Throughout my life I’ve been driven to leave the world a better place than I found it; to build something great no matter how difficult. My professional career is founded on the belief that the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is only an excuse for a lack of imagination. For over 30 years I’ve worked in the Information Technology (IT) industry, leading three companies and founding two of them. In that time I’ve seen all sorts of changes; many of them exciting, but not all of them good. From cyber security threats and increased infrastructure complexity to accelerated obsolescence and data integrity, the challenges of the digital economy are more complicated than most businesses are equipped to handle. And yet IT as an industry initially failed to take a new approach better suited to these obstacles and I failed to keep the courage of my convictions.
On-demand applications and cloud computing started to help businesses adapt, but these new technologies didn’t go far enough. Many IT departments are still entangled in the monotony of daily technology maintenance and overwhelmed by growing layers of complexity when they should be focused on creating the products and experiences that will attract new customers. The problem is if technology is the path to success, how can a business most efficiently use its IT resources when they’ve been preoccupied serving internal customers and “keeping the lights on” for decades? I’ve never met a problem I didn’t want to solve.
Seeing an opportunity and enticing challenge, I shifted my business away from the traditional IT integrator and managed services provider business model to take a radical new approach to companies’ foundational technology: IT Infrastructure as a Service (ITIaaS). We asked ourselves, “What if our business customers could gain the freedom to innovate by purchasing not just their software or storage as a service, but all of the IT infrastructure on which they depend?” With this simple idea we started building something new. We dared to take responsibility for the design, installation, and maintenance of every element of our customers’ IT infrastructure, so they can focus less on infrastructure technology and more on the data and applications that drive high value business activities.
As the first ITIaaS provider, our idea stood in opposition to some of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Such an endeavor can be intimidating, but my talented team of like-minded engineers, designers, thought leaders, and marketing professionals never wavered. Since TenFour’s founding we’ve proven time and again that there’s a better way to deliver IT infrastructure; that the traditional approach isn’t the only approach. As someone who seeks excellence in all things I couldn’t be more proud of my colleagues. As a father, friend, and partner I’d be ashamed to ever tell my family I did nothing important on any given day and luckily I never have to. I believe in the power of simple ideas to not only transform business, but the world at large. That’s why I founded TenFour, and that’s why I get up every day possessed by the drive to innovate. As we see other companies follow our example, I believe even more strongly in TenFour’s mission to liberate business leaders from old ideas and inefficiencies. Let’s build something great together.
