Blue Apache in the Press - CRN September 2009 After working in a similar business, Chris Marshall, chief executive officer and founder of Melbourne IT systems integrator Blue Apache, recognised that Australia's small-to-medium business owners suffered a shortage of IT competencies. He moved to fill that gap and has since consolidated Blue Apache as a managed service provider for the growing SMB market. In July Marshall celebrated his company’s 11th year.

Blue Apache provides systems integration, managed services, consulting, procurement, licensing and annuity management, and due diligence consulting on mergers and acquisitions.

CRN is delighted to reveal that Blue Apache was the first entrant to the inaugural Fast50. Commenting on the CRN Fast50, Marshall says “the CRN Fast50 seems like an excellent idea and it’s a great way to judge ourselves against our peers”.

“We’ve had a great year and executed our strategy well. We have identified who our core vendor partners are and we make sure we’re working closely with them and selecting partners aligned with our goals.”

Marshall says the CRN Fast50 lets Blue Apache measure how it is travelling in the market.

“We spend a lot of time building our market strategy and we’re pleased with the performance of the business,. We have got a great team and it’s an opportunity to measure our success.”

The integrator has developed its emPOWER-branded managed services solution. Each emPOWER solution is tailored to the customer, who pays only for the services required.

The managed service is charged at a fixed price rather than an hourly rate, and offers 24/7 monitoring of servers, monitor support calls and provision of reports.

One of Blue Apache’s successes is film distributor Icon Film Distribution. Icon, which grew from one to five sites after its acquisition of Dendy Cinemas last year, needed an IT management system.

Blue Apache provided helpdesk and onsite support via its emPOWER Managed Services offering. Icon’s general manager, Greg Hughes, says the service aggregates transactional data from fives sites, supports far more users and data and helps cinema managers engage with patrons in real time. Plus, another benefit, he says, is “we have no downtime”.