Ascend Integrated: Technology Solutions, INC (Ascend) Integrating the Enterprise

The increasing need to maintain and keep up with large companies has led smaller companies to opt for tools such as cloud services in lieu of purchasing and maintaining a large hardware infrastructure. Larger organizations themselves are concerned with silos created within their infrastructure and maintaining consistency within their enterprise, limiting “one-off” system implementations. Existing one-off system implementations need to be integrated across the enterprise. These scenarios have created a need for implementers to understand the organizational processes and goals before implementing any systems. Enter Ascend—a specialty IT consulting firm—providing a fresh approach to system implementation and marketing. “We work alongside businesses by understanding their processes and procedures prior to automation. This process modeling is completed, managed, and updated using MS Visio, providing CIOs a way to view how existing systems interact with one another,” says Michael Brown, Founder, Ascend.

Using Microsoft’s tools and frameworks, such as BizTalk Server (BTS) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Ascend has enabled system-to-system communication and eliminated disparity among systems across multiple enterprises. “The implementation of Microsoft tools and cloud services allows users to collaborate on the fly within a group. These tools have also been used in federal agencies, especially within the healthcare arena,” explains Brown. Moreover, Ascend has implemented, configured, and developed SharePoint based products for clients in healthcare— enabling them to share documents and information effectively within the business.

With an aim of providing cloud services and maintenance to clients, the company enables customers to focus on their goals by helping them handle the customers’ IT. Ascend also utilizes their data centers to host and test new products from Microsoft and as a “sandbox” for clients to test the company’s Implementations. In addition, the company is keen on deploying mobile applications, with a part of the company’s new infrastructure being used to host and build out mobile productivity applications.The company’s close association with Microsoft has enabled it to provide effective, well-configured and tested solutions to small and large organizations and companies alike.