2001 was a tumultuous year in technology. The dot com bust was just beginning. The free flow of cash from the Year 2000 initiatives had dried up. Companies were merging, going bankrupt and were being sold. Corporate technology spending began to plummet. The focus began to turn on only those technology projects that would enhance the top line or would help to save money.
The “nuclear winter” was just about to set in for a long time as a veteran Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist told us. All in all, for those who made their living in technology services the outlook was very bleak.
Through the thunder clouds, Ben Malek, a recognized expert in the Lotus Notes industry, seized his opportunity. Ben was a renowned columnist, author and speaker on Lotus Notes. Ben was the only member outside of Lotus to work on the Release 5 team.
Ben developed an automated tool for upgrading, merging and consolidating Lotus Notes environments. His tool was easily customizable to suit the needs of each customer. The best thing was that he was able to execute a migration or consolidation for a dime while larger service providers were charging a dollar to perform the exact same function. The company was born.
The decision was made that Malek’s sole focus was to be on Enterprise Messaging and Collaboration. Ben felt that he needed to surround himself with people focused on client success. Soon after, Ben reached out to his former colleague, Larry Rosenbaum who founded and built the most successful Collaboration practice in North America during his tenure with Whittman-Hart/MarchFirst.
In 2010 Google reached out to us and asked us to become a Google Apps partner. Even though on-premise Collaboration systems were the backbone on which we built the company, we saw the inefficiencies in this. We examined the benefits of what Google was offering and how they were delivering it through the cloud. It was clear to us, it was time to move our business to the cloud with Google!
11 years later we have not lost our focus. This, we believe, is the reason why we have built long term, repeat relationships with our customers. Focus!
AXR Consulting is a small boutique technology consulting firm who specializes in working with small businesses of less than 250 employees on the effective integration of front-office & back-office systems.
Why Google Apps? AXR was the quintessential Cobbler’s kids as it came to the use of leading edge Collaboration Technology. Using an antiquated Lotus Notes system to store client papers and for email, AXR knew that it was behind the times. Similar to many small businesses, AXR felt the pressure of the tough economic times that it and it’s clients were experiencing. Then one day the other shoe fell.
They had a catastrophic failure of their Lotus Notes server. Like many small companies, they did not maintain adequate backup to the Lotus Notes Server. Fortunately, their mail files and their client files were replicated via Lotus Notes to a old computer which was going soon to be decommissioned. Fortunately for AXR, all was not lost. AXR hired Malek to implement Google Apps to replace Lotus Notes. Email was migrated over and document repositories were moved into collections using Google Docs. Not only was AXR able to move off of Lotus Notes, but they also saw the value of Google Apps and decided to rid itself of Microsoft office. The savings from not having to renew their Lotus Notes and Microsoft licenses paid for a very nice holiday party for AXR’s employees and their families.
“Knowing the fact that my data is always available through the cloud with Google Apps and I don’t have to worry about backing it up provides me a feeling of untold safety.” Aaron Richardson, Owner, AXR Consulting
Access Ability is one of North America's largest distributors and installers of access lifts, elevators, barrier-free products, and mobility equipment. Access Ability has a network of distributors and associates based mostly in the Mid-Atlantic States.
Why Google Apps? Access Ability was using Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime for instant messaging. They found it to be unreliable as it crashed often. In order to fix the existing system they were faced with a whole new purchase of hardware to upgrade and build in redundancy. On top of all this, their anti-spam/anti-virus solution was inadequate. A lot of their data was replicated locally on the office desktops as well as their laptops in the field. They would lose data due to the rough working conditions that their devices were exposed to. The replacement time and cost became prohibitive because the majority of the company’s associates were often on the road. Access Ability retained Malek to make a recommendation and solve their issues. Malek recommended moving to Google Apps instead of investing valuable capital to upgrade their Lotus Notes environment. Access Ability was impressed with the anywhere any device access of Google Apps. They were drawn to GTalk for ad hoc instant messaging within their team. Storing their documents online in the cloud was a big improvement over relying on attachments. Reliability was the component that really made the decision to move to Google Apps easy.
“Google Apps has allowed our workforce to share information in ways we didn’t know possible before we hired Malek. No more lost revenue and service interruptions due to a broken computer. Now, our associates can literally purchase a replacement laptop at the nearest retailer and get back up and running in less than 2 hours. Before switching to Google Apps, this process would take at least a week and the real cost was the reduced productivity.” Pamela Beattie, Vice President of Operations, Access Ability, Inc.
The City of Orlando required a system to process Public Records requests. Much of the data required to fulfill the request resided across multiple mailboxes.
In addition, another system was needed to take all the mail data from an employee’s mailbox who had left their position with The City of Orlando and move it into a single mailbox . This mailbox would be populated with mail data from multiple employees who were no longer working for The City of Orlando.
Why Malek? Malek developed a single application utilizing the Audit API to facilitate the export of the mail data. A request set to “external” would tell the application that it was a Public Records request. The search criteria would be entered and various users mail files were selected. The application would comb the selected mail files for the matching search criteria. The export data set was retrieved, decrypted and made available for export to a .pst, .pdf or other formats.
A request set to “internal” would tell the application that it was an internal move of data for an someone who left the employ of The City of Orlando. The user(s) mail files were selected and the application would extract all the data and move it into a separate “shared” mailbox. This mailbox contained multiple former employee’s mail. Google Search would be used to find the required data on an as needed basis.
