About

We are an IT services firm for organisations in Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex. We work Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across our region  including businesses, schools and non – profits. We treat each customer individually, delivering Personal Attention and Care for their IT – its in our name PAAC IT.

What makes us different?

There are many options about who you choose for IT support and to keep your IT working for you. We think the following demonstrates what make us different and a great partner for you.

I’m Richard Paterson, Founder and Managing Director of PAAC IT

My interest in computers started when I was a teen and my father introduced me to computer games – very simple back in those days 20 years ago. It seemed quite natural and a logical development for me to build a career looking after and supporting various forms of increasingly complex IT.  One of the things I learned early on was that despite a number of vendors saying their products “just worked” and worked with each other – they don’t!

But in my experience both as a buyer and user of technology and working for another IT firm I felt that there had to be a way to deliver a better service. So I did it myself and set up PAAC-IT. I thought long and hard about what was needed and missing from current offerings and talked to many friends and colleagues. I wanted customers to be the centre of my business and be somewhere that they wanted and felt comfortable going for help, no matter how big or small the problem! I enjoy problem solving for my clients and have worked at building very close relationships with them.

I’m Eddie Paterson, Director Business Development

Ive spent most of my career in the corporate world, with organisations such as Telecom New Zealand, a start-up telco in Hong Kong, PwC Consulting and IBM. Over the last 30 years I’ve held many different roles in product development, business strategy, regulation and process development.  I joined Richard here at PAAC IT in 2015 and found that we have very complementary skill sets.  Richard and our technical team are excellent at keeping technology working and fixing when it doesn’t. Whereas my skills are regulations and process development. To get the best from IT and ensure its delivering value to your business, you need both hard and soft skills, and with the GDPR you need documentation to prove what you do. Our son and father pairing gives us quite a unique combination of skills and experience.

About PAAC IT Ltd

We chose the company name to really reflect what we are all about – Professional Attention and Care for IT.  Each customer and business we serve is different and to deliver what’s right for you, we need to understand what makes you different and what makes you special. That’s our differentiation.  We’d like to give you three examples of what this means in practice:

• A few years ago when the Wanna Cry ransom started knocking businesses down like flies we knew that some customers did not have as robust backup solutions as they should have. So Richard worked nights and a weekend to backup all their Dropbox data. They didn’t ask us to do it and we didn’t charge – it was just the right thing to do.
• Another customer (this time a break-fix customer with no support agreement) had a power supply fail at a critical moment. We organised a motorcycle courier to bring down a replacement power supply that we installed after hours so they were up and going first thing in the morning; and
• A business approached us as their server was reaching end of life and needed replacement. Their IT provider had recommended they simply replace the server with a new one. But the business owner wasn’t convinced that this was the right move and asked for our opinion. We suggested moving to more of a cloud-based solution – better for the client, but not as lucrative for an IT provider. They are now one of our customers!

So that’s the ethos and core of our business – professional attention and care.