The Institute of Information Technology and Technology Solutions
IT-Spark was formed in November 1999 by Chris Doney. Many of the Information Technology professionals who joined forces to form IT-Spark worked together first at the Institute of Information Technology (IIT) at the University of New South Wales before it was closed at the end of 1992 and then with Technology Solutions between 1992 and 1999.

The Institute of Information Technology (IIT)
1987 - 1992
The Institute of Information Technology (IIT) was founded in 1987 as a joint venture between IBM and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to deliver IBM's customer and internal education in NSW. IIT was set up to manage the partnership on behalf of UNSW and act as a 'bridge' between the diverse cultures of IBM and UNSW. IIT's founding Director in 1987 was Professor Cyril Brookes, the then Head of the School of Information Systems at UNSW. Cyril Brookes invited Chris Doney, who at the time was IT Manager at the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, to establish and lead a team of UNIX professionals to deliver AIX education over the complete range of IBM's curriculum.

High Quality delivery
By 1990 IIT was delivering education for IBM in all curriculum areas throughout Australia and South East Asia.

The quality of UNIX course delivery exceeded IBM's targets.

When IBM awarded the second round of 3 year contracts, in 1990, IIT was appointed as the principle interface to Australian Universities. When IBM announced their RS/6000 range of AIX workstations in 1991, IIT became the provider of all RS/6000 education in Australia and SE Asia plus Train the Trainer (T3) courses. IIT was also asked to provide customer support for RS/6000s running AIX.

Expanded range of offerings
By the end of 1992 IIT was providing, in addition to support for IBM's AIX education, ULTRIX education for Digital, teaching for companies such as Computer Power, HP, and delivering Multimedia courses on Apple Macs, consultancy services for DEET, Unix advice for the Department of Defence, and research for Digital and IBM.

In late 1992, as part of IBM's rationalisation of its outsourced business activities, IBM decided to reestablish an in-house training capability. As the major part of IIT's activity was to deliver IBM's outsourced customer and internal education, IIT was closed.

Technology Solutions (TS) 1992 - 1999
Chris Doney became a foundation Director of Technology Solutions. His role was to build and lead the technology teams across a broad client base. The success of this saw TS grow to a consulting firm which had revenue in excess of three million dollars in 1999.

Technology Solutions provided high quality, professional IT Services for major corporate and government agencies. These services comprised systems development and maintenance, consultancy, management, education and training in all major computing platform technologies - including all flavours of Unix and Microsoft NT.

The success of TS had brought phenomenal growth. In November 1999, the Directors of TS decided to restructure the company along client lines to ensure better focus of the widening business interests.

IT-Spark (ITS) 1999 - Present
IT-Spark was born November 24th 1999, though already mature with an excellent list of clients and record of client service. The experience gained across the previous decade has produced a company that has grown by a factor of 6 across the first 18 months of business. Able now to focus on high availability and mission critical computing - IT-Spark has distinguished its self across Asia Pacific and is currently opening a joint venture with our Chinese partners operating from Hong Kong.