Michael D. O'Keefe · OGS Group

Thirty years inside enterprise infrastructure.
A practice built around three decisions most companies make only once or twice.

OGS Group brings senior experience and vetted technology partners to enterprises and system integrators. We help address unstructured data problems, select the right customer platform, and build successful GSI Alliance programs. Strategic context for both buyer and integrator. Direct access to specialists. Outcome-based.

Schedule a conversation How does this apply to me?
3Practice areas, one principal
30+Years across enterprise IT & channels
3Execution partners on call
2Vetted technology partnerships
Start here

If any of these three scenarios apply to you, we should have a conversation.

01 — Data & risk

You don't know what's in your unstructured data — and you're about to find out the hard way.

A divestiture, cloud migration, rising costs and extended data storage lead times, or regulatory audit is forcing a reckoning with file shares, mailboxes, and SharePoint sprawl nobody's touched in a decade.

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02 — Customer platforms

You're evaluating a CCaaS or UCaaS platform — and every vendor is your new best friend.

The pitches blur together, your incumbent is fighting back, and you'd like an objective read from someone who isn't getting paid by the winner.

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03 — Alliances & GSIs

You have a product you want global system integrators to have in their portfolio but before you invest in an alliance program want to know what a successful journey looks like.

Whether you are an OEM or ISV, a start up, or an established company that would like to partner with any of the global system integrators, can you answer these questions: What expectations should my C-suite have internally? How long will it take? What are the pitfalls to avoid? Is my company's selling motion in alignment with what's important to a GSI? How do I build reseller and GSI channels distinct from each other?

See the practice

Execution at enterprise weight. OGS Group delivers results to Fortune 500 companies, mid market companies, and works in partnership with the largest system integrators. Our work and engagement scales through three established platforms — each chosen because their bench provides scale when you need it.

Practice 01

Unstructured data, defensibly classified.

For  CIOs · GCs · M&A leads · CISOs · Cloud architects · Storage Infrastrucuture Teams · CROs · Data Privacy Officers

Most enterprises don't have a data problem. They have an unstructured-data problem — petabytes of email, files, SharePoint, and shadow drives that nobody can confidently classify and nobody wants to be the one to delete.

That's fine until a transaction surfaces it. A divestiture demands clean separation of buyer vs. seller data. A cloud migration meets data-residency rules. A regulator asks for an audit trail that doesn't exist. Suddenly the thing nobody owned is on the critical path.

I help enterprise companies and system integrators get out of that corner — quickly, defensibly, and without re-platforming the enterprise. At-scale classification work performed in partnership with Congruity360; leveraging a proven methodology and modular approach to address what's on a critical path and in scope.

Typical engagements

  • Divestiture & carve-out data separation
  • Cloud migration readiness & cleanup
  • Regulatory & audit-readiness reviews
  • Sensitive-data discovery & classification
  • Records retention & defensible deletion
  • M&A diligence on data risk exposure
Two short briefs unpack this further — one for CIOs (operational & economic value), one for CISOs (regulatory & IP risk). Read them →
Talk through your situation
Practice 02

CCaaS & UCaaS, objectively chosen.

For  VPs of CX · CIOs · IT directors · Contact-center leaders · Network Solution Architects

Every contact-center and unified-comms vendor has a deck that says the same five things. Every one of them is the "leader." The buyer's actual problem isn't information — it's too much of it, all paid for by the people pitching.

I run platform selections the way a fiduciary advisor runs a portfolio review: requirements first, vendors second, and the recommendation grounded in operational outcomes — not vendor margins. Access to the Avant Pathfinder ecosystem means I can pull real cost and reference data on every credible provider without making a sales call to do it.

Whether you're replacing an incumbent, consolidating after a merger, buying your first cloud platform, or trying to figure out the best way migrate Teams in a hybrid environment with a CSP's SIP trunks, you get a recommendation that holds up in a board review and a solution that delivers what was promised.

Typical engagements

  • CCaaS / UCaaS platform selection
  • Contact-center modernization roadmaps
  • Vendor-agnostic RFP design & evaluation
  • Incumbent-vs-replacement business cases
  • Post-merger comms platform consolidation
  • Cost benchmarking via Avant Pathfinder
An 11-page Point of View unpacks the full evaluation framework — architecture, vendor philosophies, the decision model, and the economics behind it. Read it →
Talk through your shortlist
Practice 03

GSI alliances that actually move.

For  Alliance leaders · ISVs · Channel Leadership · OEMs · Sales Leadership · CEOs · CROs · COOs

Landing inside a Global System Integrator is not a logo slide. It's a multi-year political project, and most vendor alliance teams burn the budget building relationships with the wrong people in the wrong towers.

I've spent over a decade in those rooms — on the product company side, the channel side, and inside the global system integrator's ecosystem. I know what matters to global system integrators how to align a solution to become part of their active client delivery programs. GSI Alliance programs, at scale, are incredibly beneficial, but what it takes to get there is important to understand up front. Don't decide to invest in a global system integrator alliance program, without understanding the executive commitment that it takes to be successful and the length of the journey.

