Sysguy Consulting was officially started in 1995 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. There is one primary owner and operator of the company Stephen Kennedy and several trusted contractors that are brought on as needed.
Stephen Kennedy
In the late 80’s, while attending University, Stephen’s father got a new IBM Clone Personal Computer, it was an X86 processor, with a 20 MB Hard Drive, 5.25 Floppy, EGA Monitor and 640K of Ram and Dos 3.0! Stephen started playing games on the system and one day was trying to remove a game and deleted all of the start up files on the system! Panicing he called support, and was talked through copying the files from the Dos disks to the HArd drive and the system was up and running again with no data loss but a big scare. A few weeks later the bill arrived for the support call, 75.00! At that point Stephen was determined that if he was going to play with he better learn as much as he could.
After graduating from the University of Western Onatrio with a BA in Economics, Stephen got his first computer A 386 DX 33. That was upgraded and tweaked and was put through it’s paces and Stephen learned all he could about the system. Soon he added a colour dot matrix printer and started printing colour signs for a friends retail outlet, and then doing some more desktop publishing. After graduation Stephen started working at the Royal Bank of Canada as Personal Banking Representative. He started doing signage for campaigns in the branch and soon got a Colour Ink Jet printer!
Not long after the purchase of the ink jet printer, word spread and Stephen started getting calls from other branches for banners and signs and posters and the part time desktop publishing business was started. All the while Stephen kept learning about PCs and getting questioned on them. About the same time he also got his first Video Blaster and purchased Video for Windows 3.0 and started capturing and editing postage stamp sized videos.
In 1995 Stephen transferred from his Personal Banking position at the Bank to a Customer Technical Support Representative for the Electronic Business Banking Group. There he took support calls from end users of the Banks EBB software and helped configure and troubleshoot hardware and software issues. During this time he took a couple of Visual Basic Programming courses and transferred to the Electroni Commerce department and worked as a programmer for a year.
After a year of programming Stephen became a 2nd level tech specialist for the EBB group again and looked at ways of making support better, tested software with new releases (Window 98) and trainined the support staff.
In 1998 Stephen took over as the manager of the Bank’s Head Office Support team which 4 years later merged with the implementation team and Stephen took over as the Team Leader of the 2nd level Tech Team that supports all RBC Technical Support Analaysts in Western Canada. Today he is still employed full time there.
In 1995 Sysguy was registered as a domain name and the company formally set up. Stephen’s full time job has allowed hime to learn more about the enterprise aspect of netwroking and his computer hobby (now job)Â has driven him to learn all he can about systems and cool gadgets.
While Sysguy is really only a part time business we do have some flexibilty and the tools to support remotely during the day. A majority of our work is preformed on evenings and weekends. We offer solutions primarily to the Small Business Owner and in March 2006, received our Microsoft Small Business Specialist Designation. This involved proving that we understood small business needs and proved (by writing an exam) that we were able to design and implement a network for small businesses using MS Small Business Server 2003 and other Microsoft products. We are continuing our eduactae and hold MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) Status for Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional and Designing and Implementing Networks for Small Businesses. We are also continually working at obtaining the same status for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Our Contractors
When needed Stephen brings aboard trusted contractors to assist with projects and for vacation relief. He only uses people that he has worked with in the past and trusts their abilities in both dealing with the technical problem and dealing with you the client.
We strive to offer very competive pricing, innovative solutions and sound advice and feedback.
If you are just looking for information or would like a consultation please contact us at (403) 668-0678