TWO Island companies have formed an alliance which they say will create "a new and innovative force" in the Isle of Man's telecoms and IT marketplace.
Manx Telecom and Intelligence Limited have gone into partnership and say they have a number of opportunities and projects on which they will collaborate.
Mike Dee, the chief executive officer of Manx Telecom, said: "Forming a strategic alliance with Intelligence Limited brings together two companies with complementary skills and experience - particularly in the growth technologies of the future such as virtualisation, cloud-based technology plus hosted and managed services.
"We believe that together we can bring something new, innovative and powerful to the marketplace offering a wider range of integrated services to our customers in the Isle of Man and elsewhere."
Steve Woodford, chief executive officer of Intelligence, said: "This move reflects the rapid changes taking place in every business sector and in technology itself.
"Today convergence across IT and telecoms is increasingly on the agenda for CEOs, management teams and owners of every business sector. We are moving to an interconnected world - a world in which the digital revolution requires new responses from new types of companies or groupings of companies.
"In the end, of course, it's all down to meeting customers' needs. Increasingly customers want a total solutions provider for their business systems - that's what our partnership will be providing and we will be doing so with an unrelenting focus on driving down costs and delivering more value to all our customers."
Mike continued: "We plan to take a high profile and very proactive stance to attracting new companies to the Island and anticipate working very closely with the Isle of Man Government in its increasingly successful efforts to promote the Island as an international business centre and to attract inward investment.
"One of the attractions for both Manx Telecom and Intelligence in making this move is that we agree about what the future looks like – and how best we can take advantage of the opportunities it will bring for our customers, our staff and for the Isle of Man as a whole."
