The Horizon Pacific Story

Noting that his teachers continually had problems with their computers, Dwayne Smith conceived the idea for Horizon Pacific at just 13 years of age. 

Dwayne began a profitable enterprise during his college years and was able to fund himself through private school by repairing and configuring personal computers for the education staff, as well as home and business computers for parents of fellow students.

On leaving school, Dwayne went fulltime with Horizon Pacific to follow his dream of building New Zealand’s first national technology company helping New Zealand’s small to medium businesses, ensuring to always speak laymans terms and offer friendly, helpful advice to business users whose expertise lay in the tools of their trade, not in the complexity of IT.

Profitable from the onset, Dwayne was mentored by some key people in the real estate sector and he quickly became a household name in the major real estate chains throughout the North Island.

Growth came quickly, so Dwayne hired and managed a technical team to provide the support his customers had quickly come to expect. The provision of technical expertise, software and training for customers meant Horizon Pacific was well placed to note the changing requirements of computer users.

The world of communications began a period of disruptive change, the pace and scale of which had never been seen before. Horizon had – and continues to employ – a strategy of embracing change.

This led directly to Horizon Pacific becoming an ISP in 2002 to supply customers a broadband solution which met their own needs rather than those of the massive telecommuncations giants dominating the market at that time.

Seeing a clear need to differentiate more than just on price, Horizon Pacific only signed up business customers, thereby managing to hold off the inevitable “slowdown” periods of peak home user access and controlling the viruses and spam hammering the residential networks.

Growth within the company was significant as Account Managers and an administration team were established to service customers both before and after products were implemented.

Supplying email was a logical next step to customers screaming for a low spam, reliable alternative. Horizon Pacific was a New Zealand ground breaking supplier of Outlook Anywhere – a mail solution utilising the full functionality of outlook yet available via web and handheld solution. Horizon Pacific continues to be a New Zealand leading supplier in fully functional mobile email solutions.

The technical repair side of Horizon Pacific gave rise to concerns from the business development team as to the long term viability of “a PC on every-one’s desk” with the high management costs of antivirus software, software upgrades, version control and data sharing access.

At this stage, Dwayne recognised the need for experience and guidance to assist with the massive growth in customers and in the company itself, so he brought in Rob Drower, General Manager. Rob’s 25 years in banking provided financial wisdom and stability to launch further growth.

Following the United States trends – and again leading the way in New Zealand, Horizon launched Desktop Anywhere in early 2005 as a terminal services solution for small to medium businesses. Phenomenally successful, Desktop Anywhere has changed the working face of the real estate and travel industries throughout the country and facilitated many a user needing to share and access accounting software from outside the office. Desktop Anywhwe has brought lifestyle options to many small businesses who don’t require a full time accountant.

Horizon Pacific continue to develop and deploy successful products for the New Zealand market which enable efficiencies, economies and growth. The company is now well established nationally, and National office is based in Albany.

Client success drives Horizon Pacific growth and the Customers are also showing significant growth as a result of the tools and technologies Horizon have implemented. Consequently Horizon Pacific’s future looks bright.

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