After 20 years IT troubleshooting for New Zealand businesses, Ponsonby based Fisheye are launching a new online workshop platform to help improve remote work tech issues.
London, 1997. Jeremy Hunt was 22. Two years out of uni he’d landed a technician job with Barclay’s investment bank during its biggest IT project of that era, the London Stock Exchange crossover from analogue to digital.
"The City in the mid 90s was the wild west. Information technology was brand new and everyone was thinking big. But people were also nervous. Digitising the LSE was like swapping the tracks out with the trains still running. I remember the night we finished the testing and were ready to hand over. We were all terrified.
"All the big investment banks were lining up to patch in their servers. At about 2.00am our number was up and my boss hit enter. The drives spun up and the cooling fans engaged and we all just stared at this little green light on the front panel. Finally, this bloody light stopped flashing and went solid. That was that. The LSE had gone digital!"
It was a baptism of fire that served Hunt well. By the early 2000s he was back in Auckland with a dream of his own. Fisheye IT was born and he never looked back. "Those early years in London were super exciting technically, but the big takeaway for me was to never leave the people out of the equation. Time and time again that proved the case, even with our biggest corporate clients. Technology only does its job if people can engage with it properly."
Now, as the 20th anniversary of Fisheye approaches, Hunt and client manager Rae Cadwallader, are about to launch their next venture.
"We’ve noticed through Covid-19 just how integrated personal devices and home systems have become with business IT systems. When staff work from home, their own personal tech is suddenly critical to operations. Not having the support they get at the office means things can start to slip really quickly. You’d be surprised how much time and money gets lost on tech issues that would have previously been thought of as personal problems, not company ones.
"The number of times we’ve seen a major bottleneck caused by a lost password, or printer not connecting, or a laptop crashing at a critical moment – it’s crazy. Multiply that by however many staff you have and it’s a big problem. We thought it was a good moment to pivot and help solve the problem.
As a partner brand to Fisheye, Hunt and Cadwallader are launching Bootup, an online workshop and micro-learning platform for businesses with remote staff and freelancers who lean heavily on home hubs.
"We’re throwing our arms around the whole issue of remote working from an IT perspective. Bootup will offer full shakedown of security, device optimising, password management – absolutely everything people need to keep their personal IT in good order and stop operational bottlenecks. We’ll be deploying our substantial tech experience to make sure it’s done properly.
"We’ve had an amazing response so far with test sessions. This is something remote workers really want and it’s something managers and business owners are quite desperate for. We see it as digital wellbeing or just another way of keeping a healthy work/life balance."
The Bootup website is now live and booking its first series of workshops in November. All welcome - from individual freelancers to large scale teams.
"If you’d told me back in ’97 I’d be launching a support service for people’s phones I’d have laughed at you. But then again my iPhone 12 could probably have run the LSE by itself back then!”
For more information email info@bootup.nz or call T: 09 941 8340.
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Published 1 October 2021