Our history

Rock Solid Knowledge celebrates its 10th year of trading.    

As the direction of the company had changed towards products and software development, we felt it was time to introduce a fresher feel to the Rock Solid Knowledge logo.

Our focus on products and content driven apps and websites didn't really fit the "rocky" look of the original logo. Working with designers we came up with a new, clean lines, logo and branding.

Until this point, all twenty employees at Rock Solid Knowledge were software developers. We realised that we needed someone to specialise in the sales and marketing efforts for our products and services.

Kieran immediately set about automating the sales pipelines and getting our digital marketing strategy moving

We had contacts at the Gloucester History Festival (GHF)and so realised that they desperately needed a new website. With our Umbraco background this was a perfect fit to allow them to manage the content as the festival progressed.

Unbeknown to the festival staff we also built them a companion mobile app using Xamarin Forms. This was the first time we realised how powerful it was having a central CMS driven data store with multiple delivery channels (in this case web and mobile running off the same managed content)

We continued to support the GHF for many years and built useful videos for their attendees easy use of the App. 

So it turned out that an office for eleven was just not big enough. With mobile development and identity work we were going to have to have room for at least sixteen. And so we took out our first lease on a building, moving into Vantage Office Park, Bristol

Suddenly we were in an office four times larger than previously with our logo on the front door. It was a great feeling.

Which we still reside at! Its a great space for our Hybrid working

HouseMark, who provide services to the housing sector, asked us to help them move their existing Domino based authentication infrastructure to IdentityServer and modern security protocols.

Not only did we have to replace their Domino system but also support all of its integration points: some of them custom and some of them standard (such as SharePoint). This was the start of another long-term relationship.

Since then we have gone on to build over 100 customer single sign-on solutions for a range of customers across the world. 

This was a momentous month; we took the big decision to expand the company. This involved us hiring employees for the first time and getting physical offices. 

If we wanted to do more than four of us plus trusted people we knew, we knew we had to do something radical. The next three months were filled with office hunting and putting out job adverts

At the start of September, we moved into our new offices in Aztec West, Bristol. We had taken on two recent graduates, Toyan and Sam and so six of us took up residence in an office that would take eleven - "plenty of room for expansion" we thought

Having Toyan and Sam in the office was fantastic. As we were from a training background we did intensive training and had them work on their first project - a Twitter reflector to retweet our posts through the company account

ICSA Software asked us to build them a modern web application for their next generation of products. We used our team-in-a-box model to deliver a skilled, cohesive team for the development

This meant most of the company was now in full time development, building a Single Page web Application (SPA) at a time when framework support was minimal.  Much of the JavaScript infrastructure we take for granted these days had to be built from scratch for this project.

After several months of development, always working closely with ICSA Software, the SPA we had been writing, Connect, went live in Febuary 2013. Customers loved the new site and the increased usability of using a SPA.

This was the founding of a long term relationship that is still going strong today

Having attended our one day MVC workshop at DevWeek, the CTO of ICSA Software asked us to spend a day exploring architecture options for updating their products

ICSA Software wanted to bring on new functionality using modern approaches to web development. This was the start of a close working relationship that carries on to today

A video conferencing company asked us to help them go beyond their specialisation for a customer. Central Bedfordshire Council wanted an innovative way to allow people to access their services from local libraries. 

We met with them in early September and they told us they had to show their customer a demo in two week's time. Andy and Richard were speaking at the Basta! conference near Frankfurt the following week but threw themselves on the project between sessions to create a prototype of the system. The customer was impressed and so we started to plan the production system.

By December, using Windows 7 Embedded, WPF and WCF we started to build a kiosk that integrated video conferencing with a number of other devices that allowed people to complete applications for council services without having to go to council offices. We, also, now had interest from Cheshire West and Harrow councils.

As a group of experienced freelance trainers and consultants we realised that if we could combine our varied skills into a team then we could deliver far more than each of us as individuals. Rock Solid Knowledge was born.

All of the team had been doing consulting work, as individuals, but we knew we could have a bigger impact for our customers by working together. Plans to form the company began...