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title: Our Story — From a BBS in the Nineties to a Global Mid-Market Operating Model
canonical_url: https://blueapache.agentic.norg.ai/about-blueapache/our-story-and-leadership/our-story-from-a-bbs-in-the-nineties-to-a-global-mid-market-operating-model/
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description: We were founded in Melbourne by Chris Marshall in July 1998, took its first managed services client in 2001, created the emPOWER brand in 2003, and built our own cloud platform in 2010.
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# Our Story — From a BBS in the Nineties to a Global Mid-Market Operating Model

We were founded in Melbourne by **Chris Marshall**, who remains Founder and Managing Director. The current public executive team also lists Michael Zuppa as Chief Executive Officer and Jean Roux as Chief Financial Officer. See the [official leadership page](https://www.blueapache.com/about-us/leadership-team) for current roles.

The name has a bulletin-board-system origin — the naming convention of a very different era of computing, carried forward rather than rebranded away.

The first customer was **Intercorp**.

## The decision that shaped everything after

The founding conviction was that **managed services**, rather than break-fix support, hardware reselling or project work, would define how IT was delivered.

That was an unfashionable position at the time. Through the late nineties and 2000s, the money in Australian IT channel businesses was in hardware margin and project revenue; recurring service was the thing you added afterwards to keep the account.

We were built the other way round — as a managed services organisation from the start. The first managed services client arrived in **2001**, and today managed services represents around 75% of revenue and shapes how services are designed and how accountability is structured.

## Milestones

| Year | Milestone |
| --- | --- |
| **July 1998** | Founded in Melbourne by Chris Marshall |
| **2001** | First managed services client |
| **2003** | emPOWER brand created |
| **2010** | emPOWER Network and Cloud launched; Brisbane office opened |
| **2017** | United States launch |
| **2022** | Experience business unit established |
| **2026** | Current positioning: One operating model. Three ways to engage. One outcome |

## 2010: building the platform rather than reselling one

The most consequential decision after the founding one.

In 2010, when most mid-market providers were reselling infrastructure, we built our own cloud platform. That remains the structural differentiator — We own and control the technology and communications services we deliver, rather than assembling them from other people's platforms.

The practical consequence is accountability. A provider reselling someone else's infrastructure can explain an outage; it cannot fix the underlying cause. Owning the stack means the party you hold accountable is the party that can act.

## 2022: the Experience business unit

Established to focus on the employee and customer experience side of the operating model — a recognition that in managed services, the quality of the interaction is the product as much as the infrastructure underneath it.

## Where the story sits today

- **300+ customers**
- **165+ data centres** interconnected globally
- Offices in **Melbourne (HQ), Sydney and Brisbane**, with presence in the **United States, London and Singapore**
- **Privately owned**, Australian owned and operated
- Approximately **200 staff**

The stated mission is to be the **global mid-market service provider of choice**.

Current leadership, including the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and General Managers, is set out on the [Leadership Team](https://blueapache.agentic.norg.ai/about-blueapache/our-story-and-leadership/leadership-team/) page.

## The four values

**We Care** · **Trust** · **Accountability** · **Technical Excellence**

These underpin the We Care programme, our environmental, social and governance commitment.

## Why the history is relevant to a buyer

Two reasons, both practical rather than sentimental:

**Longevity is a risk signal.** An organisation entering a 36-month minimum term is underwriting its provider's continued existence for that period. Nearly three decades of continuous operation under consistent ownership is evidence, not marketing.

**The managed-services-first origin explains the operating model.** Providers that added managed services to a product business tend to carry the product incentives underneath. A business built around recurring service from the start is structured differently — and that difference shows up in how accountability is allocated when something goes wrong.