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Company: N-able Inc, Boston, MA
Nomination Submitted by: Firesource 360
Company Description: N-able fuels IT services providers with powerful software solutions to monitor, manage, and secure their customers’ systems, data, and networks. Built on a scalable platform, we offer a secure infrastructure and tools to simplify complex ecosystems, and resources to navigate evolving IT needs. N-able has been the recipient of numerous awards for product innovation and security excellence.
Nomination Category: Information Technology Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Information Technology Department of the Year
 Nomination Title: A Herculean Effort: Fully Operational on Day One
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated information technology organization's achievements since the beginning of 2020, OR an essay of up to 650 words? (Choose one):
An essay of up to 650 words
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video:
- If you are providing an essay of up to 650 words, place it in the following space:
Total 614 words used.
The Challenge
In September 2020, six months into the global pandemic, SolarWinds, Inc. initiated activities to spin off its $350 million Managed Services Provider business. The newly formed entity, N-able, would launch in an IPO targeted for July 2021. With an aggressive timeline in place, this was a tall order for the IT department as they needed to build a new IT organization and implement a fully autonomous IT infrastructure, systems and data integrations to support the 1,300 people and operations the new publicly traded entity would require. [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION]
Cloud-Centric Separation
To meet the legal requirements for N-able as a publicly traded company, the foundational underpinnings of the company’s IT infrastructure and product engineering had to be separated. Key elements of this effort included full and comprehensive voice and data network separation; migration of the physical data center to a new Azure Computing environment; disjoining, upgrading, and patching over 1,300 user workstations; splitting software code and binary repositories; and standing up new software build agents.
[REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] With little time, the partially staffed N-able Infrastructure and Operations team rose to the challenge, effectively working around the clock and onboarding new external resources to meet the IPO deadline.
Publicly Traded Company
In addition to separating the fundamental corporate infrastructure and end-user assets, the IT department was tasked with building and implementing entirely new platforms. To support the financial reporting of a publicly traded company, a complete finance ecosystem (general ledger, procurement, forecasting and planning, tax and treasury) was created. Additionally, the human resources ecosystem was built to manage the employee lifecycle of recruiting, onboarding, compensation, and benefits.
To fully integrate all these new systems, a modern Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) was implemented. Over 45 new integrations were built, tested, and deployed by the IPO date. Voice services were modernized by implementing Cisco’s cloud-based UC (Unified Communications) platform. IT service management was enabled by implementing a new IT service management system, Jira Service Management.
To support the emerging data management and analytics needs, a new enterprise data management platform was built. Leveraging the latest developments in large data management, a new “data lake house” was built on an open data management architecture. This combined the flexibility, cost-efficiency, and scale of data lakes with the security and structured data of traditional data warehouses, enabling business intelligence (BI) and machine learning (ML) on all data.
Finally, three new physical offices were built, equipped with new networking environments and state of the art AV equipment.
Modernize the Workplace
Beyond separating and building the IT capabilities to run the new company, it was critically important to do so in a modern, scalable, and secure manner. For enhanced threat detection, scanning and data loss prevention, the IT department rolled out Microsoft Defender. User device management and patching for both Windows and Mac were migrated to Microsoft Intune. Device profiles, Palo Alto firewalls, and Azure Computing environments were built with adherence to CIS level 2 “defense-in-depth” standards—intended for environments where security is paramount.
For custom-built IT systems, new build processes were implemented leveraging Azure DevOps. SAML single sign on (SSO) centralized and strengthened user authentication on the 42 most critical systems. Finally, multi-factor authentication (MFA) was implemented for user domain access.
- In bullet-list form, provide a brief summary (up to 150 words) of up to ten (10) of the chief accomplishments of the nominated information technology organization since the beginning of 2020:
Total 148 words used.
- Within 10 months of initiating the effort, N-able began trading on the NYSE on July 19, 2021
- On day one, N-able was fully operational, executing automated and integrated go-to-market, support, financial, HR, and product engineering workloads on completely new, modern, scalable, and secure solutions.
- Delivered 73 discrete projects (36 infrastructure and engineering, 37 application and data management)
- Developed 39 new Boomi-based system integrations
- Implemented 42 single sign on integrations
- Deployed 6 new financial systems (NetSuite, Coupa, FXall, Gtreasury, Workiva, Anaplan)
- Migrated 1,300 user devices to N-able domain
- Implemented new Microsoft Teams-based A/V systems to 36 meeting rooms
- “The execution, quality and business capability delivered by the newly formed N-able IT department exceeded the expectations of the company and the board of directors and immediately allowed N-able to focus on growing the business and serving our over 10,000 MSP partners.” – John Pagliuca, CEO N-able, Inc.
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