Throughout his career, DLT Solutions’ President and CEO Rick Marcotte has been a proponent of ongoing personal and professional growth. As CEO of DLT, he recognized early on that leadership includes setting the right tone for his employees with a great understanding that people are an organization’s greatest asset. To that end, Marcotte has implemented many key initiatives aimed at shaping DLT’s environment into one that is conducive to learning, empowerment, social responsibility and leadership. Rick’s efforts paid off when DLT was honored with the Star Workplace 2010 SmarCEO GovStar Award. This honor recognized DLT as one of Greater Washington’s top government contractors for our dynamic, fun workplace environment.

It’s hard to imagine Oracle Corporation as anything other than the multi-billion dollar giant they are today. But when DLT was founded in 1991, Oracle, as $200 million company, were merely a shadow of their current selves. Our founder, Tom Marrelli’s, original idea for DLT Solutions was to create a “reseller” and GSA Schedule holder in support of Oracle Corporation, a small growing business in those days who was having commercial challenges working with the federal government. Today, we’re an Oracle Platinum Partner and one of their largest government partners and largest partners worldwide.

It’s a simple concept. The more you put into a factory, the more you get out. But it goes deeper than just quantity of ingredients. You need high-quality raw inputs in order to yield a high quality output – in this case quality leads and a healthier bottom line – as well as tracking in place to ensure everything is processing through the factory according to plan for maximum efficiency. That’s the basis for the agency-style marketing department at DLT Solutions. In the past several years DLT’s marketing department, sometimes referred to as “The DLT Marketing Factory,” has focused on results and measurable value. Realizing that the IT vendor partners are essential to DLT’s continued success, we have focused on driving leads for our vendor partners through a scientific, measurable, metrics-intensive system that ensures every dollar spent is, literally, a dollar earned.

DLT started in the early 1990’s as a small GSA reseller. For years, it followed that path…small, informal, limited oversight, “ready-fire-aim” operation. Fast-forward to 2002 when the founder Tom Marrelli passed away and his estate created a formal Board of Directors to direct the company. With existing management in turmoil and ownership issues in dispute, the Board turned to a crisis management firm to run the company. It was under that context that Rick Marcotte assumed the CEO position in mid-2004. Under Marrelli’s mantra of “eating an elephant one bite at a time,” Rick set out to prioritize the numerous issues and stabilize the Company….show leadership and commitment to the vendors; calm the employees; ensure customer satisfaction doesn’t degrade; “professionalize” the business.

It's 2:30 in the morning, and you’re still in the Data Center, carefully monitoring a backup of an enterprise application. The backup hits 90 percent completion when suddenly, the process stops! After an interval, the backup services then fail to restart! Finally, after reviewing the manual pages and checking online, you realize that you need help! This was the type of scenario we had in mind when launching The DLT Service Center in 2005. The Service Center is a multi-faceted insurance policy for Symantec, NetApp, and Quantum’s data management technology.

For some, it’s the Triwizard Cup. For others, it’s the Lombardi trophy. At DLT Solutions, the Babar Cup is the light at the end of our competition tunnel. The Babar Cup is the prize rewarded to the winning team of our Social Committee-run competitions. And at DLT, we have a lot of competitions. Whether its capture the flag in paintball, our annual kickball tournament, or the crown jewel of DLT competitions: Race for the Cup, friendly competition is just embedded into the culture of DLT Solutions. All that competition is made possible by a group of employees, collectively known as The DLT Social Committee. The identities of the employees that make up the committee are kept secret. But one thing is certain; they do a great job planning and running events.

“The holiday party at DLT is more than just dinner and a speech from the CEO. It’s a major event with entertainment and dancing – and sometimes even an after party – that people talk about all year long.” Luice Woo, Marketing Specialist, DLT Solutions Amongst employees, the annual DLT Holiday Party has become something to look forward to. Typically held in January, it’s been a great way to thank employees for all their hard work and to celebrate with our co-workers and their families. We help the employees embrace our “work hard, play hard” attitude by bringing in DC-area radio DJs, popular local bands, and more. Our Senior Management Team has even been known to take the stage for a musical performance or two!

On any given day, 12,000 of Washington D.C.’s children, families, and individuals are homeless or in need of food, with about 82% of these homeless families headed by single mothers. That’s a pretty staggering statistic but food and nutrition and clothing programs like Martha’s Table, a non-profit organization located in D.C., are doing their part to lessen that number. The DLT Foundation has aligned themselves with Martha’s Table’s to aid their cause.

Consider the following statistics taken from the Disaster Recovery Journal (Winter 2011): • A single incident of data loss can cost a company an average of $10,000.00 • 93 percent of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more, filed for bankruptcy within a year. • 40 percent of businesses that suffer a loss of data, fail within 5 years. And while most companies and organizations have taken Disaster Recovery seriously, they often fail to take a proper BIA or Business Impact Analysis and properly test their plan for appropriateness; often resulting in losses. A BIA or a Business Impact Analysis is exactly what it sounds like; proper research to determine what the business impact would be if an application, website, database, HR document, etc… were not available for given sets of time. Perhaps if a database were not available for an hour there would be little impact, but if it were down for a day, it would be critical. It is important to do an accurate study to determine where those pain points are for all aspects of your organization and review them regularly for changes in criticality. While this sounds like the absolute foundation for all DR plans (and it is) I have regularly encountered both government and private industry that fail to do this most basic step. They either consider everything to be critical (it isn’t) or they only backup a few servers that they think contain their most important documents/data. Neither of these plans accomplishes suitable DR.

Every year companies innovate, overcome obstacles and systematically defy the odds. The Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 program recognizes these efforts in its annual ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in the United States and Canada. In 1999, DLT Solutions had the honor of being named one of the fastest growing companies in the country by Deloitte & Touche. The "1999 Technology Fast 500" honor was awarded to DLT Solutions based on our tremendous growth in revenues from 1994 to 1999; an increase of 973%. That trend of tremendous growth is something we learned to become very familiar with at DLT.