Venture Technologies Finds Increased Demand for Broad
Range of IT Services

Ridgeland, MS - October 23, 2006

By BECKY GILLETTE
bgillette@bellsouth.net
MBJ Contributing Writer

Demand for IT solutions is booming right now, and Venture Technologies in Ridgeland is riding that wave with strong sales in all areas of its business.

“As a Systems Integrator, our solutions transcend a broad and deep array of technologies and we’re experiencing strong demand in all of our core competencies,” said Gerard Gibert, president of Venture Technologies, Ridgeland.

Most organizations implemented networks at some point over the past 10 years. But the continued demand for network access and network services is resulting in major network infrastructure upgrades.

“Switching and routing technologies are more sophisticated than ever, much more powerful and functional than previous generations of these products,” Gibert said. “Convergence of voice, video and data, web-based applications, increased server horsepower, storage requirements, mobile and remote computing, the surge of messaging traffic and content-rich Web-enabled applications are all trends driving demand for more reliable, higher-capacity, more secure network infrastructures. Server virtualization, blade technology and new UPS technologies for data centers are also gaining steam.

Wireless networking, too, is growing at a rapid rate. Gibert said they expect their wireless networking business to more than double in 2007 over 2006. Outdoor wireless mesh networking is also expected to be a huge opportunity.

Another major growth area is VoIPT (Voice-over-Internet Protocol Telephony). Gibert said the convergence of voice, video and data onto a single IP infrastructure consisting of private and public networks just makes economic and technical sense.

“Virtually every organization seeking a voice communications solution is implementing IP-based technology,” Gibert said. “This is an area where an organization can purchase increased capability, functionality and reliability for less money than traditional proprietary systems. Eventually, all voice communications systems will be IP-based and will incorporate integration with video and data. Separate networks to support different media will soon be a thing of the past. IP is the global standard and all communications forms will adhere to it.”

Another important area of service is security. Networks and information systems are considered key organizational assets. Gibert said access to data anytime and anywhere is critical to the very survival of virtually every organization.

“Even the most mundane, horizontal of applications–e-mail–can often be the difference between success and failure,” he said. “Despite legislation and other governmental efforts, there are plenty of bad guys out there and no evidence in sight that they are going away. In the early days of networking, firewalls and anti-virus systems were the cornerstone, the only requirement to protect a network and the programs and data that reside on it. But today’s complex, heterogeneous environments incorporate a number of points that require security.

“Today, we have to protect against all sorts of exotic threats, from within and outside of the network. Recently, I attended a conference dedicated to messaging security. Hard to believe, but there is an entire IT sector focused on securing e-mail. Regulations such as GLB, Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA are driving organizations – especially health care and financial institutions--to deploy increasingly sophisticated messaging security solutions.”

According to The Gartner Group, there are about 22 pieces of legislation pending at the federal level, and scores more at the state level, designed to punish organizations that experience data leakage and disclosure of sensitive or private information.

“To top it off, organizations must also contend with mobile computing, wireless networking, thumb drives, and other places where data may reside or be transmitted,” Gibert said. “At Venture, we take a holistic approach in engineering security solutions for our clients. We address all aspects of security including firewalling, intrusion detection/prevention, messaging and data encryption, e-mail archiving, data leakage, mobile computing, wireless security, anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, anti-malware, http traffic filtering, content filtering, authentication and application security. We also provide security management solutions.”

Storage issues are also important. Gibert likens data storage to closets in your home: You simply can’t have enough of either.

“Seems like no matter how much storage capacity resides on a network, end-users can always fill it up,” Gibert said. “Fortunately, there are great, affordable storage solutions that protect an organization’s investment and scale easily. Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) technologies are affordable to even small-mid sized organizations.”

He adds that storage systems utilizing the ISCSI standard are growing in popularity. Miniaturization and major price reductions for these high-end storage technologies are resulting in a surge in demand.

“End users don’t want to delete or archive data,” Gibert said. “They want permanent, on-line access to their files. And the current rich-content nature of data consumes storage much faster today than in the past. Of course, the growth in real-time storage is also driving the need for more sophisticated backup solutions. Venture is currently working with a number of clients in deploying reliable, affordable, high-capacity storage and backup solutions.”

