Seeing ICT is believing, says Gardner Systems

Clients do like to see their proposed IT solutions in action. Merseyside has lacked a purpose-built facility that can combine the three interdependent elements of software, hardware and network - until now. Gardner Systems' new £200,000 ICT Centre of Excellence, in Liverpool, will demonstrate bespoke IT systems working at their best for the company's local, regional and UK customers. As a gesture of regeneration goodwill, Gardner Systems is also opening up the solutions centre to its competitors.

Blue-chip corporations with multi-million-pound turnovers are used to turning to 23-year-old, Wavertree-based, Gardner Systems Plc for reliable and innovative ICT solutions.

However, they tend to ask two questions, explains project manager, Paul Stringfellow. “The first is “Will your recommended solution work for me?” The second is “Can you, Gardner Systems, an SME, service a company like us, 50 times your size?”

The answers are now, Yes and Yes we will prove it to your satisfaction and beyond in our solutions centre.

Until now, the main option to show the workability of a system has been to take prospective clients to see similar installations at work with co-operative earlier clients. The downside is that it is seldom possible to bring the exact software, hardware and network specifications together in the same place.

By contrast, Gardner”s new centre will bring together contemporary technology from, among others, Microsoft, IBM and NetApp.

One of Gardner's chief fortes developed over many years is in using the well-proven building blocks of industry leaders and combining them creatively to deliver specific solutions.

“We don't invent the processes but we have developed a “Core to Edge” business model that adds real value where the client benefits are far greater than the sum of the technical parts. In other words, we don't serve plain vanilla, off-the-peg solutions,” adds Paul.

One important reason for this approach is Gardner's experience of users that have benefited from proprietary solutions while they were a relatively large customer, served by a hungry, small supplier, often becoming vulnerable if a sudden takeover leaves them as a small customer of a larger, more remote, supplier.

“We have always believed that by taking off-the-shelf technology and then adding our expertise in delivering highly-customised solutions, users have the ultimate fall-back that there are many providers they could turn to out there if things ever went wrong,” he adds.

Nevertheless, it has been impractical for clients to travel to Microsoft's UK headquarters in Reading, or even IBM, in Manchester, to test-ride a tailored solution.

“Launching the new Wavertree centre means that we can now, firstly, listen carefully to clients and understand what they tell us they need. Secondly, we can provide them with a proposal that precisely meets their objectives. But thirdly, we are now able to say, “We will mock it up for you”.

“The beauty of the centre in practice is that we can take customers who initially scratch their heads when trying to understand new concepts and prove it to them by simply moving next door. The general reaction we have had is, “Fantastic, that's exactly what we have been looking for.”

It is fitting that a Merseyside regeneration initiative has also benefited from one of Merseyside's regeneration advantages. “We felt that this project would attract keen support from the ICT Invest Fund, and so it has proved,” says Paul.

The fund has provided £25,000 towards the development. This ties in well with other schemes that put local SMEs on a level playing field with big corporates in ICT procurement discounts.

“The centre is now so important for regional business growth we have made it our policy that it will be available to not only IT users coming through Chambers of Commerce and sector organisations, such as MERIT, but also non-Gardner customers and, indeed, our competitors.

“Innovation and enterprise is good for everybody!”

www.gardnersystems.co.uk

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i-techpartner web portal shares great new EU ideas

Now it's your turn. June's i-techpartner Academy has already seen dozens of Merseyside budding entrepreneurs forging valuable new acquaintances. As the momentum builds towards pan-European opportunities, you are invited to profile even modest, early ideas.

Welcome to a web dating service with a serious difference. The i-techpartner portal, with RADAR functionality, is already swiftly matching the Northwest's original thinkers with funders, supporters and professional services keen to take great ideas to European markets, and perhaps far beyond.

i-techpartner is a two-year-long, €3 million EU project carefully designed to mature promising technologies, ahead of an international innovation summit in late 2008.

It has already generated practical results. A June Northwest i-techpartner Academy at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus, saw 33 enterprises and researchers showcasing cutting-edge concepts to an audience of 120 investors, academics, business and technology experts, plus other SMEs keen to partner good ideas at an early stage.

A survey on the day revealed that those taking part had on average already made five new contacts. Of these, three to four were thought well worth pursuing. Realistically, one to two are expected to lead to positive collaborations. This is a very successful hit rate - the Academy event itself could well spawn some 50 new collaborative relationships.

