Interview with Robert Greenwood of AexiManagement.com Published: Jun 08, 2004

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AexiManagement is a UK based firm offering advanced outsourced server management solutions. We had a chance to interview Robert Greenwood, CEO of AexiManagement.

 AexiManagement is a UK based firm offering advanced outsourced server management solutions. We had a chance to interview Robert Greenwood, CEO of AexiManagement.


www.aeximanagement.com

WHG: Hi Rob, thank you for taking the time to be interviewed with WebHostGear.com
What is your name and title?

Ok, First off all.. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk with you on WebHostGear, I visit this site often and am ecstatic at the opportunity of having my company interviewed. My name is Robert Greenwood and I am joint owner and chief technical officer of AexiManagement.com

WHG: What is your company's location and contact information?
Although we do maintain offices and "dwellings" around Europe and the US, our main headquarters where the day to day running of AexiManagement is performed are within Manchester, UK. Or to be a little more precise, Stockport. Our main contact information is tel: 00447932726131 (Toll free number will be available soon) and email: [email protected]. You can also contact me directly at: [email protected].

WHG: When did your company officially launch?
AexiManagement officially launched its web presence in the early months of 2004, But before that we were providing numerous clients with local server management solutions. It was in fact the idea of one of our clients to start selling our products to the rest of the world, and since then we have never looked back really. We are proud to support 15+ major hosting and dedicated server providers as well as numerous small to medium sized firms. Unfortunately for privacy reasons we cannot give out any information regarding those clients, as we pride ourselves on being as transparent as possible when it comes to providing solutions towards their clients.

WHG: Tell us about your company and services
AexiManagement is a UK based firm offering advanced outsourced server management solutions. Over the past few years we have observed the outsourcing market become saturated with Indian and American providers some of which either struggle to understand the English language or just lack the basic fundamentals to provide high quality technical support services. That is where we believe our company differentiates from most other providers today, We make sure that all our technicians and server administrators speak excellent English and are fully certified in the role they will be required to work in. As well as providing true 24/7 technical support services and a wide range of tailor made solutions ranging from kernel recompiles to helpdesk support.

WHG :What operating systems and control panels do you support?
We are proud to offer support and administration services on all operating systems and control panels, we are even beginning to provide numerous newly developed control panels with ideas and source codes to be included into their distribution. Obviously some of our technicians including myself and my partner will know certain control panels are operating systems better than others, we like to call these our "niche" support groups. The "niche" operating systems include Redhat, Debian, FreeBSD and other forms of Linux as well as Windows 2000+. Secondly our "niche" control panels include cPanel, Plesk, Ensim, H-Sphere, DirectAdmin and WebMin. As I mentioned though those are not the only control panels and operating systems we support.
 
WHG:  How many people work at Aeximanagement, do you provide emergency support?
As I mentioned before we have numerous locations over Europe and the U.S. But based in our Manchester office is about 7 people. This includes my partner and myself as well as 5 technicians who between them will manage the helpdesk and make use of our advanced server monitoring system. Over the past few weeks we have also taken on about 5 apprentices and we are now holding regular web based training classes for them. Yes, We are very proud to offer 24/7 technical support via our helpdesk for existing clients, and emergency support is provided at $25 per hour which is more than half price when compared to other providers.

WHG: What is your day to day role like at your company?
This usually varies dependant on the work load and availability of helpdesk staff. But I would say a usual day would star around 8:30pm where my partner and myself would meet up and discuss any news related to Aexi or its services. From there I would usually take a quick look at the helpdesk and make sure all tickets are responded to within the time specified in our SLA, if not I would make sure I resolve those tickets myself.
The next item on the agenda would be security audits. We usually need to perform about 5 of these a day on new and existing clients machines and so this can take up quite a hefty chunk of the day. At the moment only the two partners Andrew and Myself take care of these as we prefer our technicians to stay focused on the helpdesk and server monitoring. So I would say that all together a good 3 or 4 hours is spent performing this audits and making sure everything works correctly.
The rest of the day is usually spent speaking with current clients or people who are interested in becoming clients. This is usually done over the phone as we like to get to know all of our clients well so we can provide a more custom service. The agenda of these phone calls can usually range from answering sales questions to attending to feedback from our current clients.
That pretty much concludes a normal day in the office, Out of the office I do spend a lot of time posting on httptalk.com and am called into the office again on the odd occasion to either speak with a client or deal with a downed server.

WHG: How do you differentiate your company and products in a highly competitive industry?
We here at AexiManagement try to compete in a highly saturated marketing by providing all ours clients with services which we believe are not available elsewhere. Since the opening of AexiManagement to the public we have constantly been updating our products to insure quicker response times and more detailed information regarding any issues that arise.
With AexiManagement you are guaranteed 24/7 technical support from our fully certified helpdesk technicians and server administrators. When brought together by competitive pricing we are able to offer up-to-date pricing schemes that will fit any users budget

WHG: Why would I choose you? How experienced is your staff?
At AexiManagement we aim to offer an extremely high quality of service coupled with both 24/7 technical support and competitive pricing. Enabling us to compete highly with numerous other outsourced support providers. We are proud to offer completely transparent services and up-to-date help and faq material for your companies website. So you know that when you buy a service through aeximanagement, your not just buying access to fully certified technicians you also gaining numerous new avenues of support for your clients or servers.

WHG: Do you have any kind of certifications or notable experience?
Every member of AexiManagement will have some kind of certification based on the areas they work in. For example, all our systems administrators who perform the day-to-day managing of our clients services are both RHCE and MCSE certified and will endeavour to attend at least 1 training course a year. Another example would be our helpdesk technicians, They are both certified in level 1 systems administration and attend yearly customer service seminars.

WHG: What areas in your business would you like to improve?
As we have only recently opened our doors to accept public clients we obviously have had numerous feedbacks from our clients related to the service we offer and how we could endeavour to improve it. One of the most popularly requested features is a 800 toll free number for existing clients to make use of. We are currently researching this and plan to start using a service like this within the near future. One important improvement that will need making over the next few months, is to purchase a custom made billing system. As we continue to grow we have begun to realise that a out-of-the-box system really does not provide all the features we are looking to make use off, so I would imagine this will be a improvement made over the next few months. Our final improvement would definitely be the office, we are currently renting a few floors from an office based in Manchester, but as our client base continues to grow so does our need to expand. 
 
WHG: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Firstly, I would like to have seen all the improvements listed above to have taken place enabling us to provide a higher quality service towards our client base. From then, who knows?. I would like to believe that we would still be providing the quality service that we do know but to a wider percentage of the available market. I would also hope that we would have released numerous new features and plans to the public as well as to the private sectors of business.
 
I would like to hope that my partner and myself would be able to take a back seat within the company. Obviously continue to watch over the goings on within the business and interact with clients but also enable us to focus our available team on improving the service we offer.

WHG: Do you have any final comments?
Well, again I would like to thank you for giving us this opportunity and wish this site and yourself the very best. You have a lovely little community here and I'm sure the popularity will continue to grow as it has done over the past few months. Finally, I understand the frustration customers go through when trying to find a reliable outsourced support company and so I hope this interview and the many others find within this site help them get a grasp on the concept of "Outsourced Support"