Our job is to empower customers to change IT from a cost centre to a business enabler, says Liam Pace, Commercial Services Manager, ICT Solutions.

What is your role at ICT Solutions and what responsibilities does it involve?

Having spent nine years working with a major local telecoms provider, in 2009 I became a founding member of ICT Solutions. I’m currently the manager responsible for commercial services. This includes managing a team of business development executives, preparing company-wide business plans, and ensuring that corresponding sales and marketing plans are executed to the required level. At the end of the day, it is my responsibility that we reach our targets – this entails continuous monitoring and liaison with my colleagues to make sure that we remain on track.

I also spend a substantial part of my time meeting with both existing and new customers. This is the part of my job that I enjoy most and I’m a strong believer in the importance of having an open communications channel with customers. It’s how we build a trusting relationship with our customers.

As a company, your main area of expertise is system integration. What are the main advantages that this offers to organisations?

At ICT Solutions we cover a wide area of technologies including infrastructure, software, IT security, applications and cloud services. This allows us to go to our customers with an open mind on how to best address their business requirements.

We’re also able to deliver a complete solution, even one that consists of a number of solutions integrated together. Our role is to ensure that our customers are getting the most cost-effective solution that meets their business requirements.

We also continuously invest a lot in our people in terms of technical training and expertise. This enables us to successfully deliver projects of a complex nature. Furthermore, our customers benefit from the extensive experience and expertise resulting from the various projects we deliver.

You recently organised an event dedicated to managed cloud backup and recovery services. What issues did this event address?

Data is probably the most important asset for businesses

Data is probably the most important asset for businesses and data backup remains a hot issue for both IT administrators and business owners.

We provide cloud connected backup and recovery in the form of a cloud service, using state-of-the-art backup software. The service makes use of normal internet connections available to businesses in Malta. The data is secured by multiple encryption technologies and stored in secure backup vaults in two diverse data centres in Malta.

The beauty of this service is that it also provides customers with an immediate offsite disaster protection. Moreover, customers have the peace of mind that in case of disaster, they have the full backing of our technical team.

Customer feedback has been very positive regarding the ease of use and visibility provided by this service. This ease of use is achieved using a simple web portal where all the monitoring and management is carried out.

This service has been in operation for 18 months now and we have a growing customer base ranging from small customers backing up their financial data to large organisations that have moved completely to our cloud service for their backup requirements. We’re currently offering a 30-day trial account to potential customers to allow them to try out our service.

Business needs are constantly changing and evolving. How do you assist and enable your clients to scale up or scale down accordingly?

We achieve this by focusing on the business challenges rather than the technology itself. Technology has to address business needs and not the other way round.

Once the objectives are discussed and agreed upon, then it is our task to present our customers with scalable solutions that can address these needs. We also embrace the various flavours of cloud services as this allows us to deliver solutions to customers in a timely, secure and efficient manner, providing our customers with a pay-as-you-grow model.

You enjoy partnerships with various product and service providers. How do these partnerships enable you to offer best of breed solutions?

As a systems integrator we believe that it is critical to continuously grow and nurture partnerships with leading vendors and technology companies. Having a healthy eco system of partners allows us to provide our customers with a number of solutions to address their requirements. Over the past years we have also opened relationships with vendors that were not present in Malta, thus providing the local community with new best-of-breed solutions.

Security and trust are key elements in any ICT offering. What level of security do you offer to your clients, across all offerings?

We fully understand the responsibilities that come with our services and we ensure that we have the highest level of processes and procedures internally to address and control this. Internally we also make use of a number of IT security products such as multi-factor authentication, secure password management, secure and auditable remote access, and sensitive content encryption to achieve this.

Not all organisations can afford to run a fully-fledged IT department or set-up. What outsourcing services do you offer?

At ICT Solutions we offer IT outsourcing services that deliver on strategy, implementation and support in a flexible, efficient and accountable manner. Rather than being simply reactive to IT problems, we offer preventive solutions that not only help organisations manage their risks but also show organisations how to recognise and make the most out of business opportunities through the efficient use of IT.

IT is considered as an expense when not used to its full potential. Our job is to empower customers to change IT from a cost centre to a business enabler. We manage to do this by having a focused technical team providing IT outsourcing services across all the spectrum and by continuously giving strategic input at a business level.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.