Spire reaches another milestone – our 25th anniversary!
SpireTech turned 25 years old on Feb 25th, 2018. In the technology business, that’s a few lifetimes. While our services continue to evolve with new technologies many of our clients have been with us since day one! We want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our valued clients — we appreciate your business!
Our birthday is a good time to reflect on why we founded SpireTech, and how we chose our name. For a trip down memory lane read on.
Why SpireTech was founded
Spire’s founders, who worked in the IT department of a large Civil Engineering firm, noticed that there were no IT firms in PDX supporting the specialized needs of Architects and Engineers who required both networking and CAD expertise.
A lot of our work focused on end-user productivity – if you save all your employees 10 minutes a day, it can pay real dividends in driving profitability and efficiency. We knew that most small AEC firms could not afford to employ full-time internal IT staff with the needed expertise, so we decided to start a firm bringing large-firm capabilities to smaller design shops.
How we chose our name
One of the company founders, Scott Cook (SpireTech’s president) drove west across the Ross Island Bridge every day on his way to work. The large KGON tower, now called the Stonehenge tower, had been recently constructed on top of council crest, and was in his line of sight. While thinking about what to name his new company on his drive in to his dayjob, and thinking about what the new company would do for our clients (which at the time was mostly about improving productivity) he came up with the name Spire Technologies to inspire a vision of elevating your productivity using technology.
Along comes the internet and other big changes
In the technology space, things move fast and change all the time – so we’ve had to do the same over the years. SpireTech expanded to add Internet Services in 1994, built our own datacenter in the late ’90s, and began offering server hosting (colocation and datacenter) services in that time frame. Around 2008 we began offering what our industry now refers to as Managed Services, which is mostly all-inclusive, proactive, flat-fee IT management services and VIP support for Portland-area businesses. Two years ago, Spire joined the Microsoft cloud program and subsequently reached silver cloud competency. In 2017, Spire placed #82 on the MSPMentor 100 Small business edition and #425 on the MSP 501, which ranks Managed Service Providers nationwide based on size and growth.
What’s next?
Our crystal ball doesn’t work much beyond 3 to 5 years, but we’re certainly planning on “more cloud” continuing to be part of our future, specifically Azure and SpireTech’s cloud services. Over our 25 years of service, SpireTech has continued to evolve to help our clients meet the challenges of the ever-changing technology landscape. If you’re reading this, you might well be a client – and we’d like to thank you for your continued support.