Aaron Leiberman – ConRes IT Solutions

The call came while Aaron Leiberman was attending an industry conference in Las Vegas for partners and customers.

A ConRes client had been hit with a ransomware attack, and he and his team of solution architects and engineers were urgently needed on-site to guide incident response and recovery efforts.

Leaving the conference immediately, Leiberman, the chief technology officer for ConRes, gathered more than 30 of his 70-plus member team, along with top tech partners. They worked days, nights and weekends for more than two months to restore the customer’s infrastructure, implementing network and security solutions to strengthen their overall security posture.

Whether it takes part or all his team, Leiberman says the goal is ensuring customers can quickly adapt to change, productively and affordably—and without compromising quality. That approach—of merging long-standing industry relationships with his staff’s expertise—has been the key to the company’s success, he notes. It’s also what he enjoys most about his role.

“Technology isn’t just about evolving businesses or solving IT challenges; it’s also about relationships, earned trust and establishing true partnerships where you’re providing solutions as quickly and earnestly as possible,” Leiberman says. “When we engage with a customer, we sell what we can do by bringing our experience and talent into the room and giving good advice.”

Earned trust

Founded in 1962 and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, ConRes started its business renting test equipment for use in sectors from aerospace and defense to health care and research.

A family and women-owned company, it now has seven locations around the U.S.—as well as offices in Asia, Canada and Europe—to help companies design, procure, implement and support custom IT solutions.

“By combining top-level manufacturer partnerships, dedicated professional services and a state-of-the-art Integration and Logistics Center, we bring value by delivering end-to-end solutions across cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity, data center, DevOps and helping organizations with their digital transformation,” explains ConRes MarCom and Field Marketing Manager Mark Boisvert.

Boisvert and Leiberman have worked together for more than a decade, and Leiberman’s detailed and collaborative approach to ConRes’ customers has always impressed Boisvert.

“He’s widely respected as a trusted advisor,” Boisvert says. “When Aaron says something, it’s the gold standard.”

Noting the need to stay ahead of the technology curve, Leiberman says his team has amassed more than 600 professional certifications. That’s helped them remain nimble during the COVID-19 pandemic, as customers around the world shift their workforces to remote, developing long-term strategies for the new modern workplace.

In fact, at the time of Leiberman’s interview with Toggle in January, ConRes was already working to address a security breach at one of its European clients.

“It’s all about making an impact, and helping customers solve business problems with technology,” he says. “I expect everyone to come in every day and make a big impact across the organization and how we work with customers. Technology changes every day, but relationships last for decades.”

Quick changes needed

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, Leiberman worried customers would cut back on tech spending and initiatives. Instead, he’s found ConRes to be in even higher demand as customers shift to remote or hybrid working models.

To help customers transform their workforce, Leiberman and his team quickly built a digital transformation practice, encompassing everything from collaboration and messaging tools to cloud offerings and cybersecurity. The goal, he says, was to help customers create a more flexible and unified user workspace experience—while driving productivity and maintaining a good security posture.

“Collaboration, identity and endpoint management, coupled with a new modern desktop—all working more seamlessly—are the foundational elements to workspace transformation,” Leiberman adds.

Other customers are boosting on-premises or hybrid infrastructure, adding server capacity and protected connections for employees working remotely. WAN is also getting overhauled with SD-WAN offerings to help build secure connections to the public cloud.

For others, it’s about migrating certain workloads to the cloud, implementing DevOps or other measures that improve speed and scale. Whatever the need, Leiberman and his team work closely with the ConRes customer to design and implement solutions.

“We’re not a one size fits all,” Leiberman says. “We essentially bridge that gap between the manufacturer and the customer. We do a really good job of helping the customer pull this all together. Our subject matter experts (SMEs) have years of experience in designing solutions and educating our customers. We’re then the boots on the ground that get the job done.”

Always involved

Wearing those tech boots has appealed to Leiberman since the early days of the digital revolution.

A native of Portland, Maine, Leiberman grew up more immersed in apparel than tech at the family owned clothing stores started by his grandfather. It may not have taught him tech, but it instilled the work ethic and customer service skills he brings to ConRes every day.

Leiberman earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1997 from Bryant University in Rhode Island. After graduating, he began consulting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working with firms in the Boston area and “learning from the ground up.”

As the internet boom grew, Leiberman was also learning through experience, guided by a founder of the firm who encouraged him to be self-motivated and self-sufficient.

When ConRes came calling in 2005, he readily accepted the offer to become an engineer. In 2009, he earned his Cisco CCIE certification—one of the hardest industry certifications to obtain.

“I’m very confident with what I do, comfortable chatting with customers —I’ve been doing this a long time,” Leiberman says. “We’re on different sides of the table, but we’re all doing the same thing. We have the same challenges we’re trying to solve.”

Continuing education

Over time, Leiberman gravitated to networks and cybersecurity. In 2019, he was named chief technologist at ConRes, where he was responsible for reshaping the entire professional services organization. Within months, he’d put together a plan to reorganize the group—to address specific company areas with individual leaders and teams.

“By aligning our teams with the challenges at hand—and the needed solutions—we were able to evolve faster and support our customers better,” he says.

In December 2019, Leiberman was named CTO, capping what he calls “a nice progression,” built on the advice he got starting out on the IT field as well as the relationships he’s built at ConRes.

Overseeing a team of 70-plus engineers and architects—and responsible for the company’s technology direction—Leiberman admits the new role has been a challenging one. Luckily, the upshot—giving customers the solutions they need to embrace digital transformation—is equally rewarding.

“I pride myself on being a trusted advisor to our customers—and having the best team working alongside me,” Leiberman says. “We need to listen to the needs of customers at all levels—and give them the right solutions. I was able to put a lot of skin in the game. And it’s worked out well.”