by Sali Earls
Bangor based Solet Ltd. offer a range of IT services to business, from disaster recovery to security audits, and from network mangement to support and maintenance. Solet's clients include car dealerships, Cadwalader's Ice Cream and Venture Wales.
Sali Earls spoke to Martin Pegler, Director of Solet Ltd., to find out more about the company.
What's the history of your
company?
Solet Ltd. is an IT Consulting, Network Management and Telecomms integration company based in Bangor, Gwynedd and was the result of a chance meeting between myself and my co-Director Ifan
Jones in the spring of 2003. We were both based in the Intec building in Bangor working for different companies and quickly gained a mutual understanding and respect for each other's abilities, attitudes
and drive.
When Ifan told me of plans by his current employer to separate the IT Networking Support into a new company run by him and asked me to join him I jumped at the chance to work with someone with the same ideals, who was totally open and I knew would put his heart and soul into the business. We both wanted to run a company that operated to the high standards of customer care, work ethic and diligence that we had always used in all of our prior employments.
There was enough overlap in our skill sets for either of us to cover the other, anything one didn't know we had only to ask the other for a direct answer, and with our thirst for knowledge we would expand the range of services we could offer our customers.
Consequently we incorporated Solet Ltd. on the 21st January 2005 and began trading on the 6th April 2005.
What unique products/services does your company provide?
Primarily a totally un-biased, honest and cost-saving approach to advising customers on the whole of their IT infrastructure, which includes telecomms hardware, all explained in a non-technical, down
to earth manner. We treat all our customers as if they were our best customer, we turn up when we say we're going to and we go the distance until their systems run as if they were our own.
Our main drive is the installation, configuration, administration and maintenance of networks in the true sense of the word where there are workstation machines and one or more servers. Once the benefits, like being able to centrally share (and backup) files and then selectively allow access based on the user, are explained and understood by the customer we then implement a solution. If we are installing a new server we recommend running Linux on it as it is, in most instances, free to the customer, is impervious to viruses written for Windows and easier to maintain, backup and restore.
The real beauty of Linux though is the wealth of other server based applications, again at no cost, that can then also be added to the same machine like an email server, web server, database server etc. More and more of our customers now have all their emails directly coming to and going out from a machine in their offices, they have complete control of the creation and deletion of user and group mailboxes and they continue to use their favourite email client, like Outlook, transparently. Unlike the usual POP3 mailbox, where emails are local to the workstation, all emails are stored on the server for ease of backup and a web-based email client is already configured for external access by remote workers.
As Broadband speeds increase and costs decrease more of our customers will also be able to host their web sites directly from their Linux based server in their offices.
Having been in the industry for a combined total of 30 years there isn't much that we can't support for a customer with an existing IT setup and we have many customers who run Microsoft's Windows based server applications, VLANs, VPNs, mainframes, CTI and bespoke hardware and software solutions.
What's been the key to your success?
We think it's the overall package of a pair of jargon free, friendly, honest guys who implement solutions that are free, tie in to any existing infrastructure, are future proof, enable group and remote
working and all with as little disruption to a customers' daily routine as possible. The fact that we, the owners of the company, are also the face of the company and have a reputation to uphold assures
customers; we prefer to be hands on and that will never change.
Also we aim to be the one-stop-shop for a customer where we will have the technical discussions with manufacturers of specialist hardware or bespoke software on their behalf. A very strong background in bespoke software development, data capture and process control enables us to, in most cases, fix problems on site with direction from the supplier. More importantly though it gives the customer leverage when we inform them that something they have been told by a supplier is either definitely not true or can easily be done.
What one piece of outside technology has benefited your company most?
Linux, most definitely, it enables us to offer solutions to SMEs that would otherwise be too costly for them to purchase and/or implement. We cannot stress enough how robust an operating system it is
and as a result allows us to provide a solution that we can install, configure and 'forget about'. We don't want to be re-called to a customers' site because of someone else's poor software; it only
frustrates the customer, casts us in a bad light and damages our reputation.
There is absolutely no need for any business to put up with constant server crashes and site visits for re-installs and the lost data and productivity that ensues, we prove this time and time again with our installs.
What one piece of advice would you give to start-up companies in your field?
Know what you sell, inside out, period! We see too many 'sales' people blab on about software or hardware that they only know a little about because they've been on a day's training course for it.
Worse still they haven't got the suite of IT skills necessary to install and configure a complete solution. If you sell a bespoke software package that allows concurrent users usage over the network you should know how to configure shared network drives or UNCs and DSNs for access to the data for mailmerge.
Our skill set is added to daily and we pride ourselves on its depth and breadth.
Where do you see your company going in the future?
Voice over IP (VoIP) is the next big thing in telecomms and we are now keyed up and positioned to offer commercial and, to continue the trend of 'open source', free alternatives, which are essentially
software PBX systems running on Linux servers. This will allow us to offer more of a complete IT solution that integrates what are currently two distinct systems, voice and data.
The aim is to reduce customer 'phone system' costs with a much smaller initial outlay, free calls, cheaper maintenance and, as these systems are geared toward 'in house configuration', less administration overhead.
On the 7th September we ran our first live 'open source day' where we demonstrated a Windows XP workstation transparently accessing shared Word documents and Excel Spreadsheets from a Linux server. We then demonstrated a laptop running Linux and using Open Office (the free alternative to Microsoft Office) to modify those documents that were then re-opened using Word and Excel without any loss of formatting or functionality. For us it's a case of educating businesses as to the free alternatives, showing you can move to open source piecemeal with no interoperability worries and we will be running more of these free open days in the future.
Find out more about Solet Ltd. at www.solet.co.uk.
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