Capstone IT

4 Key Benefits of Working with CaaS Providers

4 Key Benefits of Working With CaaS Providers

Efficiency: It’s the difference between winning by a photo finish or leaving your competition in the dust. Every growth-oriented company needs to find ways to operate more efficiently, optimizing costs, processes, and workflows—and even your software packaging approach.

In the past, applications were large and complex, frequently running on legacy infrastructure including different computing environments and operating systems. Today, innovation is helping increase speed and agility in these legacy applications. For 93% of organizations, the preferred way to package software applications is now containerization, an increasingly popular application designed to simplify everything from deployment to maintenance for your team.

While virtual machines (VMs) were once the go-to solution for businesses, containers are proving to be a beneficial, lightweight, and portable alternative. Compared to a VM, which must carry its own guest operating system (OS), a container is much less bulky. It has all the code and dependencies it needs to reliably run anywhere, anytime. In short, containers let you operate more efficiently, more securely and with enhanced business performance.

Now, you can accelerate your digital transformation by working with a Containers as a Service (CaaS) provider. Here’s how a CaaS managed service provider can help.

Women’s History Month: Honoring the Women Who Drive Our Success

Women’s History Month: Honoring the Women Who Drive Our Success

At Capstone IT, we pride ourselves on upholding strong values and fostering an environment for all who share those values of selflessness, empathy, execution, integrity, and forthrightness. As we celebrate Women’s History Month, we are honored to recognize and highlight the contributions of five exceptional women who have greatly impacted our organization over the years.

We have named these individuals as our newest Ascent inductees, a title awarded to Capstone IT team members based on their outstanding qualifications, including:

  • Their alignment with our core values
  • Their tenure of three or more years with Capstone IT
  • Their standing as respected leaders in their respective fields

Capstone IT deploys VMware-hosted MSP solution to streamline data management for booming agribusiness

Capstone IT deploys VMware-hosted MSP solution to streamline data management for booming agribusiness

OSHKOSH, Nebraska – Capstone IT, an IT solutions and staffing company, has successfully deployed a managed service provider (MSP) solution for Oshkosh Heifer Development (OHD), a leading producer of dairy cattle. Hosted on VMware’s Tanzu platform and designed by Capstone IT, the solution has modernized OHD’s existing software platforms into a single, cloud-based application to consolidate and manage colossal production-related data sets. The project effectively automates what was once a time-consuming, manual process, opening the door for OHD’s exponential growth.

3 Ways to Simplify Your Business Transition to a DevOps Culture

3 Ways to Simplify Your Business Transition to a DevOps Culture

When your business is dependent on quickly and regularly launching new features, iterations, or applications, your team members need to accelerate delivery without sacrificing quality. Many IT innovators suggest DevOps as an ideal way to reduce SDLC costs by 50% while speeding up delivery from request to production. However, the transition is vastly more complicated than just changing your approach.

For the uninitiated, DevOps effectively combines development and operations under one roof. Where once these two functions operated on separate islands, there is now greater collaboration across unified teams throughout the lifespan of an application or solution. Members of DevOps teams contribute to development, testing, and deployment tasks within the same timeframe. As you can imagine, this fusion of principles, practices, and tools can spur innovation, enabling your company to introduce and improve new products and services at previously unheard-of velocity.

If this sounds like a promising on-ramp to greater speed to market, you’re not wrong—and you’re not alone. Capstone IT is here to make the process as smooth as possible. Here are some tips from our team to simplify your transition to DevOps and speed up your timeline for full-scale results.

Is a Multi-Cloud Strategy Safe? Here’s What You Need to Know

Is a Multi-Cloud Strategy Safe? Here’s What You Need to Know

Now that cloud adoption has gained traction in most organizations, there are fewer conversations about whether migrating processes and workloads to the cloud is necessary. The accessibility, collaboration, and scalability of these tools has transformed the business world. However, every cloud vendor has different strengths and weaknesses, encouraging many innovators to explore ways to maximize the benefits of multiple cloud platforms.

Simply put, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud are deployment models that integrate more than one cloud. Multi-cloud strategies involve multiple providers of public cloud services (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, etc.), each of which is responsible for a specific workload. Hybrid cloud setups, on the other hand, feature at least one private cloud or on-prem data center and one public cloud. The former solution appears more modern and streamlined on paper. Adoption of multi-cloud solutions also can’t be ignored, as 81% of public cloud users reported they were using the services of multiple cloud vendors, according to a 2020 Gartner survey.

But the question remains: is a multi-cloud strategy safe for your business? The short answer is “yes,” but there are considerations you should understand before implementing. Here’s what you need to know.

