Member Article

Sunderland's Affinity secure £100k to launch new business

Sunderland IT firm Affinity have secured £100k investment to create a new remote services division across the North.

The funding from Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept (POC) Fund will help Affinity to set up ‘Rymote’ - a service which will eliminate the need for an IT engineer to be on site.

Affinity founder, Al Yong, said: “We recognised that there is a demand in the global market for accessible Cisco engineering skills and this is where the idea for Rymote stemmed from.

“After receiving a significant investment from Northstar and backing from local partners, both in the public and private sector, I feel really positive about our ground breaking service. This service means that we can work with customers located anywhere from our Sunderland base.

“Affinity will be working closely with the University of Sunderland and creating skilled jobs in the local area. With a wealth of experience from the existing business we are position to introduce exciting new possibilities and make a huge difference to the IT industry.

“We help clients get the most from what they have already got and take their Cisco investment and tune it up, much like a pit team would tune up a F1 race car. I suppose you could say we offer remote network optimisation whilst putting the customer in the driving seat.”

Affinity’s partners include some of the world’s biggest IT and communication suppliers, including BT and Cisco.

Rebecca Crawford, investment manager at Northstar Ventures, said: “This is a really interesting company to add to our portfolio. Affinity is on track to be a real success and the funding it has received is going to help it to market its new service Rymote and also create a string of new jobs.

“The new staff members are anticipated to be hired over the next 12 months as demand ramps up for the company’s services.”

Affinity Systems was established in 2010 and is Sunderland based but also services clients in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands.

The POC Fund is backed by the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .