2021 has seen much uncertainty and resilience as the world continued to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. And whilst this year has brought some tough times, we want to take a moment to reflect on our positives.
We Repurposed Laptops for Students in Need
We started the year in lockdown with education being delivered remotely. However, many students didn’t have devices to access remote education. We therefore decided to repurpose old client laptops and device donations from people across Norfolk so that we could give these to students who needed them.
16 Years in Business
March marked 16 years in business for Breakwater. Sadly, we were unable to celebrate our sweet sixteenth together, but big celebrations will be due soon.
Our Sustainability Policy Launched
On Earth Day we launched our new internal sustainability policy. It not only sets out the steps we are taking but provides resources for our team. We also launched our Ecologi page where we plant five trees for every laptop we sell and offset at least two tonnes of carbon a month through funded projects.
Our First Charity of the Year
This year we launched a new charity of the year scheme within the business. Our team chose to support The Feed who work to prevent hunger and homelessness in Norwich. As part of our fundraising, eight of our team took to the skies for a team skydive!
New Team Members
We welcomed a few new faces to the team this year. Tom Radford joined us in August as our Trainee Junior System Engineer. Tom supports our Level 1 team with all incoming support queries.
Not long after Tom joined, we welcomed Mark Towler, our Trainee Account Manager. Mark has excelled in his role and has already been promoted to Account Manager.
Next up Dean Gray was welcomed to the service desk team as our new Systems Engineer. Dean works with our Level 2 engineers on more complex issues.
And finally, Richard Griffiths joined us in November as our Senior Engineer.
Promotions on the Service Desk
We were incredibly excited to see three promotions on our service desk this year. Jamie Chapman was promoted from Systems Engineer to a Level 3 Engineer, making him the highest point of escalation for the service desk team.
Andy Malcom has been with Breakwater since 2007 and has now taken on the role of Strategic Services Manager. Andy is now heading up our Network Admin side of the service desk.
And finally, Jordan Getley was promoted to Service Manager. Jordan joined us back in 2018 as a Trainee Engineer and has quickly risen within the service desk team.
Congratulations to Jamie, Andy, and Jordan!
We Sponsored the Norwich Science Festival
As in-person events made their return, we decided to sponsor the Norwich Science Festival! We sponsored a brand-new DigiTech day designed to highlight the opportunities in tech within our region. Our team had a fantastic day engaging with visitors of all ages with coding games, drawing competitions, PC building and more!
Our Cyber Security Conference Returned – In-Person!
Our flagship Cyber Security Conference made its in-person return at The Space, Norwich on 9 December. The event welcomed expert speakers from Datto, Norfolk and Suffolk Police and our keynote speaker, tech expert, author, and presenter Jamie Bartlett.
Norfolk Business Award Finalists
For the second year running, we were delighted to be finalist at the Norfolk Business Awards. Our finalist category was the Customer Excellence Award. We were excited to be able to attend the awards this year and boy did we go in style. Our team arrived in a stretch hummer and had an incredible evening. Congratulations to RThirteen for taking the win in our category, and to all the other finalists and winners.
Our New Website Launched
In November, our new website went live. Alongside a refreshed look and feel, the new site has given us more opportunities to support businesses with their IT. We introduced a new knowledge hub to store all our guides, video demos and insights. We also added a new FAQs page, client area and much more… Why not look around whilst you’re here.
We hope that you also have some wonderful memories of this year. Here’s to 2022!
