Brian Folkes, Founder and CEO of RDS (Recovery and Distribution Services) tells us about how the company came to be and what they do today. RDS, LLC was started in a spare bedroom of my house in 2004. It was spun off from a company I sold called RAMCO distribution services. I really enjoyed the Telecommunications Equipment sales side of the business and wanted to devote my full attention to growing that niche. Telcos and businesses have come to rely on RDS’ ability to provide high quality legacy networks spare parts and to suggest alternatives and options to keep those old networks delivering traffic. But it’s not all about the past, either. We distribute fiber optic transceivers, splitters, media converters and cables for the emerging markets. As a distributor of telecommunications and networking products, we are always educating ourselves on next -gen equipment while supporting legacy networks. Our fiber optic product lines are a prime example of that. As customers moved from copper based topologies, we expanded our reach to the newly developing market. We also have added testing and repair services to further extend the life of no-longer-supported switching and network equipment. I tell the RDS team that the most important tool we have to serve our customer’s requirements is our ears. By listening to their wants and needs, we can adjust to better serve our partners. A real world example of that is when one of our government’s value-added re-sellers lamented over the problems it experienced with getting network spares quickly to the field techs in emergency situations. We were able to maintain networks spares in regional facilities and were able to deliver same day service to the downed site. In five years, I see RDS anticipating our customers’ needs instead of reacting to them by creating automated data mining and producing predictive algorithms based on customer feedback.