Lee Darke started working in IT in 1995 in Kitchener-Waterloo. By 2015, after two decades of walking into other people's wreckage, he founded EmpowerIT to productize the lessons. The systems we operate today are built from what failed in those three decades.
A server failed mid-shift. No tested recovery. The line stopped. Cost: $5,000 per hour, multiplied by however long it takes to put the environment back together. We've walked in after the fact and rebuilt from backup images while the plant manager watched the clock.
Ransomware hit. Production data, client records, billing systems, shipping schedules. We've answered this call enough times to know the playbook. We've reverse-engineered live attacks, rebuilt environments, and stood up SOCs that prevent the next one.
A customer security audit arrives with a 90-day deadline. No evidence package in place. We've turned this from a contract-killer into a formality, often with days to spare.
The previous provider went dark right when things got hard. We've walked in cold, taken over operations, and stabilized environments that had been running on duct tape and the previous tech's memory.
Charging by the hour to fix what should not have broken is a misalignment of incentives. We run the foundation so the breach, the audit failure, the recovery emergency, do not happen in the first place. When they do, we have already walked in once. We know the path back.
Every ticket is tracked. Every response time is measured. Every quarter we sit down with you and review what we fixed, what we prevented, and what your technology is doing against your business goals. No ticket reports. No jargon. Outcomes only.
We do not chase paper credentials for their own sake. What we have is three decades of field experience and the operational scars to back it up. The system reflects that. It was built from incidents we walked into, not from a vendor's reference architecture.
EmpowerIT is operator-led. Lee personally leads scoping for every engagement, especially AI work. An outsourced development team provides execution capacity for AI build engagements. Managed services delivery runs on a small operations team trained by Lee on the operational standard.
The combination is deliberate. Operator judgment on the front end. Focused execution on the back end. No middle layer of account managers between you and the people who actually do the work.
You can reach Lee directly. (519) 279-0194 or hello@empowerit.ca.