Starnet Data Design, Inc.

Starnet was founded in 1987 by President and General Manager Steve Marks, who remains actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. Starnet’s unique mission was born of Steve’s involvement in the IBM Midrange Industry (System 36/38/AS400) from 1983 through 1987.

In 1987, Starnet established an exclusive relationship with a startup company in Northboro, MA, StarTek, to distribute its IBM Midrange structured wiring solutions. That successful relationship formed the foundation of Starnet’s initial solution focus, one that entailed helping IBM Midrange customers migrate away from twinaxial daisy-chain cabling architectures to structured twisted-pair star wiring.

In the early 1990s, as Novell Netware LANs began to proliferate into IBM Midrange environments, Starnet developed the expertise to help customers implement local area networks. Our primary focus centered on performing desktop memory management on Windows 3.1 PCs, to support simultaneous IBM Midrange PC Support and Novell Netware LAN connectivity over Token Ring. This was no small task considering the challenges associated with memory management on Windows 3.1 PCs.

Through the 1990s, Novell networks started to share the landscape with Microsoft Windows networking. As IP became the protocol of choice supplanting Netbios, and Token Ring networking started to give way to Ethernet, Starnet evolved in step. Our areas of expertise expanded to include a number of networked IP/Ethernet infrastructure solutions to assist our target market—small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), educational institutions, local government entities—in using technology to improve efficiencies and increase competitive advantage.

Today, our lineup of solutions continues to keep pace as modern network and communications technologies evolve at an accelerating rate. We work diligently to update our portfolio, constantly assessing the marketplace and selecting technologies that deliver a robust value proposition and elements of future-proofing.

Our business model has always centered on providing turnkey solutions inclusive of solution design, product fulfillment, installation/training and ongoing support. We maintain a strong engineering focus, with a 2:1 ratio of engineering to sales personnel.

As we look at our opportunities for 2010 and beyond, we anticipate difficult competition from online and ”cloud-based” suppliers in the marketplace, yet we continue to see tremendous opportunities to deliver the Starnet value proposition.

As technology becomes ever more important to operational efficiency and competitiveness, business owners and IT managers will want to work with people they know and trust, who are aware of their unique needs and are focused on straightforward solutions.

Mission Statements

1. At Starnet, our mission is to instill confidence in our customers and demonstrate that we are keenly focused on their ultimate objectives. To that end, Starnet will always work for and with our customers in a manner reflecting the highest ethical principles, the latest technological advances and the business world’s best practices.

2. We blend Best-of-Breed technologies with expert engineering skills and focused customer services to deliver solutions to our customers to help them improve operational efficiency and increase competitive advantage.