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Over the next few years the number of clients grew and we started supplying custom made PC's to small business clients. In case of failure, we maintained a small number of "courtesy" computers. Our courtesy computers were infrequently deployed and so we looked for avenues to use them as a secondary revenue stream. In 1995, saw the birth of our Computer Hire section where we hired out these PC's (and later other equipment) as hire computers. My brother Paul entered the Business and helped in Customer Services. One of our clients was backed by Manchester City Council, and to be awarded a new contract to supply and support a large number of computers around the Manchester area we would have to change status to a limited company. Many of our clients new the name "Mark Andrew Smith" and so in 1998 the very un-imaginary company name "Mark Andrew Smith Limited" was born. At this time, my father, Eddie Smith, came into the Business to act as Company Secretary and offer general Business advice as the business was moving into new avenues. The Millennium came and went without any hick ups as predicted by ourselves so long as you ensured that you had a recent BIOS and Operating System. Later that year, the market for PC's dried up as most clients had recently replaced their computers the year before. In 2001, we decided to stop building PC's and concentrate on our Consultancy and PC Support. We added hosting and server support to the line up of services offered during 2002 and we started looking into Linux as an alternative to Microsoft servers. The cost implications and the security impact was immense and so we migrated our data services to be Linux by 2003. During 2004 and 2005, the computer hire side of the Business was showing signs of a massive slow down as many sole trader training companies were no longer hiring from us. Where we used to be all over the United Kingdom with our hire equipment, we were only hiring around the London area. We decided to close the computer hire side in August 2005. In 2006 we decided to expand our data hosting facilities, not only offering website hosting and data backup to our own equipment, but offer a new server service called MyServer. MyServer is a virtual private file server service and allows the connectivity of users in differing geographic locations to work together privately. In August, we were offered the chance to acquire the hosting side of System Innovations Ltd and take over their client base which we agreed and did on 1st October 2006. This gave us strategic access to AceFlex and become the UK Partner to ICN for their AceFlex framework software for hosting B2C and B2B shopping malls on the Windows server platform. By 2007, we launched SpamSafeMail, allowing private individuals to take advantage of email filtering services that large companies enjoy from ourselves as part of MyServer. Immediately after Easter we added a Terminal Server machine into our data centre for our MyServer users to use as yet another flexible method of connecting in. Our immediate plans during 2007/8 are to expand the server facilities we have and continue to serve our dedicated client base with our exceptional standards of service. We currently have three staff as a small family run concern and will be looking for another IT engineer later in the year allowing my father to retire. Our long term plans are to offer a one stop shop for all IT and telecoms needs for clients. To cater for this we will be advertising our vacancies and to expand the team and will be looking to employ a number of trainees over the 2008/9 time frame.
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