There are some jobs – vicars, tailors and chimney-sweeps, for example – which have traditionally run in families. That’s now becoming true of IT – Information Technology – consultants which shows just how far we’ve come into a cyberworld that was scarcely dreamed of half a century ago. “That’s right and I’m a case in point,” says Simon Glynn. “My father was in the IT business and while I was still in school I took part-time jobs to learn the basics. It didn’t take me long to realise that that was what I wanted to do with my life and so here I am.”

“Clear about our market”
Simon was born and bred in Walsall in the West Midlands of England. “I didn’t want to stay there all my life and one of the things that drew me to this business was its international character. With my interests and experience it was easy to move. In my mid-twenties I went to Holland, to Amsterdam, and spent several years there. I liked the place and the people. Then in 2000, I was offered a job in Sophia Antipolis. At that time, remember, all the signals there were very encouraging and so I accepted. Well, things got a bit difficult in Sophia and my employers decided to move out. They wanted me to go to Stockholm. I’d got used to the Riviera life-style so I said no and stayed on to start my own company.”

What does Riviera IT Solutions do? “We started by offering an IT consulting service to small and medium-sized companies. Then we branched out into some specialised markets like yachts and congresses – that involves putting in a temporary communication infrastructure for exhibitions. What a lot of our clients want is a complete package – hardware, software, telephony, secure links and the rest. Things seem to be going well. “I’d say so. We’ve got a very good client list here and we’ve now got a UK subsidiary and we’re planning to open in Spain.”

How would Simon explain the company’s success? “To start with, as we all know, starting a business in France isn’t easy. I’d been working down here, as I told you, and I understood more or less how things work. Then we were very clear about what our market was and how we had to approach it. Our clients are mainly international and English-speaking. We not only have the language but we know how they tick. I don’t want to criticise our French colleagues but they don’t always know how to deal with a foreign client. To give just one example: we’re available virtually 24/7 and nobody gets told in an emergency that we can’t get round till Tuesday week.”

“Ahead of the field”
What’s it like working in an industry where the technology is changing so rapidly? “Exhilarating – but though. We know that to keep ahead of the field we’ve got to stay on top of that technology on a day-to-day basis. What’s now today may be virtually obsolescent within the year or even sooner. Our kind of clients expect us to be tracking developments closely”. And how does Simon see his business future? “Still being ahead of the field – and working very hard to stay there.”

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