But the partnership programme is for all would-be Northwest innovators. You can access RADAR by going to www.i-techpartner.eu

This is a powerful opportunity to market yourself and your ideas. Conversely, you can search for technical requests where you think you have an answer. You may want finance - or someone to finance. Or, you may be looking for a person, or people, sharing similar ideas.

AIMES Marketing Manager, Marie Mitchell, expects mushrooming potential for this pan-EU initiative. “We expect i-techpartner to generate some interesting projects, and hopefully, deals that will benefit the Northwest economy,” she predicts.

AIMES (the University of Liverpool's Advanced Internet Methods and Emergent Systems Centre), along with Merseyside ICT, is the prime i-techpartner mover in England's Northwest.

As the tactical and strategic links grow between both individuals and entire regions, from Scandinavia and western Europe, across Rhône-Alpes to Central Macedonia and the Southern Great Plains of Hungary, a widening series of events is planned.

A Spring 2008 UK Forum will focus on e-services, followed by a pan-EU summit in late 2008, where advanced developments will be presented to a serious panel of business venture capitalists.

Meanwhile, i-techpartner keys very well with Northwest regeneration, says Steve Smith, Merseyside ICT Sector Director and Chairman of the AIMES Steering Committee. “This was an excellent event,” he comments. “It is exactly the right sort of activity that AIMES can excel at! We were very impressed and are keen to work very closely with AIMES and the i-techpartner team to do much more.”

www.i-techpartner.eu

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3D networking takes new-start Evolve to national success

Three years ago, wife and husband team, Michelle and Stephen Helsby, had an ambitious idea. Today, persistent promotion has taken them to blue-chip audiences - and won them the “Best New Business in Liverpool” award.

When Stephen Helsby first looked at 3D Studio Max software, he knew he had the roots of a winning business.

His problem was learning to use the programme from scratch. “Googling' led him to a website tutorial forum. Without hesitation, he posted “poor” work, asking for help and comments. Within a year he was a site moderator.

Then Bionic trawled the site searching for talent. The London-based agency spotted Stephen and asked him to use his photo-realistic 3D architectural representations to back a £60 million-plus PFI (Private Finance Initiative) bid by Miller Construction to build six Newham schools.

The result was so successful that Bionics has made Evolve its preferred supply partner for similar blue-chips, including the major Laing O'Rourke Construction Group.

Meanwhile, Michelle joined a variety of networking groups in Liverpool and her persistence has led to work in Spain and Portugal, as well as talks covering a PFI tender for Alder Hey Children's Hospital.

“We realised that combining tireless promotion and attention to fine detail on each job was the only way to win more work,” says Michelle, who has leapt from 10 years experience as a practising solicitor to full-time Mum and then back to work promoting Stephen's creative skills.

“After trailing around architects practices and design agencies, we realised that to compete with a sustainable business meant we had to take our quality, and the perception of our business, to a new and much higher level.

“My passion is building relationships with the right business people and prospective clients. In the past two and a half years, I have combined my role as a Mum with extensive networking and a vast array of courses and seminars to develop my financial, business development, PR and marketing skills.”

To start Evolve, Stephen brought his 17 years of experience as a qualified design engineer and a vast knowledge of 3D modelling and combined it with endless hours spent on his passion for accurate, photo-realistic, cutting-edge imagery. One of the team's first jobs earned just £1,000 and took six weeks to complete on two old computers.

Now - several much more suitable computers further on - their diligence has also been rewarded by award success. Recently, Evolve and Stephen were chosen as one of only 10 UK companies for the London final of the Arena O2 X Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2007, where the judging criteria was entrepreneurial spirit.

The top award may have eluded them then, but the Evolve team has since won the prestigious “Best New Business' in Liverpool award at the Business Oscars event, organised by Downtown Liverpool in Business.

The third member of the team, who has helped to make it all happen is architectural graduate, John Ferry, who came on board in 2005.
www.evolveproductions.co.uk

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Information snatched from the rising waters

Recent freak weather has highlighted the vulnerability of infrastructure. But modern disaster recovery depends as much on swift data retrieval as physical resources. Merseyside's TakeWare enabled one Yorkshire school to save all its records in 15 minutes from the rising waters. The company is helping many other organisations to prepare for the worst.

Electronic files detailing children's classroom achievements were about to be lost beneath three feet of storm water closing in on South Yorkshire's Toll Bar Primary School.

Instead, only hours later - as the original PC lay beneath the flood - every valuable information file, and essential school administration documents, were reinstalled and running again on another Doncaster LEA computer.

