The Fast & The Furious
3:00 PM EDT Fri. Jul. 21, 2006
From the July 24, 2006 issue of CRN
Page 10 of 10
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By Heather Clancy  Brian Gregory has owned his network integration company in Olathe, Kan., for about a third of his life—all the more compelling when you consider he's only 31 years old.
The president of Network Innovations, which last year topped $1.5 million in sales, joined the staff 15 years ago as a Novell NetWare technician and hasn't looked back. Gregory became a partial owner of the firm in January 1994 and took on the whole operation about a year later. He has proved a pioneer in VoIP technology: Network Innovations, with just eight full-time employees, was singled out for its work in the banking industry last year by strategic vendor Altigen Communications. Network Innovations also counts Novell and Microsoft, for basic server infrastructure, and WatchGuard, for firewalls and VPNs, among its other key vendors. Gregory, who says the company has been profitable every year of its existence, credits his clients—the company has 250 customers in total, six of which have been with it since the beginning—with helping show him the way in business even while he showed them the way in emerging technologies. "If you really do care about their business and it matters to you that you do a good job, it takes care of a lot of the problems," he says. ASCII Group, mainly to learn from his peers. "It has really helped me form a tighter partnership with some of these people," Gregory says. Citizens Bank, which has been a client for about two-and-a-half years, tapped Network Innovations to deploy the Altigen IP-PBX system across 11 locations in Kansas, and the relationship has deepened over time, to the point where local executives consider him an expert on computer safety and network security. "We are comfortable enough with Brian that we have actually had him speak at customer forums that we do," says Paul Newman, a vice president at Citizen's Bank. Belinda Davis, principal owner of DGR Associates, which has been using Network Innovations for its entire 15-year existence to keep its Web site up to date, maintain its phone systems and introduce it to state-of-the-art technology, considers the integrator an extension of its own business. "Brian has been very proactive in providing me service through these years. He's part of my staff to me," she says.
Joe Holman, managing partner at Holman, Hansen & Colville, a local law firm with about 20 attorneys, says his firm turns to Network Innovations for the entire gamut of its infrastructure needs, including two file servers, and 40 PCs and workstations. "Brian may be younger than anyone on our staff, but he's so far ahead of the curve on service and knowledge that it doesn't make any difference at all. In fact, it's probably an advantage," Holman says.
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