Many of you will know that I have worked in several different roles at Datasouth over the past 6 years. At 1:30pm on Thursday 31st March 2011 Datasouth Business Solutions Ltd went into voluntary liquidation. It was a sad ending and a very difficult time for everyone involved.

I believe we had built a truely world class team delivering exceptional service to clients in New Zealand and Australia. I am extremely proud of the work we did and in particular how we helped our clients in the two catastrophic earthquakes that hit Christchurch in September 2010 and February 2011. We were winners of the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Award in New Zealand three years running, something no other company has done.

The sheer volume of emails and phone calls from clients, partners and competitors offering to help our team in our time of need is just overwhelming. I think this shows not only the strength of our relationships but also how Canterbury as a community has come together during the past few months.

So what’s next?

In December 2010 I was promoted to a new role as Group Software Manager and set about building and developing a multi-disciplined team. Our team had a strong feeling an obligation to follow through on promises to our clients and provide continuity of support. After a few discussions, some number crunching with Excel and lots of positive encouragement, our two Senior Developers and I decided that we should setup a company. Everything happened quickly and within a couple of days we had the bones of an agreement between the three of us.

Our focus will be on .NET development, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Data Warehousing and consulting around solution design and architecture.

Yesterday was the most exciting day in my 21 years in the IT industry because we started work on our (ad)venture!

Website, email address and new phone to come.