Christian M. Grupp

Christian Matthew Grupp was born in Missoula, MT, and has since moved across the country several times before he moved to the Coeur d'Alene area in 2004, which he believes to be the most beautiful place he has lived in yet. In early 2005 as his father, Matthew P. Grupp, Esq., started The Grupp Law Firm, PLLC he assisted in both the IT world and in his Business practice, he continues to maintain the IT infrastructure and Web-site. In the late Summer of 2007 Christian opened Ardent Flame Designs, LLC.

Christian has always had a passion for technology, with his first foray into technology detecting security exploits for an on-line school at the age of 12, as well as beginning to code in HTML and CSS. Soon thereafter, he began his foray into the more dynamic technologies of PHP and MySQL, as well as beginning to study how to manage enterprise-class services.

In 2007 Christian finished his first web application, a CMS (Content Management System) for the web with the help of his long-time friend, Michael Arnaldo. He also had finished substantial development in a system displaying thousands of city ordinances on-line, and deployed his first complete IT solution with full remote access capabilities, virtualization to support seamless integration of a Mac and PC environment as well as countless other features to enhance the office's productivity and security.

In 2008, he finished an agile platform as a reliable, and secure, foundation for Web Applications; to include a proprietary, HIPAA-compliant, communication utility in use by several departments in the Washington State Government. In this time-period, he also took a strong interest in virtualization, and rabidly beta-tested every seed of Parallels, as well as many of the VMWare seeds. Christian became the most active forum member on Parallels' support forums, as well as finishing as a top beta tester for the Parallels Server application. Also in 2008 he began development of his Complete IT Solution (CIS), which included intensive studies, to include poring over thousands of pages of manuals and hundreds of hours testing the different software packages available, to assemble a list of solid and reliable business platforms that he could trust to deploy in his client's valuable business networks.

Always striving to provide the best, easy to use, and reliable solution for his clients, Christian finished a re-write of his CMS in the early Summer of 2009 based on the application core he developed. This new version built off the ease of use from the first version, but with a new Web 2.0 layout, heightened security, as well as a plethora of new integrated sub-systems to include: video, photo, podcast, videocast, video mini-site, article, blogs, and calendaring with advanced attendee tracking and reporting.

Christian's largest reward is in seeing the happy results of a successful deployment, and satisfaction in the business owner's eyes as he is able to delve into work with a new efficiency. His second largest reward is in the friend's he makes along the way, with communication being key to every project, he spends many hours communicating with client's, coworkers, and strategic partners; each new conversation with a person, and each new person he meets always brings a new and exciting experience. And through all this, three goals always stand forefront in Christian's mind:

1. To place technology in its proper place, and not to over-glorify its role. While he believes that the IT infrastructure is the lifeline of a modern business, he also believes that far too much time is often spent by consultants implementing technology for the technologies sake, and the system is built with the business to be melded around it. Christian brings his experiences from the Business Planning arm of his Father's Law Firm, as well as his experiences working with his clients, to help identify how a technology system can be shaped around a business' processes; and in the event of those systems being absent, he uses his experiences and training to help the business owner break his process into a set of tasks to compose the system, and then build the technology system around a streamlined workflow.
2. To stay on the edge of technology and bring the latest ideas to the table where they can be of value. While Christian wishes to place technology 'back in its place' for his clients, he has a strong passion in following the technical world, and is always brainstorming ideas and concepts, as well as testing the ideas of others.
3. To bring the 'Enterprise' to the SMB (small to medium business) market, and provide a system that will maximize the business' profit and efficiency, while being easy to use. Christian often spends several or more hours a day testing solutions and studying technologies that aid in this goal.

Christian loves the classics, and studied Classical Greek and Latin during High School, as well as reading as many of the classics as he could make time for. His favorite book is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. In his spare time away from the technology world, Christian avidly reads (especially the works of Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks), weight-lifts, plays classical piano, and snowboards when the weather permits. And regardless of his days activities, Christian is a firm believer that you "learn something new every day", and endeavors that he fall asleep each day with at least one thing to take away as a lesson for the rest of his life.