dotUK
31st January 2006, 15:03
In true Small Business style I signed up ages ago and never got round to doing anything with it! Actually, not strictly true, have been lurking a bit, but not enough.
Anyway, my name's Andy Flisher and I'm one of the proprietors of dotUK - www.dotuk.net. We operate primarily in and around the North East of England, covering the Tyne, Tees areas, Durham, Northumberland, Newcastle, North Yorkshire etc. I say primarily because only half our business model requires a local presence.
And that model is, two sided, one side being Web Development, Design, SEO to a (growing bigger) extent, CMS, and your general Software Development. The other side is geared towards IT Support and Maintenance, targetting SME's who either have no IT department of their own, often as wouldn't be justified, or going in as Consultants to companies with their own teams to assist on specific projects.
We find the two angles cross over well with one acting as a foot in the door to the other. We can also offer customers good value with Support and Maintenance contracts that cover both sides, client gets better hourly rate, and we get more hours and a bigger tie to the client.
Where we seem to be unusual is that we're also quite happy hiding in the background, we do a fair amount of per project work, or other outsourced jobs for other Design companies, basically a contractor basis. I think this is because we have both the Linux/PHP/Perl/MySQL/OpenSource skillset and the MS/Windows/NT/ASP/SQL Server in equal balance so we can often deal with projects for agencies that is the 'opposite' of their in house focus.
Of course we all have our preferences but now's not the place for an OS war! Hmm, just realised typed up way more than had intended, so best move on.
PS: Our website has just been trimmed down and relaunched (3 days ago) using our favoured CMS, so it's abit sparse and some content is, well ancient and cringeworthy!, so please be gentle, although feedback welcomed always.
Anyway, my name's Andy Flisher and I'm one of the proprietors of dotUK - www.dotuk.net. We operate primarily in and around the North East of England, covering the Tyne, Tees areas, Durham, Northumberland, Newcastle, North Yorkshire etc. I say primarily because only half our business model requires a local presence.
And that model is, two sided, one side being Web Development, Design, SEO to a (growing bigger) extent, CMS, and your general Software Development. The other side is geared towards IT Support and Maintenance, targetting SME's who either have no IT department of their own, often as wouldn't be justified, or going in as Consultants to companies with their own teams to assist on specific projects.
We find the two angles cross over well with one acting as a foot in the door to the other. We can also offer customers good value with Support and Maintenance contracts that cover both sides, client gets better hourly rate, and we get more hours and a bigger tie to the client.
Where we seem to be unusual is that we're also quite happy hiding in the background, we do a fair amount of per project work, or other outsourced jobs for other Design companies, basically a contractor basis. I think this is because we have both the Linux/PHP/Perl/MySQL/OpenSource skillset and the MS/Windows/NT/ASP/SQL Server in equal balance so we can often deal with projects for agencies that is the 'opposite' of their in house focus.
Of course we all have our preferences but now's not the place for an OS war! Hmm, just realised typed up way more than had intended, so best move on.
PS: Our website has just been trimmed down and relaunched (3 days ago) using our favoured CMS, so it's abit sparse and some content is, well ancient and cringeworthy!, so please be gentle, although feedback welcomed always.