MetroWest495 Biz

26 MetroWest495 Biz | May 2014 wHAT iT TAKes G avin livingstone and his wife Cathy own it services company Bryley systems in hudson. Bryley — a variation on his moth- er's maiden name, Byerly — has 15 employees and more than 200 clients, a third of which, he estimates, are in the manufacturing sec- tor. But the firm is fond of transportation projects as well. in 2011, with the Worcester Regional transit authority (WRta), Bryley was tasked with integrating the technology platform of the state's second-largest regional group. do you think it was the wrTA project that sort of put Bryley on the map, so to speak? We've been around for a while. Actually, our largest sales year was 2000 … a lot of that was hardware/software and less of it was service. So we've adjusted. Our industry is such that hardware capabilities go up, hardware pricing goes down, and hardware margins shrink. So, we were probably 80 percent to 90 percent software sales in 2000; that shifted over to about 35 to 40 hardware and software sales in 2013. you're still always evolving with the clients and always bringing them up to date on what's changing in the industry. so it's a very fluid rela- tionship based on trust, it sounds like. That is the best part of our jobs, I think, that enthusiasm and the reason that folks are here and in this industry is (that) things do change. They are always a little more exciting — a little more frustrating at times —but there's always something that is making it a bit more effective, efficient and yet, necessary to have folks like us involved to help put the pieces together and make them work. in iT, we hear a lot about spyware, malware and these kinds of vi- cious attacks. i don't hear a lot about prosecution. why is that? A lot of the infiltration occurs from an overseas site. I mean, I don't know the statistics offhand but every time I see a story it is typically not a hacker in the U.S. attacking a U.S. site. I think (the international component) hampers a lot of pros- ecution efforts. They are (the) same (types of) attacks. It isn't like the same thing that's been hap- pening over the last 15 years. It isn't like they've changed dramatically. do you think there are businesses out there that don't really see the threat (in a security breach), and don't see that this could devastate their business? Massachusetts came up with a new regulation, 201-CMR 17. It finally became law in 2010 and says if you have any personal information on a Massachusetts resi- dent … all your processes should be revolving around making sure you don't have a place to leak it electronically. All of your computer systems need to be kept up to date … with anti-virus software and all that stuff. We did seminars and a lot of IT companies (did), all over the state. In terms of new business? Pretty close to none. People are aware, (but) are they spending the money? Probably not to the extent that they need to. with the wrTA project, there were different software solutions operating on different hardware systems. what is the status of that project now? Build-out is complete. Maintenance is where we're at at this point. They have approximately 55 workstations … Each bus has a computer. In terms of the (16) kiosks which we will be taking over in the near future … the goal is (for) the kiosks (to) grow significantly. If you're at the street level, it's giving you information about when the bus will be there, the schedule, WRTA services. In the bus itself, you can learn how long until the next stop, etc. In the garage, the buses pull in, wirelessly they are transmitting maintenance in- formation on their oil, (the) amount of fuel that they have … then the video they are taking of the bus of people sitting on the bus gets transmitted and stored, and there's a whole policy built around the videos' retention. All that information is there and available. It is absolutely phenomenal. what's next for Bryley? We are targeting 25 percent growth in sales in 2014. My role has shifted over the years and I am much less involved in the day to day. I'm doing some of the business development as well as the strategic and stepping back to let others step forward. is that difficult to do? or is it just about having a great team in place to reach goals? You've got to give them the space to make that happen. n This article was edited for length and content by Susan Shalhoub. gavin livingstone President & CEO, Bryley Systems Inc. An insider's view of how to build and sustain a business. P h o t o / ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? "the reason that folks are here and in this industry is (that) things do change."

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