We have built a carefully crafted portfolio of key vendor partnerships which allows us to bring what we consider the very best technology solutions to our customers. It’s also the same technology we use to run our own business.

Being a Microsoft Certified Partner is very important to us because it takes quality people to acquire that certification - it’s not about the revenue we generate for Microsoft.

We must hold a requisite number of Microsoft Certified Professionals on our staff and being such a professional entails many hours of study/practice, sitting hard to pass exams and then keeping that all up to date.

Although there are many Microsoft Partners worldwide, only a small percentage hold certifications in both systems and software development disciplines. While we’re understandably proud of this achievement, it’s also critical to the way we develop our services.

Isn’t gold better than silver? From our perspective, not really. To be a gold partner, you need either more staff or to be generating more revenue for Microsoft. In terms of the quality a partner can deliver, silver is equally as good as gold.

Datto Business Continuity protects us and our customers.

We chose Datto to look after our own critical data and systems after a long and torturous evaluation process that spanned multiple years and many vendors. It was only once we were satisfied with our installation that we started speaking to our customers about it.

Like many IT companies, we had run BackupExec for many years and it had delivered a sterling service. However, it had reached the stage where we considered it no longer fit-for-purpose based on our desired business continuity requirements.

We tried many different solutions over a three year period. Many were cloud-only and thus too slow. Some didn’t work as advertised. Some were too complex. Some were OK, but the pricing floored us (or had us laughing in disbelief). Some required a self-imposed disaster when we needed to recover back to our original equipment.

When we found and then tested Datto, we knew very quickly we had a winner. Yes, the costing model was different from what we had before, but it was within the realms of what we, smaller than all our customers, could afford.

The cost of zero downtime is only affordable by some of the largest companies. The cost of going from a poor/average backup system to a premium quality business continuity system isn’t that bad, especially when you consider it’s protecting your reputation.

We love doing Datto demos and nobody has ever been anything other than impressed with what it can do. Other than a small amount of your time, you’ve nothing to lose - get in touch and let us show you how business continuity can be done.

There’s a belief that phone conversations are dead and that even email has had its day. Both are very far from the truth.

What is dead with phone systems is having that box on the wall and handsets that all people ever do is dial numbers manually, or for the more advanced, enter a speed-dial number (that only one person in the company knows how to program).

We’ve been using 3CX since not long after its release in 2007. Tentatively at first, we made outbound calls using it and received our incoming calls to our existing system - both still using our traditional ISDN phone lines.

Skip forward to 2019 and we can barely remember having these ISDN lines and it’s great to no longer have the bills.

All our phone calls use VOIP, having ported our existing phone numbers to an internet provider. If we need more “lines”, it’s a simple click to upgrade and then downgrade later.

We have voice conferencing built-in, easy to use desktop applications for contact lists/seeing who’s calling and a truly slick mobile application which means even when we’re out, we’re still part of the phone system. 3CX allows us to shut our office during bad weather, all work from home and nobody can tell.

As for our customers, they’ve embraced this way of working too.

Being developers, we’ve also integrated 3CX into some bespoke line-of-business applications, saving customers money and giving them a competitive advantage. 10,000 calls per week anyone?