As some of you will know, we have been working with Rural Link (now known as Lightwire) for a number of years. This led to us getting to know them and the related opportunities out there. IT Partners Group has now become a shareholder. I have joined the board and will be working with Murray and the team to grow the business. It is exciting times, with lots on the product roadmap now, and a commitment to broadband plans with no cap.
Google recently announced a new product: Google Drive –think cloud storage, just like DropBox, Microsoft and Apple’s iCloud service. Engaget has compared all four, you can see at a glance features, free and paid versions.
A few things have been happening accounting-wise at IT Partners. One of them was the formation of IT Partners Group Limited. I had a choice, should I setup a new entity in QuickBooks, or look at Xero? I then started thinking about how strategically Xero made much more sense.
I take the view that “legacy applications” hold back business much more than they ever realize. Legacy applications impede business for a number of reasons. Often it is around functionality, how the system is architected and the platform it runs on. These problems limit system and team effectiveness, resulting in higher costs and lower productivity.
We have moved most entities to Xero, and will update you with progress on the journey.
The UK government has done some interesting thinking on Design Principles for the web. Whilst they are spot on for digital design work, I think they deserve a wider audience, as both business and government could learn from them when thinking about their purpose.
A good example would be design principle number two: Do Less, which in summary is “Government should only do what only government can do. If someone else is doing it — link to it. If we can provide resources (like APIs) that will help other people build things — do that. We should concentrate on the irreducible core.”
I love working with focused companies that really understand where they add value and how they work with “partners” … if only there were more!
IT Partners prides itself on the team of network engineers that we have. We solve complex problems from connecting multiple sites all around NZ, to completely replacing the entire network infrastructure in a large retail environment; live!
One of the advantages of dealing with IT Partners is that we are vendor neutral, which enables us to put together networks based on multiple access technologies from Crown Fibre, Velocity, FX Networks, Telecom Wholesale and Rural Link to name a few. The benefits to our clients are one seamless network, speed, and the ability to use the lowest cost / best performance provider for each individual site – no more making compromises across the network.