Shift Ahead Boosts Enterprise Value Through IT Strategy

ShiftAhead Technologies is driving global client success by transforming technical debt into measurable growth through strategic IT solutions, achieving a 35% IT cost reduction and ensuring 99.99% system uptime with a comprehensive phase-wise approach.

As the digital world becomes more complicated, the IT infrastructure is becoming the most important value lever for businesses.

At Shift Ahead, we recognized that globally companies are frequently entangled in their "technical debt" - the running cost of continuing with outdated systems not only restricting agility but also consuming a huge chunk of the budget.

Our answer is to turn this "debt" into a weapon of competition by enabling the infrastructure to scale with the business vision in the long run.

The Challenge: Performance Balance with Expenses That Continue to Rise

In recent times, the today's businesses are falling in a puzzle with tons of challenges. To ensure performance, they want their infrastructure to be the highest performing and, physically, always available on a 24/7 basis. On the other hand, they still have to figure out how to reduce their Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) continuously.

Shift Ahead’s Case Study - A major global account – A leading IT service provider:

Shift Ahead’s collaboration with a global IT service provider, was in the mid-market segment, totally unaware of the consequences, their in-house team which was responding to the complaints and fixing issues without giving any thought to innovation.

Shift Ahead's analysts say that about 70% of the IT budget goes to keeping current systems running and maintaining them. This leaves just 30% for digital transformation and other projects.

Not only was our client's enterprise value stolen from them, but the battle with the new services was further delayed due to the ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​delayed schedule.

The Shift Ahead Strategy: A Multi-Tiered Infrastructure ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌Transformation

Initially, our Shift Ahead’s expert team created a deep evaluation of the existing environment. We comprehensively assessed the situation and decided to stop the repetitive break-fix approach, and instead, turn the drafting into a proactive Managed Services Provider (MSP) set ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌up.

We have our team in India constantly monitoring and optimizing our client's infrastructure, thereby providing them with a follow-the-sun support model for the entire 168 hours in the week, thus the client is saved from potential losses of around $5,000 per hour to downtime.

· Infrastructure Audit & Baseline: How we found out the underutilized cloud instances and other equipment lying unused that were responsible for 15-20% of the total spending wastage.

· Hybrid-Cloud Migration: our focus was on moving prominent workloads to a flexible hybrid environment to ensure the instant availability of the data at the time of disaster recovery.

· Security-First Architecture: As ransomware attacks were witnessed more often in IT industry, our specialist put in place a Zero Trust protocols together with automatic patch management. This works one step ahead of this growing threat from the dark.

Shift Ahead: Phase-Wise Plan Strategy:

1. Phase 1: Cost Rationalization and Assessments: At first, our experts cut down the client's cloud space to only what they needed. We set up the storage based on how the data centers were being used, pulled down "ghost" infrastructures, and moved workloads that weren't needed to lower storage tiers.

2. Phase 2: Setting up Global NOC Services: Our team worked with the client's team to build the right Network Operations Center (NOC) for them. We employed AI-powered tools to guess what problems will come up, which helped us do a better job for our clients. This way, the NOC stopped responding and started making guesses.

3. Phase 3: Process Automation: we were successful in implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) through such tools as Terraform and Ansible has shown real-time results. Whenever the client requires a new environment, it will take them just a few minutes instead of weeks, they can also reduce the amount of work involved in the task of configuration.

4. Phase 4: Continuous Improvement & Upskilling: Our approach wasn’t just about the hardware, it was mostly about the human factor. The client got the opportunity to concentrate on innovative initiatives, for example, integrating Generative AI into their service delivery because of our management of all infrastructure-related activities. They reskilled accordingly in order to start handling the latter.

Tangible Results: Delivering Statistical Success and Enterprise Growth

Our calculated changes brought by the collaboration were manifold from the outset, and the client was able to measure them. The client declared that the overall IT infrastructure costs were reduced by 35% in the first year of their partnership.

Moreover, the system uptime was taken to the next level, 99.99%, and the client was therefore able to present a platform that is rock solid when it comes to attracting the bigger clients from the enterprise segment. According to a survey, the companies that have a robust IT set-up are valued by the market at 20% more than their rivals as they are better equipped to react swiftly to market changes.

Partnering with Shift Ahead, the client has shaved costs beyond the bare minimum and thus built a scalable platform that increasingly boosts enterprise value. We have proven that an IT department could be turned into a revenue-generating facility churning out the success of business year after year just through its optimization. As the global clientele partners with us, our commitment to technological innovation and cost-effective management ensures that they become the digital age ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌winners.