Check out our May newsletter and see what's going on in the world of IRIS!

Last week the staff of IRIS Solutions participated in our summer company outing at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, NC.

A great time was had by all as we paddled down the Catawba River on flat water kayaks...

... and ended the evening with a fireside dinner on Hawk Island; a wooded island located in the middle of the Whitewater Center.

(Photo Credit to the U.S. National Whitewater Center)                    

If you have never been to the Whitewater Center you should definitely take the time to check it out! We had a wonderful time team-building and mingling with each other in a non-office setting. 

There are sure to be other IRIS adventures so stay tuned!

(Photo credit to the U.S. National Whitewater Center)                                  

We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to those of you who have made our progress possible throughout the last year and years before.  Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

What do you get when you have a room full of computer nerds for a conference?  IT Nation.

Last week IRIS Solutions sent two people down to IT Nation (the annual partner summit hosted by our management software company in Florida) to help develop our technical skills.  The conference was great for us and we got a good break from the day-to-day grind.  While down there we were able to network with other IT shops like ours and talk about best practice.

We met with different vendors such as ConnectWise, SonicWALL, Firebox, Axcient, Kaseya, Symform, and LabTech.  These may not sound like the types of companies you are used to hearing about, however they help shops like ours offer great solutions to our customer base.  These companies build products that we can offer our clients at a smaller scale since so many of the products offered and built for IT from companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco are built for large platforms.  The smaller channel driven providers like us help our deployment of technologies such as hosted Exchange, online backup, application performance, and other cloud-based services.

Overall we have made some significant improvements to our business.  We have developed better policies for ticket flow and problem resolution and are going to start using something called "email connector" to help keep up with support-based emails better.  We have also made improvements to our quoting system for faster turnaround on products and replacements. 

As we talked to other business partners like us there is one thing for sure; IT businesses like ours have a lot to offer other small to medium sized businesses.  The world of IT is changing so rapidly that it is hard to keep up, but in a small company like ours we can see a change coming and make immediate changes to our process and direction to overcome those obstacles.  Have you ever seen IBM do anything fast?  Think about this: IBM owned the computer market with the IBM XT in the mid to late '80s.  Around this time a small startup called Dell came in and took over the delivery of computers to individuals and businesses.  IBM could not change quickly enough and then Dell became the number one reseller.

IRIS Solutions is just the right sized company to help facilitate change for our evolving future in IT.  We learned a lot during IT Nation and are continuing to make improvements to our company.

We are a technology company that thrives on technical things and innovation. However, we could not do any of this without our current military and past veterans.  Thanks for what you do.