It’s a beautiful facility. “We are in the business of making our clients’ lives easier. We take on the headaches of technology so our clients can focus on their business” commented Doron Kaminski, Managing Partner, F12.net.
The company started back in 1992 as a one-man operation. It just goes to show how far a channel partner can grow to become a great success. And, from what I saw, they are now getting ready to accelerate their growth. Other channel partners can take note as to how to become successful and remain relevant to their customers.
The Mayor of Markham, Frank Scarpitti, was on hand for the cutting of the red ribbon to officially open the new facility. The data-center, located in the middle of the building, is well fortified with everything that you would expect including a UPS and back-up generator fail-over system that keeps everything up in case there is a power failure. The offices are all open spaces so everyone can collaborate without barriers. The boardrooms feature a tablet at the entrance to schedule meeting times (I am assuming that where the bar was set up for the open house will be converted back into the reception area when things get back to normal.. but, what if the reception area continued to be a bar? Maybe at least on Fridays? Just a suggestion…:o)).
The open house was well received on all levels. The food was great and there was even a musician for entertainment. Of course the elephant in the room was “Batman” Yes! A real live Batman with a bat mobile and all sorts of gadgets for some cool photo opportunities (I did take a selfie with Batman). So why invite Batman? Doron said, “we think of our clients like Batman and we are the team in the background that supports Batman to do whatever needs to get done!”
F12 features a customer portal that offers real-time access for their clients to open a service ticket and monitor its progress. The same tool allows clients to automatically facilitate a variety of services like adding mail boxes or other Microsoft licenses. There is a future technology center where the dedicated team is exploring how emerging technologies like AR, VR and 3D printing can be applied to their customer’s businesses to increase productivity. They offer a complete technology testing environment to ensure that their customers’ IT solutions are 100% ready and working properly, before live deployment. F12 also offers a growing range of outsourced IT services, including hardware. There seems to be a lot of growth potential in the future of F12.
You could label them as a MSP, but they are so much more. These folks are truly focused on business outcomes and removing pain points from their clients. They are all about increasing the productivity of their customers. I recently wrote an article on “The Future Of The IT Channel” where I outlined what the next generation of Channel Partners will look like. Well, F12 is a very good example of what the next generation of IT providers will look like and they are already here today.
Congratulations F12 on a fantastic journey and we look forward to following their success. If success can be measured by the quality of the service, then F12 is on top of the game. We actually know about this quality first-hand – we have been one of their clients for many years and we have not been disappointed yet.
I will be doing another interview on e-channelnews.com with Alex Webb, CEO of F12 and Doron Kaminski in the near future, so watch for it…