The TakeWare Company's BackupMaster “BeyondTape” made the rescue possible, replacing previous lengthy back-ups taking several hours with a data captured in minutes.

As a result, education has continued as nearly normal for 150 young pupils, whose lessons have been transferred to nearby schools.

Office Manager, Anne Newton, realised that she could walk away from Tollbar school with crucial information safely stored and retrievable. “It meant that I could save every one of our pupils”, Word, Excel and office documents within 15 minutes,” explains Anne, who only took delivery of her new PC and BackupMaster in early June. “Our old system would have taken four hours. Everything would have been lost.”

BackupMaster has already become an integral part of disaster recovery planning for some 40 of the 170 local schools, after being recently trialled and recommended by Doncaster LEA, explains TakeWare founder, Barry James. His Plug&Go innovation has resulted in a hot-pluggable, standalone software store that extracts all the crucial data at high speed.

Compatible with SIMS (School Information Management System), as well as a wide range of other educational and commercial software, and based in technology patented in the UK, US, Europe and worldwide, it forms a modern alternative to older tape technology conventionally used in the education sector and business, he adds.

While Toll Bar deployed BackupMaster on the frontline, many other organisations are “using it in anger”, according to co-director, Geoff James. “We have supplied more than 100 to SpecSaver branches nationwide, while MortgageTalk in Sheffield is so concerned about laptop data integrity that it has equipped all its financial advisors with the unit.” Fujitsu Siemens and Yamaha have also made purchases, as well as the NHS.

With a storage capacity of 320GB, or more, per unit, BackupMaster can also work automatically. In applications such as AutoCAD multi-dimensional design work, it can be set to snapshot complex files regularly every hour.

Importantly, points out Barry, the “BeyondTape” system has a reputation for 100% recovery of lost files. The conventional reinstallation failure rate is around 40%, he says.

A reassuring thought if the flood waters begin to rise again.

www.takeware.co.uk

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Learning Inc sees a new DAWN

Learning Inc has a memorable reputation with Government departments, police forces and the training sector. The August launch of its Web 2.0-based Diversity At Work Network (DAWN) will help even small companies to recognise new business value.

Now settle down because Learning Inc wants to tell you a story.

That is not meant to be patronising. It's just that the Liverpool Science Park Innovation Centre-based company appreciates that the traditional elements of telling a tale are fundamental to how we develop and learn, even in the modern age.

Expressed in more contemporary terms, the Learning Inc team is achieving growing success by combining a deep-rooted belief in constructivist learning theory with high production values and a flair for design. Even with potentially mundane, but essential, business-based training, it uses devices, such as evocative imagery, character and narrative, to introduce drama and emotion to otherwise dry subjects.

The Learning Inc portfolio is impressive, including a range of tailored learning successes with DEFRA, Video Arts, BT, Centrex (formerly national police training), NCSL (National College of School Leadership), and the Department for Works and Pensions.

However, the team has just completed a major project for learndirect, where they developed an entirely new approach to practical diversity and equality for the SME sector. Their innovative solution combined a soap-opera-style story with accessible action planning challenges and a detailed information repository.

Warren Deer co-founded the company with Ivor Perry. Warren believes that stories are central to the way in which people remember and learn and that effective learning should provoke an emotional response.

“In this case, we looked at diversity issues through the eyes of the owner-manager of a small SME who, through no fault of his own, is locked into a traditional view of the world.

“By getting learners to challenge the behaviour they see, we get them to rethink their own assumptions and target gaps in their knowledge. Our process enables learners to see things from a broader perspective, and importantly in this case, realise how diversity can add real value to their business.”

Learning Inc uses the fact that modern trainees are media savvy by employing sophisticated techniques and production values, commonly associated with television and film, in its traditional training and web development solutions. This blend of technology and expertise has now led on to its new social networking application, DAWN.

“We have the professional skills to shape this raft of media into a coherent and practical learning experience,” Warren continues.

“With DAWN, we are taking things to the next level by adding to the mix community interaction and online networking. We want to give people in small companies, as well as organisations with formal Human Resources (HR) Departments, the chance to experience the media and also to share their own stories with the wider business community.

“Our aim is to turn the learning process into a dialogue. We want members to benefit from all the work we have done with the likes of learndirect and DEFRA, while also giving them a forum to share their experiences.”

By basing DAWN on a Web 2.0 platform, Learning Inc has ensured that the accumulated views and inputs of users will come together to create a growing resource, built on first-hand experience that should, over time, make a real contribution to the development and adoption of best practice and business effectiveness across the area.

www.learninginc.co.uk

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