Sundown Solutions Becomes Serve Denton’s Newest Business Partner
How did you first hear about Serve Denton?
We actually found Serve Denton when we were looking for new initiatives for our community giving program. We have always had a strong belief in giving back to our local community. Our UK office sponsors several local youth sports leagues and has signed the UK Armed Forces Covenant to support their military and veterans. Here in the US, we have been donating 5% of our profits annually to 22Kill, an organization which works to help prevent suicide amongst veterans. Serve Denton seemed like a great opportunity to help target and improve our local area directly as we grow.
Tell us about your business and its community goals (how long you've been in business, company history, etc.).
Sundown has been in business in the UK since 2006 and in the US since 2015. Our core team met while working at Microsoft providing Tier 3/Tier 4 BPOS-D SharePoint. What we were retooling to become, and is now known as, Office 365. We decided to team up and rebranded the US operation as Sundown Solutions US in 2015, providing our services to clients in Europe and North America.
We have top tier resources and former Microsoft architects from the entirety of Microsoft’s product offering and have quickly become a premier consultancy across the Microsoft spectrum. We have won several awards, but none make us prouder than the awards for our training program. Our Sundown Academy program is a 1 year program where we train young people in house to be excellent engineers. The majority of our apprentices have stayed with us to be full time employees after completing the program.
Now, we have several security and encryption patents and products and focus on healthcare, finance, government and other high security sectors.
Why did you decide to become a Business Sponsor?
Frankly, it just seemed right. We could not decide on where we should be helping and I wanted to make sure we did something local. Several of our staff were or still are volunteer high school teachers for TEALS K12, an organization which helps high schools establish computer science programs and trains teachers to be able to teach CS courses. I haven’t been able to do that anymore but wanted to do something. We are also looking at working with the Denton Public School Foundation this year. We thought Serve Denton would be the best first step for us, because all the different programs they work with. They have a good grasp of where the needs of the community are and we trust that our support for Serve Denton will truly serve the community.
What is your favorite thing about Denton?
I have only lived in Denton for 2 years, although we have been in DFW for 10 and been through for events. My wife has been teaching at UNT for 4 years. We just love it here. There are always things to do, the Universities keep the culture interesting and fun. I have to say, it’s one of the few places I have been where you can see a hipster kid, a man fully decked out in his cowboy duds, and a multitude of other folks all together in the same store and everyone seems friendly and gets along well. We are here to stay.