A technology partner, not a supplier.
VectorShift brings international CIO experience to businesses on Vancouver Island. It is run from Brentwood Bay by Fergus Murray, and it exists for companies too small to employ a CIO and large enough that technology decisions cost real money when they go wrong.
Why this exists
There is a gap between the businesses big enough to employ a technology executive and the ones served well by an IT support contract. Companies in that gap end up making consequential decisions — which system to buy, which contract to sign, whether an automation is worth building — as a side effect of somebody's other job.
Those decisions are usually made honestly and often made badly, not through lack of intelligence but through lack of time and comparison. Nobody in the room has seen twenty of these before.
That is the gap VectorShift works in.
Who runs VectorShift
The point of VectorShift is to put experience earned at international scale in front of businesses that would never otherwise get access to it. Fergus Murray has spent twenty years doing this work. Since 2018 he has been Head of Technology and Broadcast at World Triathlon, the IOC-recognised international federation for the sport, accountable for technology across more than 180 national federations in over 100 countries.
That role covers the same ground a fractional CIO covers, at a size where getting it wrong is expensive: a $2.5M annual technology and broadcast portfolio, enterprise systems from CRM and ERP through single sign-on and service management, executive accountability for cybersecurity and incident response, and a data privacy programme spanning GDPR, PIPEDA, FOIPPA and Swiss regulation. He built the ITIL-based governance framework the organisation runs on, and reports spend, risk and progress to executive and board level.
He has also done the specific things the service pages here describe. He cut broadcast production costs by more than half through vendor renegotiation and consolidation, while sustaining more than 28 productions a year including the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He built TriathlonLIVE, a streaming platform, from nothing to over $1M in annual recurring revenue and 250,000 registered members. He led World Triathlon to become the first international federation with fully programmatic access to its own data. And for the past several years he has been integrating AI into the working practices of a globally distributed team, which is the same problem a thirty-person business on the Peninsula has, with fewer zeros on the end.
Before that: software development in Dublin, a bank’s network department in Luxembourg, and a BSc in Computer Systems from the University of Limerick.
He holds PMP, ITIL 4 Foundation and ITIL 4 Direct, Plan and Improve certifications, sits on the Technology and Innovation Commission of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, and serves on the board of Peninsula Soccer Club here on the Saanich Peninsula. He received World Triathlon’s President’s Award in 2024.
How we work
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The assessment is free, and yours
Every engagement starts with a 15-minute call, and the roadmap that follows is yours whether or not you continue. It is written so any supplier could pick it up, because a plan only we can read is a plan that locks you in.
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We are not paid by vendors
No commissions, no reseller agreements. When the advice is about which system to buy, that matters more than anything else on this page.
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Fixed scope, fixed price
Projects are scoped to a price and a date. No enterprise retainer, no year-long programme, and the ongoing work cancels with 30 days' notice.
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You own what we build
It runs in your accounts, against your data, documented so somebody else could maintain it.
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We stop when it stops paying
Time saved gets measured rather than assumed. An automation costing more to maintain than the work it replaced is a failure however impressive it looks.
Recent work
St. Vital Minor Hockey Association is a volunteer-run association carrying the same problems as a small business: several domains, email spread across them, and software costs that nobody had time to challenge.
The work involved qualifying the association for Google Workspace for Nonprofits and Google Ad Grants, consolidating its domains, and setting up email so volunteers could actually administer it themselves. The outcome was enterprise-grade tooling at nonprofit cost, and an arrangement the association can run without us.
“Thank you for doing this. I could never have negotiated this.”
Executive Director, St. Vital Minor Hockey Association
Where we are
VectorShift is based in Brentwood Bay, on the Saanich Peninsula. That is not an accident of registration: being here is what makes it practical to be in the room when a decision gets made, rather than on a call scheduled for next week.
We work across Central Saanich, Sidney and North Saanich, into Greater Victoria, and further up Vancouver Island where the work justifies the drive.
Common questions
Who actually does the work?
Fergus Murray leads every engagement, so you always know who is accountable and you are not handed to a junior after the sale. His background is above. Where a piece of work needs a specialist — a migration engineer, a security reviewer — we bring one in from a network of trusted contractors and tell you we are doing it, rather than stretching one person across everything or quietly subcontracting behind your back.
Are you a reseller for anyone?
No. We are not paid commission by software vendors, which matters when the advice is about which system to buy. If we recommend something it is because it is the right answer for you, and if the right answer is the software you already have, that is what we will say.
What do you not do?
We are not a helpdesk. We do not do day-to-day IT support, and most clients keep the provider they already have for that. We are also not auditors or lawyers: we can tell you which practical security controls matter, but a formal certification or a legal opinion is a different exercise and we will point you elsewhere for it.
Why is the assessment free?
Because it is the only honest way to scope anything. The 15-minute call tells us both whether it is worth doing at all; after that, neither of us can tell whether there is worthwhile work here until someone has looked, and charging to find out puts a toll on the conversation. You keep the roadmap regardless.
What happens if you tell us to do nothing?
Then we have done our job. That outcome is common enough to plan for: sometimes two of the four things on the roadmap are worth doing and you can do them yourselves.
Where are you based?
Brentwood Bay, on the Saanich Peninsula. We work across Central Saanich, Sidney, North Saanich, Greater Victoria and Vancouver Island.
Start with a conversation.
It starts with a 15-minute call. If we are a fit, the assessment that follows is free and produces a written roadmap: what to fix, what to replace, what to leave alone, and what each costs. Yours to keep either way.