IT consulting on Vancouver Island, from the middle of it.
A 460-kilometre island with one main road breaks most IT advice written for a city. We plan for the closures, the outages and the ferry-delayed parts, then do the fixing. Remote first from Port Alberni, site days booked ahead.
Remote first · site days booked ahead · scoped and quoted before anything starts
- Sign-in blocked, all sessions revoked9:14 am
- Mailbox converted to shared, office manager given access9:16 am
- Licence removed, back in the pool9:21 am
Front desk printer says offline again. Nobody touched it.
It picked up a new address after the power blip. Fixed it remotely and pinned it so it stays put. Try printing now.
Printing. Thank you!
- Based in Port Alberni, mid-Island
- Scoped before it starts
- Replies within one business day
- Your accounts stay in your name
Most IT advice is written for a city. A city has a vendor across town.
Four things the Island changes. They all cost money the same way.
Nothing dramatic. Just the ordinary assumptions inside most IT advice (a courier, a technician, a second internet path, mains power) failing to hold here. Each one changes what a sensible system looks like, so we design for all four.
Next-business-day hardware isn't
A replacement part from the mainland crosses on a ferry. Next business day means next business day in Richmond, then a sailing, then a drive. So before anything breaks, we work out which failures you can ride out without a courier and keep the cheap spare for the one you can't. That's a business decision more than a parts decision.
One road, and it closes
In June 2023 a wildfire at Cameron Bluffs closed Highway 4, and Port Alberni and the whole west coast had no road out. The Malahat closes. The Inland Island Highway closes. When a corridor goes, nobody drives to your site that day, so we build systems that can be reached, diagnosed and usually fixed without anyone driving anywhere.
Your internet may have one path
Plenty of Island communities hang off a few physical fibre routes, and one cut can take a whole town's business connections down at once. The question to answer first is cheap: what does the business still need to do while the internet is off, and can it?
Winter takes the power out
Coastal wind storms and multi-hour outages are a normal part of the year here. Whether the till can still take a payment, and whether anything was mid-write when the lights went, gets decided long before the storm. We decide it with you.
The whole Island, worked from the middle.
Port Alberni sits where Highway 4 meets the rest of the Island. Remote first everywhere, site visits booked ahead.
Port Alberni sits mid-Island. Close to most of it by road.
Highway 4 meets the Island Highway near Parksville, which puts us level with the middle of the Island instead of the south end, where most IT firms are. That helps with site days. Remote support reaches Sointula and Sooke the same way.
Mid-Island
Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Lantzville, Nanoose, Gabriola. The Island's busiest corridor and its mainland gateway, with two vehicle ferry terminals and an airport. Web work for this area has its own page:
North Island
Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland, Campbell River, and the highway north past Sayward to Port McNeill and Port Hardy. Distances get long and vendor options thin out fast. North of Campbell River, remote first is the only plan that works. Web work in the valley:
West coast
Port Alberni, Tofino, Ucluelet, Bamfield. One road in, Highway 4, and it's our road. Seasonal operators whose summer decides the year, in the corridor most exposed to a closure.
South Island
Duncan, the Cowichan Valley, Victoria and the peninsula. This is where the Island's IT supply is concentrated, so you have real local options here, and we'll say when one of them fits better.
Off the road entirely
Quadra, Cortes, the Gulf Islands and the coastal communities reached only by boat or float plane. Nobody drives out for an afternoon, so a system that can only be fixed in person doesn't work here. We build ones that don't need it.
Consulting, then the doing. Advice you can't act on isn't worth paying for.
Computers, printers, networks and the software you already run, looked after on their own, without anything being built. We look, we tell you straight what's worth changing, and then we do it.
What gets looked at
- The computers, printers and networks the business already runs
- The software you already pay for monthly, and whether you still need all of it
- What happens when the internet, the power, or whoever knows the system is unavailable
- Where the manual work is, and whether any of it should stop being manual
How we run it
- Remote first, because that works across this geography
- Scoped and quoted before anything starts
- Whoever quotes the work does the work
- Replies within one business day
- Accounts, domains and licences stay in the business name
Where the line is
- No promise a system will never fail. The promise is that we thought about the failure before it happened.
- No lock-in. If the relationship ends, nothing of yours is held.
- If something's outside what we do, we tell you on the call, not three weeks in.
If it turns into a build
- AI and automation — for the work that repeats every week
- Apps and MVPs — for the internal tool a spreadsheet has been impersonating
- Websites — a custom managed site at $350/month, no build fee
Tell us what isn't working.
A system that keeps breaking, software you're paying for and not using, or a straight opinion before you commit to something. We'll tell you what fixing it takes.
Book a call