After spending the last decade providing IT infrastructure, Innovative Corporate Solutions Limited (ICSL) is heading towards the side of the business where little infrastructure is required — cloud computing.

Having worked on its cloud solution over the last six months — it is now in the testing phase — the company is now at a point where it will start bringing customers on services, using Amazon on its back end.

“We will be able to deliver computing to you wherever you need it,” said Neil Abrahams, CEO of ICSL. “If you want it on premises (which includes all the physical infrastructure on site), that’s what we have been doing for years… If you want to move to the cloud, we have partnerships and the ability to provide that.”

The idea is to offer its clients their required IT solutions “however they choose”, while giving them a third option — Hybrid, which allows companies to run part of its workloads internally and part in the cloud.

ICSL plans to fully launch the new services within the first half of 2013.

“It’s a very exciting time to be in the IT industry for a number of reasons. Firstly the cloud allows us the opportunity to bring enterprise computing to much smaller customers who could not afford the large capital expenditure of the traditional on-premise model,” said Abrahams. “Secondly, there is so much software and connectivity available today at a very attractive price point that makes many solutions now economically within the reach of many Jamaican firms.”

“The increasing complexity of technology platforms whether they are on premises (site) or in the “cloud” requires and necessitates the purchasing of expert services to evaluate, design, implement, and maintain company’s information systems,” he said. “ICS with its deep evaluation, technical design, consulting, implementation, and support methodologies will become more important to organisations in their thrust to improve profitability in a challenging macroeconomic environment.”

The company — which was formed in 2003 when one of Innovative Systems’s principal, Chris Reckord, and Abrahams, an employee at the time, bought out that company’s corporate sales and services department — has been in transition for some time.

Back in 2008, Abrahams took over the responsibilities of the CEO position from Reckord, who continued to focus on marketing as the company’s executive director, and two years ago, ICSL started offering consultancy services through Innovative Consulting Group (ICG).

What’s more, just last month, Reckord sold his stake in the company to Abrahams.

And even while computer sales, the provision of advanced infrastructure and storage presently represents approximately 50 per cent of its business, ICSL’s consultancy services has moved it away from a company that “just does front-end sales”, and allows it to offer a total range of IT services.

“The consulting comes in when a customer wants a five-year plan, or wants to buy an expensive telephone system,” said Mike duQuesnay, director of consulting services and a former PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant.

“A lot of people will say ‘yes I want infrastructure’, but what kind of system do you want?” ICG aims to answer that question and more.

“Many big consulting firms can make recommendations, but can’t do infrastructure, and a customer may go to an infrastructure company and it can’t do surveys and such,” said duQuesnay. “Pure consulting, includes business process engineering, software selection and implementation, among other things.”

In a fast-paced world of ever-improving technology, such services are no longer exclusive to large companies.

According to Abrahams, ICSL provides solutions for SMEs, particularly small businesses that have a heavy reliance on technology, like a supermarket, which needs to have a point-of-sale system and wiring that allow it to work.

“We design, procure, implement, remediate, and support information systems for small and medium businesses that have a reliance on technology to run their businesses all the way up to corporate entities with large IT teams,” according to the company.