About Flexiion

We are significantly different from most technology management and support firms, in the breadth and depth of our customer engagements. These range from arms’ length service delivery and support, to pure business advisory.

 

Arms’ length: Although not typical, we do have some customers that need a particular service that changes only rarely. Both examples here, were implemented in private hosting for reasons of cost, bearing in mind the significant data egress fees that are typical of the hyperscalers:

• Legal firm: We provide archiving and back-up services for a major law firm, which was deployed about seven years ago, and just continues largely unchanged.

• Education: We host a long-term archive for a large school in the south-east. Almost by definition, this is what it is and doesn’t change.

 

Go-to-Market: We are active in many early stage firms, and blend business and technology advice with infrastructure management and support:

• ComplianceTech: We are working with a start-up aiming to address the compliance issues for firms doing financial transactions B2B and B2C. We began very early on and helped shape and validate the proposition. We’ve introduced development partners, key members of the management team, investors, professional advisers and others. The technology is built and tested, but the change in FCA regulations due in October this year have opened a large, new opportunity, albeit one that delays roll-out, and the firm is now aligning itself with this.

• Payment orchestration: We worked with an investor in a payment technology business that needed to change direction. We researched their technology and the market opportunities, and helped to shape and validate the customer proposition. We were instrumental on the Board of the business in bringing to market a business that delivers rule-based orchestration across many payment providers for high volume transactions. We worked with the business for three years to help build the team and expertise in-house, in line with the investor’s strategy, and it’s now delivering for a diverse range of traansaction types.

• EdTech: We have been working with an EdTech venture that is bringing an AI driven teaching aid to meet a B2B2C opportunity, internationally. Inevitably, this is very challenging from a data protection perspective, with user data that might need to move from one jurisdiction to another, and customer data that must exist independently of international considerations.

 

Long term strategy and implementation: We are often involved to help devise, shape, and implement the long-term plans of customers:

• Education: We are working with a different education group that operates across three sites, has an in-house team of twelve put IT specialists who do no teaching, and an IT budget approaching £2m annually. We work closely with the head of IT to devise and deliver a long-term transtion from an infrastructure broadly in-site, to one that is fundamentally Cloud based. We are involved in the decisions about the steps along the way, the changes, and the subsequent infrastructure management and support.

 

Scale-up and scale-out: We are very familiar with the challenges that emerge as a result of scale and change, and we see this as a significant area where we add value in helping management teams anticipate and navgate around problems resulting from change:

• MedTech: We have worked with a team to build a business that processes and transports highly confidential medical information. We started working with them on strategy before they had drawn up their first investor deck. We have introduced development partners, investors, comms specialists and others, and they are now beyond SeriesA and approaching £5m in annualised revenues. The infrastructure is a specialised mix in order to handle the highly sensitive data: Broadly, processing and distribution is handled by infrastructure in a hyperscaler, there is a specialised gateway co-lo server with private comms into the data centre to control connection to the NHS backbone.

• Access control: We manage the infrastructure for a firm that provides site access control for enterprise customers. This requires 24/7 cover and response, and the data is sensitive. Typically, their customers have fixed policies determining where can be held and with which hyperscaler. Consequently, they have to be able to run and support infrastructure from a diverse range of providers, which is a key area where our team of specialists adds significant value.

 

International: We often work with firms who operate internationally or for whom that’s a crucial goal. We bring our experience to bear and are used to unusual situations and requirements:

• B2C: We are working with an ambitious entrepreneur presently based in Hong Kong. He approached us with a business idea and we’ve worked closely with him over the last eighteen month, starting out by helping shape and validate the proposition, raise investment, identify and select a development agency, define the technical solution, and bring it to market. The business reach MVP at Easter, brought on board its first beta customers and is now in international roll-out. The first customer was in Indonesia, and others followed in Hong Kong, and we are now reviewing enquiries from North America. We continue as business and technology advisers, and we manage their infrastructure.

• IoT: We have been advising a firm of IoT security specialists who are working on a project to roll out a B2C streaming service across Malaysia and Indonesia. This is requiring careful choices of where and how to host at the edge, and deliver content into set-top boxes for Malaysia and 4G back-haul for Indonesia. This venture is still in the design phase.