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Hosted services provider LightEdge, based in Des Moines, Iowa, announced the formation of LightEdge Consulting Servcies, or LCS, a subsidiary that will focus on midmarket IT business consulting and will expand LightEdge’s hosted delivery model to include premises-based solutions, architecture design and implementation.
“Through our experience working with Fortune 500 companies, small and medium-sized businesses and our understanding of large-scale hosted environments, we have developed -best practices’ that can we leverage for our customers to create high reliability platforms,” said LCS Director of Operations John Jarrell, in a statement. “As an adjunct part of a company’s IT staff, LCS can reduce costs and improve efficiency by completing projects that require specialized knowledge and experience.”
LightEdge says LCS will offer a wide range of business IT consulting services, including discovery/design recommendations, solutions architecture, server maintenance, patch management, backup solutions and virtualization through Hyper-V and VMware. LCS will also provide proficiencies and platform design for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office Communication Server, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft SQL implementations and migrations.
LightEdge says the company was formed to provide SMBs with accessibility to consultants with a broad base of IT experience. Because many businesses have concerns related to their business technology but are unsure of the solutions available and their relative costs and benefits, the company says LCS is in a unique position not only to engage and determine the root cause of these issues, but to provide an effective solution. Once a solution is defined, LCS would either step back to an advisory position or implement the solution entirely, including ongoing maintenance.
“The opportunity to discuss business needs and potential solutions with someone who is knowledgeable with both traditional office-based solutions and hosted business services is a game-changer for business owners as it gives them access to a wide variety of viable options,” said LightEdge Chief Operating Officer Jeff Springborn, in a statement. “LCS is an interesting concept in consulting because it is highly personalized for the customer and ultimately delivers the best solution for their needs, whether that is an on-premises solution, a hosted service or a combination of both.”
The company makes a case for the growing number of small businesses impacted by complex technologies that their small IT departments don’t always have time to learn. As LightEdge points out, the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server includes 5 separate server roles, requiring a platform spanning multiple servers.
LCS plans to concentrate initial efforts in the upper Midwest.