We've been around a while.
In 2002 we started customizing and maintaining proprietary, standard and mission-critical call centers for companies like Walgrees, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Dun & Bradstreet, US Marshals, and Marriott. We handled all seven layers of the OSI model meaning we did everything from bring in connectivity (this is pre VoIP), to structured cabling, extending DMARCs, data center setups, network implementation, system configuration, testing, software rollouts, admin/user training, reports, and maintenance.
The name Active Port came from our model of charging by the port and making sure the port was working as a part of our maintenance. Our maintenance model was unique in 2002 and we were able to attract large customers who wanted to save on their monthy recurring costs for support. Our maintenance model was similar to the droplet model of droplet hosting in the cloud where you only pay for what you use.
A big focus was recording calls, storing them, and retrieving them in the event of lawsuits. We also focused heavily on "call treatment" and how a customer traveled from a main number to the right individual in order for a sale to close or get technical support. Before the cloud was reliable, we set up physical systems to switch over to when cloud providers sold to clients that were too big for their fast-growth SaaS environments. We still have clients who maintain cloud and physical systems or dual cloud environments. When our clients have contracts with their customers with high availability SLAs, we support those environments at the level of their risk appetite from disaster recovery to high availability.
Natural progression to APIs.
In 2012 we added open source solutions to our proprietary offerings. The cloud was just getting popular and up until the lockdown, there were a lot of hold outs. During the lockdown, we saw a need for integrating cloud systems and we started focusing on API development. We had worked with APIs since 2012 when we setup an internal ticketing system to manage the ticket volume from working with Charter Communications on their rollout of business voice services for the Western half of the United States.
Instant messaging and multi-channel support was starting to be adopted and because we designed, installed, and supported mission-critical call centers for large companies, we wanted to optimize our processes in tandem with the market adoption of expanded channels around tech support, sales, customer service, and more.
Our first API project.
We were supporting Charter Communications with upgrading their Nortel Option 11 to Option 51 switches for carrier-grade solutions because we were already the vendor for their systems used for their call centers at each location. We would install the cards and daughter boards, configure the switches, and support their NOC with bringing each system live. When their NOC needed Level V support, we were the vendor they contacted because we were a faster source for trouble shooting than the manufacturer.
We originally had four people supporting the tickets opened by Charter Communications during this period and it was eating into gross profit so we designed a hybrid ticketing system of on premise and cloud systems to build the front end of our website with a ticketing portal for their IT department. We built an API to connect the off-the-shelf ticketing software we licensed with our accounting software and the front end customer ticketing portal. We re-assigned three people who were our small call center and trained Charter Communications to open tickets from our website. The fourth person became the dispatcher with email notifications when there was a new ticket.
The dispatcher would assign the appropriate technician and when the work was complete, the technician would close the ticket. Each night, accounting would batch the tickets then invoice Charter Communications which improved our cash flow by connecting our logged work hours to our billing with one click. We rolled the ticketing system out to all of our clients and the resources saved are why we have always been focused on optimizing and automating as many processes as possible.
Our core strength is integrations whether bought or built. We offer a wide array of software development services today and debated whether Active Port is still relevant to our brand 20 years later with an eye on the progression around Quantum Computing. "In classical computing, ports typically refer to physical or virtual entry points for data and communication, often associated with networking. In the context of quantum computing, the terminology can be a bit different, but the principles of connectivity and communication still apply."
We still offer maintenance support even though almost all of our clients use the cloud. The concept of the "port" will live on, regardless of whether the terminology changes a bit with Quantum Computing and we chose to keep the name and the model of paying for what is used to deferentiate ourselves from other software agencies.
Our Team
Please enjoy some of our team's animals.
We were in lockdown for almost two years. We decided to support some artists online by using their images to represent our pets. When the lockdown was over, it felt right to keep the team pictures from the lockdown. Please click on the names below the images to see the artist generous enough to share their work.
William
Photo by Charles, Pexels
Marley
Photo by Marcelo Chagas, Pexels
Roscoe
Photo by Dids, Pexels
Mistoffelees
Photo by Gilberto Reyes, Pexels