Regional resellers: Geraldton

Masters IT: Vaughan Masters, owner

I’ve been in Geraldton for about five years and I started the business two years ago. Geraldton is going well and there is plenty |of opportunity for business here. 

Some businesses were affected by the mining drop-off, but everyone else seems to be OK.

There are small businesses starting up all
the time here. Geraldton gets a lot of people coming up to Perth so it is quite a transient town because of that big city influence. People still want to be able to do the same things they can do in any other city.

If local businesses need their computers fixed or networks set up, then we look after them. We also do a lot of website development and customisation for business. I see a lot of growth in electronic marketing, and businesses here are looking at Facebook, websites and mobile apps as primary marketing tools. 

We were one of the early sites for the NBN rollout. We have a cloud data centre here now and NBN will help with that, so we will see cloud computing become more prevalent here.

Logic IT: Nick van Namen, director

It was 2007 when my business partner Dwayne Archer and I got together, but both of us have been in IT since the late 1990s.

We try and help people with anything technology-wise. We have 16 people on staff today, having started off with three or four, and this year we will take on a few more staff to propel us into other areas.

The mining-related stuff has deteriorated, but since 2008 we’ve had steady growth.
We focus more on sustainable industries where there is always going to be a demand, such as the medical industry.

In 2009 we started up our own carrier. We’ve invested in our own infrastructure and directly connected to the local NBN point-of-interconnect. We’ve got a strong relationship with NBN Co and were the first ISP in Australia to offer faster than 100 Mbit/sec.

At this stage, we are focusing more on the ISP and the services we deliver. We have been hosting cloud services and providing networking solutions.

Watson Computer Sales & Repairs: Brad Watson, director

Including myself, I’ve got five techs and an admin person. Our core business has mainly been repairs, and we also sell laptops and computers and a large range of accessories.

We do Toshiba warranties, and also warranties for Leader Computers and EDsys Computes. We like their service and they are both really reliable machines.

Now we are getting more into the business side of things with servers and larger networks. I’ve brought on a business manager who has re-evaluated the whole business, and is taking us to the next level. We employed another server technician and now have a good core that can handle servers for small to medium businesses; before we were more home-oriented.

We’re using Facebook a lot for advertising – it’s good to reach people when they are actually using their computer. We’ve got about 1,200 likes on Facebook and for every 100 likes we give away an external hard drive, so instead of our advertising money going into a big firm, it is going back to the customers.