My name is Francisco José Perez van der Oord :-) That sounds pretty Spanish, right? That's because my father is Spanish. My dear mother was Dutch, she passed away way too young on May 17, 2014. I was born in the most beautiful village of Holland (Heemskerk ;-)) on December 19, 1976 and this makes me a real Dutch guy rather than a Spanish guy, despite my name. I'm the eldest son of the family Perez and I have one sister who is three years younger than me. I married my first girlfriend Marjolein and we now have three beautiful daughters: Lisa, Anne and Suus.

 

I started my IT career in 1996 (at age 18) as a Field Service Engineer at a small IT company called Colan. During the first years, my friend Paul Geerlings taught me all the (technical) ropes of the business and after he left the company, I followed him a year afterwards. We had worked for two different consultancy companies for a while when we decided to start our own IT consultancy company. But. We wanted to start a different company and we asked ourselves: “Isn’t there a better, more inspiring way to do things?”

 

We founded ITQ in 2001 and set out to gather a group of consultants with a shared passion for technology to work on the best IT infrastructure projects, led by the philosophy professional services for customers will be their biggest challenge while they try to keep up with the speed of new innovations. The slogan “Dutch independent VMware knowledge partner” ensures ITQ has professional service knowledge throughout the entire VMware eco-system, concentrated in five business units: EUC (work space one), SDDC, HybridCloud, Cloud Native Apps en IT Transformation Services. As CEO, I’m accountable for the success of ITQ, while also responsible for business spinoffs like the S-Unit, Provisior and EUPSCO. I strongly believe speed is the new currency presenting major business challenges to retain knowledge while staying on the right track with all these new impulses and opportunities.

 

By now, the question “Isn’t there a better, more inspiring way to do things?”, has been answered: indeed, there is! I don’t believe in a profit-driven business model. Just focus on what you’re good at and work to be the best. That’s how ITQ has come to prove that when a business is founded on passion, enthusiasm, collegiality and concession-free quality, success will follow.

 

Nowadays, I’m balancing my time between my work and my family, leaving some time to spare for my great hobby: hiking :-)