What we found was that clients who made that transition with us very quickly realised that our proactive, 24/7 system mon¬itoring approach prevented problems from arising in the first place, so the old ‘break-fix’ service effectively became redundant for them. And because we were prepared to be different, the next phase of Resolution IT’s journey was further developing our managed service concept so that businesses could completely outsource their IT needs if they wanted to.

If that was initially a step too far, we developed a hybrid model so that businesses could use our qualified and experienced engineers and system consultants exactly how it suited them.

That could range from freeing up companies’ in-house teams for project work or at peak times, to us looking after basic IT ‘housekeeping’, freeing up their own teams for other work.

Effectively, our staff became trusted advisers and worked as part of the internal IT department and became an extension of our clients’ businesses. That also meant the operation gained access to the most up to date experience from dedicated and qualified staff who were always exposed to the latest technologies and solutions, but without the associated costs.

Well that was our vision on launch. How well it has worked in practice?

Today we have clients in financial services, insurance, hospitality, aviation, real estate, recruitment, education, professional services, and medical and public services, so you can see our approach is completely scalable and adaptable to any IT need.

More importantly, it is what clients actually want – complete IT flexibility that can enhance their own capabilities or assist when there is a big project on, to replacing in-house teams completely.

A further indication of this success is that regulators are increasingly viewing the use of a properly qualified technology partner as best practice in meeting complex compliance and regulatory requirements. Company boards in particular appreciate that additional level of comfort.

The increasing pressure on businesses to protect themselves and client data from cybercrime has been another driver on our 10-year journey. And here again, regulators recognise that outsourcing to suitably skilled and qualified providers is a defence if things should go wrong.

While we have been looking after other people’s businesses, we have also been growing our own. Resolution IT moved into purpose-built premises in 2011 to cope with our expansion, and then had to double that office space three years later.

We now have more than 25 team members here and in our Dubai office and are actively assessing further growth opportunities because demand for our managed IT approach keeps expanding.

Our immediate focus, however, is further developing the managed model we launched 10 years ago and, in particular, working with clients to further unlock productivity and efficiency gains from their IT and use of software.

Over the years we have found that our clients have grown with us and that it has enabled some of them to be bolder and more innovative in their use of IT and our services. That partnership has also helped foster a less adversarial relationship between managers and their IT departments while also up-skilling in-house teams.

The increasing use of cloud services and the frightening rise in cybercrime mean the biggest challenges for businesses in the future will be maintaining security of their systems and customer data while avoiding the risk of breaches.

In the next 10 years we expect to continue to develop along with our clients’ needs.’