Page 36 - Tropic Magazine Issue 19

TROPIC • COVER STORY

and we’re already starting to do that.
We’ve even had other companies calling
us and saying, ‘Our customer wants
AirBridge, can we partner with you and
sell your product?’ Local Government
bodies are going to tender with a
specification to deliver AirBridge™,
which of course is our trademark. Now
that we can deliver on a national scale,
it has become really interesting.”
The journey began when Mr Stephens
devised a construct to deliver fast,
reliable and affordable network
connectivity to the remote Torres
Strait Island Regional Council region
using encrypted point-to-point
wireless, a solution he soon realised
could be valuable to many more Local
Government areas. “AirBridge Networks
was then started and grew rapidly
throughout the Local Government
sector,” the Managing Director said.
“We regularly speak to business owners
that want to achieve specific business
outcomes and need technology to
facilitate that. We then draw on
decades of experience within our team
to deliver a truly holistic architected
solution. We have had great success

I want to share my deal with the technology requirements
dream of using of enterprise customers.”
AirBridge has also secured the relevant
technology to achieve expertise, in part by pouncing on some
great outcomes. of the talented staff that have recently
departed Telstra. “I genuinely believe
- Doug Stephens
we have the absolute best staff in their
respective fields on a national scale,” Mr
Stephens said. “These are experienced
in many industry verticals including professionals whose customers say, ‘no
government, mining, agriculture, matter where this person goes, that’s
aquaculture and healthcare and we where my business goes’. You don’t
continue to uncover more applications get to that level unless you’re good and
for our solutions. that’s who we’ve hired. Working with a
Far from resting on its laurels, big team like this is quite humbling.”
picture thinking is now leading The groundwork for further expansion
AirBridge to take advantage of Telstra’s has also been laid by investing in
recent restructure. A new arm of the the set-up of hosted and automated
company known as TerreCom aims to business processes. “There is a
fill the gap left in the large enterprise scalable mechanism for every aspect
market, allowing the AirBridge Group of the business, from provisioning
to expand further into metropolitan to accounting to opportunity
and international-based businesses as management to project management,”
well as continuing to grow in regional Mr Stephens said. “What I was asking
Australia. “As the technology landscape our platforms to do they hadn’t done
continues to evolve and become more before, so we had to try to figure out
complex, the need for truly experienced how to augment our systems around
network architects will become more those processes. That is going to set us
prevalent,” Mr Stephens said. “That’s above our competition.”
where TerreCom is placed. We are However, Mr Stephens acknowledges
certainly amongst the more well- that at the end of the day, continued
equipped undertakings in Australia to success comes down to relationships.

36 • Tropic • Issue 19