Conversations
A Conversation with Jeff Brewer, President & CEO, Business Vitals
MidlandsBiz:
What is your education and background?
Jeff Brewer:
I received my BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from USC in 1984 and my MBA from Maryland in 1991. I started my career in the Information Security group at the National Security Agency. From there, I worked for Defense contractors TRW and GTE. Later, in the process of helping start and manage to national IT services firms, as I ultimately became responsible for strategic planning, strategic alliances and operational execution of our services delivery and customer support.
MidlandsBiz:
What are the origins of Business Vitals?
Jeff Brewer:
In 2001, I was working as the CIO (Chief Information Officer) and VP of Operations for a national IT services provider that delivered business critical software as a service - customer relations (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) programs such as PeopleSoft and Oracle among others. In my opinion, I thought we were providing more value than we were actually recognizing revenue for. We implemented software solutions for customers, and literally gave away the ancillary services such as data storage, data security, and disaster recovery (DR) for free. Since that company was not interested in developing the business as a separate profit center, I resigned my position and wrote the business plan over a 3-4 month period, self-financed the business, and took the plunge.
MidlandsBiz:
In simple terms, what is the core business of Business Vitals?
Jeff Brewer:
Our motto is: Outsource Your Technology Risk TM. Our focus is to make technology work for our clients, to mitigate risks and help achieve compliance for a fixed and predictable cost. We enable our clients to buy IT Services delivered from the internet "cloud" via a "pay as you use" subscription pricing model thus helping our clients convert capital expense to operating expense.
Technology should be an enabler for a business, not a hindrance. Many companies have been paralyzed or even put out of business because of poor IT security compliance planning and execution. That should never happen. Technology is not the horse (the source of competitive advantage); it's akin to the wheels of the proverbial cart.
Our customers know intuitively that they are the experts at the strategic, core aspects of their business, but not necessarily all of the tactical components such as information technology. They eat, breathe, and sleep everything related to their business, but shouldn't have to worry about what might happen in the event of an employee security breach, lost back-up tapes, systems failures, email down time, a stolen laptop, a fire or hurricane. Our proposal to customers is this: you run your business and let us handle the IT security and compliance execution.
MidlandsBiz:
Who are your customers?
Jeff Brewer:
In today's environment of increased regulation, companies can face fines if they are not in compliance. Whether it's Sarbanes-Oxley for publically traded companies, Gramm-Leach Bliley for the financial services industry, or HIPPA for healthcare, a lack of compliance is a legal and therefore financial risk to your company. There is also a growing need for companies to safeguard credit card information they handle and other regulatory requirements. We deliver compliant, IT-based services and solutions to help our clients with each of these.
We can help most organizations and businesses, regardless of their industry and geography with their IT security needs, but we have carved out a particular niche where we help those small and mid-sized businesses who recognize that IT security and compliance are not their core business focus. We have had great success helping commercial, governmental, public and private organizations that have large amounts of transactional data that needs to be protected – customers in: banking, financial services, education, distribution and logistics, manufacturing, legal and engineering firms, healthcare, insurance, retail, and heavy equipment are representative of the kinds of customers with whom we do business.
Clients who, in particular want to get out of the business of technology hardware, software selection, implementation and ongoing management and support -- we can help!
MidlandsBiz:
Talk about your new data center here in Columbia.
Jeff Brewer:
We have always leveraged third party data centers for our production and disaster recovery services, but we are proud to now offer a state-of-the-art data center right here within our headquarters location at Washington and Main Streets in Downtown Columbia. We looked for buildings throughout the Midlands, but, in the end, it made more sense to house the data center in the same building as our corporate offices. We are currently completing final build out of the the data center and will have it fully operational by end of January 2011.
An expanded call center enables us to deliver on our key value proposition – customer care and service. The days of keeping critical business data on a server in a computer closet or non-mission critical computer room are over. As the sheer volume of information has skyrocketed, there is an even higher premium on housing that information in a secure, mission critical facility and infrastructure managed by an experienced staff with deep, technical bench strength.
Our data center will have a tremendous amount of capacity – read to house thousands of servers and thousands of terabytes of storage capacity and hundreds of gigabytes of network connectivity -- all delivered via a highly controlled and secure environment with 2X redundancy on connectivity, power, environmental conditioning and fire suppression. The data center will offer our clients the highest levels of redundancy with no single point of failure, and flexible space that we can adapt to client needs.
