Connecting Point of Greeley was founded in November of 1985. Ted Warner , Rick Berry , Harlan Trupp and Pawnee Leasing Corporation originally purchased the franchise from Connecting Point of America. The Greeley operation was actually started in 1982 and was run as a company owned franchise for the first three years of its existence.
Connecting Point originally sold office products such as personal computers, small copiers, software and supplies. Additionally, the store was the drop off point for TCI cable TV bills. Although many computer products were sold, the store originally specialized in Apple and Atari Computers. In 1984 it became apparent that the computer world was moving to the IBM and IBM compatible platform so Connecting Point went through the arduous task of securing an IBM PC products authorization. That was accomplished in late 1985, and the store began selling a large amount of PC compatible computers and related products.
Beginning in the mid 1980's the current ownership group shifted the focus of the store from retail to a more business-oriented approach. Connecting Point maintained a retail storefront, but also added an outside sales force and began beefing up the service department. In the late 80's and early 90's many business customers began needing local area networks. Connecting Point was a leader in this area, and became a Novell Gold authorized reseller. Rick Berry was one of the early Novell CNE's (Certified Netware Engineer).
In 1990 the final pieces of the ownership team came together. Ted Warner moved to Greeley to manage the operation of Connecting Point, and through a series of purchases bought out the interests of Pawnee Leasing Corporation. One of the great strengths that Connecting Point has had over the years has been the hands-on approach the owners have taken. Ted Warner (President), and Rick Berry (Network Engineer) are active each and every day in the business.
As the computer industry has matured it has become increasingly important to provide our clients a high level of sales expertise, service capability and network consulting and design services. Connecting Point became proficient in selling and supporting the Windows platform and became a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider in 1997. Over the last several years Connecting Point has had a fairly balanced approach to the networking market and currently supports Novell Netware, the entire Microsoft Windows platform, and the various Citrix platforms.
A major addition to the Connecting Point offerings began to take shape in 1996. We were awarded a contract with the Hewlett Packard plant in Greeley , Colorado to provide technical outsourcing services to the plant. Beginning with five engineers at the HP Plant, our outsourcing effort has grown to the point where we have provided engineers to many of the top firms in Northern Colorado . Outsourcing services have become a critical and popular piece of the various offerings we provide to our clients. With the addition of our popular On-Site System Admin istrator (OSA) program, companies can now utilize Connecting Point engineering services for as little as four hours per month. This “outsourcing light” program provides many positive benefits to our clients.
In 2001 Connecting Point moved into the IP Telephony arena. We became certified for both the Cisco AVVID and 3COM NBX platforms. We have dedicated sales consultants and technical engineers to consult, design, install and maintain rich IP Telephony platforms for our clients. This is an exciting growth market for Connecting Point. Additionally, in 2002 we added the exciting ESI All In One Digital Phone System Line to our telephony lineup. Connecting Point is now a full service telephone system provider.
In mid 2003 Connecting Point began focusing on providing a suite of remote managed services to their clients. The goal of the managed service offerings is to provide our clients increased network uptime and save money by lowering overall support costs. The cornerstones of the managed offerings are a local redundant data center and a professionally staffed Help Desk. The current client offerings include; 24x7 network monitoring, patch management, email management, managed security, managed client desktop, remote data protection and business continuity and a full suite of hosting services. All these services are undergirded by our 24x7 Help Desk offering.
Today Connecting Point is an managed service and network integration organization that is focused on providing solutions that exactly meet our clients' business goals. Our mission is to provide an end to end approach to technology issues for our clients. Our entire professional staff of sales, service and administrative personnel is focused on the five technology focus areas listed below:
- Networking - hardware, software, network infrastructure, virtualization services and operating system support
- Telephony - voice, video and integrated data over a unified network platform – full call center support – system design maintenance and support
- Managed Services – 24x7 network monitoring, patch management, email management, managed firewall, remote data protection and business continuity
- Hosting Services – both co-location and fully hosted offerings are available in a virtual environment
- Product Procurement – World class products, corporate & inside sales teams, purchasing agents