Our Story
JNR Networks was founded in 2005 by husband and wife duo, James and Natalie Riley. From the start, JNR was built with heart and passion to serve people. We think of ourselves as a Business Consulting Firm that specializes in IT. While we handle typical IT tasks (such as procurement, design, implementation, help desk, lifecycle planning, etc.), we bring a rare business acumen to the IT industry. This competency allows us to engage our clients at a deeper level, focusing on their business needs, culture, and beyond, independent of IT. Our solutions often involve IT but are rarely exclusively IT solutions. More often than not, our implementations also touch on HR policy, business culture, strategic initiatives, operational processes, and more.
Through the years, we have realized that an amazing IT firm needs to focus on three major things:
- Business Alignment: IT systems have no intrinsic value; they are subordinate to the business and people they serve. Therefore, all IT systems need to be built in a way that, first and foremost, aligns with the needs of the business and the people who use them.
- Solid IT Engineering: On the surface, this seems a bit obvious, of course an IT firm needs to be good at IT. What may not seem so obvious is that this requires constantly combating complexity and designing systems to be as simple yet capable as possible. While IT systems will always have complexity, one mark of very competent engineering is the level to which we can simplify the design. This simplicity makes systems much more usable, stable, supportable, and secure.
- Ongoing Maintenance and Support: No matter how well a system is designed, it is unrealistic to expect it to operate perfectly and optimally indefinitely.
- IT systems need maintenance, including applying patches, cleaning up unnecessary files, and more. We started doing this back in the 90s and called it “Ongoing Maintenance.” Now, marketing has coined it “Managed Services.”
- Even more critical than the technical maintenance of IT systems is maintaining business alignment. We do this through regularly scheduled meetings with business leadership to ensure that we remain tuned in to the business needs and can continuously make the necessary course corrections to maintain that alignment.
Our Why
We believe that a business’s greatest asset is its people. When people are provided with an inspirational culture and powerful tools, the stage is set for the business to maximize its potential. We believe that technology is a tool that empowers this transformation.
We believe that the IT industry has failed to serve businesses due to a fundamental disconnect between how IT has been delivered and a businesses’ needs. Either IT has been treated as a commodity or the answer to every problem…either way, it is improperly positioned to fulfill its purpose.
We Do IT Different by working with our clients to build technical solutions, where they make sense, that empower people to maximize a businesses’ potential.
Our Values
We believe that something incredible happens when you have personal and professional integrity, while also focusing on having a positive impact. When you do this, things begin to grow!
Integrity has two distinct, but related facets. The first relates to a person’s character, ensuring that there is consistency between what they say and what they do. The second focuses on how objects and systems properly do what they are designed to do and interoperate with other systems in a cohesive fashion so the entire system operates as a unified whole.
Integrity is a nice concept, but until it is put into action, it sits on the shelf, collecting dust and cannot have impact. We believe that we are designed to do more than have great ideas and philosophies. We are designed to put them into action with consistency and integrity so that we can have a positive impact on those that we have the honor of working with and serving. As such, all of our work filters through an evaluation of its impact…if it won’t have a positive impact, we set it aside.
We see growth as the natural result of doing the right things for the right people for the right reasons. When we do impactful things, with integrity, growth is a natural result.