Microware: Sparking Disruption through Virtualization

Albeit virtualization has pervaded enterprises world over, winning the consensus of the global IT space, its proliferation across the Hong Kong corporate landscape has been a slower reaction. However, the catalysis augmented by an increasing cloud expertise of the region has gradually managed to overwhelm whatsoever the previous inhibitors were. Attributing to this transformation and establishing its prominence in the process, Microware marked its foundation in 1985. Started as a distributor business, Microware expanded its focal area in the late 90s to become infrastructure solutions provider while rising to domain expertise in virtualization and infrastructure migration in the following years. With strategic alliances forged with the likes of VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Veeam and Nutanix today the company specializes in providing managed services and monitored automation for a broad range of customers. Joseph Yang, CTO and Director of Professional Services and Outsourcing at Microware, says, “Over the course of last twelve years we have heavily invested in providing infrastructure management and virtualization on both the server and the data center side. We pioneered the expansion of virtualization in the Hong Kong market.”

Given that it cannot be possible for most enterprises to identify their technical requirements accurately, Microware adopts an approach to assess each client’s business rather than outrightly delivering services at its disposal. The company performs a base line study of both the technical and business aspects of the customer’s infrastructure environment and recommends how to set and transform the environment.

It also provides free consultancy services in the primary stage to help the customer inspect their current environment and develop an understanding of their technical requirements. The traditional demands of Microware’s customers include hardware recommendation and general end-to-end implementation service request.

Microware has had tremendous success delivering for the conventional demands of its clients including migration to the cloud or a private virtualized infrastructure. However, the company observed that with this traditional approach, the crucial element of monitoring the clients’ environment after virtualization is difficult. Also, most customers often didn’t update their environment after virtualization for about five years, making the infrastructure vulnerable to security threats. To mitigate this, Microware developed an actively managed proactive managed services contract to monitor the customer's environment. This helps the company to construct a good understanding of the loading, health, and patch levels of the customer’s environment. Through this information and a broad analysis of client’s requirement, Microware provides them with a change form on a quarterly or half-yearly basis, informing them of the updates that need to be pushed through the environment in a managed way.

Microware employs a unique blend of professionals that further add value to the company’s work culture and skill sets. The company has a strong pre-sales and implementation team focused on delivering accountability to the projects and drive success for customers’ business. “The way that we do businesses in terms of solutions drives trust within our team, and the structure that we follow checks us from over-committing to our customers and assists us to deliver efficiently,” adds Yang.

Microware’s roadmap for its future endeavors aligns with the company’s core focus on the managed services domain. The company intends to develop a robust and mature managed service portfolio regionally through effectively enabling remote support in the region. With a strong portfolio of infrastructure solutions and managed services, Microware aims to transform their transactional business into a subscription based business and expand further to cater the markets of south-east Asia.