Xbase Technologies Corp. is a newcomer to CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers of the Year list for 2010.
Xbase is a managed IT services and network provider that services organizations that are primarily located in the Greater Toronto Area, Andy Heighington, the company’s vice-president of sales and marketing, said. While the company offers services across verticals, its expertise can especially be seen in the financial and not-for-profit sectors, Heighington said.
Heighington says the Toronto-based company has been in business for over 20 years. As one of our Top 100 Solution Providers, the company achieved revenues between $5 and $10 million last year. The company holds partnerships with vendors which include Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, VMware and more.
Within the last 10 years, Heighington said Xbase evolved into more of a managed services-focused organization. In the last five years, he said the company expanded its offerings to also establish a live, 24/7 helpdesk offering.
“Today we’re pitching to customers to reduce their risk by having them outsource their IT to us,” Heighington said. “Now we have a helpdesk within our organization and we’ve seen growth year over year and we’re making our numbers based on having a more services-orientated business.”
While its managed services and helpdesk businesses are a couple of the reasons why Xbase has continued to see growth over the years, Heighington said its people and culture also play a huge part of the company’s success.
“We’re about 24 people here at Xbase,” Heighington said. “We’re developing our own culture inside the organization where we know our team has to be at their desk taking customer calls, so we do things to keep them happy. We provide lunch to all of our staff on a weekly basis and we also do lots of lunch and learns.”
Last year, the company changed office locations so it could better grow its helpdesk and network operations centre services. Its new location also allows customers to come in to test and review solutions in a boardroom environment.Xbase has a variety of solution focuses, Heighington says, including wireless, disaster recovery, virtualization, cloud computing and more.
In response to being named a Top 100 Solution Provider of the Year for CDN, Heighington said it’s a great way to highlight where Xbase fits in the industry.
“It’s great to get market exposure and to finally show our partners where we sit in the industry,” Heighington said. “We haven’t really focused on marketing in the past 20 years and now we’re making it a point to reveal some of the solutions and partnerships we’ve been able to secure. We’re making our progress in the tough economy due to our partners, staff, skills sets and customer testimonials.”Having been able to grow its business primarily through word of mouth and recommendations, Heighington said he’s optimistic that Xbase will continue to grow with the right amount of marketing and exposure.