GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler: 5 Keys To Digital Readiness Transformation

GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler tells several hundred CIOs that ultimately digital readiness transformation will determine whether companies fail or succeed in the future.

Digital Readiness Is ‘Essential’

GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler told several hundred CIOs attending Cloudscape 2022 that digital readiness will ultimately determine success or failure in the cloud era.

“Digital readiness is essential, it is no longer a nice-to-have,” Dupler told a jam-packed conference room at the annual Cloudscape conference for CIOs attempting to navigate the fast-moving technology landscape. “You can be muddling through trying to figure this out right now but in the mid to long term this is a business viability issue.”

Dupler told the attendees that it is vital that they move aggressively to implement a digital readiness transformation. “The whole industry is rallying around creating these digital business platforms,” he said. “You don’t want to be a laggard here. The train has left the station and you have got to get on board if you want to be around.”

At the top of the list driving digital readiness transformation for GreenPages, No. 169 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, is cybersecurity, economic challenges with a potential recession and a talent skills gap, said Dupler.

One big factor holding back the digital readiness transformation is “inertia” that comes with running business day to day, said Dupler.

“How are we going to deal with day jobs and drive transformation?” asked Dupler. “There is fear, uncertainty and doubt. We have dealt with some of you who have said that my leadership just doesn’t get it. They are not going to invest.”

Dupler urged customers to communicate and collaborate with the GreenPages team to overcome that “fear, uncertainty and doubt.”

Here are five ways GreenPages is helping CIOs and businesses achieve the digital readiness imperative.

GreenPages’ Digital Platform Services Focus

GreenPages, one of the top cloud computing services providers in the country, has built out six major digital platform services that are essential to digital readiness: cybersecurity, hybrid multicloud, networking, modern workspace, carrier services and DevSecOps/Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), said Dupler.

Underlying those six digital platform service areas —which make up the foundation of digital readiness—are a comprehensive assess, modernize and manage methodology, said Dupler.

“We want to be able in each and every one of these areas to come into your organization, work with you and your teams, understand where you are at today, understand your North Star where you are trying to get to either across the whole stack or in each one of those areas, and then create the modernization path with you,” said Dupler. “For those of you who want us to do it, we want to have a managed offering where you can say, Take this off my plate.’ That allows you to focus on driving digital transformation, driving the capabilities of your business and taking your companies into the future.”

A Great Cybersecurity Company

GreenPages is investing heavily in cybersecurity, moving from a “good” cybersecurity provider to a “great” cybersecurity company, said Dupler. “This is a huge investment for us,” he said.

“We have built an absolutely amazing team and do a great job in the market today responding to incidents, helping companies build compliance and governance frameworks for their security program, and just helping people become more secure as an organization,” he said.

GreenPages is driving to bring together the cybersecurity maturity curve at organizations with the digital readiness maturity curve, said Dupler. “Those two things need to go hand in hand,” he said. “You need to marry those two. Cybersecurity can set the prioritization of the digital transformation we need to drive.”

GreenPages CISO Jay Pasteris said that cybersecurity is now a board-level issue. “The board needs to look at cyber-risk as its biggest business risk,” he said. “I like to take an approach where I align outcomes to heat maps to funding. I want the board to be part of that. I want them to understand very transparently where we are good and where we are not so good. … It is going to take funding and effort. That has to be a board decision. They have to be backing that, and they have to be part of that process.”

Filling The Talent Gap With DevSecOps/Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

GreenPages’ DevSecOps /Site Reliability Engineering practice is helping cutomers fill the ever-present talent gap that is holding back digital readiness transformation, said Dupler.

“This is how we are enabling and helping customers run effectively their cloud-native applications,” said Dupler. “This guides everything we are doing today internally. It is where we are investing in talent. It is where we are looking at mergers and acquisition capabilities to really build this vision out.”

The DevSecOps /Site Reliability Engineering practice is one of the keys to “rise up” to the challenge of the digital readiness imperative, said Dupler.

GreenPages is currently aggressively building out its DevSecOps /Site Reliability Engineering team, said Dupler. “That is in the incubation zone for us,” he said. “We have got really talented people and good capabilities there, but if all of you said I need help there right now we would be pressed to scale that out. We believe that informs our investement agenda.”

Midmarket And Enterprise Customers Looking For Strategic Guidance

Midmarket and enterprise customers are looking for “more strategic guidance” as they embark on the digital readiness imperative, said Dupler.

The midmarket sweet spot for GreenPages is customers from 500 to 5,000 seats, said Dupler. Those customers are looking for GreenPages to help them “craft their strategy,” said Dupler.

GreenPages is continuing to scale its digtal platform services foundation into the future, said Dupler.

“GreenPages has a very proud history of continuing to evolve and change and adapt to the market to meet our clients’ needs,” he said. “That is one of the things we are most proud of.”

To that end, GreenPages has built out a newly formed leadership team that is driving the digital readiness imperative at a breakneck pace, said Dupler.

The waves of technology pushing the digital readiness imperative are continuing to hit customers, said Dupler. “Behind these changes, there is a whole another wave of technology,” he said.

“We are pivoting today to this vision,” said Dupler. “We think this has legs but we are going to need to continue to keep our eye on the road ahead.”

The 2023 Outlook: Adapting To Endure

With economic challenges on the horizon, Dupler cited a recent report from legendary venture capitalist Sequoia Capital that urges companies to be ready for the downturn and follow the lead of great companies that have been forged during other downturns.

Sequoia, an early investor in Airbnb and Google, pulled its team together when the Federal Reserve Board began to address inflation with rising interest rates and issued the “Adapting To Endure” call to action for its portfolio companies.

“The core theme of the presentation is we are in unprecedented times,” said Dupler. “We have never seen the confluence of events that we are dealing with today coming at corporations and businesses. Their message was the upcoming downturn they anticipate is going to be longer and deeper than we are hearing. And their message to their portfolio companies is: be ready, don’t overreact and be bold.”

Times like these “favor companies that “can act decisively and iwith velocity,” said Dupler. “In their experience in prior downturns companies who adapted well resulted in great companies that were forged.”