Ben Watson (BMTech)
In June this year, Ben Watson unexpectedly found himself one of scores of IT workers falling victim to coronavirus pandemic’s economic desecration.
The former business development manager had spent the last six years working across Perth cyber security providers, ES2 and Velrada, but was now facing an uncertain future.
However, instead of letting the dogged climate hold him back, Watson took his years of experience and put them into his own security venture, BrightMinds Technology.
“I found myself at a crossroad where I could either launch my own business or accept employment within an established organisation,” Watson explained. “After a number of conversations where I questioned the risk of pursuing a new business venture, I decided to become my own boss. I am driven to make this new venture a success and share this success well into the future.”
Known as BMTech, the new company aims to provide “practical technology solutions” to the Australian market, helping them improve cyber resilience and productivity, reducing risks and improving operational efficiency.
At present, Watson is currently a one-man show, working with contractors, but is looking to eventually bring on staff full time, in particular those with skill sets in Microsoft’s Dynamics and associated Power Platform.
As BMTech is still in its infancy, Watson’s primary goal is acquiring new customers and forging strong vendor relationships, which will naturally help build reference material and case studies.
“Maintaining these newly forged relationships is highly important as the technology landscape is indeed vast and we can continue to provide knowledge and expertise across a number of focal areas,” he said.
Although admittedly a difficult time to launch a new business, Watson is optimistic about the opportunities in Western Australia and across the country.
“Customer spending will be predicated by the region, industry, impact of the pandemic and risk appetite,” Watson said. “It is likely that the government (local, state and federal) will continue to have a focus on spending to alleviate the economic pressures on business and seek to maintain a positive economy.
"It is recognised that for some organisations this is an opportunity to focus on improving business operations," he added.
As such, Watson believes there will still be strong demand for partners who can help them alleviate their own economic pressures.
This he believes can be achieved by applying automation to business processes, enabling data protection and security for disparate workers.
On top of this, there will be demand for applications and digital channels to enable and empower the customer, migrating and modernising legacy applications and conversion to the cloud.
“Customers are ultimately focused on receiving high quality outcomes and maintaining relationships based on value,” he said. “Technology partners will need to focus on the changing digital landscape such as the; shift from campus and branch networks to working from home, need for security and compliance that considers the mobile and cloud, to name a few.”
Beyond technology capabilities, Watson added that a successful partner of the pandemic needs to have their own empathy, both internally to workers, but also to customers and across the supply chain.
“I truly believe that we are all in this together and we have a duty to be empathetic and conscious of our fellow selves,” he said. “The most successful providers will be those who have reacted to address some of the short-term challenges but aren’t blinded by near-sightedness and continue to focus on the long-term.”
ARN Advance is a centralised editorial resource designed to help partners access forward-looking content as the Australian market attempts to reposition for growth.