The system allowed for an expedited way of responding to Public Records requests. It also allowed The City of Orlando to reduce their expenditure by not paying for a mail box after the employee left while still being able to retain the data to for compliance purposes
"Malek has been exceptionally responsive and capable. Their solution to our need was implemented quickly and proved invaluable." David Gancarz, P.E. Systems Development Manager
Founder / Chief Executive Officer
Ben Malek is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Malek. Ben is an industry veteran when it comes to guiding our customer’s executives on the effective use of enterprise-wide collaboration technology.
Ben has spent his career leading technology service organizations in the selection and deployment of collaboration solutions.
Client Relations and Business Development Vice President.
Larry Rosenbaum serves as Malek's Vice President of Client Relations and Business Development.
Larry is an accomplished senior executive with 25 years of experience and he is responsible for driving growth at Malek.
Larry is skilled in developing and managing long-term relationships with Malek’s customers, business partners and technology partners.
Director of Customer Relations and Program Management
Aaron serves as Malek's Director of Customer Relations and Program Management .
Aaron brings over 20 years of experience in overseeing technology for various messaging initiatives from planning and managing to providing the on-going maintenance and support.
Mr. Richardson holds a BS degree in Business Administration from California State University.
Director of Technology Enablement
Brandon Roby is the Director of Technology Enablement at Malek.
Brandon is responsible for Malek's cloud-based tool-set. His vision has enabled Malek to create various unique cloud-based tools that Malek offers our customers.
In addition, Brandon is tasked with the continual challenge of identifying opportunities to grow Malek's portfolio of cloud solutions to bridge the gap of what is available in commercial cloud systems.
Director Operations - Malek Asia
Daniel da Luz is the Director of Operations for Malek in Asia Pacific.
He is responsible for client support and business performance in the region.
Prior to joining Malek, Daniel worked in the area of client service and marketing serving major international brands and has extensive experience working in the multinational corporate environment in Asia.
Regional Director - Malek Europe.
Stefan has over 20 years of experience in information technology, infrastructure services and technology consulting, project manager for enterprise management, directory and collaboration solutions. Stefan led the successful delivery of multiple large IT infrastructure and Service management projects within the pharmaceutical and financial industries prior to joining Malek. Stefan holds certifications from Microsoft and ITIL(c).
Business Development Director
Joseph Scianna is the Business Development Director for Malek in Latin America, Joe has over 10 years of experience in Technical Support, Customer Service and Customer Relations working with global companies including Sykes, HP, GE and Toshiba .
Joe has a degree in Business Administration from Universidad Latina in Costa Rica.
Small Business Development Manager.
Pete Faustino manages Small Business Development for Malek. Pete has a broad computing background that includes the support, maintenance and management of technology from corporate hosted mainframes to hosted SAAS based applications.
Pete's Information Services career started with Data Center Operations, then transitioned to Software Engineering, and most recently was in Information Services Management.
Director of Marketing.
Ariana is Malek's Director of Marketing. While she is a designer at heart, Malek has been fortunate to have her serve as our Lead Publicist using her skills and focus on creativity and production as well as dual degrees in Communication and Marketing from Universidad Latina.
She previously ran her own company serving regional businesses in their design, branding and promotion of their products. She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese
Director Operations
Eric Arguello is the Regional Director of Operations for Malek based in Costa Rica. He is responsible for client support and business performance in the region as well as leading the Global Organizational Change Management services.
He brings with him a wealth of knowledge from Global companies in Telecommunications, Customer Service and Technical Support.
Here at Malek we treat our people as PEOPLE and not as a resource. When you work for Malek you are not regarded as disposable as a resource is. A very talented and smart man taught us many years ago that talent comes from many different places and in multiple forms. He encouraged us to surround ourselves with talent that complimented what we had already had in our company.
Our mission is simple, to become the preferred provider of Google Enterprise Products and Services. Here at Malek we look for people who have the desire to learn and grow. If your background is in technical support, application development, marketing, sales, systems development, systems architecture, Program & Project Management, Change Management, training, information security or customer service, we would like to talk to you. We understand that we are at the beginning of the adoption curve for Google Apps within businesses. Malek wants people with the talent, desire and most of all, who want to make a career focused on delivering Collaboration Solutions built upon Google Apps, the company who helped define what the cloud is.
If you have experience in:
At Malek, we put all our employees through our Google Apps Training Program (GATP). Our GATP is a combination if instructor-led, self-service and job-mirroring training that we have found to be highly successful for immersing talented people into the world of Google Apps. With offices in Florida, Costa Rica, Germany and Hong Kong we provide a global reach to our clients while maintaining local resources to service our clients. We have openings throughout our company. We currently are looking for:
Malek has key alliances with each major vendor in the Enterprise Messaging & Collaboration space. We use these alliances as a mechanism to further our product knowledge, understand the vendor’s best practices, gain exclusive access to technical support and obtain education and certifications.
We combine this vendor specific knowledge with our experience with Collaboration Technologies, dating back to 1990, to help guide our clients on:
Our experience and vendor relationships help our clients benefit by increasing the potential for success and lowering the risks in the selection, implementation, adoption and on-going use of Enterprise Collaboration within your organization. We provide the path to help you achieve cost reduction, increase productivity and and enhance innovation.
