MillenniumIT ESP celebrates 25 years of ‘Reimagining Today and Reinventing Tomorrow’

• Company prides itself on implementing many firsts as the country’s IT industry trendsetter

MillenniumIT ESP, Ambeon Capital and Ambeon Holdings Chairman Sanjeev Gardiner

Millennium IT ESP Director and Ambeon Capital and Ambeon Holdings Group Managing Director/CEO Murali Prakash

MillenniumIT ESP Director/Chief Executive Officer Shevan Goonetilleke

Sri Lanka’s leading systems integrator and technology provider Millennium I.T. E.S.P. Ltd., trading as MillenniumIT ESP, yesterday announced that it is celebrating 25 years of evolving its service offerings, expanding global reach and transforming customer businesses to be relevant for tomorrow… today. 

The 100% Sri Lankan origin-based Information Technology entity continues to offer agile, adaptive and rapidly evolving technology that solve current and future business challenges, helping to confidently navigate the ever-changing global business landscape. 

“It is with great pride that we celebrate this all-important milestone of an entity that has created many notable firsts and sustainable growth within the IT industry of Sri Lanka,” stated MillenniumIT ESP Director/Chief Executive Officer Shevan Goonetilleke. 

“MillenniumIT ESP’s foundation to success has always been its people, values and culture – one which has been built on relationships and mutual trust. Employees are united by loyalty to the Company and a passion for success whilst leadership is driven by teamwork, innovation, enforcement of positive relationships and a result-oriented mindset,” Goonetilleke added.

“After 25 years of creating a value driven culture internally and future ready business models and strategies externally, MillenniumIT ESP has earned credibility as a trusted Employer and Service Provider/Partner. Having matured our engagement model, we are now ready to continue this journey into the next phase of growth. In the immediate future, the Company will focus on enabling new age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) to meet near future needs and drive sustainable and profitable business outcomes across Sri Lanka and the world over,” Goonetilleke said.

MillenniumIT ESP (formerly known as ‘Millennium IT/Millennium Information Technologies Ltd.’) was founded in 1996 by its Founder/Director Tony Weerasinghe as a Systems Integrator and Sun Microsystem’s authorised reseller. The following year itself the company rose to prominence as it deployed the hardware infrastructure solution for the Colombo Stock Exchange’s (CSE) trading platform.  Subsequently, the Company built the first suite of telecom software for Dialog Axiata or ‘Dialog GSM’ as it was known then, Sri Lanka’s leading GSM telecom provider. 

Over the years, the organisation has grown in numbers with over 400 employees who work across all sectors facilitating and implementing a wide breath of technologies to a truly global customer base. MillenniumIT ESP has managed to build several global partnerships with leading firms including Oracle, CISCO, Dell, Microsoft, IBM, and Edgeverve (“Infosys”) and the company has also received numerous excellence, innovation and performance-based awards across various markets for its services around the globe, and continues to excel in their respective fields year on year.

As the leader in enterprise technology for the telecommunication industry, MillenniumIT ESP together with its global partners, has produced robust technology architecture and infrastructure, as well as reliable and scalable enterprise solutions for the sector. The company provides Sri Lanka Telecom, Dialog Axiata, Mobitel Sri Lanka and all other telecommunication companies in the country with enterprise grade infrastructure solutions comprising of critical servers, storages, consolidated databases and backup solutions and implemented virtualised/hyper-converged infrastructure platforms, using industry leading technology stacks. 

In 2007, MillenniumIT ESP assisted Dialog Axiata to transform its Legacy Network to make it the country’s first IP-MPLS network, and in 2013 in order to support the increasing bandwidth, converted this IP-MPLS network to a 100G DWDM based Cisco network which was South Asia’s first 100G network for Cisco technologies.  In 2008, when Sri Lanka Telecom introduced a game changer and ventured into the television space in the country with the launch of PeoTV, MillenniumIT ESP provided the IPTV platform and digital Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to PeoTV in this audience-empowering business. MillenniumIT ESP also enabled Sri Lanka Telecom to reconstruct the architecture of the television industry and secure the dominant design in the local Pay-TV industry.

The fast-changing dynamics of the branded apparel industry demanded the fail-proof orchestration of a complex supply chain. Upholding system integrity is crucial for delivering high-standard performance in designing, manufacturing and logistics at high speed. MillenniumIT ESP implemented a robust security solution for its compute and endpoint which is its security infrastructure to enhance the capacity to confront the entire threat lifecycle, protect critical technology infrastructure and ensure information security and safety. 

Within the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industries, while implementing and providing ongoing support for core banking, treasury and other enterprise software applications and enterprise grade infrastructure solutions including enterprise servers, storages, database consolidations, backup solutions, virtualisation solutions and enterprise security solutions to almost all leading commercial banks in Sri Lanka, MillenniumIT ESP’s team of experts provide specialised banking and Fin-Tech skills and have an in-depth understanding of the business and associated technologies.

These significant milestones which elevated the Sri Lankan IT industry to new heights, not only placed Sri Lanka on the world map, inspired budding technology entrepreneurs and set the industry on a growth trajectory, but also cemented MillenniumIT ESP as a leading IT solutions provider in the country.  

MillenniumIT ESP was also at the forefront of building cognitive solutions to free talent from low value-adding tasks.  “AI BoT” applications designed by MillenniumIT ESP have significantly lessened the human interface in people operations at leading apparel companies, and customer service at prominent banks and telecommunication companies. The application of cognitive computing has accrued many benefits for MillenniumIT ESP’s customers including increased access to employee services, lowered costs, enhanced speed, and accuracy of responses; enabling them to focus on more important, critical decision-making tasks and projects. 

