Cybersecurity Services for Stratosphere Networks

In 2021 Stratosphere Networks sold its managed IT and security services division to Ascend Technologies and kept the advisory practice. Unusual, for a firm that had made the CRN MSP 500 seven years running and the MSP 501 for a decade. Established in 2010 out of Converged Communication Systems, which Steve Melchiorre and Kevin Rubin started in 2003, the company now earns its living from Glenview, Illinois by sourcing and advising rather than operating, holding Gold and then Platinum standing in AVANT's Pinnacle loyalty programme

Selling the delivery arm solved a cost problem and created a credibility one. Clients still ask their advisor what good looks like, and an advisor who cannot put an engineer on site gets compared unfavourably to one who can. Stratosphere still lists managed cybersecurity and managed IT among its offerings, so the promise survived even though the in house division did not. Sourcing a cloud security assessment from a supplier catalogue is not the same thing as owning the outcome of one. When a client wants the firm that gave the advice to also do the work and to answer for the finding, the pure advisory model runs out of room

CWS was built for that gap. Engineers work under the Stratosphere name, to one delivery standard fixed before the engagement starts, so an advisory relationship keeps the outcome instead of handing it to a supplier and hoping. Reach covers the US and Canada, French language delivery included where Quebec or Canadian federal work requires it. Corova handles scoping, quoting and project tracking, which gives an advisory led firm the operational spine it deliberately chose not to rebuild