Timeline
We solve profitability challenges through the smart use of technology
IT Consultant Company Australia
At Network Overdrive, we help organisations make the most of their technology to increase their results – securely and strategically.
As a proactive Managed Service Provider and IT Consultancy, our aim is to empower our clients to leverage their IT. We support you to get the most from your existing systems and strategically plan for the future so that you can reach your goals.
We’re big enough to provide a reliable, comprehensive service across all aspects of organisational computing, yet small enough to keep IT personal and customised. We focus on:
- Secure and sustainable systems, minimising your exposure to internal and external risks
- Human-centered management of your IT operations to maximise the productivity of your people and processes
- Technology Value Identification of both your current platforms and alternatives, so you can improve your technology investment decisions when executing on strategic plans.
We combine our own specialist frameworks, quality support tools and business processes with personalised services and strategies. That combination means you make sure that your tech is optimised to deliver on your business goals.
Ultimately, our goal is to deliver sustainable and appropriate technology that powers your organisation to success.
We’re not just any IT company – since our first days, we’ve worked to be both a team with a purpose and an extended family of shared values.
The right technology is the productive infrastructure of business in the 21st century.
Success requires great people and good culture – and always will.
However these days it ALSO requires effective, integrated technology.
We love what the right technology can do when it’s a good fit for an organisation’s strategy.
Making the tech you have do what it was designed to do – and do it WELL – is what we’ve been doing since our beginning in 2000.
The seeds of Network Overdrive were sown in an international airport lounge in 1999. It began with a conversation between Greg Clarkson and Mark Pedersen (who first taught Greg Linux and drew him into the world of IT in the mid-90s).
While the mainstream tech talk was the Y2K bug and “the end of the world as we know it”, Mark and Greg were having a different conversation.
It was a conversation about a business that combined commercial viability and social connection – connecting different communities to provide a holistic form of well-being for everyone involved with it.
Mark Pederson (Technology Explorer), Greg Clarkson (Network Realizer) and John D’Alton (Systems Integrator) took the first steps towards this vision.
Network Overdrive
The Prequel
2000
Network Overdrive
as an intentional business
While the vision that became Network Overdrive was powerful, the reality of running a startup technology services business required a fundamental shift – in people and place as well as strategy.
Network Overdrive moved to Melbourne, re-imagined by Greg, Darren Copper and Maryam (now Clarkson) in coffee shop meetings and a spare bedroom office in Thornbury.
Our people and our place had shifted, but the core objectives of community and well-being stayed the same.
We did some market research and found that there was no IT company servicing not for profit and community organizations. That was our passion and our starting point.
As our name reflects, we started out building communication networks and installing computer systems around Australia (and occasionally overseas through industry connections).
What we set out to deliver were communications networks that hummed along, problem-free (as though they had an extra gear to reduce your effort and stress.)
Today the name Network Overdrive still works for us – we’ve just expanded the range of “networks” we work with to include bothl the networked technologies that power business collaboration in the 21st century along with the human networks that use them.
2000
Networks
running in
Overdrive
2000
Network Overdrive
as an intentional business
While the vision that became Network Overdrive was powerful, the reality of running a startup technology services business required a fundamental shift – in people and place as well as strategy.
Network Overdrive moved to Melbourne, re-imagined by Greg, Darren Copper and Maryam (now Clarkson) in coffee shop meetings and a spare bedroom office in Thornbury.
Our people and our place had shifted, but the core objectives of community and well-being stayed the same.
We did some market research and found that there was no IT company servicing not for profit and community organizations. That was our passion and our starting point.
As IT professionals, we started documenting what we did from the beginning. Not just our customers and their systems, but in our own operations. The first edition of our Operations Manual was put together in 2000 by Darren Copper, along with market research and business plan identifying the needs of the community services and not-for-profit sector.
From the beginning we set out to be professional in our own operations, investing heavily in research, tools and processes. We didn’t set out to be your average neighbourhood IT shop, but a super clinic with the best diagnostics and equipment.
2000
Walking the talk in professional practice
2001
The business technology market
Our initial vision of specialising in the community services sector was ahead of its time – in terms of technology affordability and software functionality, as well as in the nature and culture of the community services sector.
Our vision wasn’t achievable at the time, given our objective to build a robust, sustainable, well-equipped technology business that would create jobs in our local economy.