In December 2009, the Company became a fully owned subsidiary of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) until its acquisition by Ambeon Holdings PLC. In December 2017, Ambeon Holdings PLC – a medium sized conglomerate with market dominance in the areas of financial services, manufacturing of porcelain and textile products, real estate, technology, and strategic investments – took over MillenniumIT ESP from LSEG with 100% management and shareholding control. As part of this acquisition agreement, Ambeon Group also entered into a broader ownership plan with the employees of MillenniumIT ESP, granting them an equity stake and enabling them to play a significant role in shaping the Company’s future as owner managers.  

“The strategic decision to acquire one of Sri Lanka’s leading systems integrator and technology providers, MillenniumIT ESP, helped steer the Group positively with greater penetration through technology and innovation business.  In today’s dynamic business environment, technology continues to play a pivotal role across the globe and the acquisition of MillenniumIT ESP continues to accelerate Ambeon’s international growth strategy. The Group is now well positioned to pursue global opportunities posed by enterprise businesses through the creation of a world class brand portfolio. These enhanced capabilities will undoubtedly benefit our customers and create sustainable, long-term value for all our shareholders,” commented MillenniumIT ESP and Ambeon Capital PLC and Ambeon Holdings PLC Chairman Sanjeev Gardiner.

During the latter part of 2019, MillenniumIT ESP announced the launch of the new purpose of the company which was to ‘Reimagine Today and Reinvent Tomorrow’. In addition, the company unveiled its new logo, depicting agility and the transformational mindset, integrating the same with the new purpose statement. The new logo also evoked the purpose driven company values including being pre-emptive, versatile, energetic and relentless, all geared towards understanding the future, whether it is technologies, industries or customers.

MillenniumIT ESP also invested in an ultra-modern, state-of-the-art Security Operating Centre (SOC) and Network Operating Centre (NOC) at its third office location. These facilities will continue protecting networks, cloud infrastructure, databases, servers, data centers and other technology infrastructure, ensuring the continuity of clients’ businesses with uninterrupted network service. Further, the dedicated managed service practice at MillenniumIT ESP has been supporting enterprises in managing their IT operations by providing managed services in various forms, through its NOC operations. 

“In today’s dynamic world, connectivity is evolving, and organisations are embracing change, adapting to the ‘new normal’ and growing exponentially. Whether it is banking and finance, insurance, telecommunication, manufacturing or services, industries are constantly reinventing themselves to understand behavioral dynamics and stay relevant to the needs of tomorrow’s consumer,” stated Millennium IT ESP Director and Ambeon Capital PLC and Ambeon Holdings PLC Group Managing Director Murali Prakash. 

“With 25 years of solid experience and expertise in technology, innovation, adaptation and transformation, MillenniumIT ESP is not only well equipped to leverage technologies to enable customers to shape their future by creating adaptive strategies and building agile organisations, but also able to steer these organisations efficiently and effectively into new ways of doing business,” Prakash added.

In addition to delivering top quality services across established lines of business – spanning core infrastructure, cloud, cyber security, enterprise applications and managed services – 2019 also saw the company successfully build on its capabilities in emerging technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI), data science and Robotics Process Automation (RPA) which help customers optimise their overall business processes and enable intelligent, data driven decision making. 

During the same year, the Company invested in the acquisition of Infoseek Ltd., an innovative Cloud based Human Resource Information System (HRIS) company providing services under the brand ‘MintHRM’. This investment has become an ideal strategic fit for MillenniumIT ESP to further its interest in building a fully-fledged cloud based ‘Internal CRM’ platform. 

The year 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, brought in an array of opportunities for this global technology player, where they were able to leverage on their core strengths. As a responsible corporate citizen, MillenniumIT ESP embraced the ‘new normal’ culture within the company by encouraging employees to work from home and take all necessary precautions at every instance. The company further implemented all health and safety guidelines stipulated by the Ministry of Health. 

In addition, the company was committed to partner with the governing bodies of Sri Lanka’s healthcare sector and support them in their approach towards tackling the pandemic. MillenniumIT ESP partnered with Cisco Sri Lanka in offering an AI enabled video and audio conferencing system to the healthcare sector in Sri Lanka. This solution facilitated instant decision making which was extremely crucial for containing the spread of the pandemic in the country. The company further launched HealthVision – a web enabled, mobile responsive remote patient monitoring platform for medical personnel and care givers, which proved to be the need of the time. 

Looking into the future, from a business perspective, MillenniumIT ESP intends embracing every opportunity that the circumstances permit.  As a global technology player, the company intends growing its footprint in public sector, health sector, leisure and real estate. Further, expanding on its product and solutions portfolio and progressing beyond strong system integration capabilities, the company’s software development practice which focuses on product development will continue to evolve rapidly by offering cloud applications (SaaS) to the respective enterprises. Regional and global expansions are also another area of focus for the future. The company hopes to augment its core technology offerings using emerging technologies, while continuing to funnel investment into IP development and acquisitions. 

The Board of Directors of MillenniumIT ESP include Sanjeev Gardiner (Chairman), Murali Prakash, Priyantha Fernando, Yudhishtran Kanagasabai, Shevan Goonetilleke and Dr. Sajeeva Narangoda (Alternate Director to Murali Prakash).