Talk the talk

Kevin Murphy, managing director of IT services firm Complete Network Technology, talks to David Clerkin.

You're up and running for the last three years. In layman's terms, what do you specialise in?

We provide switches and routers that connect all a business's computers together, as well as offering ongoing monitoring and management services. We also offer consultancy services on the network design side of things.

How did your business get started?

I started the company in late 2000 with two other people Billy Manley, who is our technical and operations director, and Ray Hill, our sales director.

Each of us were principals of companies which were acquired by Esat BT in the late 1990s.

We felt there was space in the market for an independent network services company.

Late 2000 may not have been the best time to start up a technology-related business, given the way the markets went. How difficult was it?

We kicked off trading that September. With the market turnaround, we had a lot of hard work in our first year, but we've managed to achieve profitability every year since inception.

We managed turnover of over €3 million in our first year and have grown it steadily since then.

What other obstacles did you face?

We're up against a lot of well-established companies that are owned by the likes of Esat and Eircom, who have a very strong account base.

But we've been successful in targeting customers we already had a relationship with.

And you'd consider yourselves well-established by now?

Now we're in our third year and we've expanded into Britain.

We've four sales people and 11 technical people working over there.

The company employs 30 people in total.

We're also expanding into telecoms. We're offering LAN (Local Area Network) extensions and fibre connections between different sites.

We've focused this on Dublin so far but are rolling it out countrywide this year.

Telecoms are a logical extension of our existing business.

How is the British operation performing?

We haven't moved into telecoms there yet.

We first got into that market because two of the main vendors we deal with asked us to service some of their British customers. We've also done work for our existing Irish customers who operate there.

One of our clients is Avid Technology, who make digital editing equipment for movies.

They have an office in Sandyford in Dublin, but we've designed a computer network for their operation in Pinewood Studios in London.

How big will the telecoms side of the business become?

The telecoms business is very exciting for us it will take us onto a different level and allows us to offer more to customers. It also makes us a one-stop shop that can service all our customers' needs.

I hope it will account for 50% of the business by the end of the year.