However, our focus on service, ethics <> and social connection served us well in building our own culture of connection and strong relationships with our customers.
We broadened our market focus to serve SME businesses, particularly those needing communications technology that worked across the country, particularly in remote locations.
In 2??? we moved beyond our Melbourne office, opening an office in Brisbane? so we could better serve clients across Australia.
2015???
Network Overdrive across Australia
2008???
The transition to full managed services
Our clients were increasingly diverse – Regional health care, Video/TV production house, pharmaceutical startup, financial services and spare parts suppliers. Yet despite their different industries, their needs were surprisingly similar – affordable technology that worked; the right systems and processes that helped them succeed; a strategic view to planning for the future.
We broadened our scope, going beyond the hardware and becoming a complete IT Managed Services provider, helping our clients use their technology to power their whole operation (not just do their accounting).
From the inception of Network Overdrive, we’ve been focused on community, value and service.
One of our resolutions in regard to this was to use our technology to keep our business nimble and efficient. We weren’t in the game of “growth” – we were in the game of “good business”.
Our goal would be to be “big enough” to provide sustainable, high-quality services but to stay “small enough” to build and maintain personal relationships with our customers.
When we shifted our strategic focus in 2008 to become a full IT Managed Services Provider, we reaffirmed this objective.
We needed to be big enough and diverse enough so that we could:
- Provide a full range of services to our customers
- Create sustainable jobs for our staff that didn’t burn them out
- Provide interesting, challenging work to our staff to keep them motivated
- Give them great tools so they could do their best work
To achieve this goal, we built a portfolio of professional tools to enable us to support our customers quickly and efficiently. We made sure that we had enough people and that they were doing work that interested them, so they didn’t burn out.
We tested and implemented tools like ConnectWise and Kaseya so that we were working at our best, managing client needs from WA to Queensland and into Asia.
2008???
A vision of
“just right”
IT managed services
2013
A bigger new Melbourne home
2015
Network Overdrive
over the seas
As the business grew, we needed more space. So we moved into new offices in North Melbourne, with extra space (and a much better view).
After a time of growth and exploration, Greg went overseas to explore for opportunities. This led to the establishment of an office in KL, Malaysia, which opened with an initial team of three people and has grown since then.
A key focus of Network Overdrive has always been to work strategically – INTEGRATING technology and strategy so that technology becomes a source of business revenue.
We do technology – but not for the sake of technology. We believe that IT powers profits and productivity. The right IT, optimised strategically and aligned with your business planning, will help you uncover and deliver maximum value to your customers and your stakeholders.
Over the years since Network Overdrive started in 2000, we developed ways to uncover that value, tailored to our customer needs and connecting business strategy with technology. In 2015 we pulled the pieces together – into our Profit Stacks Framework.
Profit Stacks is a straightforward, practical methodology to help you own, understand and leverage your organisation’s technology to maximise your results.
(If an IT managed services provider tells you “we’ll look after your technology so you can work on your business” then run! They’re asking you to abdicate and accept what they prefer – which many NOT be what your business needs for your long-term success.)
2015???
Profit Stacks – a practical process for turning technology into opportunity
2019
A renewal of our community service focus
Network Overdrive was first conceived of as a business serving the community service sector, then pivoted to serve the broader business market. Though we’ve evolved and transformed over the years, we’re still in service to SME business and a range of community organisations.
That commitment has been reaffirmed by our formal partnership with Fletcher IT, a Brisbane-based specialist consultancy serving the Not For Profit Sector.
Peter Fletcher has become our Queensland Regional Manager, and is developing a IT Managed Services approach specifically for NFP and Community Sector. But Peter has a broader remit – to use his skills to build Network Overdrive across the region.
2020 – A year of transformation
The world changed – and so did our operations. When COVID hit everyone’s plans were disrupted. We went virtual – and started helping our IT Managed Services customers survive, optimise and transform – according to their needs.
“Agility” has always been our core strength – and helping our customers build their own agility has never been more important.
It was sad to leave the various offices we’d spent so much time in – but a necessary step. And the disruption has helped us look critically at our own purpose and processes.
2020
A year of transformation
Greg Clarkson
Director / CEO
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Mario Vecchio
Director / CEO
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