Granite Networks Brings Broad Expertise and Real Experience to IT Services

Blaine Tillander, Managing Director of Granite Networks, has helped this Royal Oak-based IT company grow the old-fashioned way – they’ve built relationships and earned referrals by gaining their clients’ trust and working hard to deliver technology services that meet every need. With a team of 12, they bring broad expertise and real experience to the table, but still feel small enough that clients know who they are calling. Tillander says, “We tend to punch above our weight in terms of our size versus service delivered.” 

The company, founded in 1998, works with a wide variety of organizations and has successfully become a business you can count on. Tillander’s role keeps the team, strategy, and the service model moving in the same direction, and he firmly believes that “stronger small businesses make for stronger communities, and that is good for everybody.” 

Focus caught up with Tillander, asking him about Granite’s managed services, specific areas of IT vulnerability for small businesses, and how they align their capabilities to a client’s goals: 

Granite Networks has been providing IT services and support for over 25 years. Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey.

My entrepreneurial journey is tied pretty closely to Granite’s story. The company was founded in 1998 by Paul Hogan and his previous business partner. When I joined Paul as an equal partner in 2014, the opportunity for me was to build on that foundation and keep growing the business in a thoughtful way. We were never trying to be the loudest company in the room; we were trying to be the one clients could count on. That’s still the goal. If we do our job right, clients spend time running their business, not worrying about IT, which is a much better use of everybody’s time. My Fortune 500 experience was a great education, but building a small company with a close-knit team has been far more challenging and far more rewarding. 

Granite Networks offers “Managed Services.” Explain how this can be especially useful for small businesses.

We offer one suite of Managed IT Services. Through our GranITe Works® program, we handle monitoring, help desk support, on-site support, cybersecurity, cloud administration, backup and recovery, and comprehensive consulting. That translates into fewer surprises, less downtime, and access to a level of IT support that would be impractical to build in-house. It also means leadership is not stuck playing accidental IT manager on top of everything else they already have going on. 

What are specific areas of vulnerability for a small business and how can these risks be mitigated?

Small businesses are vulnerable in a lot of the same ways larger companies are. They just have less margin for error. A lot of small business leaders assume they’re too small to be a target, and unfortunately the bad guys don’t share that opinion. The best way to reduce the risk is to be proactive. Strong identity protection, regular patching, secure backups, endpoint protection, employee training, access controls, and a real plan for what happens if something goes sideways all matter. At Granite Networks, we make security practical instead of turning it into a parade of fear and jargon. 

Explain “layering” and why it’s so important for security.

Security is really about layers. You have to assume every safeguard is going to fail at some point, so the goal is to make sure one problem does not become a full-blown disaster. No single tool is going to save the day by itself. If cybersecurity were that easy, my job would be a lot quieter. Multiple protections work in conjunction to create a moving target for bad actors to fight through. Things like endpoint protection, email filtering, multifactor authentication, patching, backups, training, firewalls, and live monitoring all play a role. Threats can come through people, devices, credentials, or software weaknesses, so a successful defense strategy has to cover accordingly. 

What do you do to keep your employees’ knowledge and skills at the forefront of technology?

Technology has always changed quickly, and current advancements are exponentially accelerating that process. If you stand still in this business (frankly, in any business), you are falling behind. We make sure our team has access to, and training on, the leading edge of that technology. We cover the cost of all training and certifications for our team, and both encourage and support them in following their own lead in selecting the learning channels they are most interested in. 

When working with clients, how does Granite Networks align technology with business goals?

We start with the business first and the technology second. Clients are not calling us because they want more software in their lives—they want to grow, operate more efficiently, reduce risk, serve customers better, and stop dealing with recurring headaches. Our job is to understand those goals and help build a technology environment that supports them. Sometimes that means recommending something new, and sometimes it means helping them simplify, clean up, or get more disciplined about what they already have. The point is that IT should enhance and drive the business, not limit it. 

You joined the SBAM Board of Directors a year ago. Tell us how SBAM’s current work is helping create a stronger small business environment in Michigan.

SBAM has been a great resource for me as I’ve navigated the minefield of building a business. In return, being able to contribute in a leadership role is an honor. Right now, the board is focused on some very real issues for Michigan business owners, things like health care affordability, useful training and development through SBAM Academy, and hands-on support through resources like the Small Business Support Hub. There’s plenty of work to do to help businesses start, grow, and hire. We’re working hard to improve Michigan’s standing as a favorable place for small business. I think that work matters, and it lines up with what we care about at Granite Networks. Stronger small businesses make for stronger communities, and that is good for everybody. 

By Bona Van Dis; originally published in SBAM’s July/August 2026 issue of FOCUS magazine

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