do Enterprises Benefit from Microsoft’s As-A-Service Model?
We help enterprises give their employees greatly improved end user experiences in several ways.
Savvy organizations realize end users are much happier when they can rapidly help themselves accomplish a task, such as requisitioning the technology they need on their own without having to deal constantly with their IT organizations. Microsoft products allow enterprises to move quickly and easily to that self-service model end users love to use in their personal lives, where we can make software available through a corporate store that’s also enterprise-approved and highly secure.
This offering includes the care and feeding of mobile devices, too. Through cloud services like Autopilot and Intune from Microsoft, we help enterprises deliver those great experiences on mobile devices while still protecting corporate information from leaving that device or getting into the wrong hands. Microsoft also has mobile application management capabilities that allow users to connect their personal devices to critical business services like Office 365, Concur and Salesforce, and work from anywhere 24x7xAlways, while still giving IT organizations the ability to control whether or not the data leaves and/or may be compromised on that device.
The Microsoft Azure set of cloud services helps enterprises build, manage and deploy applications on a massive, global cloud platform to meet business challenges quickly and securely, while continuing to provide that great end user experience. It is also critical to help secure devices and experiences through digital identity management. Today, everyone has a myriad of user ID’s and passwords in their personal life that they have to manage -and secure. Enterprises don’t want their employees to suffer through that kind of experience. Through Azure, their employees sign-in with one corporate ID and password to access all internal applications and cloud-enabled Microsoft products.
Another exciting end user experience that we’re helping our clients enable is that of unboxing and using a new PC. If you’ve ever ordered a new device for yourself, there is something fun about taking it out of the box, turning the power on and setting it up. We’re helping enterprises create that experience in a corporate environment. Wouldn’t it be great to accept your brand new PC when it is dropped off at the location of your choosing, open the box, turn the power on and securely sign-in to start-up the device in the same way you do at home?
It’s a new world out there for IT organizations that have a mandate to reduce the cost of managing desktops. At the same time, they are under tremendous pressure to deliver better and better end-user experiences that mimic our personal, consumer-oriented experiences with technology. If ATSG, in partnership with Microsoft, can deliver superior, cost-effective experiences that are highly secure and productive, at a lower cost, that is a real win for our clients…and we can and do every day!
ATSG – Transforming the customer experience through tech-enabled managed services
Today’s choices for mobility, cloud, infrastructure, communications, applications and operations are mission-critical for small, mid-sized and large enterprises alike. ATSG, Inc. is leading the transformation into Technology Solutions as a Service with our tech-enabled managed services portfolio and a commitment to technology innovation, operational excellence and client intimacy. Recognized by industry leaders and industry-leading publications, ATSG has 25 years of operating history delivering exceptional client experiences that directly result in competitive advantage, cost-savings, growth and overall success.. Visit ATSG.net, and call 1.914.517.2919 or visit one of our five Tri-State locations today for more information.
