2022: a year of innovation and success for Sure Business

As we close off on a busy year in 2022, I am proud to say that progress, innovation and excellence have remained key to the success of Sure Business. From winning coveted awards to bringing in some of the best professionals on the job market, it has truly been a pleasure to watch the business grow and see our client offering expand at such a palpable rate.

Remaining true to our ethos of keeping our island communities connected, we’ve committed to invest over £100m into our islands above and beyond our normal annual investments. As I look back over the past year, I can reflect on five key areas that we have excelled in in 2022:

A highly engaged professional team

As always, our team is the beating heart of Sure Business, so this year we continued to introduce some of the most experienced ICT professionals in the market to our already-excellent pool of highly engaged team. We welcomed Joe McCusker as our new Group Professional Services and Product Director, with a background in high-level telecoms and ICT roles in blue-chip companies such as HP, Microsoft, Digicel and BT.

Earlier this year, Iain Davidson joined us as Head of Enterprise Products, whose appointment has been a momentous step for Sure Business in terms of our exploration of new products and solutions. Diversifying our team, Cybersecurity Consultant Grant Mossman is an invaluable addition to Sure Business, given the rise of ransomware and the ever-evolving threat of cyber criminals.

Innovation to meet client need

Our drive to bring in the right experts is of course matched by our desire to offer our customers the very best technology on the market. We recognise that cybersecurity is increasingly at the forefront of our clients’ minds. So this year we’ve worked closely with our partners to invest in new developments in using AI and emails to counter cyber threats, this has been backed up by new Cloud solutions, including our immutable storage that we know brings that much needed peace of mind. Planning for 2023 is well underway and our experts are already working with a number of new strategic technology partners that will allow us to provide new services for the Channel Islands and beyond.

Award-winning excellence

I am delighted to say that this year also saw us take home Customer Excellence Partner of the Year award at the 2022 Mimecast Partner Awards. This accolade reflects Sure Business’ excellent 24/7 customer service. I am very proud of the team for winning this prestigious award, which demonstrates how well we are operating as a top-tier service provider.

Being at the forefront of developments

Maximising Sure Business’ visibility this year has also been on the agenda, and our team attended several key industry events including VMWare Explore, Mobile World Congress, TeleForum 2022, HPE Discover 2022 and Layer123 World Conference. Each of these appearances allowed us to maintain a powerful industry presence while also ensuring we kept a finger on the pulse when it comes to scoping out the latest ICT solutions. Our team has established links with potential new suppliers and, through our existing partners, enjoyed access to the latest innovations on the market.

Caring for our community

Finally, Sure Business celebrated a particularly important milestone, as our Sure Community Foundation passes a huge £300,000 of donations to island charities. We also leveraged our technical expertise for good through our sponsorship of the always popular Isle of Man TT, where we provided technological infrastructure including GPS tracking and digital flags. For Prosperity Day in Jersey this year we split our funding between two charities: Dementia Jersey and Macmillan Cancer Support Jersey, giving two worthy causes a welcome injection of funds. Finally, in Guernsey, the Sure Community Foundation won the CSR Award at the Guernsey Community Awards, demonstrating how it’s excelled in its many charitable endeavours.

2023

Sure Business remains at the heart of a digital revolution in the Crown Dependencies. We are seeing evolutions of cybercrime, a focus on Cloud-based software, and an increase in data transfers in and out of the islands. All of this speaks to the essential need for our services, as we provide businesses large and small with the tools they require to run their operations effectively, safe in the knowledge that their technology ‘just works’.

I thank everyone in the Sure Business team for their continued hard work, as well as our industry partners and, of course, our ever-growing customer base. I wish you all a happy and healthy festive season and look forward to seeing you in 2023, for another year of innovation and success.