Member Article

North East’s growing IT prowess attracts top talent to the region says Perfect Image boss

The growing prowess of the North East IT sector is helping one Newcastle firm attract the best talent, its CEO has said.

More jobs are on the way at Newcastle-based IT provider Perfect Image as the firm have expanded into new premises on Cobalt Business Park.

CEO Andrew Robson says his firm’s growing customer base across the UK has necessitated a move into bigger office space and a bigger workforce.

He also reports that top skilled workers are coming to the North East because of its growing reputation as a hot-spot of IT innovation.

Andrew said: “It’s great to see the burgeoning IT sector in the North East. It’s moved on massively in the last ten years, and operators like HP and Accenture think its important to nurture the the local talent pool and engage with the community.

“Having those big operators encourage things like apprenticeships and training opportunities is great for the appetite among schools and colleges. We’re also seeing a huge uplift in the number of people who want to relocate to the North East - because they see it as the place to be for IT and technology.

“We’ve benefited from that because some very skilled people have been willing to relocate to the North East to work for us. We have guys who have written the book on certain services, and it’s fantastic to see the region getting that recognition.”

Andrew, who was formerly chair of Codeworks Connect and currently chairs Sunderland Software city, is now heavily involved in new North East IT sector body, Dynamo.

His impetus is directly tied to Perfect Image’s own growth, who are hungrier than ever for a top flight regional skills base.

Nine new jobs are currently on the table following Perfect Image’s decision to take a ten year lease on the offices, which will accommodate the firm’s 60 staff, with room to expand to 100.

The firm, which supply end-to-end IT services for large corporates and SMEs, work on new software solutions as well as integration of company’s existing software into new systems. They also resell services including business intelligence, software solutions for sales and marketing people, Microsoft sharepoint and Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Perfect Image have seen considerable growth around their ‘managed services’ offering - the infrastructure necessary to run an IT system, including hardware, servers, connectivity and data storage.

Now 20 years old, their success is founded on a strategy which set them apart from competitors.

Andrew explained: “We took the decision some years ago, that unlike our competitors, we didn’t want to build our own datacentre. Ultimately data storage is becoming commoditised, a bit like a utility provision.

“You have to do it in quite a big way in order to get the economies of scale. We’ve seen the big cloud providers, the three globally, do this at with great added value. We chose probably the biggest of these big three - Amazon - to partner with.

“The scene has changed dramatically in the last few years. For instance, Amazon have made 42 price cuts since introducing the service, and every day they’re adding the size of infrastructure that used to be required to run the whole company.

“Smaller data centres simply can’t compete with the scale. However, Amazon operate as a self-service provider. That’s where we come in to provide quality support, advice and management for clients on the ground.”

Locally, Perfect Image have a number of competitors in the managed services space, but few with partnerships as big as Amazon.

On a national scale the firm face competition from smaller ‘boutique’ operators in the applications sector.

Despite the competitive element, the relationship with other IT operators in the region is a close one, Andrew explains.

“We refer work to eachother, and have shared clients in many instances. We compete on some elements but collaborate on others, and everyone in the region tends to do that very well. It’s to the benefit of those clients in the region.”

Those interested in the vacancies at Perfect Image should visit the companies jobs page here.

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