I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you in this last newsletter of 2020.

My name is Paul Havinga, I live in Aalsmeer, I’m the father of two children, and last September I switched from the AMCS Group to Speer IT. At Speer, I have the role of Commercial manager and I’m also part of the management team. Together with Kees, Peterpaul and Sipke we are doing the day-to-day management. I look back to the first 3 months with a good feeling and I certainly don’t regret the switch. It is a great branch that is very active. There is a lot of investing going on, which keeps it very dynamic and offers a lot of future perspective.

Speer, which has been around for 20 years, is actually still a relatively young company, but in that time, it has grown to become the market standard in the Netherlands, when it comes to the registration and management of fiber optic networks. Because early in its existence it was able to work for the big names in telecom, the company had a very successful start.

Innovating by listening was in the company’s genes from day one. This gives clients a lot of influence over the development track and allows clients to add a lot of value to the product. This enabled the fast development of the Cocon application, and this continuously ensures good alignment with the quickly changing fiber optic market. I’m seeing that within our organisation, innovation and reliability are two important pillars we use to align all of our decisions with. The world is changing rapidly. Many of our clients are growing fast; they keep developing, making adjustments and seeing new opportunities. We want continue to support our clients in this, follow them in what they need, or better yet, anticipate their needs in advance.

This is the reason that Speer often works closely with its existing clients in the development of smart innovations.  I was also pleasantly surprised about how open Speer is to looking for innovations with other companies in the sector. Speer is very committed to that! Their attitude is 1+1=3. For example, there is extensive collaboration with Simac, in which the monitoring technology for fiber optic networks (OTDR) are joined with the networks’ management software. This enables real-time monitoring within the existing network, with immediate insight into the impact on customers, the exact location and routing options. The link to our software enables us to often see the malfunction coming early, because the measurement data is continuously compared with each other, so degradation is detected early.

Another company an in depth collaboration was set up is Infodation. The reason for this collaboration is the existence of a range of small applications in the market that all support (fragmented) pieces of the administrative process. These are not scalable in their capacity and cannot achieve the desired efficiency that the telecom market now needs. In collaboration with Infodation, we are now developing the market standard for these administrative processes and are offering this through one standard platform. This platform will be completely integrated with Cocon and its aim is to support all processes around management of contractors and installing, managing, selling and operating fiber optic networks.

In addition, it is nice to see that we, as an industry within Europe, are at the forefront in the construction and management of fiber optic networks. Our knowledge and products are also appreciated outside the Netherlands. This also applies to Speer IT. Cocon is now used internationally by large telecom organisations, in countries like Belgium, Germany, Spain and Ireland. We are proud that the major rollout of FttH, which is now taking place in Germany, is supported by Cocon.

Working with clients is my favourite kind of work. How do you make a client really successful with our product? What value are we adding? How do we support our clients on their way to success and how do we take this journey together? Ultimately, Speer IT’s success depends on the success of the clients. Looking at 2021, I think I will feel like a fish in water in this place.

I look forward to a wonderful and successful collaboration with all of you and wish everyone all the best for the holidays and a happy and healthy 2021!