Santa Cruz Tech Beat

Companies

Pagoda: Quietly Saving and Securing Businesses

By Kaya Lindsay
Special to Santa Cruz Tech Beat

September 9, 2015 —  Santa Cruz, CA

Proactive, Predictable, Process.

Those three words sum up the business model of local flat rate IT services company, Pagoda Technologies.

Pagoda Technologies, proudly stating they’re “Your Path to IT Enlightenment,” has been been quietly saving and securing businesses all over Santa Cruz County for the last 15 years. And in Africa, too, but we will get to that.

Jon Allen, Founder of Pagoda Technologies. (Source: contributed)

Jon Allen, Founder of Pagoda Technologies. (Photo: Contributed)

Jon Allen, founder of Pagoda, sat down with me last week to discuss the company and what they’ve been doing for the last 15 years. With a background in physics and a love of computers, Jon is a New Zealand native who came to Santa Cruz in the mid-90’s. In New Zealand he was working with Pipers. During his time there, after hours, and behind the scenes, Pagoda Technologies was born.

After developing a Patent Attorney General Office Data and Accounting system — which also happens to be where the Pagoda name comes from — Jon left Pipers to start Pagoda. Back then, Pagoda developed messaging software and did business throughout New Zealand and Australia. However, business came to a halt when the big players got involved that we know today: Microsoft and others.

Pagoda was put on hold for a long time. Jon was happily employed in Santa Cruz working in general tech support and having a family. In 2000, he started up Pagoda again, this time with a focus on IT support.

In 2007, Jon partnered up with Robbin Finnerty and their company has been growing ever since.

Robbin Finnerty became Jon's partner at Pagoda Technologies in 2007.

Robbin Finnerty became Jon’s partner at Pagoda Technologies in 2007. (Photo: Contributed)

Robbin came from an engineering background in CAD, Control Systems, and construction experience. She was so good at her job that past employer, Great Coasters, ended up following her to Pagoda Technologies when she made the switch from engineering to IT.

Pagoda Technologies specializes in setting up computer networks, PC support, network and server monitoring, and custom programming. Unlike other IT service providers in the industry, Pagoda Tech also offers comprehensive business strategy planning. They help local businesses set up in the cloud, prioritize the number of servers their clients will need. They also provide long term data storage and disaster recovery strategy planning for companies planning to grow.

The Pagoda team can monitor everything about their clients’ networks, from servers to fans, and remotely fix almost any problem with minimal interruption for users.

Jon showed me the interface they use, NCentral, which allows access to each client’s important IT information, all in one place.

A row of green boxes indicates that all is well, a yellow box indicates an alert, and red means there is a big problem. As we looked over the mostly green boxes, Jon explained to me exactly how Pagoda Technologies works from day to day, and how quickly they can respond to a problem once it has been identified.

“If a server drive fails, we know right away. If it fails at 9 am, we get an email within minutes, let’s say 9:05. As soon as we get that email we call Dell and get the new drive. If we get the drive and arrive at 10:30 in the morning onsite, we can have the drive installed by 10:45 and the server is restored to full integrity by 11 am.”

The Pagoda team is located in Santa Cruz County, but their clients are everywhere from San Jose to Africa.

Pagoda supports Assist International, a humanitarian organization addressing the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people. Computers of staff traveling in Africa are monitored as easily as those at home in Santa Cruz. The remote access saves clients money and improves the quality of support.

Pagoda Technologies is an old standard in Santa Cruz. They have been quietly and efficiently monitoring, managing and addressing the technology needs of Fire Departments, Accounting Firms, and many other businesses.

Learn more about Pagoda at http://pagoda-tech.com, or contact Jon Allen, JAllen@Pagoda-Tech.com.

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Kaya Lindsay is a blogger, social media expert and adventure seeker: http://www.KayaLindsay.com

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