YORK-based company PowerON was founded on a principle ambition to make IT services simpler.

Now in its fourth year of trading, PowerON has doubled in size year-on-year, and is now on track to hit turnover targets having delivered 403 projects to date.

Based on the former Terry’s site in Bishopthorpe Road, PowerON employs a team of 25 and is hoping to impress judges in the Small Business of the Year and Business Innovation of the Year categories.

Phil Mercer and Steve Beaumont, the founders of PowerON, decided to build a business based on a new innovative approach which anybody could use and deploy. Steve created the initial product set and Phil developed its commercial and market engagement model.

Through years of prior experience in the industry, they understood that many customers struggle to install and manage their internal management IT infrastructure due to the complexity, time and costs associated.

After a year of research and development, with all costs self-funded by PowerON, the first product was born. The Cloud Management Appliance (CMA), is a purpose-built appliance, designed and created by PowerON.

In recognition of their innovation, PowerON has been awarded EMS Elite Partner status by Microsoft and is now part of a select partner group with access to early product releases and technical content. Only 70 partners globally enjoy this status and only six within the UK. This sets the scene for PowerON to achieve its desired aim of being recognised as Microsoft Partner of the Year.

The PowerON team is influencing others through their methodology around automation and the effectiveness of their engagements. This also contributes to the uptake of Microsoft software by customers, which has a positive effect on PowerON and Microsoft.

Kathryn Baarda, head of marketing at PowerON said: “PowerON has continued to develop its solution by building on the strong value and unique selling point of the CMA with a continuous aim to simplify and broaden the reach of their products.

PowerON’s Unique Intellectual Property (IP) capabilities and other innovations mean that they can help customers eliminate many of the complicated processes usually seen in traditional IT Management deployments.

“These factors, alongside their excellent managed services puts them ahead of the competition.”