Overview

Open Answers was founded in 1988 by two brothers - Ian and Alex Bellia - to deliver Unix support services to several large retail organisations on behalf of vendor NCR. Over time this relationship expanded to include education services, consultancy and software development expertise.

The Open Answers customer base grew throughout the 1990s as word spread about our capability to support Unix environments. After NCR our next vendor relationship started with Sunsoft in 1994 and from there the list of technology customers expanded to include Sun Microsystems, IBM, ICL and Red Hat.

With the rapid growth of the Internet, we were first asked to write web integration software for Airmiles in 1997. This soon evolved to a fully managed hosting service from which companies such as Xerox, British Airways and several local government organisations asked Open Answers to take on support for their online infrastructure.

This exposure to innovative, secure, high volume and high availability online environments saw demand increase further for our services. Open Answers specialists and consultants have subsequently gained considerable experience from working within the architecture, infrastructure, software development and QA functions of several leading UK ecommerce operations. As well as technology, our sector experience includes the travel industry, financial services, government, news, gaming and legal professions.

Over the past twenty years, the Open Answers team has expanded to a core of dedicated professionals with experience across every aspect of modern technology, across all layers of the systems delivery stack.

Open Answers has expanded its customer base to include a large number of blue chip customers, many of whom have been clients for over a decade. From remote support and web hosting to in-house consultancy and team leadership, the company continues to play a major role in supporting organisations’ business critical Open Systems, proprietary and Open Source applications. Open Answers has from the start, reflected its core values in its name. We provide business value to our customers with an open and honest approach. Openness is more than ever such a critical and relevant aspect of technology design and operation and we continue to share these values with our customers and partners.

So, why do we still talk about Open Systems? We use this term to broadly describe the types of environments that we design, develop and support – systems that are interoperable, portable and standards-based to maximise the value from business investment in technology.