Specialists in IT solutions for every need
By: Mudeeha Yousaf
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Audcomp, a full information technology solutions organization, has been successful in the industry for 28 years and presently stands as one of the largest IT firms in south-western Ontario. Amongst CDN’s top 100 Solutions Providers in Canada, Audcomp excels in providing professional services and developing intuitive solutions for IT infrastructure, cloud services, IT managed services, software, hardware and IT procurement.
Incorporated in 1986 by Gary Sohal, an Engineering graduate from McMaster University, the company began its roots selling computers, servers and solutions. The traditional hardware selling business shifted as the industry evolved, and what started as a basement-operation rapidly grew to a 700-square ft. retail facility. “As the whole computer industry was evolving, we evolved with it and reinvented ourselves into a solutions organization where we would sell hardware, but the more important part of the sale became installing the solution and the service behind the hardware,” comments Gary. The company moved into the virtualization of servers and expanded their client computing division, becoming a cloud-services organization as well as a hardware and software enterprise, providing IT solutions, consulting, design, implementation and maintenance. “We manage our clients’ networks remotely and fix any problems that may arise. We also go on site and fix any problems that cannot be repaired remotely. It’s a 24/7 business.”
The company ventures off into a whole slew of services under their cloud and management side of the business. Their clientele includes the public and private sector enterprise organizations. “We have a cloud solution where we provide everything from co-location of their servers to their data backup, their disaster recovery and full production server facility.” From hospitals to school boards, the company specializes in building data centres from the ground up and designing it in a way that meets 21st century standards.
Though, the company does not neglect the small-medium sized businesses and manage their computing, making sure their IT is evolving and fitting in with their business needs. “These days the workforce is mobile so we want to make sure that these small-medium sized clients are able to tap into a larger computing power and their staff is able to access information from anywhere,” says Gary. “We allow these businesses to act like large organizations through their IT and allow them to cut costs and stay current. Traditionally, small-medium businesses don’t have the budget to always renew their technology, but now we can do that for them without additional budgets.”
IT access is inevitable in today’s tech-prone world and ‘around the clock access regardless of location is needed. “At the end of the day, we used to have technology conversations with our clients, and nowadays it’s a financial conversation where it’s about how much money we can save our clients and how we can make their business function better so that IT fits their business model and their staff’s requirements and flexibility,” says Gary. “We have to figure out what else we can do to build value in the IT space. Those kinds of challenges bring us new opportunities.”
Audcomp is proud to be pioneers of the ‘green IT movement’ – to become a paperless organization to improve corporations’ environmental footprint. As per Gary’s initiatives to cut costs on paper, the company spearheads emailing clients and handling all of their services electronically. “We sell less hardware so the clients are able to keep their devices longer but be able to evolve with IT as it moves fairly quickly.” They are keen believers in recycling ethically to decrease pollution, and advise their customers to follow suit. “We want to be ambassadors for the environment and let our clients know we all need to do our small bit to ensure the earth is good enough for our kids and their kids.”
The enterprise has developed their data centre so their clients can use cloud services locally under Canadian laws and jurisdictions, as opposed to having their cloud offerings from the United States to avoid the risk of data infringement. “We have a great, working model. It’s never perfect, you always have to keep working at it and the trick is to keep improving it,” says Gary. “We’re always looking for new clients. We enjoy the fact that we’re able to service our clients really well and have a good retention of clients. Our expansion plan is to continue the game we’re playing in.”
Winners of the CDN Channel Elite Silver Award for Best Service Organization, Audcomp wishes to break the mould in longevity and innovation and “we listen to what the client is looking for, provide what they want and look at the bottom dollar to see how we can save them money,” closes Gary. “Our philosophy is all about the customer. Anyone can provide an IT service but we want to provide them a solution that differentiates us from everybody else.”
For more information on Audcomp, visit www.audcomp.com
