Midland Computers

history

Midland Computers Ltd was established in 1999 by Chris Bickerton, its aim - to become the county's foremost provider of computer and IT related services.

Starting with just himself and David Haycox (who provided deeper technical knowledge), the company's first year of trading permitted expansion, bringing two other staff members on board. In 2000 Peter Barfield joined the fledgling company, immediately broadening and diversifying the company's skill set to include web and software development, whilst Hedley Corcoran provided the necessary extra sales support to cope with increased demand and help drive forward new business.

The company quickly gained a well earned reputation in the IT industry for its speed of service and excellent pricing, whilst steadily growing both financially and in number of staff members.

By 2003 the company outgrew the offices in Tweedale and relocated to the current site in Halesfield, opening a showroom to service local businesses and end users in the process. This new location provided improved locality and plenty of room for expansion.

At this time demand was also growing for our Internet services and hosting, so the decision was made to bring connectivity in house, enabling us to more closely monitor and manage our servers whilst offering a higher level of support to our clients.

Steady growth over the next two years led to the expansion of the building in 2005, with a new floor put in place to increase office space and provide a comfortable environment for the growing number of employees.

2006 saw blossoming partnerships with major IT players such as Microsoft and Cisco being nurtured, as well as improved redundancy for power and connectivity for hosted servers and the company as a whole.

The fruitful partnership with Microsoft was further developed in 2007 by achieving Gold Partner status. Greater emphasis was placed on the levels of service provided to customers by increasing the size of the engineering team, and ensuring that new and existing engineers alike became certified with Microsoft and other qualifications.

In 2007 the hosting environment required expansion and so a new bespoke data centre was constructed within the building to house more equipment. This new environment provided improved cooling, further room for expansion and better organisation of connectivity.

The following year 2008 brought further expansion of office space, and also a full refit of the showroom. Branding of the company was improved with new logo designs now adorning not only the building, but the fleet of company vans as well. The continued addition of talented individuals in all departments of the company raised the staff number to thirty.

Our 10th trading year of 2009 was a challenging one with the world plunged into recession. Midland Computers reacted swiftly to ensure continued success by further improving all internal systems whilst analysing all staff activities for efficiency. Adoption and offering of new products and services meant we could achieve what all our clients wanted to do... save money. These tactics ensured we maintained organic growth and, more importantly, increased our financial stability compared to the previous year.

Midland Computers is in great shape for 2010 with further increased demand for its services and a full relaunch of our website and ecommerce systems offering over 35,000 products. Our Engineering and Sales team have recently passed gruelling VMware examinations to build our new partnership with the virtualisation market leader.

We're working hard to build on last year's efforts and make 2011 our best year yet!