16 technology


Living up to its name in every way


Year on year Blue Chip has been showing a record turnover. The Business Magazine spoke to sales and marketing director Anthony Green


Setting the scene: how and when did Blue Chip start up, how have you evolved and what are your main services now?


Launching in Poole 20 years ago (1992), we’ve expanded to Bournemouth, Southampton, Bedford and Leeds. We’ve grown to provide the full spectrum of technology services, solutions, training and outsourcing on local, regional and national levels, working with both SMEs and large-scale global businesses.


This gives us a holistic approach to helping organisations improve, perform and overcome IT challenges through business applications; infrastructure services; training; outsourcing and support services; cloud computing expertise and data centre capacity.


You have reported another record turnover of over £18 million and continue to recruit. How have you maintained momentum in the current economic climate?


The impact of cloud services and continued growth of flexible and remote working have left many IT businesses unable to meet the changing needs of their customers. We’ve seized this opportunity to proactively enhance our business model and service offering, creating an environment where greater internal efficiencies position us for continued operational growth.


We’ve invested in key areas for continued success: recruiting over 30 new staff to support the expansion of our services; funding multiple campaigns to win new business; implementing new internal systems, including a new service desk and the continued development of innovative service offerings such as SecureVault, our online backup service; plus offering industry-leading 24/7 support.


The New Year welcomed the launch of our new training and exam suite at our Poole HQ and the opening of additional training facilities in Southampton, to meet high demand levels.


Our new, interactive website marks the culmination of this considerable investment, representing the full extent of our services, while including an interactive online service desk portal to greatly enhance customers’ IT support experience.


What are the main IT challenges currently facing businesses and how does Blue Chip’s offering differ from other IT companies?


We’re proud to be among the most highly- trained and accredited IT companies in the country, winning multiple vendor and industry awards. It’s a specialist skill to then apply this


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high level of knowledge and technical ability to a customer’s business need.


Since the credit crunch first took bite in 2007, many companies have restricted major IT infrastructure projects and quite rightly, sweated their assets. However, the impact now is that companies are left with aging IT infrastructure, resulting in high support and maintenance costs. Many of our clients’ whole environment – from network and server infrastructure, to client devices, all desperately need replacing.


We are leading the way, recommending businesses adopt a virtual data centre environment, transitioning that support and maintenance spend into an investment in brand new backend infrastructure, without the need for extensive capital investment.


Naturally some clients prefer on-premise solutions and this has been the core of our business for 20 years, unlike many of our competitors, we are genuinely unbiased and provide customers with both options.


Another differentiator for Blue Chip is our 24/7 support for all customers. No company can afford down time and our around-the-clock monitoring system sets us apart by alerting us to issues regardless of day or night, enabling us to address them immediately – crucially often before there is any real impact on a business’ ability to operate.


What do the next 10 years hold for Blue Chip?


Our industry dictates that we have to be progressive, adapting and expanding even in the toughest of markets. Our forward-thinking board has met the industry-wide challenges head on, radically changing internally to create a company structure that underpins our business model, and we’ve invested heavily in the training of our technical, sales and account management teams.


We find ourselves future-ready and in some respects, leading the way. At a time when it may well be “survival of the fittest“, we set the bar very high.


Everyone talks about the ’cloud’ – but how can cloud services positively impact on a company’s costs and performance?


Excessive hype can make it hard for customers to differentiate between ill-informed publicity and solid, established solutions.


If used properly, cloud services can be a great benefit. From a cost and administrative view,


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – APRIL 2012 Anthony Green


cloud solutions remove capital investments, speed up go-live time, eliminate back-up worries and provide anytime access to company files – securely stored – of course. From a performance view, they’re simple to use, make employee communication and collaboration easier and enable flexible working – shown to increase productivity.


Additionally, SMEs can dramatically reduce software and other computing costs, eg Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers the option to buy a single user license, enabling smaller businesses to experience the benefits of larger enterprises, at a fraction of the cost.


Data security is key to all businesses – but the threats are growing. How can a company adequately protect itself?


Security is a huge subject. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the associated risk is an industry-wide issue surrounding the use of personal laptops, smart phones, tablets, etc on a company network.


Employees are driving the issue, led by their personal and business worlds converging into a single device. Businesses face two options: create a policy and clear parameters for the use of personal devices, or face the threat of them being used without knowledge or consent.


Also worth noting is how cloud computing is impacting everyday security procedures, such as backup and disaster recovery (DR). Our preferred solution – SecureVault, is more robust and efficient than traditional tape-and-hardware, encrypting data (each company holds a unique encryption key), which is then stored on two vaults in different data centres, protecting it from technological or natural disasters.


Data is compressed to occupy less space on the server, and businesses only pay for the space they use. Meanwhile, IT managers have greater control and easier access because it is managed online.


Details: www.bluechip.uk.com


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