For Bob Guilbert, managing director at Eze Castle Integration Inc., success in the fragmented and rapidly changing IT market comes down to an intense focus on customer needs, careful attention to the competition and almost constant evaluation of the business. Recently, Eze Castle, a Boston-based provider of IT solutions and private cloud services to hedge fund and alternative investment firms, began offering enhancements to its Eze Managed Suite, a fully managed IT solution that offers business applications through its Eze Private Cloud infrastructure. The new offerings, which include Microsoft and Varonis applications, provide collaboration, file synchronization and sharing, document security and governance capabilities in a single package. Guilbert spoke with itbestofbreed.com recently about what it takes for a vertical-focused MSPs to manage change and stay focused.

How can you tell when your solution could be more complete?

With any successful business, complacency should never be an option. We never stop looking to enhance our products and features in order to provide our clients with the tools they need to be successful in the investment industry. We assess enhancements to our products and services as the result of two primary drivers: the competitive landscape and market demand. It’s in our best interest as a company to stay one step ahead of our competitors and maintain our standing as the leading provider of cloud solutions to the financial services industry. Additionally, and more importantly, we evaluate our business regularly and respond to requests and recommendations from our customer base to satisfy their pressing needs.

How important is the balance between demand creation and responding to demand?

Ensuring balance is critical to navigating the path between demand creation and response. If we lean heavily in one direction or the other, it could lead to deficiencies for the overall business. We continually analyze the investments we make in our teams and personnel, marketing programs, and business development programs to ensure we can properly respond to demand and leave room to stimulate the business with new opportunities.

Customers ask for a lot of things, how do you stay focused?

Yes, customers ask for a lot, but satisfying their needs and requirements is our business. We take great effort to meet regularly with a cross-section of our client base to garner candid feedback on our company as a whole as well as interactions our clients are having across our departments.

What do you wish vendors would do better?

Vendors should be proactive in managing the lifecycle of partner relations. This includes everything from implementing rewarding partnership programs and providing certification opportunities to designing technology roadmaps, supporting the sales engineering process and enabling MSPs like ourselves to deliver competitive and appropriate pricing models.

What do you wish customers would do better?

We are a MSP providing world-class and worldwide cloud and outsourced IT solutions to investment management firms. Our clients expect and require the best that technology has to offer. Therefore, we appreciate and expect candid feedback from our customer base to help us enhance our business operations, technology, pricing, etc.