Dcentrica Solutions is addressing a problem many digital agencies quietly absorb: hours of unplanned, manual, and unbilled work created by limited team-wide visibility into software maintenance, security vulnerabilities, and end-of-life risk after a project goes live.
Founded in Wellington by veteran developer Russ Michell, Dcentrica Solutions has built Metaport, a product designed to automatically surface critical maintenance and end-of-life data across an agency’s entire application portfolio and make it usable by the people who actually plan work, manage budgets and talk to clients.
Metaport pulls together data that is typically scattered across technical tools, spreadsheets or developers’ heads. This information relates to security vulnerabilities, software dependencies, frameworks and the dates when these stop being supported. Instead of living in silos, that data becomes visible to project managers, delivery leads and account managers in a format they can act on.
The difference, Michell says, is not that the information exists — it often does — but who can see it. “What we’re doing is packaging up what is otherwise siloed technical security information that only developers, DevOps engineers, and operations teams have a hold of and presenting it in a way that project managers and account managers can make use of.”
Having worked across six or seven agencies over more than two decades, Michell saw the same pattern repeat. Agencies would win work, deliver solid solutions, then drift into reactive mode once the site or application was live. Security alerts, software upgrades and end-of-life notices would surface late, sometimes via panicked client phone calls.
“I got a call saying, ‘We just found out our operating system’s at end-of-life. How did that happen? And what’s your plan for remediating it?’” Michell recalls. “That completely blindsided me. It shouldn’t have.”
In most agencies, developers are the gatekeepers of this information, but they are rarely the ones responsible for planning future work or setting expectations with clients. “PMs and account managers are only as good as the data they have,” Michell says. “If they don’t know it exists, they can’t ask for it.”
The result, he argues, is unnecessary risk and lost opportunity. Agencies leave money on the table by failing to plan upgrade projects in advance, clients are surprised by urgent remediation work, and developers are repeatedly interrupted to answer questions that could have been avoided.
Metaport is built to flip that dynamic. A project manager can search across an agency’s portfolio to find applications with components nearing end of life, or identify which clients are affected by a newly disclosed vulnerability. “Find me all the applications that have a component which is reaching end of life in six months. Click. There’s your list,” Michell says.
For Michell, the product is a natural extension of the role he has often played in his career, translating between technical and non-technical worlds. “I’ve always been the intermediary,” he says. “I can speak tech to developers and I can interpret what developers say to non-techies.”
That ability has its roots well before his professional life. Michell grew up with an entrepreneurial father who was sketching software ideas and pitching software and business ideas years before the web became mainstream. “He was always starting something,” Michell says. “That must have rubbed off on me.”
Despite that influence, Metaport is the first venture he has taken all the way. Earlier attempts taught him hard lessons about validation and timing. This time, the product existed before the company, born out of a real operational need rather than an abstract idea.
After being made redundant in late 2024, Michell decided to commit fully. “I just thought, let’s make this full time,” he says.
He is joined by co-director Tasia, his wife and CFO, and cofounder, long-time collaborator, and friend Luke Percy, a senior project manager who Michell describes as a fractional COO. Luke remains employed elsewhere but plays a critical role in shaping the product and keeping Michell grounded. “When he gets excited, that’s a valid level of excitement,” Michell says. “He is the customer.”
Dcentrica Solutions is currently focused on agencies, where Michell believes the pain is most acute and the blind spots are deepest. While Metaport could apply more broadly, the company is deliberately niching down first.
For Michell, success isn’t about scale for its own sake. Instead, he talks about freedom, focus, and building something that genuinely matters to him.
As agencies face growing pressure to demonstrate how they will manage risk after delivery, Michell believes visibility will become non-negotiable. Metaport’s bet is simple: when the right people can see the right information early, better decisions follow.
Interview and story by Leighton Littlewood.
