Summer 2011

Your business is growing, and you want to make sure that your technology keeps pace.

For medium-size businesses, maintaining a competitive business edge with the right technology can be challenging if you don’t have the time, staff or the business process expertise. In fact, the second most common technology challenge medium-size businesses struggle with, according to a July 2010 study by SMB Group, is understanding how different technology solutions can help their business.

Consulting services is a common option savvy IT leaders are exploring to move their businesses forward and stay competitive. This makes smart business sense at many levels. An outside consultant can help assess the effectiveness of IT infrastructure and offer advice, whether the advice is focused on server virtualization or migrating to a new email system.

The over arching point is while your business may need the same technology solutions as a much larger company, consulting options need to be tailored to your size, budget, IT environment and potential for growth.
This issue of Catalyst is devoted to helping you navigate and understand the services arena — from consulting to support services to software as a service (SaaS).

We showcase companies that have experience with a services partner. PensionsFirst Analytics LLP in London, for example, needed a partner to help it through a very tight deadline. The company had to move from conception to live operations of its first corporate data site in just four months. Since the company is a pension-fund manager dealing with changes in legislation and other challenges, the deadline was even more daunting. Yet they were successful, and the story of their journey is detailed on page 18. For PensionsFirst, the lesson learned was that choosing the right technology partner was critical.

We hope you enjoy the articles in this issue, and we look forward to hearing about how we can help you as your business prospers and grows.

	Alvaro Del Pozo Dell, Vice President, APJ CSMB Marketing