A forward-thinking Bermuda-based IT and technology solutions provider has taken full advantage of the economic crisis to boost its staffbase, open new offices and launch a suite of new services.

Fireminds, which is run by ambitious entrepreneur Michael Branco and based in Washington Mall, has gone from strength to strength since it officially started in April, using the downturn to capitalise on recruiting the best employees, finding office space at a competitive rate and capturing a niche in the market with the roll-out of its professional services and managed hosting environment.

Now the business is looking to move forward on several fronts, including the formation of a multi-location hosting environments in Toronto.

Mr. Branco, who set up Fireminds on his own, announced the appointment of Delroy Taylor as vice-president of operations and Matt Ambrose as vice-president and managing consultant in August, and has since added three new members to his team, in addition to three software developers based in the US and a number of contractors.

The company has branched out from software development to the complete IT support package, ranging from managed hosting and IT disaster recovery and business continuity to IT professional services and ecommerce and computer security, with Mr. Ambrose responsible for expanding the IT services consulting team and project management practice and Mr. Ward, formerly of Bermuda Microsystems, tasked with running the firm's internal operating systems and setting up its new data centre, as well as servicing clients, in his role as IT consultant. Mr. Ward will also establish a hardware drive recovery service next month.

David Zuill joins the team as senior web developer, having worked in Bermuda and the US, including a stint at Logic Communications, with 10 years experience in the multimedia industry, and will form the link between the creative and software teams.

The newest recruit is Tony Tiongson, who specialises in CheckPoint firewalls, Cisco, Citrix and Windows-based systems, and he will be in charge of the new hosting environment and client consulting.

"The plan is to keep expanding," said Mr. Branco, who is half way towards attaining his Executive MBA at Ivey Business School in Toronto, which he attends once a month while running his business in Bermuda full-time.

"The software team is strong and in the New Year we aim to implement some of the bigger projects we are working on now.

"We also want to increase the head count of the professional services team in the future."

One of the company's biggest achievements to date has been the launch of its new hosting environment at the end of last month, with significant investment being put into providing blade servers, storage area networks and CheckPoint firewalls, as well as redundant Internet links, at its data centre based in the QuoVadis bunker in Hamilton.

"The new service is a fully-managed hosting environment," said Mr. Branco.

"Customers can put everything there from their websites to their office environments to their disaster recovery systems - we support pretty much all of the platforms, whether it be Windows or Linux.

"You just tell us what servers you need up and running and what specifications you require and we can do it in a timeframe between 24 hours and one week (for the bigger projects).

"It is a great milestone for us and something we are looking to build on."

Fireminds has also been working closely with Sean Collier and his team at Cosmic Design to deliver on several big projects, with the latter focusing on the graphic and web design of the sites for LF Wade International Airport, Flowers by GiMi and Cycle Care among others.

"We have been working with Fireminds to develop a better solution, not only visually pleasing, but also functional," said Mr. Collier.

Mr. Branco and Mr. Collier have gone full circle, with the pair having both attended the same high school and their fathers working together at Butterfield Bank, and teaming up again, they have scooped the 2009 Bermudian Business Awards for Best Graphic and Web Designer and Best IT Support respectively.

Asides from its partnership with Cosmic, Fireminds has dedicated Microsoft, BlackBerry, VMware and CheckPoint partners, in addition to forging links with LimeLight for content delivery of video streaming on a global scale.

For more information about Fireminds contact 295-0000 or email www.fireminds.com