The Haffar Computex Legacy -- 'Customers For Life, Employees For Life'

Thirty years ago, Sam Haffar and his brother Jason teamed to found Computex Technology Solutions with a simple corporate credo – "Customers For Life – Employees For Life."

That focus on building life-long relationships– combined with the leadership of the two brothers – has taken Computex Technology Solutions from a family owned Houston business with three employees building white box PCs to a global technology services power house, No. 124 on the 2016 CRN SP500, with 170 employees and a roster of Fortune 1000 companies as customers. Today, Computex is one of the premier holdings of Navigation Capital Partners, a highly respected Atlanta based private equity firm.

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"The aim from the get go was to extend the loyalty and unbreakable bond we felt toward each other as brothers to our customers and employees," says Sam. "It is what we fully believe in. That's the only way we know how to do business. It is the Haffar way."

The "Haffar way" has made Computex into one of the most admired solution providers in the country with multiple awards including the 2016 Cisco Americas Theater Award for Outstanding Customer Satisfaction and multiple CRN Tech Elite and Fast Growth awards. The company also was recently named the top managed IT services company by the Houston Business Journal.

The two brothers together brought an almost visionary zeal to reinventing Computex every five years to thrive in a market moving at lightning speed with massive paradigm shifts from the early days of local area networking to the internet explosion and now cloud services.

"It's a constant evolution," said Sam, who was named one of the top executives in the industry by CRN in 2015,. "You have to constantly look into the future and quickly adopt new sophisticated technologies to stay ahead of the pack. That is what allowed us to become one of the top enterprise architecture solution companies. We design, implement and manage complex solutions for some of the most demanding Fortune 1000 customers."

The seeds of the two brothers success as entrepreneurs from the dawn of the PC era to a major force in the cloud services era can be traced to their Dad, says Jason. "Dad was a business man who was known for his integrity and hard work," says Jason. "He did business on a handshake. His word was his bond."

Jason on Jan. 9 will officially hand over the president and CEO reins to Frank Vitagliano, a channel icon and visionary who has played a prominent role in the growth of the channel over the last three decades as a channel chief for the likes of Dell, Juniper and IBM.

"Dealing with Frank over the years has been a sheer pleasure because of the integrity and wisdom he brings to every relationship," says Jason. "I feel very good leaving the Computex "Customers For Life, Employees For Life" legacy to him. I am looking forward to following the growth and success of the company at the board level."

Jason credits brother Sam, who will remain executive chairman, for the vision to get into the technology services business. "It was Sam's brainstorm, but we embarked on the journey together slowly building our business, one customer and one vendor at a time," he said. "It's been great supporting and partnering with my brother to grow the business over the course of the last 30 years."

Sam, for his part, said he sees the benefits of the company's "Customers for Life – Employees For Life" everyday in the long list of customers and employees that have remained with the company from the early days. "We do what we say we are going to do and and stand behind everything we do," he says. "When you do the right thing people believe in you, trust you and want to work with you whether it is customers, employees or friends. I have always said 'we are in the people business' and people do business with people they like and trust."