About EssingtonITS

We are a Telford-based team of engineers and educators who have delivered open-source technology to UK colleges, councils and businesses since 2009.

Talk to us Meet the team

OUR STORY

Small on purpose. Trusted for a long time.

EssingtonITS started in 2009 with a simple observation: colleges were paying a great deal for learning technology that did not fit how they actually taught. Open-source platforms like Moodle could do the job better and cost less, but only if someone was prepared to host them properly, integrate them carefully and answer the phone when something went wrong. That became the business.

Since then the work has grown outwards from the learning platform. Colleges asked us to sort out single sign-on, so we learned Shibboleth and the UK federation inside out. They asked for reliable wifi for students, so we built eduroam and govroam services on FreeRADIUS. They needed the servers underneath it all to be secure, so Linux support and hosting followed, then cabling, wireless and audio visual, because a learning platform is only as good as the room and the network it runs in. Most recently we built eLLM, our own private AI platform, because our customers wanted AI they could actually be allowed to use.

We have stayed deliberately small. You deal with the people who do the work, decisions are made quickly, and nobody is reading from a script. Most of our new customers come from a recommendation by an existing one, which is the measure we care about most.

At a glance

Founded 2009, Staffordshire. Now based at St James House, Telford.
Who we work with further education colleges, sixth forms and academy trusts; local authorities; defence and security organisations; and businesses across the UK.
What we build on Moodle, Shibboleth, FreeRADIUS, Linux, Xibo, Mautic, WordPress and our own eLMS, eLLM, eVMDS and GL Server.
How we host ISO 27001 certified UK data centres running on renewable energy, or on your own estate.
Credentials Cyber Essentials certified. Signatories to the Armed Forces Covenant. Members of Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce.
Where to find our knowledge over a hundred how-to articles on InfoHub, free to anyone.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

Five things we hold ourselves to

These are not a poster on the wall. They are the things we check ourselves against when a project gets difficult, and the reasons customers stay.

Empower

Give people the tools and the room to work in their own way, then trust them with the decision. That goes for our team and for the staff and learners who use what we build.

Innovate

Keep learning, keep trying new tools, and share what we find. Half of our product range exists because a customer had a problem nobody had solved yet.

Communicate

Say what we are doing, say when it is done, and say so early when something is going wrong. Clear expectations on both sides are how trust gets built.

Be bold

Back open source when the safe choice was a big vendor. Build our own platforms when nothing on the market fitted. Challenge the way it has always been done.

Think differently

Come at every problem fresh and listen to ideas from anyone. The best answer for a college is rarely the one written for a corporation.

HOW WE WORK

What working with us is actually like

We look before we quote

A site visit or a proper conversation first. If we do not understand how your people work, we cannot design something that fits, and we would rather find that out before the invoice.

We build on open source

No licence lock-in and no per-seat surprises. You own your data and your platform, and if you ever want to leave, you can take both with you.

We write it down

Everything we install is documented, and most of what we know is published on InfoHub for anyone to read. Your team should never depend on one person's memory, including ours.

We will tell you no

If a product is the wrong fit, or a public AI tool is the right answer and ours is not, we say so. Long relationships are worth more to us than one sale.

THE TEAM

The people you will actually talk to

No account managers between you and the engineers. These are the people who answer the phone, scope the work and stand behind it.

Paul Flanders

Managing Director

Leads EssingtonITS and still does the technical work: Moodle, Shibboleth, eduroam, Linux and now eLLM. If you phone about a project, it is usually Paul you end up talking to.

"Every day is a learning opportunity."

Emma Flanders-Hall

Director of HR and Finance

Runs the people and the money: contracts, invoicing, HR and the paperwork that keeps a small company straight, so the engineers can stay on the engineering.

"Everything starts with a lesson."

Tobias Flanders

Head of Digital Operations

Runs the platforms day to day: hosting, monitoring, updates and the support desk, and looks after the eLMS and eVMDS customers.

"I love to help people learn."

SUSTAINABILITY

Lighter on the planet by default

Our hosting runs in UK data centres powered by renewable energy and certified to ISO 14001 and ISO 50001. We favour open-source software that keeps older hardware useful for longer, and we work remotely wherever a site visit would only add miles. Where we can help a customer reduce their own footprint, through virtualisation, consolidation or simply switching things off, we do.

COMMUNITY

Part of something beyond the contract

We are signatories to the Armed Forces Covenant and have supported service leavers, reservists and their families in our work and our hiring. We are members of Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce, we sponsor grassroots sport in the area, and we publish our knowledge freely on InfoHub because we would rather people fixed things than paid us to.

Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce member

Want to know if we are the right fit?

The quickest way to find out is a conversation with an engineer, not a sales call. Tell us what you are trying to do and we will tell you honestly whether and how we can help.

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