Author Archives: Tori Pazda

Transaction Deepens Thrive’s Mid-Atlantic Presence in the Southern NJ, Philadelphia Market

The deal will give Thrive Networks’ Mid-Atlantic region a “founding staple.”

Thrive, backed by private equity firm M/C Partners, has acquired Apex IT Group, an IT managed solutions provider from Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Transaction Deepens Thrive’s Mid-Atlantic Presence in the Southern NJ, Philadelphia Market

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – January 21, 2021 – Thrive, a premier provider of NextGen Managed Services, has acquired Apex IT Group, a leader in IT technology managed solutions for companies in the Greater Philadelphia region. This transaction further establishes Thrive’s significant presence in the Mid-Atlantic corridor by expanding their Cloud & Cyber Security focused NextGen platform into the Apex IT client base.

Apex IT Group, headquartered in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, delivers IT managed services through its proprietary process-driven methodology and its “Simple to Switch” client on-boarding process. They serve a variety of different small-to-mid-sized businesses in the Greater Philadelphia market with a strong focus upon service delivery, operational excellence and improving their client’s technology experience.

“I’m very excited to welcome the Apex IT Group, their employees and customers to the Thrive family,” said Rob Stephenson, Thrive’s CEO. “By bringing together our companies’ shared vision of technology innovation and a fervent dedication to IT service delivery, we’re providing a significant value proposition to Apex’s clients.”

“Thrive’s industry-leading NextGen Managed Services and ServiceNow automation platform, coupled with our technical proficiency in IT operations, will expand Apex’s role as a leader in the Greater Philadelphia and Mid-Atlantic region,” said Tina Mach, Apex IT Group’s CEO. “We’ve been very impressed with Thrive’s capabilities and are confident that our partnership will drive tremendous value to our customers via enhanced engineering depth, 24×7 operations, Cloud, SOC & Cyber Security expertise.”

Apex IT Group will be a founding staple of Thrive’s Mid-Atlantic region, overseen by Jason Shirdon, EVP & Regional General Manager, and formerly the President of EaseTech, a Columbia, Maryland MSP that Thrive acquired in late 2019.

For more information about Thrive, click here.

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About Thrive

Thrive is a leading provider of NextGen managed services designed to drive business outcomes through application enablement and optimization. The company’s Thrive5 Methodology utilizes a unique combination of its Application Performance Platform and strategic services to ensure each business application takes advantage of technology that enables peak performance, scale, and the highest level of security. For more information, visit thrivenextgen.com

Thrive: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram 

MEDIA CONTACT:

Stephanie Farrell

Director of Corporate Marketing

617-952-0289 | sfarrell@thrivenextgen.com 

About Apex IT Group

George Mach founded Apex IT Group in 2007. With over a decade in business, Apex IT Group boasts consistent growth and adaptation to changing and evolving markets, enjoying an elite classification as a “World Class” Managed IT Service Provider (MSP). While IT providers bend to satisfy trends and hot-topic buzzwords, Apex has continued to hone its proprietary processes while successfully contributing to job growth and workforce development in technology.

Specializing in helping SMBs in the Delaware Valley, its IT management programs help clients gain total command over technology with core services around complete IT management and support including cloud computing and cybersecurity.

SolarWinds, a monitoring software company, recently released information regarding a security incident that impacted their enterprise monitoring application, Orion.  Orion is one of the most common monitoring applications used by internal IT teams and MSPs all over the world. However, Thrive does NOT use Orion in any of our service offerings, but rather a different product called “N-Central”.  This is a completely different platform, formerly known as N-able, which was purchased several years ago and runs as a separate division within SolarWinds.  The source code for Orion and N-Central are not shared and they each run independently on separate operating systems.

Thrive has spoken directly with SolarWinds leadership and they confirmed to us that their investigation has found no threats to N-Central or other SolarWinds MSP products.  In addition to that investigation, the Thrive Security Team has completed our own review of this exploit.  Based on our analysis of currently available public information, we determined that the N-Central technology was NOT susceptible to the same attack methodology that was used against Orion.

If any of our Customers are running SolarWinds Orion on your networks or within your organizations, please use the following link to get more details on how to remediate the issue, along with some additional background on the exploit: https://www.solarwinds.com/securityadvisory

If you have any questions, please feel free to CONTACT US.

