What We Believe In

Holding Dear our Core Values

John Harris (Operations Director)
“When David, Mike and I established Delphic Solutions, we wanted to (first and foremost) have a good time, make a big difference to real companies, and further our interest in, and the development of, open source software. I don’t think anything has changed, except that we now work in an enlarged community of around one hundred people, and now have all the satisfactions of being at the centre of a real intellectual powerhouse. I think it is true to say that we each started with selfish motives…to realize our own potential…but now are equally driven by the motive of enabling members of our community to achieve the same.”

Dave Williams (Senior Project Leader)
“In the early days, we thought it would be a good idea to get some help in establishing our strategic direction. We persuaded a guy from the Eastchurch Business School to give us a day of his time. The most valuable output of the day-I’m not sure how much else was useful-was a statement of our core values, which has remained with us to this day. We’re primitive enough to have it placarded on the wall of each office:

• To help SMEs find apt, integrated and cost-effective solutions to their system needs. That was the 1999 version! Nowadays, nearly 70% of our business (by revenue) comes from big plcs, but as we work with people, rather than their organizations, we don’t really discriminate by organizational size as we used to.
• To fully understand the commercial realities and culture of our clients. This principal is still paramount. I often reflect that this has been, for me, my biggest learning curve.
• To act as a team fully connected with the management of the client company. To become as their own IT department. This was very true of our early days, and it was a considerable satisfaction to become a valuable member of so many management teams. With big plcs, the relationship is much more that of the contractor, but we strive to build very close relationships.
• To ensure that our clients are fully secure in the operation of their open-source based system, in terms of operation, support and legal protection. Still very important, although the open source market is more mature.
• To fully acknowledge the value of open source software and to participate in it’s publically-available development where appropriate. Absolutely. We shouldn’t just take others’ labour and give nothing back. Much of the development work we do on open source software is pumped back, and we always financially support the software where is possible to do so.