Who We Are
Digital disruption: changing how we live and work.
Our History
Our Story, Mission and Culture
Our story
Founded in 2012, Metsi is a privately owned global digital Systems Integrator with operations in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and The Netherlands.
In the first few years of Metsi’s growth, our engineers were experts in service catalog, infrastructure and cloud management with technologies such as NewScale, Cloupia and CliQr.
As a result of vendor acquisitions, Metsi built strategic partnerships with Cisco, Puppet Labs, and Aveksa to offer professional services around automation and security. Our customer success led Metsi to become Cisco’s first software Integrator Partner, and began offering full-stack engineering for Software Defined Data Centre. This laid the foundation for Metsi to diversify its portfolio to become a global digital Systems Integrator around leading edge technologies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the US.
With the launch of Metsi US in 2018, the company expanded into Full Stack Visibility & Observability with AppDynamics certified engineering. In 2019, Metsi US started our US Federal business. Today, In partnership with the Cisco DoD teams, Metsi US designed, delivered, and customised IaaS and PaaS solutions that delivered faster application deployment for mission critical defense systems.
“Metsi” is the Tswana word for water and, like water, we adapt to conditions, environments and challenges as they arise.
We aim to be fluid, transformative, and beneficial to all teams, technology vendors, and partners as we collaborate with our customers to assist them to acclimatise to the ever-changing demands on their digital transformation journey.
After successfully delivering automation & orchestration services with enterprise self-service catalogues, Metsi has diversified to incorporate enterprise networking automation and orchestration, hybrid multi-cloud, and software-defined data centre solutions.
Our advisory consultancy, professional services, alignment to leading technology vendors and experience in deploying the solutions we support serves to minimise overall project risks, while ensuring a comprehensive roadmap is created for our customers, in keeping with their required timescales and business imperatives.
Our Mission
Our mission is to be a leading innovative digital engineering company that empowers modern businesses to achieve their digital transformation initiatives.
We deliver exceptional engineering on time and on budget.
We exceed expectations.
We strive for peak customer satisfaction. Feedback from our customers is that “the way that the Metsi engineers work together as a team and focus on the solution is what makes Metsi special.”
Our Values
From the start, the Metsi team has been governed by a core set of intrinsic values:
Customer Success - Our reputation is measured by the success of the projects we deliver to our customers.
- We work to exceed our customers' expectations.
- We take on complicated projects that others may not believe there are solutions to – and work until we find them.
- We work smart and collaborate with our customers and technology partners.
Mutual Respect - We treat our colleagues with the same respect as we do our customers.
- We work across diverse teams of vendor, partner and customer, where each is treated with esteem and professionalism.
- We continually work to achieve exceptional customer experience.
Business Integrity - We are forthright, with respect, transparency and integrity.
- We pride ourselves on being easy to work with, by being adaptable to changing requirements and business dynamics.
- We seek to be fluid and transformative, providing benefit across our customers’ and the technology eco-systems.
Family First - Family must come first
- Personal happiness comes from harmony at home, in the workplace and through life's experiences. Family must come first.
- Metsi individuals have a responsibility to have each other’s back.
- Our business's growth is achievable when each employee knows they are part of a community that cares about them.
Executive team
Mik Hillewaert has over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, from Benelux Regional Manager at PTC to Regional Director Eastern Region for VMware. In 2011 Mik was appointed as VP of International Sales at VirtualSharp Software, a next-generation Disaster Recovery company acquired by PHD Virtual Technologies in March 2013. In 2012 Mik founded Nubera to provide IT services to the Benelux market. Mik became CEO of Metsi Technologies in 2013 and Global CEO in 2018.
In 2012, Ghufran Shah co-founded Metsi Technologies to provide customers with a comprehensive strategic IT roadmap, which allows them to tie investment in IT services directly to business outcomes. With over 20 years’ experience in IT, including service management, hybrid multicloud, and automation, Ghufran’s passion is leveraging IT capabilities to deliver operational efficiency with innovative solutions. As co-author of 8 IBM Redbooks in enterprise service management, he has worked globally with clients to deliver value-based IT solutions. Ghufran enjoys cycling and regularly engages with his local university by setting real-world employer challenges to law students.
Stewart Beaumont is a seasoned executive whose illustrious career has seen him build and support a wide array of products across many different industries, including news, legal and financial markets. Stewart is currently an executive with Thomson Reuters, an organisation he joined in 1999. Over the course of his 2-decade history with Thomson Reuters, he has held several crucial positions, including Global Head of Divisional Technology Group and Chief Technology Officer. Since March 2021, he has served as Vice Chairman & President, Enterprise Centre. In this role, Beaumont is responsible for group strategy, including inorganic investments, and commercial strategy.
Steve James has more than thirty years of IT experience within and across customers, software vendors and partners. As a serial entrepreneur, co-founder, executive of both locally and globally built businesses, he remains intrinsically involved with the broader sales and technical teams in the construction, alignment to a customers business, and IT challenges while delivering a value proposition intended to provide differentiation to our clients.
With a core focus on the adoption of technologies and a strong passion for driving the company's technology direction, marketing and branding, building a winning team and culture that directly increases the profitability to shareholders and provides a sustainable platform for growth.
Paul Thompson is a veteran of the IT industry. Having started his career as a Systems Engineer writing applications in Assembler and the like, he eventually gravitated to the business aspect of the industry. Paul had numerous roles in Sales before progressing to sales leadership and ultimately business leadership. He specialised in the start-up of both Hardware and Software companies throughout his career, totalling nine of them through the years.
Paul spent 13 years working in Europe, again in the world of Start-up companies generally driving Venture Capital companies through to levels of maturity and market momentum across the European markets. He was involved in the start-up of companies such as Sun Microsystems, Marimba Inc, White Cross Systems to name a few. Paul also had a stint at Tivoli Systems looking after their EMEA markets. Paul speaks 4 languages. He returned to South Africa in 2004 to start Puleng Technologies.
Paul was the CEO of Puleng Technologies for 17 years growing the business exponentially before it was sold. He has now invested in a number of Start-up companies and provides leadership to these companies.