It
is easy to talk about mobile, connected and pervasive communication today. Or
even about videoconferencing. But there are those who lived through all this
before the Internet. GTI was set up in Modena in 1988, a technological partner
that helps companies choose the best technologies to improve communication and
company security systems. For FARE INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviews
Angelo Sottore, President of GTI.
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
This is not
America, but the most beautiful company stories are born in a garage here as
well, and they are just as good as those offered by the Stars and Stripes. Or,
actually, in two garages. We find ourselves in Modena, along that seemingly
endless road called via Emilia that connects half of Italy. It was 1988 and
telephone communications were making giant leaps, although under the burdensome
monopoly of SIP. Then things unlocked with liberalization and a new world
needed to be built. “At the time we also used to install telephone exchanges
and clients often looked at me perplexed and asked: ‘But, can we do it? Is it
legal?’. The only certainty is that you always need to innovate with courage
and awareness, trying to get out of old approaches and surpassed technologies,”
explains Angelo Dottore, President of GIT, a company set up 35 years ago with
another two partners - Massimiliano Degli Esposti and Antonio Dottore. Today,
the company boasts 32 people, over 50% of which are engineers and specialized
technicians working for over 3,000 clients comprising small, medium and large
businesses generating a turnover of €3.2 million. This is a technological
partner that provides safety services, network infrastructures and technologies
to communicate effectively and it has been doing it for a long time, much
earlier than others. “We take care of the planning, implementation and
maintenance of each of our business areas. We are made up of an Emilian soul
and technological progress. We are closely linked with the territory, a
characteristic we have inherited. We strongly believe in technological progress
intended as a solution and a means capable of improving society,” reports
Dottore.
Company
profile. Pioneering by definition. Just think that we need to go back in time,
more precisely to 1995, to find the first video-conference using complicated
boards purchased from America. At the time, these geeks with an Emilian soul,
as Dottore says, managed in an endeavour that seemed impossible: to set up a
teleconference between Houston and the Modena fair. “I started very young, when
I was 21 and a half. After the Technical telecommunication institute Corni I
wanted to study Engineering, but I started doing business instead. I became
passionate about tlc technology. When I made the first contacts with local
companies, I realised there were only non-performing technologies, albeit in
line with those of other countries. They were still the days before the
Internet. I visited fairs halfway around the world and wondered: “why are they
still using dated technologies?” recalls Dottore. A mission that was almost
impossible? Equip companies with innovative, performing and functional
exchanges. Easier said than done. “I still feel the same passion for
technologies that help clients communicate better, in addition to a certain
dose of healthy recklessness in the way that I stubbornly continue to explore
new pathways. The main innovation was going from being a System Integrator that
used solutions developed by others, to a builder of communication platforms. A
huge cultural and technological step.” The hardest moment? Everyone remembers
it at GTI. We get shivers down our spine. It was the end of 2008, when a global
crisis swept the world. “Despite the difficult period, we did not lose heart
and decided to invest in research and development: the objective was to develop
a VoIP exchange. The decision proved the right one, as we managed to give life to
a high-quality innovative product that is still available on the market today
and sold by over 60 Italian partners in its later versions,” mentions Dottore
proudly.
Future
challenges. At the company, a team of professionals is looking for new
solutions. The future involves continuous integrations. “It used to be called
unifed communication in the past. We have changed it to unifed collaboration.
It is not just unified communication because now collaboration entails a single
interface with all communication channels,” stresses Dottore. After all,
putting together means integrating platforms, joining the dots. The next
challenge? There is no doubt about it in GTI: it will concern cyber-security.
Cyber criminals are an absolute evil for companies that can actually lead to
closing you down without any scruples. “Over a period of two years, we have
developed a safety platform that is proving very successful and on which we
will invest further over the next few years. In the future, we expect to
involve passionate people,” says Dottore. After all, passion is precisely what
steers the future.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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