Hi-Tech Business Partnership

Flexsys Logo

Founded in 1988, Heywood-based Flexsys Group started as a support company, focusing on large mainframe applications.  Over the subsequent years it expanded into IT services, including project management, application development and software support.  It is now a multinational organisation with offices in the UK, USA, France and Germany, with a service portfolio based around three main offerings - Technical Support, Business Continuity, and High Speed Internet Access.  

Finding the right partner
Of the three main offerings, two required Flexsys to find a reliable ISP partner in order to deliver effective solutions.  Over the last few years, the company has been driven by the increasing need for technical support for local, growing SMEs (small and medium enterprises) that are unable to justify a permanent internal IT department.  Flexsys establishes exactly what support its clients will benefit from and implements and supports cost-effective and practical solutions, such as installing broadband, and connecting offices together in different locations.

Andy Roberts, Sales and Marketing Manager explained: "There is a rapid growth in SMEs that are actually growing, expanding and opening more offices.  Their key concern is how to work more efficiently, by integrating their IT infrastructures.  We look at security, firewalls and so on, one of the key parts of that is broadband and VPN provision.  We needed an ISP to provide this part of the solution, and this is where Zen Internet comes in.  As a ZenPartner for at least two years, our work with them has grown from being ad-hoc to being one of their committed Gold Partners.  Their experience and reputation has led to us recommending them more and more to our customers."

The Partner Programme, ZenPartner, is designed for IT Solutions Providers to complement their current portfolio by offering full Zen Internet services.  Members of ZenPartner have access to the full range of Zen Internet products and services including ZenADSL/Broadband, ZenDirect Leased Lines, Network Security, Hosting, Server Co-location and Zen Web Solutions. The Gold level represents a larger degree of commitment and turnover and is reflected in a substantial increase in resources and support. Partners receive a plaque as recognition of achieving Gold status, increased commission, and extra training, support, and marketing resources.

Flexsys chose to be a ZenPartner, not only because of the close location in Rochdale, but also because of its reputation and the fact they use Zen themselves.  Roberts confirmed: "There's a lot of synergy between the two companies, we share many similar ideals.  We value the flexibility that they offer in terms of infrastructure - it's always very easy, open and transparent which makes it easy for us to do our job.  And we're also both award-winning companies!" 

Hotels online
Flexsys' work in providing Internet Access solutions is based around its own product called Griffin, developed two years ago.  It is aimed at the hospitality market, with a large proportion in the hotel industry, that want high-speed Internet access throughout the building.  Griffin, an inexpensive, one-box solution that is ISP independent, takes the broadband signal and distributes it round the hotel either hard-wired or wirelessly, enabling guests, casual visitors, meeting rooms and conference facilities to have seamless and secure 'plug and play' access.  Previously, guests would have had sockets in their rooms for dial-up access, which was slow, expensive and difficult to download files. 

Flexsys provided Zen Internet with a Griffin unit to evaluate.  Its claims of security, robustness and simplicity once installed were all verified by Zen, who were unable to hack into it.   Partnering with Zen to assist in implementations, Flexsys provides Griffin to hotels, using Zen's broadband services, integrated with Flexsys technical support.  Griffin is currently installed in three hotels in Rochdale including the Royal Toby, an early adopter of the system, and many more hotels in the UK and overseas. 

The future
"Zen's reputation in the industry, backed up by several industry awards won every year, gives us a lot of comfort," said Roberts. "It also gives us, as a Solution Provider, extra credibility.   We are always happy to recommend Zen at any opportunity for implementing Internet Services within our projects."