Scott Spiro Blog

A special thank you to my friends at Autotask for choosing me to be their member of the month. The Autotask Community site sets a benchmark for IT service community sites in general, and I am pleased to be a part of it. I also value the friendship of many of the folks on who visit the site regularly. Since the Autotask Community Site is a members only site, I have reposted the interview below.

Featured Member: Scott Spiro

Posted Nov 02 2009, 01:53 PM by Mark

1. How long have you been working in the IT Industry?

I’ve been in the industry for about 14 years.

2. What did you do before getting into the IT Industry?

I was a Theater major at UCLA, so most of my time was spent working in the theater. I was also a competitive Tap Dancer too. So computers were always something that I did as a hobby, but never actually intended to make a living at it!

3. What would you say your IT specialization is?

CSG focuses on managed services for B2B SMB’s – say 15-80 workstations. We work with multiple demographics (including non-profit groups which I particularly enjoy working with). Our goal is to provide IT solutions that start with our ISP service and stretch across the network to individual user support. We also enjoy working closely with our MSP partners. For example, we help MSPs and IT Service Companies provide additional co-lo and internet connectivity services to their customers utilizing our Green IT data center. I’d say that our company doesn’t just look at our customer s from an IT standpoint but also from a business aspect as well. This helps us become part of the business process, and a trusted advisor to the customer.

4. What was your worst IT/work related moment, and what did you learn from it?

That’s a good question. There’s probably a few to be honest. But one that comes to mind was an incident that occurred about 7 years ago when we hosted Exchange ourselves. I was out to dinner with a friend when an engineer unplugged our Exchange server by accident and corrupted the data stores. After spending all night and most of the following day at the data center, I decided to outsource our Exchange hosting. One of the smartest moves I ever did.  I learned the value of outsourcing.

5. What is your favorite IT related product?

It has to be my iphone. If you think about it, the “phone” portion of the iphone is really just a small part of what the platform can achieve. Aside from the integration with Exchange, I utilize applications such as logmein ignition, and WinAdmin to connect to servers- as well as a plethora of other apps that allow me to do my job and also have fun.

6. How long have you been using Autotask?

I believe we started with Autotask in Summer of 2007.

7. What do you like most about Autotask?

The consolidation of the various parts of our company. Being able to adjust contracts and track billing is really handy for MSPs. And the sync with various MSP tools is also very cool. And after a year we finally have a cost field for services, not just for products. As a company that mostly sells services this was key for us.

8. If you could change one thing about Autotask what would it be?

I would request that it be cross platform. It would be great to run it in safari and Firefox. We also need an iphone app in a big way. The iPhone app will be huge for Autotask.

9. What do you wish someone would have shared with you when you first started using Autotask?

Looking back, I think it would have been nice to have someone from Autotask understand how our business worked to point out a couple of things that were missing at the time that could really slow down our true value of Autotask (for example, that cost for services issue). The migration folks did tell us to take it slowly because Autotask was a large application. They weren’t kidding! It did take time and we are still learning how to best use the application. Every IT Firm is different and so you don’t necessarily need to utilize everything in the product.

10. Other interests/hobbies?

Well most recently I’ve gotten more into social media (check out my blog at http://blog.scottspiro.com) and I’ve enjoyed that. I’ve enjoyed twitter too (http://twitter.com/scottspiro). Probably my main interest is music composition and song writing.  I have just completed setup a new studio that I’ll be utilizing to record some new material. I’ll be documenting this process on my blog. Also, my wife is English so I have made it a point to take up Pheasant hunting!

11. What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool things and it’s honestly hard to pick just one thing. Winning 1^st place at a national dance competition in the Caesar’s Palace Sports Arena back in ’87 might be near the top though!