Prince William Chamber tech firm of the year JTC invests $250K in new cloud infrastructure

Jewell Technical Consulting is the tech company of the year in Prince William, Manassas, and Manassas Park.

It took home the top honor from the Prince William Chamber of Commerce at the organization’s 2020 Business Awards, an annual event held at the Hylton Performing Arts Center on February 25.

JTC is an information technology cloud-based service company in Manassas. They are well known for designing and providing IT network server support to medium-sized businesses. JTC’s Vice President Kristen West says that they help customers who have little to no internal IT support.

“[The Prince William Chamber of Commerce uses] JTC as their IT department which allows them to have access to engineers 24/7 if they should have an emergency. This lets businesses partner with JTC on server projects and implementations of new technologies,” said West.  

Jewell Technical Consulting was established in 1996 and incorporated in 2002. They service the VA, MD, D.C., and six other states while growing. The company just invested more than a quarter-million dollars in new cloud-data storage equipment. The move marks JTC’s transition to its fifth generation of cloud infrastructure and will allow the company to its customers with a stronger local data hosting solution that utilizes hyper-converged technology. 

“We’ve invested in hardware to set up a lab environment and fully test the full implementation process and performance.” The lab allows JTC technicians to train with the new technology, which puts them on the same playing field as employees at Google or Amazon, she adds. 

Company founder John Jewell credits West, who’s just celebrated her 15th year at the company, and his staff for providing an award-worthy level of customer service to his clients. 

“We’re a multimillion-dollar company… and, Kristen is behind the scenes…there’s a lot that she does not get credit for,” said Jewell, praising his lieutenant. 

“One of our challenges,” said West, “was to make sure techs and engineers are familiar with new technologies that are just emerging, as it’s often hard to have hands-on experience with brand- new technologies. Often, there are not classes and training readily available for these new technologies.”

Jewell adds that “there are companies that use our cloud that are 75-year-old, and strong.” If the cloud goes down, those companies can’t work. We have to have the expertise to manage this infrastructure.”

When JTC first started, they offered remote hosting cloud services through a third-party provider. However, once they achieved their independence, the company saw its clients had a much better experience when they operated under their own cloud infrastructure. 

“It was rewarding to be recognized by the Prince William Chamber and people who belong to that Chamber. It’s the largest chamber in Virginia, and we’re just happy and honored to receive it,” said Jewell.