Zunesis Honored on the 2021 Tech Elite 250 by CRN®
Tech Elite 250 List Honors the Highest-Achieving IT Solution Providers in Vendor Certifications
DENVER, CO, March 22, 2021
Zunesis, announced today that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, will honor Zunesis on its 2021 Tech Elite 250 list. This annual list features IT solution providers of all sizes in North America that have earned cutting-edge technical certifications from leading technology suppliers. These companies have separated themselves from the pack as top solution providers, earning multiple, premier IT certifications, specializations, and partner program designations from industry-leading technology providers.
Businesses rely on solution providers for an enormous amount of technologies, services, and expertise to help them meet today’s IT challenges — whether it’s a new implementation or digital transformation initiatives. To meet these demands, solution providers and MSPs must maintain high levels of training and certification from IT vendors and achieve the highest tiers within those vendors’ partner programs.
Each year, The Channel Company’s research group and CRN editors distinguish the most client-driven technical certifications in the North American IT channel. Solution providers that have earned these high honors — enabling them to deliver exclusive products, services, and customer support — are then selected from a pool of online applicants as well as from The Channel Company’s solution provider database.
Zunesis was founded in 2004 and for more than 16 years now, we have been focused on design, implementation, support and protection of our client’s IT Environments. Our team of IT Professionals average over 23 years of experience across all facets of the IT Infrastructure, including Compute, Storage, Backup/Recovery, Networking, Hyper-Visors, and Microsoft Server and Desktop. It is important that Zunesis stays on top of the latest technologies and implementations to service our customers.
“We are proud of the impact that Zunesis has had in the Rocky Mountain region with servicing our clients’ needs. ” commented Zunesis CEO, Steve Shaffer. ” “Since the beginning, we have believed that the client’s needs trump everything else and that making the lives of our clients better is a high and worthy calling.”
“CRN’s Tech Elite 250 list highlights the top solution providers in the IT channel with the most in-depth technical knowledge, expertise, and certifications for providing the best level of service for their customers,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “These solution providers have continued to extend their talents and abilities across various technologies and IT practices, demonstrating their commitment to really conveying the most exceptional business value to their customers.”
Coverage of the Tech Elite 250 will be featured in the April issue of CRN® Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/techelite250.
About Zunesis
Zunesis, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado has been an HPE Platinum Partner for 16+ years. Zunesis has expert engineers in HPE server, storage and networking technologies along with common software applications like Veeam and Microsoft. Zunesis serves clients large and small but our sweet spot is the mid-market organization – the heartbeat of the US economy. Our mission is to make the lives of our clients and community better. www.zunesis.com
Follow Zunesis: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
Zunesis Company Contact:
Rachael Stiedemann
Zunesis
rachael.stiedemann@zunesis.com
Data Protection
In the age of ransomware and digital transformation, your company’s data is even more critical than ever to keep your business running. While avoiding data loss is the main priority of backups, it can often be hard to balance that with the cost of those backups. On top of all that, data is harder to manage and control than ever due to multi-cloud infrastructure and workers more often working remotely.
So how do you deal with all of that and still have a trusted backup in case the worst should happen? You need a single, robust solution for data management that can protect your data through all phases of its lifecycle.
Veeam has been a leading player in the backup space for a while now. It has really stepped up when it comes to addressing new challenges in data protection. It has a host of different products, enterprise to consumer, that make it easy for businesses big and small to tackle the issue. They continue to innovate and keep your data secure while remaining flexible enough to fit into any environment. This year is no different with the release of Veeam version 11.
So what is new in the newest version of Veeam?
Continuous Data Protection, or CDP
It integrates with VMware environments to eliminate downtime and minimize data loss with a host of new features. CDP will eliminate the need for VM snapshots with I/O level tracking, and reduce the bandwidth needed for replication. It works on any OS or application as long as they are running in a vSphere VM. CDP will also schedule your jobs for you, just define the required RPO and CDP will take care of it. Depending on the amount of data, CDP can also offload data processing from your hosts to proxies. It calculates the required bandwidth to eliminate guesswork.
Hardened Repositories
This keeps your backups safe from malware and hackers with immutable backups. Single-use credentials are never stored in the configuration database eliminating any possibility of those credentials being extracted from a compromised backup server.
Expanded Object Storage Support
This feature reduces the cost of long-term archives. Veeam now integrates with Amazon S3 Glacier and Azure blob archive storage which are best for very long-term storage. These repositories can be made immutable, and are policy-based, so no management required.
Expanded Instant Recovery
It makes even more of your workloads instantly available. Instant recovery has been a feature of Veeam for a while, but now it has been expanded to include SQL and Oracle databases. Regardless of size, databases are made available to production applications and clients in minutes. You can then finalize those recoveries either manually, or by scheduling them to switch as soon as synchronization catches up, or even scheduling the switch during maintenance hours.
More Improvements
Veeam has made many more improvements with Version 11, enhancing many aspects of the program. GFS and Archive backups have added functionality. Powershell is now more powerful. Backup speeds have increased. Compliance with WORM backups has been added. As well, the GUI has seen some improvements. All of these features are included with normal licenses, you don’t need to pay extra for any of this stuff.
