NMGI sees cloud service growth through partnership

The Challenge

NMGI was proficient at delivering Microsoft Exchange to their clients. They established a solid business practice of installing and supporting Exchange servers and managed service programs for their clients. NMGI was quick to realize that the accounting market (their niche vertical market) was starting to identify the emerging cloud as having real potential to reduce costs, increase efficiency and address mobility issues for their businesses. “We considered hosting our own Exchange servers in order to provide cloud solutions to our customer base, but after a couple of false starts we realized partnering was the right thing to do – not only for our customers, but also for us and our business model,” says Steve Harper, president, NMGI.

It was clear to Harper and his team that the investment in infrastructure and on-going management of a highly-reliable Exchange Email platform would require more staff and financial resources than was practical. In order to deliver the levels of service NMGI customers were accustomed to, partnering with a market leader in cloud services appeared to be the best solution. NMGI decided to stick to what they do best –consulting and managed services – and to get someone else to handle the rest.

NMGI set out to find the right partner. When it comes to partnerships, NMGI has always been very selective when determining the right vendor to work with. “Picking the right partners has been an important part of our success,” says Harper. “Moving into the cloud services market was an important step and we needed the right partner.”