Our History
The technology has changed repeatedly. Anatec has changed with it. From business applications and SQL Server to cloud services, Microsoft Fabric and applied AI, we have continued to learn, experiment and develop our capabilities.
Our purpose has remained consistent: to build useful systems around the needs of a business. Each generation of technology gives us more ways to do that — and more possibilities to explore with our clients.
We have been a Microsoft Partner since 1998. Our history is a story of what we have learned along the way, and how that experience informs the work we do today.
A changing world of possibilities
1998 — Anatec on the Web
Our first website went online in 1998. Its appearance belongs to another era, but its subject matter is familiar: custom software for particular business needs. The systems it described included production scheduling, sales information and inventory control.
Those early pages are a reminder that software has always been about the work people need to do. The tools available to us have changed enormously; understanding that work is still where we start.
The turn of the millennium — Applications and business data
Microsoft development tools and SQL Server were important parts of our work. Applications gave people a way to carry out business tasks; databases held the information those tasks depended on.
Working across both helped us understand the connections between a useful screen, the process behind it and the quality of the underlying data. That combination remains central to our engineering today.
The .NET era — New foundations for custom systems
As Microsoft’s development platform evolved, our work evolved with it. C# and .NET became part of how we developed business applications, extending the tools and components available to us.
Learning a new platform also means exercising judgement: which parts are useful, how they fit together, and how to build something that can be maintained and adapted. A business system needs to keep earning its place as the organisation changes.
Business intelligence — Making more of business data
Our work expanded into data integration, reporting and business intelligence using the Microsoft SQL Server platform. This connected naturally with our application development experience: we understood both how information was collected and how it might be used.
The questions became broader. How could data from different sources be made consistent? What did people need to know? How could a report help them see a problem or recognise an opportunity?
Cloud and Azure — More powerful building blocks
Cloud services changed what could be included in a custom system. With Microsoft Azure, applications can use managed databases, storage and other services without every underlying component having to be built and operated separately.
Our capabilities developed to include Azure applications and Azure SQL Database. Software engineering increasingly involves selecting and connecting established services, alongside writing the code that makes a system fit a particular business.
That opens up possibilities for a small specialist company and its clients. More of the effort can go into the parts that make the system useful and distinctive.
Power BI — Exploring information
Power BI extended the possibilities for interactive reporting and analysis. Alongside preparing and organising data, we developed our ability to help people explore it through reports and visualisations.
The technology makes interaction easier, but the underlying questions still matter: what does a figure mean, can it be trusted, and what decision could it inform? Our learning in analytics continues to connect the tools with those practical concerns.
Microsoft Fabric — Learning, experimenting and teaching
Microsoft Fabric has provided further opportunities to develop our data engineering and analytics skills. Our practical experiments have included data processing with Apache Spark and Delta Lake, and exploring real-time data from connected devices.
We have also developed Microsoft Learn training material through Civica, including work on Apache Spark and Delta Lake. Explaining a subject to other people is a useful test of how well you understand it.
Experimentation lets us examine the practical details as well as the possibilities — including complexity, performance and running costs. That helps us judge where a technology could be useful and how simply it can be applied.
Applied AI — New possibilities, familiar responsibilities
AI adds another set of capabilities to business systems: working with documents and language, finding relevant information, and helping people carry out tasks.
Our continuing work and learning in applied AI sit alongside our experience in applications, data and analytics. An AI feature still needs to fit a business process, use appropriate information and produce results people can assess.
The possibilities have expanded. The responsibility to understand the business, test the system and keep people in control remains.
Learning that accumulates
The Anatec Knowledge Base has been with us through many of these changes. It gives us a place to record what we learn, preserve useful explanations and return to ideas as our work develops.
Some knowledge is tied to a particular tool. Other lessons — about understanding a requirement, investigating a problem or keeping a design simple — remain useful long after the technology has moved on. The Knowledge Base helps that experience accumulate.
Formal study is part of the same process. Richard’s Microsoft learning and certification record spans successive generations of technology. Alongside practical projects and experiments, that continuing study helps us challenge what we know and develop new capabilities.
What carries forward
Across these changes, we have continued to work on systems shaped around individual organisations. Long relationships with clients including PepsiCo, BAE Systems and Honeywell have given us experience of how business needs and systems develop over time.
Today, custom software can use powerful services developed by Microsoft while still being designed around the way your business works. Our role is to understand what you want to achieve, make sound engineering choices and develop a system that helps you achieve it.
Our history gives us experience to draw on. Continuing to learn gives us new possibilities to explore. The interesting question is what those possibilities could mean for your business.
Explore Anatec today
Our Services
Explore our capabilities in application engineering, applied AI, data engineering and analytics.
How we think
Discover the ideas that guide how we approach organisations, opportunities and business systems.
Our Clients
See the organisations we have worked with and the kinds of systems we have developed.
What could we achieve in your business?
If you have an opportunity to explore or a problem to solve, we would be pleased to hear about it. You do not need a detailed technical brief to start a conversation.
