Jeremy Hansen and Tyler Gress first became entrepreneurs in middle school, providing small-scale IT services to customers in Juneau. In 2005, they joined forces to open Hansen Gress, a managed service provider that provides clients with everything from help desk to back-office infrastructure support and virtual CIO—and their partnership with GCI has lasted almost as long.
“We have worked with GCI since we were 13 and the Internet first came to Juneau,” said Hansen. “I was a beta tester for the first cable system rolled out in the city.”
“It changed our 13-year-old lives,” laughed Gress. “We will forever have a warm spot in our hearts for GCI bringing blazing fast speed to our community.”
Hansen Gress works with small businesses, most of which do not have IT experts on staff. “With us, they get to tap into a full-service, robust IT department,” said Gress. “Our staff is available to customers every day and has many knowledgeable domain experts. Customers don’t have to worry about vacation schedules, hiring someone with a limited information base, or staffing for surge management.”
Employees pride themselves on bringing creativity and fun to the workplace, a reflection of their innovative approach.
“For the most part, we have the same clients that we’ve had since we started doing this,” said Gress of their “impeccable” retention rate. “When we sign up someone new, our expectation is that the relationship will last forever, and we’ve had very few exceptions to that.”
Hansen Gress relies on GCI to keep clients happy by providing the fast, reliable, affordable platform they need— as well as impressive bandwidth and responsive business customer service.
“As a provider that has a high concentration of clients, it’s important to us that our techs can work with the same person; they don’t have to go through the interview process every time,” said Hansen.
“We think of the Internet like tap water; when we turn on the faucet, it needs to be there,” said Gress, adding that having reliable Internet is key to today’s cloud infrastructure requirements. “And we appreciate that GCI made a tremendous investment years ago in this technology to provide Juneau with this access.”
Headquartered in Alaska, GCI provides data, mobile, video, voice, and managed services to consumer, business, government, and carrier customers throughout Alaska, serving more than 200 communities. The company has invested more than $4 billion in its Alaska network and facilities over the past 40 years and recently launched true standards-based 5G NR service in Anchorage. GCI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Broadband Corporation. To learn more about GCI and its services, visit www.gci.com.