Lymington firm Bridgeworks celebrates 40 years at International Partner Sailing Regatta

Bridgeworks CEO and international partners in Southampton, England © Bridgeworks

Lymington IT firm Bridgeworks has turned 40. As part of its ongoing celebrations, the company was joined by its global partners at an International Partner Sailing Regatta and Conference at Ocean Village, Southampton, UK, on 16th June 2022 at the Southampton Harbour Hotel and Spa.

Its partners raced five yachts on the Solent after meeting their allocated skippers and crews.

Bridgeworks' Global Channels Leader Antony Reynolds says he enjoyed welcoming the firm's valued global business partners to the regatta and conference, which included a Regatta Awards ceremony at the Duke of Wellington Pub in Bugle Street, Southampton.

He explains: "This was a special day to thank and recognise their achievements in serving and supporting our customers around the world. As we celebrate our 40th Anniversary of operations in 2022, it is a privilege to be joined by our global partners, and I hope everyone enjoyed the day of fun and excitement both on and off the water."

Sponsoring sails

Bridgeworks CEO David Trossell has some good sea legs. For him sailing is a passion, and it's not just about having a leisurely sail on the Solent. It's about winning races. Effective sails are essential to get winners from the start to the finish lines. So, as the Royal Lymington Yacht Club's fleet lacked some essential mainsails, he recently stepped in to ensure that the club's 6 RS Fevas had what they needed. Bridgeworks sponsors the much-needed sails to allow all the fleet to compete.

Subsequently, the starting horn was sounded to allow 15 of the Club's yachts to race, while proudly sporting the Bridgeworks' mainsails. Young people, enrolled on the club's junior programme, can now enjoy sailing the boats, which have the same sails as much bigger yachts.

Awards continue to be won

The company has also recently won Computing magazine's AI & Machine Learning Awards 2022's 'Most Innovative Use of AI/ML' award for: "The ability to accelerate WAN performance while maintaining security, governance, and compliance is outstanding, and a real differentiator in the space," says the acclamation for the award. Adding to this success, also in May 2022, Bridgeworks won the DCS Awards 'Data Centre ICT Networking Innovation of the Year' mantle.

Supporting STEM initiatives

The company is also celebrating its work with local colleges to support the development of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) careers, apprenticeships, and education - for example, with Brockenhurst College.

David Trossell - CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks - is a STEM ambassador at Bournemouth and Poole College, and Bridgeworks runs an apprenticeship scheme. Through this support, and particularly with the aim of bringing more women into IT, he hopes to see more and more students and apprentices working hard to shape successful careers in the IT industry.

Bridgeworks encourages young graduates to work with the company through apprenticeship schemes, and as a company it collaborates with Brockenhurst College and Bournemouth College by sponsoring STEM awards and supporting STEM schemes to encourage them to have careers in the whole variety of STEM-related disciplines.

Bridgeworks' history

Bridgeworks was established in April 1982 as Digital Interfaces Limited, and it was formed by two engineers who left their employment to explore a project that their employers didn't want to participate in. It was a digital serial link recorder on a warship for the Ministry of Defence.

They continued to develop bridges and bridge protocols because in the early days of computer storage there was a myriad of manufacturing protocols. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the firm made a series of protocol bridges and tape emulating devices for the IBM marketplace. It achieved some very early innovations, such as a solid state disks, tape duplicators, and an array of tape devices.

The founders sold the company to a business angel in 1999. The products they purchased through the sale of the company were two generations behind. A year later in 2000, the firm was restructured and rebranded as Bridgeworks. This was when David Trossell - its present CEO and CTO - took up his post. Under his leadership, the company's team reinstalled a new design and development for products.

He explains: "We were the very first company to design and manufacture an iSCSI bridge, along with fibre channel and SAS connectivity. In 2008, in conjunction with Portsmouth University, we developed a project that allowed for moving of storage area network protocol data across fast distances without the penalty of latency and packet loss by using artificial intelligence, machine learning and data parallelisation, and this became known as WAN Acceleration. We have continued to do WAN Acceleration in Government, Banks, Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, and in Cyber-Security - including Formula 1."

Ongoing innovation

As part of its celebrations, and in response to market demand, Bridgeworks has also recently launched a new Storage Area Network (SAN) bridge - the EFC10026400 Max and the Max-Lite. The bridge increases the number of fibre channel ports on its Oresund Bridges, making connectivity to iSCSI SAN easier as well as more efficient, and it enables hyper-converged installation with a new bridge.

So the firm continues to develop its OEM business with IBM, Spectre Logic, Quanum, DELL, and to innovate its bridge products, the latest bridge being a 100Gb bridge. Going forward Bridgeworks plans to create more innovations, to work with companies from around the world, and to continue to promote STEM education and careers for the good of the local community.