The work is part diagnostic, part translation, part executive coaching. The output is a partner motion your CRO can defend in a QBR — not another logo on a strategy deck.

Typical engagements

  • GSI alliance strategy & positioning
  • Co-sell motion design & activation
  • Partner-led pipeline development
  • Solution alignment to active GSI programs
  • Alliance team structure & executive engagement model
  • Channel ecosystem entry & expansion
Talk through your motion
Selected alliances

The wood behind the arrow.

The practices above only work if the delivery infrastructure behind them is real. I represent two companies — chosen deliberately, not opportunistically — that let me bring vetted technology to enterprise problems. Here's who they are, and why I represent them.

Congruity360
The company

Congruity360 is the company behind Classify360, an unstructured data management and security platform that discovers, classifies, and remediates data at petabyte scale across on-prem, cloud, and SaaS environments using content-level ML and GenAI.

Why I represent them

Their platform is uniquely engineered for unstructured data problems at scale — delivering the accuracy and chain-of-custody evidence needed to satisfy DOJ and other oversight requirements, protect retained IP, avoid millions in unnecessary migration costs, compress TSAs, and produce the defensible inventory and risk-remediation artifacts CISOs and CIOs need for boards and regulators. Most data-classification tools handle controlled environments well and quietly stop working at petabyte scale. Classify360 doesn't.

congruity360.com
ATC & Avant Communications
The companies

ATC is an independent technology advisory firm focused on cloud communications — providing vendor-agnostic counsel on UCaaS, CCaaS, voice networks, and customer experience optimization for mid-market and enterprise clients. ATC's access to Avant Communications' Pathfinder platform gives clients real visibility into every credible provider in those markets, with the analytics and verified transaction data needed to make decisions that don't depend on a single vendor's pitch.

Why I represent them

I chose to join ATC as a Principal because their independent consulting model — combined with Avant's broad, competitive access to all top-tier UCaaS and CCaaS providers — is what makes objective, data-driven platform selection actually possible. Most "vendor-neutral" selection processes aren't; they're funneled through whichever provider sponsors the engagement. ATC's structure and Avant's Pathfinder catalog let me run selections the way they should be run: requirements first, vendors second, recommendation grounded in operational outcomes.

4atc.com · goavant.net
Briefs & Points of View

Framing the Issues: for the divestiture data separation and platform-selection challenges.

Three briefs developed for two of the practice areas above to provide examples of how I think about these problems on paper. Free to download — no email address required. Schedule a conversation if you'd like to know more.

Divestiture Series · CIO

Managing Unstructured Data Risk in Complex Divestitures

"In complex divestitures, infrastructure separation is rarely the primary constraint. Unstructured data becomes the dominant execution bottleneck."

  • Why 80–90% of enterprise content surfaces as the bottleneck
  • Four-phase Discover / Classify / Segment / Control model
  • Illustrative 3PB value model: ~$7.5M impact, 3–5x ROI year one
2 pages For CIOs PDF
Download brief Divestiture Series · CISO

Reducing Regulatory, Insider and IP Risk in Complex Separations

"Divestitures represent peak exposure events. Without structured classification and minimization, unstructured data becomes the primary vector of risk."

  • Primary risk vectors: IP leakage, PII exposure, cross-entity access
  • Structured Data Intelligence Model with audit-ready evidence package
  • ~50–70% reduction in manual review effort vs. directory-based separation
2 pages For CISOs PDF
Download brief Point of View · Communications

What Most Buyers Miss in CCaaS and UCaaS Evaluations

"A communications decision is no longer just a platform purchase. It is a choice about operating model."

  • Architecture, system of control, integration, AI, and support — the five decisions that matter
  • Vendor philosophies for Teams, Zoom, Webex, RingCentral, Genesys, NICE, Five9, and more
  • An economic model that goes deeper than per-seat pricing
11 pages For executive buyers PDF
Download brief

More to come.   Cloud migration, GSI alliance strategy, AI in customer operations.

Michael D. O'Keefe
About the principal

Three decades in the rooms where strategy meets execution.

Michael D. O'Keefe founded OGS Group after over three decades working across enterprise infrastructure ISVs, OEMs, and telecommunication companies. Whether it was delivering results via direct sales efforts, as a sales management executive, via partner ecosystems or through global system integrator alliance programs, his focus has always been on improving client outcomes. He sees an advantage in working with clients who value getting to the right answer faster.

He has built his consulting practice around three focused areas: helping address the unstructured data problem in large enterprises and with their global system integrator partners; introducing objectivity into customer-platform selections; and advising clients on how to build successful GSI alliance programs. OGS Group addresses the unstructured data problem with a best-in-class solution; the customer-platform decision with access to subject matter experts who provide objective, data-driven recommendations; and the GSI alliance practice with lessons learned over 12 years of building alliance programs at four companies.

Based inTolland, Connecticut EngagementsGlobal Past livesCongruity360 · Pure Storage · VCE · Oracle · Spirent · EMC ·