As the volume of suppliers continues to grow at a rapid rate, Partners have access to a multitude of different technologies and services, with Master Agents providing expert guidance and a strong set of resources to aid in the selection process. The negative side of this influx of vendors is that without a carefully considered approach, it creates an environment where the focus is less on understanding each Partner’s unique needs and each Supplier’s core offerings and instead limits it to the singular opportunity.  This narrow view contributes to less relationship development and continuity within the Channel, something Thrive believes is vital to the partner experience and to winning business.

Thrive has worked over the past year to build an account ownership element to our Channel Program to provide added value to our Partners and enhance their user experience. As a part of this new approach, when a partner reaches out to us in any form, they are assigned to a Thrive Sales Representative who then becomes the dedicated POC for that Partner moving forward. We also set up introductory calls that focus solely on understanding each Partners’ business, expertise, and client base to form a high-level partnership strategy and maximize efficiency.  Our goal is simply to provide a user friendly, relationship-driven experience for our partners as we continue to help guide them toward finding the right solutions for their clients.

Yes, the goal is always to put ourselves in a position to receive opportunities that fit our core services and then work with our partners to win that business.  However, for us it goes one step further.  Regardless of whether the given opportunity is even a fit, we want to ultimately form a lasting relationship with that partner, one that generates repeat business, and gives us a chance to most effectively align with them by understanding the key elements of their business.  This added cadence also enables us to be available for guidance and to exhibit our consultative approach to their customers. This approach has resulted in an ever-growing group of partners that understand exactly when to bring Thrive into an opportunity, as well as a dramatically increasing win rate.

We look forward to continued Channel success, and want all of our partners to know that we are always available.

Interested in learning more? CONTACT US TODAY!

Microsoft Office 365 is one of the most robust business solutions available, offering just about everything enterprises need to communicate, collaborate and enhance productivity.

With such a powerful tool, customization is key to leveraging it to its full potential. From simple document sharing to project management and social collaboration, every business has unique needs that are best served with a thorough understanding of the software’s capabilities.

DOWNLOAD our white paper today!

Hospitals in the northeast are on high alert after cyber attackers recently launched phishing emails to send malware to healthcare executives. As a result, several hospitals in Massachusetts either shut down email systems or installed more aggressive email filters. There have also been recent reports of phishing emails targeting hospitals and healthcare providers in New York and New Jersey.

Hospital executives received an email on Oct. 29 looking for hospital coronavirus statistics, and claiming to be from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, the email was fraudulent and if one employee clicked on a targeted link, the entire hospital IT system could have been paralyzed.

The healthcare system has become one of the biggest victims when it comes to Cyber Security. According to HealthcareIT, the lack of Cyber Security awareness among healthcare organizations has translated into healthcare systems being exposed to hackers and phishing.

Cyber attacks are more frequent with the pandemic and the president election as cyber criminals try to exploit busy hospitals and administrators working from home. In fact, the FBI and government officials have warned of an imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals, putting patient care operations in jeopardy.

Without continual upgrades or the proper monitoring, Norton predicts that cybercrimes will cost the world $6 trillion a year by 2021, with healthcare among the most impacted.

While the solution to hire an internal CISO, seems obvious there is an overall shortage of security professionals across all sectors. This means an administrator, not a trained specialist, must maintain ongoing security training or the company simply won’t be able to keep up with the latest trends or threats.

Also, COVID-19 opened hospital doors and doctors’ offices to thousands of new patients in 2020 which increased the volume of data being processed daily. Telehealth provided the opportunity for healthcare professionals to still treat patients but from the safety of their homes, which also created new access points through the use of apps on phones, tablets, and desktops leaving sensitive information traveling back and forth between patients and medical professionals, often unsecured.

Training is not the only issue when preventing cyberattacks. Organizations need to be just as concerned about the age of their systems as they are about staying updated with their training.

Healthcare centers are often using older systems that are embedded within other devices and can’t be easily upgraded. Without the ability to properly upgrade equipment, healthcare centers are more vulnerable than ever.

Thrive’s team of experts provide customized solutions based on the specific needs of each healthcare organization, from a secure Cloud that meets the privacy needs of HIPAA and other regulations, or Cyber Security solutions that deliver comprehensive protection around patient data.

Thrive’s NextGen services provide each customer with a unique strategy to optimize and protect their business data and applications, including access to the latest Cloud and on-premise technologies, advanced Cyber Security best practices, advanced networking solutions, compliance, and governance assistance.

Interested in learning more? CONTACT US TODAY!

Thrive has released Hybrid Cloud Director to optimize multi-Cloud workloads.