I am barely even scratching the surface on what is in the new version. I am most excited about the steps Veeam is taking to make their product more resilient against viruses and ransomware. Ransomware attacks have ramped up over the last few years. Keeping good copies of data in case of such an attack has been a struggle. Companies like Veeam have been in an arms race against hackers. Things like immutable backups are a huge leg up in the fight. Maybe someday, we won’t have to worry about that stuff, but for now, at least we have Veeam.
Contact Zunesis to find out more about Veeam V11.
Desire for IT Infrastructure Transformation
Over the past year, we have seen a substantial increase in the demand of organizations wanting to right-size, refresh, or otherwise transform their IT infrastructure/data center. Many organizations want to understand their opportunities to improve efficiency and service to the business and end-users through newer technology and IT delivery methodologies. Because the pressure to transform is increasing, many organizations are running head-first into change without clearly understanding the needs of the business or the most cost-effective strategy to deliver IT. One of the most common questions we hear from clients is “what workloads should I move to the cloud”? To effectively answer this question. a process of discovery and planning needs to be done.
IT Infrastructure Transformation Methodology
Over the past 16 years, our business (Zunesis) has developed a methodology and a group of talented technologists who work closely with clients to transform their IT infrastructure. First, we work to understand the business and the user requirements that matter today and tomorrow. We hear frequently from clients that they spend 90% of their time putting out fires and never find the time to develop a strategic IT infrastructure architecture, plan, or roadmap. The Zunesis IT infrastructure transformation methodology forces the production of these activities and documents. These delivery artifacts provide the guidance and direction for organizations to shape their IT infrastructure solutions now and into the future.
The Zunesis IT infrastructure transformation methodology prioritizes availability, resiliency, security, manageability, and performance. Our experience spans next-generation IT infrastructures for commercial and public sector organizations of all sizes and missions. The design efforts also take into consideration the financial constraints and the IT expertise of the organization.
We know transformation projects like this demand strong leadership and rigorous project management. We recognize that leadership and rigorous project management without outstanding communication are likely to cause problems. For this reason, our leadership approach is one of over-communication. We plan to keep all important stakeholders involved and engaged throughout the process. Zunesis provides supportive leadership in areas where presentations, justifications, logical explanations, and other communications are available to members of the leadership team.
The Key Phases of our time-tested IT Infrastructure Transformation Methodology include:
- Assess
- Design
- Plan
- Execute
Assess
The Assessment phase sets the foundation for the rest of the engagement and requires a commitment of time from each of the key stakeholders in the organization. At Zunesis, we keep this process efficient by using a proven approach and seasoned and experienced IT professionals. We utilize efficient forums to collect, analyze and validate requirements and current infrastructure details.
Our approach includes reviewing existing documentation, workshops, on-line surveys, and interviews. This phase documents the current state of the IT infrastructure. This is all done with a consensus understanding of core business functions and desired future state of IT infrastructure requirements. During the Assessment Phase, it is also important to gain an understanding of any business or financial constraints as they will provide guard rails during the design and planning phases.
Design
During the Design phase, developing the technology framework occurs. This is a guide to prioritize IT initiatives and projects. This phase also stack ranks the key technology strategic initiatives for the organization. All of the data and requirements collected during the Assessment Phase are used to inform the development of the IT Framework. The Zunesis team then creates and documents the Framework process and procedures. The IT infrastructure Framework along with the selected IT initiatives (priority and order) are presented, discussed, revised, and finalized.
Plan
The Planning Phase is where we build robust plans to ensure the successful implementation/deployment of the prioritized IT infrastructure projects. Zunesis recommends the development of a Technology Deployment Roadmap / Plan to describe the prioritized projects and the timeline for the implementation of those projects. Given resource, financial, and business constraints, the Technology Deployment Roadmap may define a 12-month timeline up to a 60-month timeline. It is most common for a roadmap to be 2-3 years long.
For each infrastructure initiative defined during the design phase, the associated IT projects and objectives to achieve them are defined. The hardware, software, and personnel need to accomplish these projects are also clearly defined. A detailed plan is developed for each project. We review each project plan thoroughly with the client and validate against resource, timeline, and financial constraints.
Execute
The Execution phase involves the actual implementation of selected IT projects to meet strategic IT initiatives and priorities. The IT infrastructure Framework and Roadmap are guides that inform every step of the project. All of these architectural, strategic, and structural documents ensure consistency and predictability during the execution/deployment phase.
The Zunesis team produces a Portfolio Management methodology and strategy including an organizational structure and process for management of the project portfolio defined in the Planning Phase. Documents and templates are created to support the management and communication processes during the execution phase.
Zunesis provides clients with a time-proven and efficient methodology for the development of a next-generation IT infrastructure. Our staff of consultants and engineers make the process as simple as possible while ensuring thoroughness and professionalism. Please reach out to Zunesis to see how we can help you with your IT infrastructure
