2022 – It’s A Wrap
It’s that time of year for another annual review, boy 2022 went by fast and life is certainly accelerating as we mature. As a business we made it to 5 years old in April, although we have well over 100 years of IT employee experience between us, it’s probably nearer 200 years but that would give our ages away.
In April we ditched our traditional telephony PBX in favour of a fully hosted VOIP platform, integrated within the existing computer network. Ourselves and our clients operate differently now without being tied to a handset anymore. One client with almost 200 telephony uses over several sites, opted for a mobile or PC softphone approach and only deployed 10 handsets across all their sites. As a business we now only have 1 physical handset and we run the helpdesk on pc software phones integrated with Microsoft 365. It’s one less capital expenditure to budget for with less electricity needs as we are no longer powering an old telephony system- which is important right now for flexibility and as energy prices surge.
In May we won a gong as winners of the Professional & Business Services category at the Port Macquarie Business Awards- yeah!
In June Integer presented a 30min slot at the Charles Sturt’s Big Day to local year 11 and 12 students which was well attended. It was wonderful see so many eager students wanting to explore the Information Technology sector as a potential career. We presented the idea that everyone is now in IT, as Gen Z has grown up with super powerful processing in the palm of their hand and it’s completely normal to be online doing whatever from anyplace. IT now touches or intrudes, depending on your view, in everything we do, and you don’t have to have IT in your job title to understand how it works. I personally wish we didn’t have to deal with so many portals though!
Our own Helpdesk is fully manned by ex TAFE students all of which have undertaken a Cert 4 in Information Technology and Networking, so the right career path is available in our region. Integer believes with the right enthusiasm and curiosity we can teach and guide young employees for an IT career locally.
One of the biggest problems we have all faced is employing people. There are plenty of companies hiring, and a lot of people potentially looking but ultimately not moving. We are also beginning to witness those who left to earn more money, more attractive working from home options looking to return to their previous employer. Culturally and personally, it was much better working within the previous environment and the grass wasn’t a greener as they were led to believe. Working as a team member in isolation is not for everyone.
It’s been a year of work harder with less employees, which does have a positive upside when reviewing the balance sheet, but in the long run it is not a sustainable business growth strategy.
August to September our web articles highlighted what we thought was important information to know about the Dark Web and pending government compliance and how companies can protect themselves. Unfortunately, we all know what happened in October with the Optus hack and directors now must be very aware of their liabilities should the organisations they represent experience a cyber security breach.
In December we rounded up the year with Integer IT acquiring Midcoast IT and absorbing their employees to enhance our team approach and ability to service new clients. As a by-product our employee IT experience has jumped up several more decades!
A closing thought
Like most industries IT is a cyclical market, we started out in the 1980’s with centralised computing and the days of the mainframe, we have witnessed the growth of Microsoft and distributed workplace with localised powerful PC’s and servers. Over the past couple of years, the market has swung back to secure cloud-based offerings within off site data centres which does all the work again, sounds like a different name for mainframe to me. As storing large chunks of data in the cloud can be expensive don’t be too surprised if having your data close to you becomes fashionable again so at least you can take responsibility for securing it yourself (with our help)
Finally, thank you to all our clients and suppliers for another terrific year and we wish you a happy and safe holiday season whilst looking forward to a prosperous 2023.
