“Even though a lot of work can be done remotely, it doesn’t cut the mustard when you need the face-to-face [time] with an engineer,” he says.
Featherston-based services company Chalfont prides itself on remote support. Some of its support is so remote, in fact, that it’s provided for a farm in Suffolk, England.
Fifteen years ago Stuart Jane traded throwing carcasses around at the Takapau meatworks for a career in IT, a long-held hobby he had often thought of making money from.
Canadian native Mark McGillivray, director of Palmerston North’s Advantage Computers, has been an environmental health officer, spent time in the Arctic circle, trained as a diver and studied economics and IT at Massey University in New Zealand.
Napier’s Devine Computing is capturing a specialist part of the local IT market by combining accounting software with hardware sales.
Palmerston North-based ComputerCare has built on its lengthy history with a steep growth curve in the past three years.
Napier’s Computer Connection has chalked up more than 25 years of trading and owner Tony Littleford says a company culture of fast service has helped build a network of loyal customers.
The gloom of the recession has in fact provided a profitable silver lining for Christchurch-based Montage Interactive.
Ashburton’s Robin Gourdie spent 10 years as a truck driver and has also worked in the local freezing works at Fairton. Yet, when his sister’s 386 computer broke down he began fiddling around with it, awakening a previously untapped interest in technology.
Customers can be a fickle bunch, says Timaru-based Steve Weaver, director of the Computer Service Centre.
A "management burnout” in the late 1990s led to a new career path for Ken Hippolite of Hippolite Computers.
Twenty-year-old PC Media lays claim to being Marlborough’s largest IT provider, dealing with customers ranging from home users to large corporates and employing nine staff.
Times have been tough for Huntly’s Allenmara Computers, especially when local customers aren’t paying up too quickly, and when the business has had to offer a few free services.
With autumn snow falling, Dave Green is gearing up for a busy winter. Green runs Snowline Computer Services in Ohakune, in addition to his full-time job as IT manager at a local, large-scale manufacturing plant.
The growth of remote services is paying off for New Zealand Computing Services (NZCS) in Wanganui.