Since 1998 the company has operated a commercial data center and offers managed technology services. They started with about 900 square feet of raised floor area in Ridgeland. In 1999, they re-located to the Jackson State University Mississippi e-Center and expanded to a 10,000-square-foot facility consisting of raised floor, office and storage.

Gibert said there is a huge paradigm shift in computing occurring where an organization subscribes to managed IT services in lieu of building IT infrastructures in-house.

“In this model, all or part of an organization’s IT may be obtained from a Service Provider,” he said. “Our managed e-mail service saves organizations money and includes a Service Level Agreement (SLA), as do all our managed services, wherein we contractually guarantee service levels.”

Gibert said their messaging security and anti-spam systems are world-class and while cost-prohibitive for most customers to implement internally, are very affordable on a subscription basis. Last month, Venture Technologies processed 8.5 million messages of which 7.5 million were discarded as SPAM.

“We had no false positives reported,” he said. “We recently upgraded the massive server farm that services much our application hosting service and we are in the process of upgrading our network backbone and power and power backup systems in order to accommodate growth. During Katrina, we lost primary power for four days, but our services continued without interruption, utilizing our automatic power failover systems. We service customers throughout the nation and most were very surprised that we provided service during this time, but our systems and facilities were designed to withstand such disasters.”

Gibert sees many new opportunities for their business, and believes that is the inherent nature of IT. The company is currently involved in several new projects, particularly in the western part of the U.S., regarding Municipal Wireless Mesh, a relatively new phenomenon that is gaining traction.

“VoIPT, while not technically new, is seeing strong demand,” he said. “There’s a new wave of security technologies that are gaining momentum and new storage technologies--better, faster, smaller and cheaper--are growing. And virtually all manufacturers of technology products that consume electricity are introducing new form factors of their products that are extremely energy-efficient.

“A typical enterprise network consists of a wide variety of devices that are dedicated to specific functions–servers, appliances, connectivity systems, etc.--that require lots of power. Of course, the demand for managed technology services continues to grow. The declining cost and widespread of availability of high-speed bandwidth is driving that. For a very low cost, customers can connect their businesses directly to our Data Center at LAN speeds. That really is opening up the possibilities for our application hosting, co-location, data replication, managed e-mail, managed security, remote network management and managed VoIPT services. Affordable, reliable bandwidth, once a significant challenge to delivering these services, is now a non-issue.”

One recent new contract for Venture Technologies is to supply products and services to Amedisys, Inc. (AMED) as part of that company’s Point of Care (POC) initiative. Under the contract, Venture will provide procurement, configuration, and deployment services for some 5,000 tablet PC’s. These systems will be used by Amedisys Patient Care staff in delivering world-class health care services throughout the U.S.

In addition, Venture will also provide post-deployment services including spares management, image management, hardware service and asset management. Under the asset management function, Venture will continuously track the location of every tablet unit using Altiris’ Service and Asset Management Suite (www.altiris.com).

Venture Technologies has faced many challenges over its 21-year history. Some are constant, like the search for quality professionals to staff all areas of their business.

“The talent pool is shrinking and our universities are just not cranking out technical talent fast enough to keep up with demand,” Gibert said. “Even after someone earns an advanced technical degree, a considerable investment must be made in time and money to become certified on specific products and technologies. And, of course, the most effective people have real-world experiences to compliment their academic accomplishments and industry certifications. Ours is a very, very challenging line of work, but it’s also invigorating, fascinating and rewarding.”

Sales cycles in the IT industry are increasing as the solutions increase in complexity. Gibert said selling high-end solutions requires a team approach of sales, pre-sales engineering and often manufacturer representatives and engineers. It’s very expensive.

Another challenge is anticipating their next move. The company is constantly looking on the horizon to understand new technologies, how they will be sourced and delivered, which are for real and which are “vaporware”.

“Saying ‘no’ is difficult but necessary in order to retain our focus,” Gibert said. “Of course, we can never stand still, either. What we do today doesn’t resemble what we did five years ago and certainly won’t be the same in five years. But that’s what makes it fun.”

For more information on Venture Technologies, call 601-956-5440 or visit the Web site http://www.ventech.com/.

Contact MBJ contributing writer Becky Gillette at bgillette@bellsouth.net or (228) 872-3457.

Published with permission from the Mississippi Business Journal.