FOR the last three years, North East professional services business SITS Group has made a big deal of the fact they focus entirely on the craft of virtualisation.
So when the company saw a gap in the market worth filling, they decided to set up a sister company to handle it rather than lose focus on their day job.
As a virtualisation specialist, SITS allows companies to reduce the number of physical servers it operates, filling up servers more effectively while also storing data “in the cloud”. However, it decided there was also a desire among businesses for a specialist who could actually supply an efficient network to connect companies to their data.
That’s why SITS Group commercial director Phil Cambers handpicked former ITPS head of unified communications Kevin Almond to head up a new company called Pivotal Networks. As well as Almond, Pivotal features a team of four SITS directors, and will be based at the Quorum Business Park. It aims to deliver “high performance LAN, WAN and wireless networks together with highly secured networking environments”.
Almond said: “Pivotal is plugging the gap between the client and what SITS does. The technology that SITS delivers can’t really work without an adequate network.
“We’re hoping to facilitate this through wired or wireless connectivity, enabling connection with home, mobile and office workers.”
Pivotal is already building up an order book made up of existing SITS clients and new clients, and plans to hire another three members of staff in the next year.
Almond said: “You’ve got providers that have modelled themselves as a one-stop shop but don’t necessarily specialise.
“They’re very good at dealing with a lot of products, but what Pivotal has been launched to do is to follow the same line that SITS does with virtualisation by focusing on just one area.
“We’ve got a healthy advanced order book.
“We’ve got customers outside the SITS customer base and we expect to develop quite quickly.
“We’re obviously still in a recession, but some customers are looking to renew infrastructure that they didn’t renew three years ago.
“There are a number of workers out there now using Blackberries, iPhones and various tablet devices, and you want to make sure your infrastructure is secure.
“We’ve got the ability to deliver a solid reliable network with a resilient power supply.”
He added: “The IT networking industry is ever-changing at a very fast pace. The high demand for converged data and voice networks, remote access and a greater emphasis on work-life balance have forced businesses to seek new and innovative networking solutions, in order to support these growing business needs. New technology allows us to underpin these demands with the necessary infrastructure.”
SITS Group’s Phil Cambers said the company had been approached by customers to deliver networking, prompting it to set up Pivotal.
He said: “We have seen a rapid shift towards a more boutique offering demanded by our clients.
“We never wanted to be everything to everyone. SITS stands for Specialist IT Services, and that’s how we intend to move forward; expanding only into areas that we can provide expert knowledge in.”