Cloud computer storage concept with digital screen

Capstone IT Shares Multi-Cloud Management Expertise at VMware Explore 2022

OMAHA, Nebraska – Capstone IT, an IT staffing services and IT solutions company, is proud to announce Glen Tindal, VP of Solutions, and Ken Rider, Solutions Architect, shared insights across two sessions at VMware Explore 2022. Their contributions to the success of this flagship multi-cloud management event further strengthened their status as a trusted partner with VMware Master Services Competency.

At VMware Explore 2022, VMware announced new capabilities in the Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) that further enhance developer and application operator experiences for any Kubernetes environment, increase supply chain security, and offer additional ecosystem integrations. VMware also announced updates to key components in Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations (TKO) including enhancements to Tanzu Mission Control and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to simplify Kubernetes delivery, management, and reliability. “Capstone IT uses TKO and TAP as a trusted partner of VMware to help our customers accelerate innovation,” said Rider.

Capstone Labs’ Drone Delivery: A Modern Application

Capstone Labs’ Drone Delivery: A Modern Application

Capstone Labs is building an application, Drone Delivery, to support

  • research on architectural ROI for modern enterprise-scale applications
  • knowledge transfer inside Capstone IT as well as to our clients
  • development of new processes and software

Architectural decisions have a foundational effect on the life cycle of development and operational costs for an application. These decisions impact not only architectural style (monolithic, hexagonal, or microservice-based), but also broader aspects of an application as well its:

  • tech stack
  • deployment options
  • influence on team dynamics

Drone Delivery, as a working application built by the Capstone Labs team, will be studied, documented, and demonstrated to clarify the trade-offs that determine the long-term costs for an application. Along the way, we expect that new processes and software will emerge.

This article will review the key requirements that motivate the first version of Drone Delivery; forthcoming articles will delve into additional requirements, its implementation, and its theory of operation.

Considering a Job Change? Here’s How to Find the Best Fit for You

Considering a Job Change? Here’s How to Find the Best Fit for You

If you’re considering a job change, here’s a word to the wise: make sure you’re leaving for the right reasons and the right company. Grant Thornton’s 2022 State of Work in America found that 40% of people who took new jobs would consider returning to their former employer. Now, that doesn’t mean they’d be happy going back, but it does suggest they may have chosen new opportunities based on a fleeting criterion.

The driving force behind leaving a job could be one of several factors. According to the same report from Grant Thornton, of the 21% of survey respondents who took a new job, 37% cited base pay as the main issue while 27% reported a lack of advancement opportunities. It’s safe to say that these are universal motivators (as are benefits, bonuses, and autonomy in the workplace). But none of these guarantee a person’s loyalty in the long run.

Speaking of which, company loyalty as a concept seems to be eroding, giving way to a new age of restlessness in the workplace. Of all the respondents to the State of Work in America survey, 29% claim to be actively looking for a new job, regardless of satisfaction with their current role. That number jumps to an astounding 50% among employees who make more than $100,000 annually.

So how is anyone supposed to find a satisfying long-term role when considering a job change? In our experience, following these steps can help ensure you land in just the right spot.

Capstone IT 2022 Team Retreat – Honoring Our Families’ Role in Continued Growth

Capstone IT 2022 Team Retreat – Honoring Our Families’ Role in Continued Growth

During difficult times, companies grow and adapt because they’ve remained true to their core values and tapped into the transformative power of their internal assets. If Capstone IT has persisted through challenges to achieve our goals so far this year, it’s in part because of our commitment to Servant Partnership™, an accomplishment that would be impossible without our exceptional team.

But great teamwork and execution can’t happen in a vacuum. That’s why, at our annual Capstone IT 2022 Team Retreat, we wanted to underscore the amazing support system that enables our every achievement: our employees and their families. It’s through the ongoing loyalty and encouragement of those we live and work with that make our achievements on the job possible, and we strive to make sure our culture and values reflect that truth.

Does It Feel Like There Is No Room for Advancement at Work? Here’s What to Do Next

Does It Feel Like There Is No Room for Advancement at Work? Here’s What to Do Next

If you feel like you’ve hit a wall on the job, you’re not alone. A Pew Research study found that one of the major reasons 33% of U.S. workers left their jobs in 2021 was because their employer provided no path for advancement. Stagnant jobs quickly lose their luster and the current job market (372k jobs were added and unemployment held at 3.6% in June) offers opportunities to professionals who want growth.

Naturally, more people will leave their jobs in a hot market, but the challenge is finding opportunities with genuine and lasting advancement. Not every job will give you that.

Here’s how to capitalize on the good fortune of the market and find jobs that develop your career in alignment with your goals. Plus, we’ll cover how working with the right IT staffing agencies can help when you feel there is no room for advancement at work.