Looking out across the office, I can see our team working away with a Christmas tree shimmering in the distance. What a year it has been for our team, with many moments to remember.
In April 2021 we celebrated our 10th Birthday with a client function and a rather delicious cake! It was great to take a time to celebrate with many of our clients, partners, and friends. It is hard to have imaged back in 2011 that we would have built the company we have today.
Around the same time, we started discussions with Alchemy Group about how we could work together. These discussions developed into merger negotiations and on the 1st of October 2021, we completed the agreement and welcomed the Alchemy team into Stratos.
Rolling forward to December and the former Alchemy team joined us at the Colombo St office. We are all getting to know each other and learning a lot of new things. There is a lot of work to do over the coming months and it feels like we’re off to a good start.
In the ever-changing world we work in, there is always something new to learn and skills to gain. We joined the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative to gain more Azure expertise. Our team also completed certifications for Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. The commitment to learn from across our team resulted in Stratos achieving Microsoft Silver Partner status in four technology areas:
- Application Development
- Application Integration
- Data Analytics
- Cloud Platform
We also became partners with Powell Software (Intranet and Microsoft Teams solutions) and Nintex (Form and Workflow solutions). These partnerships extend our modern workplace service offering and give additional capabilities beyond the standard Microsoft solutions.
On the project front, our team has delivered a wide range of projects including mobile applications, web portals, software integration, custom applications, document management solutions, Intranets, PowerApps and workflows for clients across New Zealand and Australia. We have worked across a wide range of industries from manufacturing to local government, legal to rural services, health to construction and much more.
In November we jointly won an ALGA Industry Excellence Award with Environment Canterbury for an innovative solution for managing contaminated land. The Listed Land Use Register (llur.ecan.govt.nz) gives people access to comprehensive information about contaminated land across the Canterbury Region at the click of a button. It is a real asset for our region.
We finished the year with our annual family Christmas BBQ at The Groynes. Santa was busy with an ever-increasing number of children to entertain. It is great to see our team out from behind their screens, getting involved in a cricket match and families socialising together. It was a beautiful Canterbury day so we all dried out from the kids water fight in no time at all.
Thank you to our clients, partners, and supporters. We appreciate all that you do for us.
Wishing you all the best for the festive season.
Team Stratos!