One of the most common queries I get from friends in the IT space is “Hey Trent, do you know someone that can help my organization with _______.” The subject varies, but the goal is the same: to get a referral for a vendor that had a proven track record, is inexpensive, reliable, and will generally make the people who chose them look like a star. Of course, my hope is that when folks ask their buddies “Who do you use for IT Security and Infrastructure?”, the answer is Applied Trust.
In my experience, finding those trusted IT vendors is very, very difficult. Usually it takes actually trying a handful of vendors before one rises to the top. Here’s the set of vendors that I personally trust, and where I often refer folks (and no, they didn’t pay me to mention them here!):
- Data Center Moves: Need to move your aged, overtaxed data center to a new facility? Blaine Berger has a team at E-Oasis that specializes in data center moves (not just in Colorado). In many years of knowing and working with Blaine, I have continually been impressed with his professionalism, deep technical knowledge, and rock-solid execution. Also, they have an interesting blog about this space here.
- Physical Security / Physical Access Control: After way too many frustrating and expensive years using Boulder’s “default” physical security provider (actual company name left as an exercise for the reader), we’ve finally freed ourselves from their ridiculous locked-in contracts, fees, and incompetence. Now, for access control systems, video monitoring/DVRs, etc., we’re using Lakewood-based ASG Systems and couldn’t be happier. They’re easy to work with, responsive, and know their stuff. And they’re about one-third the price of our previous provider.
- Structured Cabling / “Wiring”: There’s only one guy I trust to do wiring for us and our clients – that’s Mike Cudahey and his team over at Systematic Services (also Lakewood-based). Whether you need a single CAT-6 drop, or 10,000 drops, these guys are amazing. I’ve been working with them since 1998 and not once have they missed a deadline or come in over-budget, and the technical quality of their work is spectacular. You can reach Mike at (303) 273-0833.
- Data Center Co-Location/Hosting: Of course, we have lots of choices in Colorado for data center co-lo space. Unfortunately, some are not as good as others. I recommend talking to the guys over at Fortrust. They have a spectacular world-class facility and their staff has the “I will treat this customer’s environment like it’s my own” attitude that is so sorely missing at many other Colorado data centers. One of the things that endeared me to them is how personally excited they are about their standby diesel power generation facilities, a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. [In the interest of full disclosure, Applied Trust has an active business relationship with these guys, but once you see the awesomeness of their facility you'll know I'm recommending them here based solely on their own merits].
- Telecomm parts: It’s 4pm Friday and you just realized your weekend downtime just went into the ditch because you don’t have the right set of fiber jumpers. We’ve all had this happen to us in one form or another. Graybar Electric has a little-known walk up service counter in Denver right near the mousetrap which, while not much on ambiance, gives you immediate access to an impressive warehouse of telecomm, datacomm, and networking parts. Oh, and in a real disaster, you can get them to sell you parts 7×24… for a fee. This is your ace in the hole.
These are the companies I refer folks to most often — hope this list is useful to others.
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2 Responses
December 15th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Trent, the disk data recovery people you sent me to worked out great, but
I lost the sticky note with their name on it… can you put them on your list?
December 15th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Yes, excellent point. The folks I recommend in the Rocky Mtn region for disk recovery (physical media failure recovery) are Digital Medix, http://www.digitalmedix.com. They’re reasonably priced and get the job done. Thanks for the comment!
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