ZAG Technical Services Partners with Organic Producers

ZAG Technical Services was founded in 1998 with a focus on engineering and service delivery of technology, driven by the needs of each client individually.

“At the time, there was a need in the region to provide more customized technology support,” said Greg Gatzke, president of the San Jose, CA-based company. “In 2006, we began to refine our business based on the knowledge we built around the agriculture and fresh produce industry. Today, fresh produce companies make up around 80 percent of our customers, highlighting our drive to protect the nation’s food supply.”

Greg Gatzke, President, ZAG Technical Services

Joe Foos, ZAG’s development director, noted the company offers a large and experienced team of certified IT professionals who understand the increased compliance challenges of monitoring, tracking, and documenting everything organic farmers do to ensure organic certification standards are being met.

“In 2006, we began to refine our business based on the knowledge we built around the agriculture and fresh produce industry. Today, fresh produce companies make up around 80 percent of our customers, highlighting our drive to protect the nation’s food supply.” – Greg Gatzke

“With frequently disparate systems for the field, the plant, and the boardroom, organic producers need seamless technology integration and ease of use, without sacrificing cybersecurity protections,” Foos said. “No individual product or platform vendor can offer the strategic view perspective that ZAG has gained over 22 years of experience, helping some of the largest and most successful organic producers in the country grow and scale their operations.”

Joe Foos, Development Director, ZAG Technical Services

As one of the few IT managed service providers (MSP) in the world that have passed the stringent MSP Alliance audit verification process, ZAG leverages experience gained supporting more than 10,000 monitored technology assets every day, for the benefit of every client it works with.

ZAG has several successful organic producer clients based in California (who also have locations across the West and in Mexico).

“No individual product or platform vendor can offer the strategic view perspective that ZAG has gained over 22 years of experience, helping some of the largest and most successful organic producers in the country grow and scale their operations.” – Joe Foos

“Some of our clients offer a mix of conventional and organic produce and entered the organic market through acquisitions over the past few years,” Foos said. “Others have always been leaders in the organic produce industry and simply needed higher-level expertise for strategic project planning, assessments, and daily operations.”

Organic fresh produce organizations have an increasing amount and greater complexity of compliance requirements these days, and ZAG’s approach to the market has been to offer solutions that allow them to focus on their core business instead of trying to keep up with constantly changing technology demands.

ZAG does this by preventing unexpected downtime and enabling true operational resiliency in the event of an incident instead of simply trying to react faster or apply more resources to a problem after it has occurred.

“When our organic produce clients can withstand power outages, internet disruptions, equipment failures, and cyberattacks, we prove our value in minutes instead of days,” Foos said.

ZAG’s mission is “enabling our clients to succeed,” and at the core of this mantra are the partnerships with clients that help move their businesses forward.

“When our organic produce clients can withstand power outages, internet disruptions, equipment failures, and cyberattacks, we prove our value in minutes instead of days.” – Joe Foos

“If it doesn’t enable success, why would we do it?” Gatzke noted. “That philosophy helps us guide decisions around technology implementation for our clients in all industries, but especially in the fresh and organic produce business, where margins are slim and uptime is crucial to success.”

“Over the last two years when so many of our clients have faced challenges related to the supply chain, labor shortages, and the pandemic, we’ve realized that being true partners means more than checking a box or delivering the bare minimum,” Gatzke said. “We’re excited about being the kind of partners that brainstorm with our clients to solve challenges they’re facing and only recommending investments that make the most sense for the business. We’re also excited to continue delivering solutions and education that [bring] cybersecurity to the forefront.”

Right now, the main—and continuing—challenge across all businesses is the increase of cybercrime. Across the board, ZAG is seeing more attacks, more ways that criminals are accessing the network, and more companies that aren’t taking these threats seriously.

“Over the last two years when so many of our clients have faced challenges related to the supply chain, labor shortages, and the pandemic, we’ve realized that being true partners means more than checking a box or delivering the bare minimum.” – Greg Gatzke

“Going into 2022, the threats will continue to grow if businesses neglect to see themselves as technology companies,” Gatzke said. “This is especially true in a lot of companies within fresh produce who need to remain up and running.”

He believes strongly that there’s an opportunity for fresh produce companies to embrace technology as a competitive advantage that sets them apart.

“Laying a foundation for that technology to be used securely is an opportunity for growth,” Gatzke said. “Of course, as we look towards technology as a competitive advantage, we all know that defense wins championships. Therefore, we must never take our eye off the focus on security.”

In 2022, Gatzke sees ZAG as uniquely situated to support the ever-growing needs of the agriculture manufacturers within organic produce and beyond.

“Our goal in 2022 is to share the knowledge we have gained and support more organizations as they address their security needs and ultimately opt for the path of turning IT into a competitive advantage for their organization,” Gatzke said.