Emerging companies today rapidly collect a jumbled basket of cloud applications and services. Employees pull out their credit cards and sign up for all kinds of subscription services in a decentralized and disorganized free for all. These will soon be upgraded to AI agents performing all manner of functions to make employees more productive.
Ad-hoc adoption of cloud services can be fine initially, but as a company grows it can quickly become unmanageable, creating many bottlenecks and points of friction for employees and management. Integration and management of this expanding solution portfolio is now a priority.
By knitting together solutions from the expanding universe of cloud/AI offerings, companies can now achieve a secure and scalable operating state faster and more affordably than ever, creating a strong foundation for company growth. Some applications interact and require bespoke integrations, introducing a new level of complexity. The evolving ecosystem needs to be managed as a whole, and each component monitored for security and compliance purposes. New IT expertise and practices are needed to cope with these new realities of modern enterprises.
“In the future, IT departments will become the HR department of AI agents” … onboarding and training different types of AI agents and provisioning them to employees.” – Jen-Hsun Huang, CES Keynote address
Leveraging a good plan, this foundation for growth can be built in phases, with modest resources and without derailing key employees. The key is starting with the goal in mind and following a roadmap as the company grows. In this white paper you will learn about the new sources of complexity for an emerging company in managing a dynamic cloud/AI-based IT environment, with specific recommendations for addressing the new challenges.
KalioTek respects your data, to learn more, see our privacy policy.
| Pain Points | Desired Outcomes |
|---|---|
|
New apps are acquired continuously across the company. No one is managing the ecosystem as a whole. |
Single managed system for granting and tracking app access privileges. |
|
Employees’ requests for access get stuck with delays over approval and confusion over appropriate access privileges. |
Clear approval process, automated workflow, with reliable response time from IT. |
|
Management has poor visibility into usage trends, cost, direction and security of the overall ecosystem. |
Easy access to app usage trends, license tracking. Planning for app selection, integration and overall security profile. |
|
Ad-hoc approval processes are broken when an approver is unavailable or leaves. |
Centralized system with clear ownership and roles, does not depend on any one individual |
|
Compliance efforts are complicated by lack of single source of access rights and approvals, lack of audit trail. |
Audit trail of all requests for access, approvals, termination of access. |
|
New Hire Onboarding – timely preparation of IT tools and access for new hires is unreliable; new employees have a long tail of follow-up requests to get what they need. |
Single request through company IT portal initiates standardized process, equipment procurement, granting of all role-appropriate access privileges. |
|
Termination – timely removal of access privileges upon termination is unreliable and difficult to track. |
Single request through company IT portal initiates termination procedures, removal of access, computer inventory management. |
Emerging companies start with a few core applications such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, often with Zoom and external backup/storage services. As they begin to grow, they add security applications, single sign-on, HR apps, sales and marketing tools, cloud engineering tools, etc. All this changes and becomes more complex as the company grows and more solutions are added. In our experience, a typical emerging company will have dozens of subscription services to manage within their first couple years of life. New solutions will inevitably replace older apps, and all will evolve. This dynamic is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, as AI agents emerge for many functions. These apps and services collectively constitute a critical part of a company’s operations. The entire matrix needs to be centrally managed to maintain a stable and consistent environment, enabling employees to focus on their core jobs without interruptions and hit their critical milestones.
Managing the access and permissions for a growing employee base with an expanding suite of applications and subscription services presents a new problem for emerging companies. All this changes what these companies need in the way of IT expertise and support. Throwing a body at it is no longer sufficient. New skills and planning are needed from your IT team or provider. Various applications must be implemented, integrated into the overall environment, carefully rolled out to the user base, then managed and maintained. Individually, none of these is rocket science, but collectively they add a new layer of complexity and opportunity for chaos.
Increasingly, the first “glue” application to be rolled out is a single sign-on (SSO) platform, such as Okta, Microsoft Entra, or Google SSO that gives employees ease of access to the role-appropriate IT tools. Once SSO is introduced, everyone will want their special app included for their users’ convenience. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many apps and integrations will follow. SSO integration and support must be a core expertise of any IT team or service provider.
As hiring increases, a reliable process for efficient onboarding and termination of employees is a life saver for HR and overburdened group managers. A single request initiates a standardized process, procuring computers, handling logistics and provisioning role-appropriate solutions. This can be set up in an IT portal with automated approval routing – now an ante for any modern IT environment. The portal also provides a handy audit trail of all access privileges that will aid security and compliance reviews.
Most IT support requests are now about getting access to something needed, not fixing something that’s broken. Employees need timely help navigating the changing IT ecosystem and management needs help to stay on top of the increasingly complex matrix of apps and services. Each app or service must have rules for access and a designated owner for approval and configuration. Departmental apps may need the explicit approval of a department manager or a designated superuser, while others may be approved for all. An orderly process with appropriate automation is required or this will quickly get out of hand. Still, response time is important, so employees don’t wait long for the approval of the tools they need. This is a new dimension for the IT helpdesk that requires clear support processes that haven’t existed in the past.
All permission changes must be captured for security and compliance purposes. License usage must be tracked and trends noted. Redundant solutions must be flagged and escalated for cost management and standardization. This all argues for a centralized solution with consistent processes, tools, and oversight, rather than helter-skelter efforts by a range of managers to each manage their piece of the puzzle. Your IT environment must be designed from the ground up to support this new set of requirements.
The example application matrix below keeps track of apps so that helpdesk performers and management know the process, approvers and integration level for each app.
| Application | Approver | SSO | Security Group | Provisioning | Approval Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Adobe |
Michelle Wilson |
No |
NA |
Automatic |
Yes |
|
Apple Business |
Deepak Gupta |
No |
NA |
Manual |
Yes |
|
Cisco AnyConnect |
James Nguyen |
Yes |
NA |
Manual |
Yes |
|
Crowdstrike |
NA |
No |
NA |
Automatic |
No |
|
Concur |
NA |
Yes |
NA |
NA |
No |
|
Dropbox |
Deepak Gupta |
Yes |
NA |
NA |
Yes |
|
Greenhouse |
Audrey Green |
Yes |
Greenhouse Users |
Automatic |
Yes |
|
KnowBe4 |
NA |
No |
NA |
Automatic |
No |
|
MS 365 |
Michelle Wilson |
Yes |
NA |
Automatic |
Yes |
As your company implements one or more compliance regimens, often mandated by customers as a condition of purchase, you’ll need many apps integrated into a compliance tracking application such as Vanta; it tracks actions relevant to compliance and streamlines your recurring audit process. Your infrastructure becomes part of your customers’ digital supply chains. They have good reason to seek assurance that you are following industry best practices, but they can’t review every provider separately. Compliance certifications – HIPAA, ISO, PCI, SOC2, or one of many other industry-specific requirements – are their shortcut to that assurance. Compliance will also bring you peace of mind that your company is following the best industry security practices.
KalioTek customers have embraced this cloud-based strategy to cope with the proliferation of apps and employees:
For more information about cloud integration or other services, please contact us at 408.550.8007, sales@kaliotek.com or our website: https://www.kaliotek.com/contact-us/
About KalioTek
KalioTek’s provides IT, security and compliance services that are finely tuned for growth-oriented life sciences and technology companies with critical security and compliance requirements. Since 2002 we’ve helped dynamic emerging and midsize companies create foundations for growth and navigate rapid change. Our principals have been on the founding teams of high growth startups and know the challenges firsthand