Celebrating 25 years of OpalTec

5th October 2023, Bristol, UK

Today, we are celebrating a very special landmark. From humble beginnings in Managing Director Mark Hamilton-Davies' house, via the Old Church on Collins Street to our current headquarters at Burcott Road in Avonmouth, its been quite a journey for OpalTec.

On 5th October 1998, fresh from celebrating the end of his 20s, Mark Hamilton-Davies started trading as Opal Technology Brokerage. The number one song in the UK Charts was Rollercoaster by B*witched. A song title that very aptly described the first few years of that journey.

Back in 1998, technology was very different. Portable Data Terminals, as they were known back then, predominantly ran on DOS based Operating Systems, could only scan 1D barcodes, and if you mentioned wireless most people would probably think you were talking about Radio 4 and The Archers or The Shipping Forecast.

Symbol Technologies and Telxon dominated the market, with Symbol introducing the PDT6100 series to replace the PDT3100 series which had dominated the retail and transport & logistics sectors for several years.

In December 2000, the company changed its name to OpalTec International Limited to more accurately reflect its ambitions and business model. Relationships had already been formed with major organisations in manufacturing, retail and transport & logistics throughout Europe and farther afield.

This was followed in May 2002 by a move to new, much bigger and fully refurbished premises at The Old Church in Avonmouth, and the creation of OpalTec's first repair centre (initially known as Sym-Tel) in 2003.

We quickly outgrew the facility at The Old Church, and in May 2005 moved to our current location on Burcott Road in Avonmouth.

The Burcott Road site has an 8,000sqft warehouse as well as space for more than 10 helpdesk and workshop staff. This additional space has allowed OpalTec to store large volumes of stock and to employ a very talented technical team to assist in pre-sales and post-sales technical support.

This additional technical knowledge allowed OpalTec to guide its customers through the Windows based operating systems in devices like the market leading MC9000 series terminals.

Following Microsoft's decision to move out of the mobile Operating System space, Android has become the primary Operating System used by most device manufacturers in the Enterprise Mobility sector, with a move away from the traditional handheld terminal form factor to more touchscreen based devices.

OpalTec's knowledge base has enabled its customers to make the transition to Android based devices, and with the larger volumes of devices used throughout most industries, we have developed key skills in areas such as Mobile Device Management, Application Management, Security and Streamlining of Workflows.

The world of barcoding and mobile computing has certainly moved on a long way in the last 25 years, and we're very excited about what the next 25 years has in store for OpalTec and the Enterprise Mobility space...