We have some exciting news! IT Resource was selected out of hundreds of nominees as one of Michigan’s Economic Bright Spots. The annual award is presented by Corp! Magazine to Michigan based businesses that are experiencing growth and giving back to the community. This is the second time IT Resource has been recognized for this achievement.

“Michigan is a great place to do business and we are very proud the customers relationships we’ve built and the commitments we’ve made to our local communities,” said Gary Lutz, our managing partner. “We feel very honored to be recognized once again for the contributions we’ve made at both a local and state wide level.”

Gary Lutz (second from the right) is pictured with fellow recipients at the 2010 Economic Bright Spot Awards Ceremony

We have experienced steady growth rates each year since the inception of our company in 2000 and the number of full time staff members has grown 100% in the last 5 years. After seven years in business we expanded by moving the headquarters from Grand Haven to Coopersville, where we would have a larger office space. As of today we are experiencing yet another expansion, but this time we’re staying in Coopersville and renovating the building space next to ours to accommodate our growth.

The decision to expand next door came after careful consideration as to whether or not the new office space should be in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, or Michigan. We have a number of clients in both Chicago and Wisconsin and having office space closer to them would have been proximate, but we choose to stay in west Michigan, as it is the place we all call home. We have deep commitments in the communities in which we work and live and we plan on continuing to build relationships with local businesses and community organizations.

In order to stay up to date on ever-changing technology, and accommodate the growth we have experienced, we made a conscious decision to increase our technical partnerships and in 2011 we added both Singlewire and Axcient as partners. This involved staff members becoming educated and certified on the variety of products these new partners offer, and in return, we can sell, support and install these products. In addition to bringing on two new partnerships we have also deepened our levels of expertise and expanded our capabilities with our core partners (Cisco, Microsoft, and VMware). We have also acquired 8 new certifications in the last year.

We will be honored at the Michigan Economic Bright Spot awards presentation on Tuesday, June 12, 7:30 a.m., at the MSU Management Education Center in Troy, MI. Tickets to this event can be purchased at www.corpmagazine.com.

In 2011 we pledged to continually improve our help desk team by implementing a new process to resolve issues more efficiently. We're happy to report that things are moving in the right direction and we're using our help desk to assist customers each and every day.

A few months back, in the midst of the power reorganization project, IT Resource purchased a UPS (uninterruptible power system) from Eaton, a power company. We added it into our data center and started to add devices to the unit. Currently, we have one of our new Raritan Power Distribution Units plugged into the UPS which is powering about 14 devices. The UPS can power much more than that, however.

A short while after getting the UPS installed and running, I received a call from Melissa over at Eaton. She wanted to ask me a few questions regarding the unit we bought and how it had impacted our business so far. I did a mini interview over the phone, answering some general questions about the product and its role at IT Resource. She had mentioned that there was a possibility of being featured on their website in a testimonial.

A few weeks later, and many more hours of usage on the UPS, I’m glad to say they published an article on their website featuring the interview I did with them. The link to the page can be found here. From there you can download the whole story and read the interview. See how we were able to: 

• Ensure continuous uptime to our connected equipment and keep our customer applications available at all times
• Power more equipment
• Save space in our data center
• Easily monitor and manage equipment