Decades have passed since Cycrest installed technology such as dumb terminals, NetWare file servers, Novell GroupWise products, and tape drives that took all night to back up just the data.
Decades later, Spokane IT clients for whom Cycrest installed that earlier technology are still with us, and that was more than 30 years ago.
Working with our Clients, many of whom have been with us for over two and three decades, is what keeps Cycrest focused on relationships, providing high levels of customer service and solutions, all while continuing to honor those relationships.
This is the lens we’d hand any owner deciding who should run their IT for the next decade.
What We Were Sure Would Last and Didn’t
Every era had a fixture that seemed permanent. In the late eighties, it was the file server running Novell NetWare, which seemed so entrenched that nobody budgeted to replace it. In the 2000s it was the server closet, with a Windows Small Business Server box, a tape drive, and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server so the partners could get email on the road.
All of that is gone too. Small Business Server had its last release in 2011, and Microsoft stopped selling it after that. BlackBerry’s server business faded within a few years of the iPhone’s arrival. The rest of the closet mostly emptied once Microsoft 365 started transitioning email systems to hosted solutions rather than keeping Exchange running in a room down the hall.
Security products turned over just as reliably. Over the years we saw a long series of them pitched as the answer, including the all-in-one firewall appliance, the antivirus suite that would catch everything, and whichever dashboard came next. Each one solved a real problem, and each was absorbed or replaced within five to seven years.
Few of those were bad purchases. A business that sees every system as something it rents for a few years tends to budget for the exit, while one that sees a system as permanent is often surprised by an end-of-support date and ends up paying for a rushed migration.
Vendor Relationships Outlast the Products They Sell
Product lines come and go. The people at the distributors and manufacturers we work with turn over far more slowly, and a lot of quiet value comes from that.
Say a product is reaching end of life. If we know someone at the vendor who knows our client base, we can hear about it early, work out the cleanest migration path, and sometimes get a few extra months of support while a client’s budget cycle catches up. It takes about a decade to build relationships like that, and they are worth more than any single product line on a quote.
Why a 35-Year Client Changes How We Work
What happens to advice when a client relationship is expected to last decades? It gets more conservative, in the useful sense. If we expect to be supporting a business ten years from now, recommending something flashy today means we’re the ones cleaning it up later. That changes what gets recommended, and sometimes it means talking a client out of a purchase.
Long tenure also means memory. We know why a clinic’s network was split the way it was in 2009, which line-of-business app can’t be patched on the usual schedule, and which owner hates surprise invoices. A business that switches Spokane IT providers every three years loses that history each time and pays to rebuild it, usually through a few rough months of rediscovery.
Growing Through Allied Systems Without Changing
Cycrest has also grown. We acquired Allied Systems, which gave us more people and more capacity and extended our reach across Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Western Montana.
How we deal with clients hasn’t changed as we’ve grown. Cycrest is accountable; we still give conservative advice, and we still expect a client relationship to last decades. Our view of technology hasn’t changed either. When something better comes along that provides more security and productivity for our clients, we’ll consider adopting it; when something works, we keep it; and we try not to confuse the two.
How to Pick a Spokane IT Partner That Will Last
If you’re evaluating a managed Spokane IT partner, the tech stack in the proposal is the least durable thing in it. It will look different in seven years no matter who you hire. Spend your evaluation time on the habits that outlast the stack.
Very little of what sits in today’s server racks and software subscriptions will still be in use a decade from now. The businesses that get through those changes calmly will be the ones that paired whatever technology they had with tested backups, steady vendor relationships, and a Spokane IT partner that plans to be around for the next change too.
If you want to know where your own backups stand, ask us to run a restore test with you. It’s the fastest way to find out whether your current setup is insurance or hope.
Contact Cycrest today at 509-747-9275, and we’ll schedule you for a free evaluation.
