Managed IT and Cybersecurity Services for Mid-Market and Enterprise Organizations

Ascend Technologies is an IT management and consulting firm that combines managed IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and cloud services for mid-market and enterprise organizations. The company took its current form in 2019 through the merger of West Monroe's managed services business with Gratia, Inc., backed by private equity firm M/C Partners, and headquarters sit in downtown Chicago. Client work concentrates in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, legal, accounting, insurance and education, where uptime and regulatory obligation both carry weight.

Delivery is organized around a staffed security operations center that runs continuous monitoring and investigates threats around the clock, rather than forwarding alerts for the customer to triage. Managed detection and response pairs that monitoring with threat intelligence and incident response, while vulnerability management adds recurring scanning, testing and patch management to close identified weaknesses. Surrounding services cover penetration testing, risk assessment, identity protection and MFA, email security, next-generation firewall perimeter management, and security awareness training. Virtual CISO engagements supply governance direction for organizations without in-house security leadership.

The portfolio spans a wider footprint than most security specialists, because the same team also runs service desk, Microsoft 365 and Copilot deployment, Salesforce and HubSpot implementation, application development and a managed private data center. That breadth is a product of sustained acquisition, including the 2020 addition of MSSP Infogressive, Switchfast and Stratosphere's managed IT division in 2021, Peters & Associates in 2022 and Edafio Technology Partners in 2024. Published figures cite over 600 protected organizations and a decade of CRN MSP 500 Elite 150 recognition.