For the third year in a row, Saratoga’s own Maitjian Welke has won a prestigious designation in Silicon Valley’s IT field. Welke, president of Completely Managed Information Technology Solutions, is the Computer Reseller News’ “2017 Women of the Channel.”
The company, commonly known as CMIT Solutions, manages cybersecurity, cloud services, email archiving, disaster recovery, and other information technology for businesses.
“I like this particular recognition because it focuses on the women of the channel,” Welke said. “In a male-dominated industry, most of the recognition goes to a lot of different categories, so in a way, it is nice to be recognized among your peers.”
“The channel” is essentially the ecosystem of people selling technology hardware, solutions, and services.
Welke said that the IT channel doesn’t inherently discriminate against women, and if jobs are available and a person is capable, women can definitely compete. But, she added, there are different assumptions about men and women.
“When it comes to technical topics, people will assume that the man knows more than the woman does,” Welke said, “until you start talking about it.”
Welke and her husband Todd co-founded the CMIT Silicon Valley branch in 2009, and later adopted the Palo Alto branch.
Their leadership and vision at CMIT Solutions of Silicon Valley and Palo Alto have driven the branches to a 95 percent-plus customer retention rate. They manage the IT services of businesses with anywhere from one to 100 employees, so that those employees can focus on their business objectives without the worry of spam, lost data, and the like.
She’s the face of the company, participating in several local business organizations like the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. When Welke is not in meetings, she’s developing the business through marketing and sales, while her husband manages operations and the company’s employees.
Welke has more than 20 years of experience in technology from companies like Cisco and Sun Microsystems. She received her degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin.
“My inspiration started when I was in college,” Welke said. “I was trying to figure out what area to major in, and one thing I remember was my dad telling me to give this a try to see if I like it, so I signed up for a course and I really liked the challenge and the whole topic around that, so I stuck with it and have had a career of over 20 years building software.”
Nearly every business needs IT support since companies generally operate and communicate through computers—a necessary but temperamental tool that can cause headaches in the form of crashes, disappearing data, and spam. Then “the cloud” was thrust into the atmosphere, taking the computing world by storm.
“We face the same challenges a lot of small businesses do,” Welke said. “Actually going out and finding one customer at a time is the challenge for small businesses. It takes a long time and a lot of relationship building. We handle such a big item in a business that the business owner really needs to trust us. We have a really good record of being very responsive and reliable to our clients.”
CMIT Solutions has been ranked No. 1 in its category in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500 list for five consecutive years. In 2014, Todd Welke was recognized by McAfee, an Intel security sector, for CMIT Solutions’ work in cybersecurity and ransomware. The couple has lived in Saratoga for about 17 years with their two children, Carter and Allyson.
To learn more about CMIT Solutions, visit www.cmitsolutions.com