IT Products, Services & Solutions for the Real World: Compugen

“Simplify your business and watch it grow”

Founded in 1981 by Harry Zarek, Compugen is Canada’s largest privately-owned and operated IT Solutions provider. Compugen has built strong and successful relationships with both its partners and its customers for more than 30 years. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, it works with leading technology partners to develop the best solutions for its customers and delivers solutions and services from 13 offices across Canada and the US. It supports over 165,000 end users on an ongoing basis and our in-house call centre resolves in excess of 11,000 calls per month. Compugen’s Green4Good program has allowed us to assist companies with the environmental disposal of their end-of-use technology, while raising over $1 Million for charity in the process. 

Genesis and Growth of Compugen

From a small operation in Toronto to one of Canada’s largest IT service providers, Compugen come a long way. It all started when Harry Zarek developed an interest in computers while finishing his PhD in physics at the University of Toronto. He began a business building PCs in the basement of his Toronto home and called it Compugen, short for computer generation. By 1984, Compugen became an authorized Hewlett-Packard reseller and started selling LaserJet printers. In 1989 Compugen bought a Compaq reseller in Ottawa and turned it into the first branch office. Compugen hosted the first annual 10K road run to raise money for Frontier College’s computer labs in 1995. Between 1989 and 1998, branches open in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Montreal, and Quebec City. In 2000, Telecom Company Norigen acquired a significant part of Compugen. Compugen broadened its offering and introduced network infrastructure and storage services to enterprise customers. In 2002 Harry bought back Compugen and focused on independent growth. In 2007 Compugen built a software team, added a financing and disposition arm (Compugen Finance Inc.), and introduced its award-winning Green4Good program. By 2016, Metafore and Compugen combined assets to form Canada’s #1 solution provider

Unleash your Potential

Overcoming obstacles to realize benefits: Major upgrades and changes to an IT environment require careful thought about the technology involved and the business case underlying it. They can be reactive changes because you’ve identified a weak spot that needs to be strengthened, or an area where you want to take advantage of emerging technologies to push your business forward, and need guidance on the best way to do it. The purpose of our IT investment justification and decision support team is to look beyond the specific technology and instead consider the large-scale implications of IT on your organization.

An optimized nerve centre for your organization:

Datacentres used to operate as silos, where each piece of hardware did a unique job, now the age of convergence is upon us. Storage devices, servers and networks are being consolidated into one big family of shared resources, and our datacentres follow the same principle. We build datacentres that are based on converged architecture – an open model that pools servers, storage and networking resources and shares them between multiple applications.

With all resources grouped together into compact, efficient packages, the new datacentre is easier to manage and provision, and it supports the rapid scaling up or down of resources associated with cloud-based services. Whether you are building your way to a big data strategy or simply looking to get your environment optimized and primed for growth, a converged datacentre is a strong strategy.

An agile infrastructure that adapts quickly to change: The cost and power saving benefits of server virtualization are well known, but what does it look like in action? With a powerful virtualization solution, Terminal Systems Inc. reduced its server footprint from 300 servers to less than 20. TSI runs the container port in Vancouver and wanted assistance to reign in their sprawling server farm and optimize the underlying network infrastructure to make it more resilient. Despite a reduction from 300 to 100 servers less than three years prior, it still wasn’t enough to make it manageable.

With new consolidation techniques, TSI was able to reduce their server count to 18. Modular and scalable, the new server setup is ideal for high availability and business continuity. If one server fails, another will automatically take on the workload.

Looking forward, new business applications can be brought online quickly and easily, giving them the tools to make their business more responsive than ever.

Clientele Opinion

 “It’s a very professional relationship with everyone we’re working with at Compugen and nothing is casual – it’s formal, but it’s open.”

- Mark McMorrough, Director of IT, Hi-Pro Feeds Lp

“We chose Compugen because of their competence and extensive experience with virtualization in the Citrix environment.”

- Sukey Samra, Director of IT, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Extol the Progenitor

Harry Zarek, President and CEO: Zarek first developed an interest in computers as an engineering student. In 1981, the same year IBM launched the personal computer, he started a small business in the basement of his Toronto home, building and selling PCs and setting them up for customers. He called the company Compugen, short for computer generation. Under Zarek’s stewardship, the small basement-based company has grown to become one of Canada’s largest IT solutions providers, with a track record that consistently exceeds the industry average. He’s core principles have always been customer value and satisfaction. His focus is on sales and marketing activities and developing long-term business strategies to position the company as a trusted partner to its customers and vendors. Zarek holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering Science and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toronto.

“We believe in being a leader both in and out of the technology community.”