Our current culture has grown to expect that information, from our bank accounts to sports scores, should be within arm’s reach at all times. IPM is one of the best companies at ensuring our experience with the technology we use to access that information is one that’s straightforward, enjoyable, and, more than anything, safe and secure, especially for the business world and the corporate environment. Working with computer systems and platforms and moving toward mobile devices such as phones and tablets, IPM and president Myron Bari are adapting and developing technology to pair with new applications, while maintaining strong and tenured business partnerships to stay well positioned for success, whatever the future brings.
Bari is a 30-year veteran of the computer science and information technology business, working for IBM in the early 1970s, after getting his master’s in computer science and applied mathematics from NYU and his MBA from Farleigh-Dickinson University. With such a background, Bari has become accustomed to the inherent change and progression of technology. “No other industry changes as much or as fast as IT does,” he says. “Companies that are successful are the ones that keep reinventing themselves and understand that the reinvention of what you do is constant. IPM has reinvented itself continually over the last 25 years.”
Watching the progression from mainframes to computers to servers to client servers to the cloud, Bari has kept IPM a leading company by changing services but maintaining relationships. IPM is in the business of deployments and implementations of desktops, software, and, most recently, mobile applications. “We make a complicated system, that someone else has developed, work well,” he explains. “The value we add is being able to make the systems work together so that the experience for the end user is fantastic.”
IPM By the Numbers
35%
Boost achieved in IT, sales, and administrative staff to support the growing Citrix, Microsoft, and EMC practices
29 Years
IPM has been delivering solutions to the New York Metro Area
8 years
Minimum average tenure of IPM employees, showing the strong retention and work satisfaction at the company
20–25%
Expected and desired growth of business every year in order to meet goal of doubling every 3 years
Being flexible and reinventing itself has enabled IPM to be the longest-standing Citrix Platinum Partner in the Northeast, in addition to other lasting partnerships with leaders in the industry. One strategy that has been integral to this ongoing success has been a consistent focus on forecasting and evaluation. Bari organizes formal planning sessions on a quarterly basis and calls the concept “maintaining a forward-looking dashboard.” The all-day sessions bring the management team together with a facilitator to go over lessons learned, identify what IPM wants to accomplish, and where the markets are. “If you’re not planning, you don’t know where you’re headed, and what course corrections you have to make in terms of getting to where you want to go,” Bari says.
One future trend that most consumers can identify with is the advent of mobile applications. “What’s happening in 2013 in the consumer marketplace is that [there are] more and more applications written for the iOS and Android platforms, mobile devices, and tablets,” Bari says. “End users want these things. People’s lives are changing: you’ve got your e-mail on there, every two minutes, you’re hitting an app.”
But what’s even more interesting to Bari and IPM is the growth and number of corporate applications for mobile devices, and the possible security issues that come with those applications. “With consumer applications, there are no real security questions,” he says. “In the business world, there are issues around security and protecting data. What IPM is doing is working with companies who develop programs and software around ensuring that, when you hit your corporate application, it not only works, but keeps your corporate data separate from your personal data. It needs to be secure so that a corporation’s information isn’t compromised.”
In a way, this is what IPM has been doing for more than 20 years, allowing Windows users to work from anywhere on any device and to get into corporate applications. Only now, the platform is changing to Android and iOS systems. “It’s exciting to do what we do for the new emerging platforms,” Bari says. “As these apps start to proliferate, we want to be known as the ones to secure them for the end user, and to do so in a way that doesn’t affect the experience.”
