The pool of specialized IT professionals is shrinking, while the IT landscape is becoming more complex and demanding. How do you deploy your IT resources as optimally as possible? Mario Casier from Copaco has a clear vision.
The IT sector faces major challenges: the tight labor market makes it difficult to find qualified personnel, while stricter regulations such as NIS2 impose higher demands on cybersecurity and compliance. This, combined with rapidly evolving hybrid work environments, raises the bar even higher. Tooling, training, automation of the billing process, and outsourcing can help companies get the right employees in the right place. Mario Casier tells us how to deploy your resources as intelligently as possible for optimal results. He is Business Unit Manager Cloud, Software Security at Copaco, a cloud Service Provider.
Office Walls Broken Down
The IT landscape has become much more complex over the past ten years. “In the past, you had an office with an on-prem environment, server, and local network. Back then, if you protected everything in your IT environment within the office walls, your cybersecurity was reasonably in order,” Casier recalls.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, companies had to rapidly deploy workplaces to living rooms. This means that the IT landscape now looks very different. Consequently, the expectations of employees for the IT department are extremely high. “It’s a daunting task to find technical staff who can monitor that in terms of productivity and security.”
Legislation and Compliance
Not only has the IT environment become more complex, but new challenges are also emerging in terms of regulations. “Legislations such as NIS2 set the bar even higher for companies,” says Casier. NIS2 requires Belgian and European companies to boost their cybersecurity. This comes with a series of conditions that must be followed.
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To meet these growing requirements, a lot of technical expertise is needed. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult for companies to find specialized IT experts to obtain all those certificates,” says Casier. “We want to be a partner that thinks along to achieve more with the available technical staff at the partner. Thanks to our personal approach, junior employees can take over certain IT management tasks from senior colleagues, who in turn can focus on implementing the latest trends such as AI at customers,” he explains.
Training Program
“The Cloud Value Academy is a training program aimed at technical professionals within the cloud ecosystem,” says Casier. This includes trainings that cover the digital workplace, backup, security, and server environments. Additionally, the Cloud Value Academy is linked to Cloud Champion, which is purely about Microsoft and related services. “Microsoft is very broad and changes quickly. Cloud Champion always makes the latest new trainings available,” states Casier.
“To cover the certification piece, we work with @the Academy. With this, we create tailored training programs to meet the growing requirements of, for example, Microsoft. This way, we ensure that IT employees obtain qualifications to maintain their required skills,” he explains.
“In short, we can offer trainings and courses from A to Z. We have internal specialists in, among others, IaaS, Copilot AI, Azure, and Security who can help with this.”
Deploy Resources Intelligently
“The right tooling can help less experienced employees or young people in training to perform complex tasks in a simple way. Such profiles are easier to find in the labor market. They ensure that the basics are in order. This creates more space for experienced IT specialists who can focus on new technologies or customized projects with customers,” Casier explains.
“An example of such tools is Nerdio. Junior IT employees can use this tooling to determine how much an Azure environment will cost, how to set it up optimally, and manage it.” In this way, they can easily keep the Azure environment running without taking time away from specialized IT experts.
Moreover, the company emphasizes the importance of outsourcing. “When working with infrastructure partners for specific projects or turnkey private cloud environments, risky investments in hardware or licenses can be avoided.”
Automation
“Many companies still spend two to three working days per month manually matching invoices. We replace this time-consuming process with API connections, through which our portal communicates with accounting systems,” Casier explains.
With automation processes, cloud licenses are managed in the most efficient way.
Mario Casier, Business Unit Manager Cloud, Software Security at Copaco
“This fully automates invoicing, customer management, license and order management, reducing errors and eliminating double entry. This not only saves time but also increases the efficiency and reliability of data.”
Meeting Demanding Requirements
The combination of a tight labor market and stricter regulations makes IT management more complex than ever. Companies struggle to find qualified personnel and meet higher security requirements. Therefore, seek support through the right tools and training. This enables companies to work more efficiently and remain compliant without putting extra pressure on their scarce IT resources.
This is an editorial article in collaboration with our partner Copaco.