About Us
Revell Research Systems was established in July 1985 by Alastair Revell
as a sole practice to provide software consultancy and training in Devon.
At the time, Alastair Revell was in the middle of a gap year between completing his A-levels
and starting university. The business operated on a part-time basis for the first three
years while Alastair Revell completed his degree in Mathematics at the University of Birmingham.
During this formative period, he envisioned a consultancy that was independent and impartial,
which offered unbiased advice to its clients and espoused the highest ethical standards.
This was in the early days of micro-computing, which was fast being adopted by the business
community. MS‑DOS was the dominant
operating system in this market when Microsoft released the first version of Windows at the
end of 1985. It was an exciting time to be starting a business.
Initially, the business simply focused on providing software development services and training
on software applications to businesses in Devon. The firm built a solid reputation for providing
good training and developing reliable solutions. Its impartiality appealed to business leaders
and its small client base started to grow by word of mouth.
However, it was not until after Alastair Revell graduated in 1988 that the practice started
to really grow substantially and began offering its services to companies throughout the West
of England.
By 1991, the Consultancy was offering IT support to a growing number of clients across the
South West of England, which was fuelled by the deliberate policy of building close business
partnerships with our clients. (We continue to grow because satisfied clients recommend us
to others. We consider this to be an important benchmark, which we continue to maintain and
improve on.)
During the 1990s, the practice focused its disciplines into IT Strategy and Governance, Systems
Management, Network Engineering and Software Engineering. Web publishing was added to the
software engineering discipline in 1996 as the Web took off, attracting projects for both
internal and external sites.
The first decade of the new Millennium saw considerable growth with the firm being
engaged by a number of large blue chip professional service firms, attracted by the Consultancy's
ethos and technical reputation. The Consultancy also saw its software development
work utilised by one of the largest PLCs in Northern Europe during the period.
The business has always had a reputation for social responsibility. It is engrained
in its corporate DNA. So it was no surprise that
it established the Revell Research Systems Prize at the University of Plymouth in 2006, which is now awarded to the
student graduating with the highest marks in Computing. It has been awarded every year since 2006.
In 2009, the practice underwent a major restructuring exercise to prepare it for the next
phase of its development, incorporating as a privately held company. The move allowed the
business to realise ambitious plans for its continued growth.
In the following year, the Consultancy organised its solutions into four delivery groups:
Consultancy and Advice, Service Management, Training and Learning, and Software Development.
These solution groups served the business well during the 2010s and still form the bedrock
of our work today.
The pandemic had a profound impact on how organisations work, driving the adoption of cloud
computing, flexible working and served as a catalyst for digital transformation.
The Company is now well into its fifth decade of Making Technology Count with a strong
and ambitious team leading its development. It can draw on considerable expertise to help
its clients realise their ambitions.
The Consultancy continues to evolve and adapt to the constant change that has accompanied
the last four decades. It has ambitious plans to become the orchestrator of a flexible ecosystem
to take advantage of changing working patterns in the way IT, digital and computing professionals
create value in a world of increasingly porous organisations.
