The IT Nerd

With National IT Service Providers Day being today, I wanted to share a perspective that goes beyond the standard “keep systems running” narrative.

Jason Tierney, SVP of Managed Services at C3 Integrated Solutions had this to say:

“For defense contractors, the challenge today goes beyond traditional IT support. In real-world assessment scenarios, challenges can come up when internal IT must work with external compliance teams, including process assumptions, incorrect documentation and a lack of coordination during a formal third-party assessment. Many organizations are also navigating multiple compliance frameworks, each with its own language, requirements and techniques. Even seemingly minor admin or system changes right before an assessment can create real problems. 

In regulated environments, IT service providers are taking on a different role, with responsibility that extends beyond downtime and outages the risk of not passing an assessment or annual re-attestation. Strong change management, close coordination and consistent compliance process documentation are critical to getting organizations to an assessment-ready state and helping them stay there.” 

Jeff Cratty,VP of Cloud & Integration at Blue Mantis adds this:

“National IT Service Provider Day is a reminder that the right technology partner does more than keep systems running. The best providers help organizations assess where they are, strengthen security, modernize what matters most and manage change in ways that support business goals. They create a secure foundation for innovation and help teams move forward with greater clarity and confidence.

As companies navigate AI adoption, cloud transformation and rising operational demands, they need service providers that can connect strategy to execution, protect critical data and reduce risk and stay engaged beyond deployment. That means identifying practical use cases, strengthening data governance and supporting internal teams through change.

When providers deliver that kind of guidance and accountability, they do more than solve technical challenges. They help businesses adapt faster and turn technology investments into measurable value.”

This link provides some suggestions on how you can say thanks to the people who keep your organization running. Trust me when I say that a thank you can go a long way for these people.

Today is Earth Day and Earth Day matters because the systems we’ve built, especially in tech, don’t just run in isolation, they draw power, consume resources, and scale globally, which means every decision we make at the infrastructure level has a real, cumulative impact on the world around us. The companies that take that seriously and design for efficiency, smarter data placement, and sustainable operations aren’t just being good citizens, they’re building more resilient, cost-effective, and future-proof IT environments that actually perform better under pressure.

Richard Copeland, CEO, Leaseweb USA and Marie-Pier Angers, Sales Director, Leaseweb Canada had this to say: 


Richard Copeland, CEO, Leaseweb USA:

“From a tech and business perspective, I’d bet most people haven’t thought about Earth Day in terms of server utilization, but that’s exactly where this lives. You walk into most environments and what you find isn’t some cutting-edge, perfectly tuned system. It’s racks of infrastructure running at a fraction of their capacity, powered on, cooled, maintained, and barely doing anything. Then on the other end, you’ve got teams overcompensating in the cloud, spinning things up ‘just in case,’ because nobody wants to be the one who underbuilt. So you end up paying for excess on both sides. More machines than you need. More energy than you should be using. A lot of complexity layered on top of it.

When organizations step back and actually place workloads where they make sense, in infrastructure that’s designed to run efficiently at scale, things start to normalize. Utilization goes up. The number of systems required goes down. Cooling demand drops. You can see it in the power draw, you can see it in the monthly bill, and you can feel it operationally because everything is just simpler to run. That’s the part that doesn’t get enough attention. Sustainability in IT isn’t some separate initiative. It’s what naturally happens when you stop running inefficient environments and start treating infrastructure like something that should actually be optimized.”

Marie-Pier Angers, Sales Director, Leaseweb Canada: 

“Many IT environments are inefficient by design. Not because people are careless, but because they’re trying to solve for risk. So they overbuild. They duplicate. They leave capacity sitting there unused because it feels safer than coming up short. Then they layer in cloud on top of that, sometimes the right way, sometimes not, and suddenly you’ve got this sprawl of infrastructure that’s expensive to run and even harder to reason about. The environmental impact is just a byproduct of that inefficiency.

When you start running workloads in infrastructure that’s actually built for efficiency, where higher utilization is the goal, where resources are shared intelligently, and where you’re not defaulting to one model for everything, the math changes pretty quickly. Fewer machines doing more work. Less power required to run them. Less cooling to keep them stable. At the same time, better performance and more predictable costs. That’s why this isn’t a tradeoff conversation. The same decisions that make your environment easier to operate and cheaper to run are the ones that reduce your footprint. That’s the alignment most teams don’t realize is sitting right in front of them.”