Why Open Systems

Gavriella Schuster explains her decision to join the Open Systems board this way:

“What Open Systems is doing is really leveraging Microsoft 100% — Azure Sentinel and Defender — and making real use of that in a way I don’t see anyone else in the market doing,” she said. “So the customer already owns [that] and then [needs] services.”

For instance, more end users need help protecting against phishing and other email threats, as well as more expertise in safeguarding data and privacy. Open Systems “has a lot of those threat vectors covered, so the customer doesn’t necessarily have to buy other tools and can actually shed some of the other tools they’ve purchased. Then the partner can really focus on the expertise that Open Systems offers to them and be that frontline.”

In this scenario, partners manage the assets and do Tier 1 support. That’s a plus, Schuster says.

“One of the things Open Systems does is … help the customer identify which assets they want to most heavily invest,” she said. From there, ensuing guidance comes from the partner.

“The partner can then be the CISO, in some cases, for some of these midmarket customers,” she said.

When you consider what Schuster says on the very last slide, this approach makes perfect sense.