Although we want our clients to understand that providing mission critical IT space is a key component of what we can do, it is not what differentiates Business Vitals. What differentiates us is the back-end management of business applications, data, the associate technology and processes and most importantly having an extremely responsive, client-centered support team.
MidlandsBiz:
How do you make IT expense predictable?
Jeff Brewer:
All of our services have been developed to meet the most common IT needs of our clients via a monthly subscription unit pricing model per user, per location, per server, per gigabyte, etc. Our model is based upon the "pay as you use" concept that enables organizations to buy IT as it should be – as a service.
MidlandsBiz:
Do you make software recommendations for businesses?
Jeff Brewer:
Technology solutions differ in each industry so we do not try to be expert in every application for every business – we can't. Our focus is not on the unique software applications that support a business, but rather on the delivery of a stable and secure platform upon which the systems and applications can support client operations reliably.
We can help companies avoid technology buying mistakes which, similar to bad staffing decisions, can tie up resources and result in huge opportunity costs. We are very effective at helping companies with IT capacity planning so that their infrastructure will grow as their business grows. It is critical for companies to avoid buying too little or too much IT capacity, but that is a difficult thing to forecast for most companies.
MidlandsBiz:
What advice would you give to owners of companies and CEOs regarding their IT infrastructure and security policies?
Jeff Brewer:
There are four questions that CEOs need to ask themselves & their team:
- Do we have effective IT security, compliance and business continuity plans in place that are easy to implement and managed at a predictable cost?
- Do these plans include policies that are compliant, auditable, and tested?
- Have we identified all points of risk within our IT systems, infrastructure and staff skill sets?
- Do we have an action plan to make continuous progress toward improving our IT security and compliance?
MidlandsBiz:
If so many problems emanate from employees, how do you protect against company information on laptops and emails?
Jeff Brewer:
Typically, we find that companies are so busy focusing on their own clients that they have not had time to develop an effective acceptable use policy for laptops, email and the Internet, or the policies they do have in place are not really enforceable. Each of these key business resources and others must be managed as just that: business assets and not personal ones. The "Personal Computer" is a big time misnomer and management needs to be informed to adequately safeguard against risks associated with its non-business use or misuse. Companies frequently use our services to help write and implement effective IT security policies that the organizations' non-technical leadership can monitor and understand and insure compliance.
MidlandsBiz:
What about companies that have their own internal CIO (Chief Information Technology Officer)? Do they use your services?
Jeff Brewer:
Absolutely! Even if you have an internal CIO, it helps to have an objective third-party review of your IT organization, plans, infrastructure and budget. We have helped a great deal of forward-thinking CIOs who are trying to make sure their organizations' IT is safe and secure at a reasonable cost – especially in this trying economic climate.
MidlandsBiz:
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs?
Jeff Brewer:
Number 1: As with any business, my decision to start Business Vitals involved significant risk and uncertainty. I could not have done it without the incredible belief and support of my family.
Number 2: Securing a manageable number of clients and their confidence in your organization and maintaining that diversity and confidence is critical to a firm's long term growth, health and capability. Without this, no organization can survive.
Number 3: It is of critical importance to surround yourself with talented people who have great capacity, capability and commitment. Learning how to identify, attract, grow and retain high integrity talent is one of the most important skills that an entrepreneur needs to develop.
Number 4: Whether it is with suppliers, customers or employees, it is critical to always think win/win in business. When you have the right employees, customers and suppliers, it can be mutually beneficial and synergistic for everyone involved. Long term, high quality relationships such as these are critical for the success potential of any organization.
Number 5: Know and understand your market and what makes you different and valuable to your clients. Being a "me-too" company in a highly competitive marketplace with little or no differentiation will not succeed over the long haul.
MidlandsBiz:
Did you have any financial supporters when you started the company?
Jeff Brewer:
I am the only investor in the company. Outside investors were interested in funding the company, but at a significant premium. At the time, I felt like I needed to refine and prove out the business model prior to accepting and risking someone else's money. Looking back, I am very grateful that I made that decision.
MidlandsBiz:
What has been the key to your success?
Jeff Brewer:
The key to our success has been our focus on the customer. Continued growth of our company is only possible if we can continue to effectively manage and expand long- term client relationships while continuing to find and secure new clients whose needs are a good fit for our capabilities.
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