EXCLUSIVE: Datacom has growth in its vision

Datacom CEO, Jonathan Ladd

IT systems and processes company, Datacom Group, is honing its channel play by targeting key areas of growth, according to its CEO, Jonathan Ladd.

“Last year we made $NZ937 million and we’re continuing our growth. We see a lot of growth in New Zealand and here in Australia, moving up into Asia as well,” he told ARN.

The Cloud space is one of importance to the company. Ladd mentioned that it intends to focus on this space within its targeted sectors – education, local government, health, and payroll.

“We have our own Clouds (DCS and DCSG) but we also have partnerships with the likes of Microsoft Azure and AWS. We want our customers to have the right workload on the right Cloud. Some businesses are better suited for public Cloud, while some others aren’t – yet. And we have a number of customers that prefer a hybrid set of Clouds.”

The services environment is also one of importance for Datacom. Ladd said offering X-as-a-service

“There is a shift in the market – the space is increasingly becoming IT-as-a-service and that’s the direction we’re heading towards. Some of our partners are struggling to do that because they’re either too big with many organisational layers, or too small to take on the risk,” he said.

“One of the reasons for our success is our size, our breadth and depth of reach, and agility. That does make a difference. And our conversations are more outcome based and offering end-to-end solutions.”

But the company will also have plays in third party resale; gradually growing its services business, including managed services; and working on software development.

“That recipe has been successful in New Zealand, so we’re transitioning that into Australia,” Ladd mentioned.

And the channel is a key part of the company’s growth vision. Ladd said it is instrumental for it to deepen and its relations with companies like Microsoft and AWS, but also manage its partners as carefully as it does its customers.

“We’re all in an ecosystem here and we will collaborate with anyone at the right time for the right customer and for the right work. We also work in co-opetition with the channel, so operating within the channel is something we’ve taken seriously,” he said.

“When we think about the channel, we’re not only thinking about being in it as a reseller or service provider that needs technology and passes it on, we’re also thinking about generating our own stuff and each the rest of the world.”

According to Ladd, the IoT space is also an avenue Datacom is planning on benefiting from. The company has been working with sensor technologies over the past few years and intends to put that into use within the IoT and data analytics space.

“We want to see data sets that we can get from the sensors and want to see what outcomes we can derive from that data using analytics. It is part of the end-to-end piece and driving outcomes on a real-time basis.

“Technology is changing rapidly and there needs to be a mindset change in the market to provide immediate outcomes. Companies that don’t end up doing that and diversifying will end up being gobbled up,” he added.