Tech To Watch: Profiles

ZSL Inc.

Founded in 1995, ZSL, based in Edison, N.J., is a midmarket IT outsourcing, applications, replacement technology, mobile computing, enterprise 2.0 computing, DW/BI solutions, managed services, virtualization, MS Dynamics and QA and testing service.

Shiv Kumar, executive vice president, said that business is increasing 30 to 40 percent year over year for a variety of reasons.

Fortuitously, the company shifted into different verticals instead of keeping its focus in the banking and finance industry; big-league clients include CapitalOne, Citigroup, Wachovia and the troubled Lehman Brothers. With expansion into other verticals such as health care, pharma and telecom, Kumar said ZSL has not experienced a big impact because of the current decline in the finance sector.

Collaborative growth is another key growth driver. ZSL's "Get IT Together" partnership model is aimed at providing supplemental and added-value services for systems integrators, VARs and solution providers. Kumar said that roughly one-third of ZSL revenue is derived from this collaborative model, which has been in place for the past six to seven years, and has 60 participating partners globally.

In addition to working with the usual suspects, such as HP, IBM, Microsoft and Sun, ZSL also has been actively looking for and adding new vendors during the past several years. Kumar said that the company has signed four or five new and emerging vendors in the last year.

"The midmarket is always looking for superior tech products, so we constantly look to add new emerging partners in our portfolio with a cost-effective licensing implementation model," he said.

ZSL also has found that significant growth has been achieved by investments in a tech engineering workforce, such as hiring new employees and sponsoring certifications.

For the remaining part of the year, ZSL plans to further its business globally in unified communications, virtualization, green IT and mobile and wireless emerging technologies, Kumar said, using its partnership program, adding new vendors and putting in more time and investment in its research and development initiatives.