IBM i & Domino providers: Following 20 years of continuous profit & growth, Life Enterprise Technology Group (Life ETG), consisting of Life IT & Kelros, has become an Employee Owned Trust, which has made staff beneficiaries of the business and appointed Mark Doorbar to join Howard Myers as co-director.

The transformation to an EOT is the latest strategic move by Life ETG to reward team members for their hard work and loyalty, and maintain the group’s recognition as one of the industry’s leading managed support providers for IBM i & Domino.

Life ETG’s employees have already elected new Trustees to be their voice, enabling every individual to have a say in Life ETG’s evolution and success. In addition, David Wilson of Spinnaker Commercial Finance, has been appointed as an external independent Trustee.

Jill Sherratt, founder and former managing director will now focus her attention on developing Ariadne Software, an independent company that delivers software solutions for the IBM i platform. 

Jill Sherratt, founder and outgoing managing director of Life ETG, said:

“Since founding Life IT in 2000, I have seen the business grow into a renowned and respected IT managed services business. After much consideration I took the decision to turn the business into an Employee Ownership Trust in order to put the future of the business firmly in the hands of those that built and work in it. I am delighted to announce the appointment of Mark as a director, the commitment of both Mark & Howard is a testament to the continued stability and strength of the business.”

“Our team has been integral to the success of the business and with new opportunities arising for our support services and solutions, this is the perfect time for staff to engage in and have a say in the company’s strategic vision.” 

Howard Myers, Director said:

“Life IT is built around its talented staff and the trustees & directors understand how integral they are to its success. We will continue to promote service excellence and drive the aspirations of the company’s development - including growth into exciting new services and solutions.”

Mark Doorbar, Director said:

“We have something very special here, and by becoming an EOT we hope to maintain this culture and ambition by allowing all employees to influence the new exciting chapter at Life ETG.”

Find all about Life IT Services and Solutions here

What others say about us

“Having migrated from IBM Domino to Microsoft Office 360 (Business Cloud), we are delighted with the results – and have 1000 happy internal customers who much prefer Outlook to Domino. Life IT were flexible, fair and supportive when schedules had to change due to other Gurit projects.  We had direct access to engineers and technical staff and a dedicated team who were easy to work with.  The whole project was done in a very friendly environment and I would definitely recommend Life IT for these sorts of migration projects.”

Henrikki Häkkänen,
Global IT Services Manager — Gurit Services AG

“Without the professional and expert support of Life IT, we wouldn’t have had the quality product we now have. They gently but insistently pushed the boundaries of our assumptions during the analysis phase, getting us to challenge our mind-sets and think outside the box. They then worked seamlessly as part of our team and delivered to time and to budget – no mean feat”.

James Hacking
Head of Technical Services—HCSS

“As we’d already invested significantly in Lotus Notes and Domino, a solution that built on our existing investment and skills was ideal. Life IT understood what was important to us and delivered a solution that met our needs. We’ve already seen the number of ‘distress calls’ to the sales office reduce as our sales managers can easily access customer data off line wherever they are and we’ve had positive feedback all round about the ability to update their call reports instantly on the road.”

Colin Mosley
Head of IT—Polyflor

“The Life IT solution has provided us with a significant reduction in support and maintenance costs and is an easy to use, more resilient and more easily maintainable system. As a business that handles thousands of transactions a day from 12 different own brand or white label websites it was vital that the whole process was seamless and, with the renewal of the support and maintenance contract from our existing supplier looming, it was also vital that the project came in on deadline. Life IT achieved this and more as they provided us with additional MI functionality and supported our staff whilst transferring their skills.’

Andrew Kirkham
Head of IT Development—DLR

“Life IT are doing a great job providing a very professional and efficient service. They are almost silently efficient and just get things done – only escalating issues when necessary. Their expertise in the AS400 is a key strength ensuring a real depth to their service and they keep us up to date with advances in technology too. So from an AS400 perspective I have very little to worry about.”

John Geary
IT Service Delivery Manager

“After the restructure I was left with a critical resource gap which quickly needed filling, having worked with Life IT before I gave them a call. Their response was swift and efficient. They now work as a virtual Center Parcs help desk team providing a strength and depth of support. Their flexible working based on a time bank system is real value for money. So not only do I get an expert and efficient service, I have reduced my resource costs!”

Kerry Moakes
Head of IT—Center Parcs

“We wanted flexible support to ensure 24/7 cover and Life IT worked with us to deliver this. Life IT has become integrated into the Bentley way of working and their role has expanded into looking at the technical side of the application as well as the support. “Our relationship has been built up over a significant period of time and both sides have worked hard to develop a supplier/customer relationship that can be used as a model throughout Bentley. We are now in the position where we have a pro-active partnership, Life IT are treated as part of Bentley, and that is a credit to them”.

Chris Sayers
Senior IS Manager—Bentley Motors

Support options

From full 24 by 7 operations to month end support and holiday cover, we can tailor a fixed price solution to fit seamlessly with your IT department.

So we offer a wide range of technical support services including IBM i, System P, Domino and SQL Server, to proactively monitor the availability and performance of your systems within a fixed price contract.

The key to our Application Support is that it’s ‘tailored’ to your exact requirements, with the flexibility to increase the resources and hours of cover as required.

With a Life support contract, you have access to a multi-skilled team with hardware, operating system and application skills as well as the latest IBM i certifications.

We provide any combination of application, operational and technical support, no matter how current your environment is and no matter how long support is projected for.

Life IT offer bespoke managed Microsoft SQL Server support services which are tailored to our customer’s requirements to ensure their systems are optimized, stable and secure, as well as prepared for future upgrades and updates.

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