Making Sense Out Of A Converged IT World

Several technology vendors focused on the midmarket spoke about converged IT and what their products and services deliver.

I've been a technologist journalist for over a decade and a half. When I started my career, tech was easier to cover. Products and services were clearly defined – this company makes laptops and servers, this one provides anti-virus software, here is a telecom company.

Now we live in a world of converged technology. A company can offer a range of services: cybersecurity, virtual networking, business intelligence. That convergence can often make it hard to pinpoint what a tech vendor or managed service provider truly does.

And convergence can make it difficult for midmarket IT leaders to sift through the vast array of services these companies often provide to know what exactly they need for their organization's objectives.

Depending on who you ask, technology convergence has different meanings. I like the explanation in this article from MarketScale. Convergence "combines various facets like physical security, cybersecurity, and HR into a unified platform. It also points to the growing convergence of security systems, driven by advanced access controls and digital transformations like IT/OT technology convergence."

The article explained some of the challenges with tech convergence: "The integration of diverse technologies" can lead to "potential 'territorial disputes' among security managers," it stated.

Convergence can also create "overly complex systems," the article further argued. Additionally, " one of the biggest mistakes that enterprises would make in approaching this problem is to try to integrate the operations of all the systems as a unique infrastructure."

But there is another challenge unique to tech journalism, that is defining and categorizing these tech vendors that now often offer a plethora of technologies: IAM, multi-factor authentication, SD-WAN, and more into a few or one unified platform.

At the Midsize Enterprise Summit Fall 2024, I had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with several technology vendors many of which offer multiple products and services, and asked them how they define their company, their thoughts on convergence, and what specifically they deliver to midmarket customers. Here are their responses:

SEI Sphere

SEI Sphere is a managed security service provider forged from the financial services sector. However, a company representative told me they provide security services for many industries including manufacturing and retail. The company offers networking, security, and cloud services.

"People are trying to get to the cloud. They're trying to figure out how to secure it," said David Detweiler, SEI Spere's managing director of sales.

"We have some organizations that consume network and cyber, we have some organizations that just consume cloud ... Convergence especially in security, that is part of what we believe to be a differentiator. We provide all the tools, the licensing, everything for a business to have their cyber security program run.”

1Path

1Path is also a managed service provider and the company does a lot.

"We are an MSP by definition, because we are rooted in end-user support. However, we also have MSSP capabilities. We can do cybersecurity, we have the ability to provide SIEM, but really it is about the people side of it, the interaction with the end user, the client, and the partnership aspect of it. What I mean is, if a client says, I need a SIEM, I ask, Do you need a product or do you need an application? That's where we really get into the weeds and ask, What business problems are you trying to solve?" said Ryan Campbell, senior account executive at 1Path.

"We've intentionally gone after the midmarket ... we are small enough to provide the context and familiarity needed in the midmarket, while also having the ability to reach that enterprise-grade level technology that the mid market needs. Along the way, we’ve gained the operational maturity that midmarket clients seek."

Zero Networks

"We are a unified zero-trust platform," said Nicholas DiCola, VP, Customers, Zero Networks. "We do three things which is automated network and identity, micro segmentation, and remote access for customers. "

He spoke about the company's approach to microsegmentation.

"We take every host, and we turn the firewall on that's built into the operating system, blocking inbound as a default and only allowing a few things inbound that ae needed. If it's a web server or an active directory server, or whatever server, allow that inbound, but clients typically don't host applications. They should have no inbound ports open and available to other things on the network, so we close all that down for customers."

Celigo

"One of the things that we are seeing a lot with CIOs ... is proliferation [in] what you can buy. Software has moved from traditional IT to all these kinds of businesses. Then comes an explosion of the total number of apps any organization is dealing with," a Celigo rep said.

"The purchasing decision are now out of the hands of IT." And when departments within an organization purchase an app for their business objectives, "the first thing they ask [IT] is can we get this out of your budget? Can you help us provision users? ...."

"This is where iPaaS [integration-platform-as-a-service, which is what Celigo offers] comes in ... We recognize there has been a convergence of IT and IT leaders needing to solve all of these problems. Rather than [IT] having to piecemeal an [integration] stack together, why wouldn't you want a whole platform that encompasses everything?

We service about 6,000 customers; the primary majority are midmarket."

ESET

"I always refer to ESET as a research company with products," said Tony Anscombe, chief security evangelist at ESET . "We're EDR/MDR, it's about managed services, it's about protection.

The company he said, offers several security add-ons around encryption, multifactor authentication and more.

"We give the customer the choice whether you want on-premise or the cloud. There are some scenarios [like] government or companies that actually want on-premise systems.”

He spoke of AI. "We deployed our first AI technology in 1997 ... when you think of the massive data that security companies collect – did somebody think we were doing it manually? We were using machine learning."

SMEs [small-mid-size enterprises are ESET's "sweet spot," he said. Security has a lot of components now, far from the days of anti-virus shrink-wrapped software. Even SMEs "really need multiple vendors, multiple technologies" in their security architecture, he added.