Matthew Buck’s Blog – Principal Engineer at RatwareUK

At RatwareUK every customer comes to us with a different set of problems. Every business is different, we know this. We’re different too. It would be easy to roll out a template that 75-90% fits their requirements, but we’re perfectionists. A solution that fits with the client’s business as well as creating new depth and scalability is what we’re after. This is why last week, when we were designing a wide area network, myself and a couple of engineers worked on a Saturday to discuss and configure the VPN and servers.

Free from the daily tasks of maintenance and programming, we set up a projector, meeting desk and proceeded to discuss and design a company’s network – literally – on the wall. We found this workshop approach was extremely productive. As engineers we were actively learning and implementing new skills and our combined rigour and ingenuity was poured into the new system. We then continued bench-testing the system and it was eventually deployed the following week. It was a complete success and the customer was provided with a system that worked precisely the way they wanted it to. You’d be surprised, but this sort of forward thinking is discouraged in some organisations. I certainly, would not work for any other company.