One Company, One Team: The DNS Story

A Rich Legacy of IT Expertise and a Company Built on Clients' Needs

The DNS Group, as it is known today, was started by Ray Grooms in February 2000 after 3 years of being an independent IT consultant.  Ray had received a tip about a manager at Sara Lee in Winston-Salem, NC looking to hire a .Net developer.  At the time, .Net was a new technology that practically no one had experience with.  Knowing the expertise of the people he was thinking about for his new group, Ray obtained the phone number of the manager and made his first cold call for DNS.  The manager was somewhat reluctant but stated “I’ve got 20 resumes on my desk, if you want to throw a couple of more on the pile send them over.  I’m hiring one.” 

Ray put in a call to Jason Hall, who had recently obtained both his MCSE and his MCSD.  Jason was a team lead on the JCPenney.com website re-write in Texas at the time.  Jason sent over his resume and Ray forwarded it on to the manager.  A week later they requested an interview and a couple of weeks after that, they gave DNS the position.   Jason moved back from Texas and joined the quickly- forming DNS team on Sara Lee.

Of course, cold calls don’t usually go that well and if the first one had not, it’s hard to say how many more would have followed.  Luckily though, the first one did go well and The DNS Group can now name clients (past and present) including Sara Lee, First Union, Wachovia, Center for Creative Leadership, RJ Reynolds, Compass Group North America, Volvo, Sprint, Verizon, Cingular, Bank of America, Republican Mortgage Insurance Corp, American & Efird and NASA.

The DNS Group has transitioned from an expert IT staff augmentation company to focusing on the specific, mission-critical software package of Callidus for Incentive Compensation Management. 

Today, The DNS Group is celebrating 20 years as one of the leading experts on the deployment, integration, special programming customization and training for Callidus.