‘Never let a crisis go to waste’: how Oreta is steering through COVID-19

Rajitha Rajasingham and Sachin Verma (Oreta)

Oreta boss Sachin Verma is well-aware there is no point staking hopes of a “swoop” economic recovery but that doesn’t mean customers will completely abandon their IT 2020 strategies.

As managing director of the Melbourne-based provider, Verma is standing by the phrase “never let a crisis go to waste” as the company hones in on its most customer-critical services.

Over the next  nine months, Oreta aims to cement its position in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market, professional and managed services, especially across the SD-WAN, which Verma sees as growing “exponentially”. 

“From global trends and visibility from our vendor partners we anticipate that the IT industry will shrink before it experiences a ‘swoop’ recovery,” Verma told ARN. 

“Spending on data centre systems will decelerate," he said. "However, the market for IaaS will grow, as will the demand for SD-WAN. As customers continue to re-evaluate their IT strategies and cost savings, managed services will become more of a prerequisite.”

Founded in 2014 by Verma and Rajitha Rajasingham, Oreta has long focused on providing IT services to large enterprises and small-to-medium sized businesses across networking, cloud and security.

Partnered with Cisco, Google Cloud and Telstra, the provider recently launched its Telstra Business Technology Centre (BTC) in Melbourne, expanding its offerings to telephony and mobile. 

Having launched a new office in Sydney has opened, Oreta now has  a team of over 100 and a client base of over 9,000.  

However, despite recent success, the pandemic has naturally brought some hurdles for Oreta to overcome, in particular around planning long-term revenue.

“In these unprecedented times, we are experiencing economic upheaval and significant business interruptions,” Verma said. “As a result, customers, in particular the mid-market, are seeking projects that are shorter and sharper in their lifecycle, ensuring they can optimise their costs.”

Alongside growing its SD-WAN footprint, Oreta is hoping to grow its managed services capabilities and recurring revenue.  

Although customer acquisition will still be important, Oreta’s main priority in terms of execution is expanding the services it offers to its existing client base.  

“We understand that 2020 is probably the worst recession that we all will see hopefully once in our lifetime," Verma said. "As they say, never let a crisis go waste. This is the attitude we will approach our business at Oreta over the next 12 months.”

From a customer perspective, partners now need to be more agile and have the ability to react to changing disruptive market conditions, he said.

On top of this, the ability to engage the line of business to do “short and sharp projects” will be critical, while automation and convergence are key to “delighting” customers. 

“In the wake of COVID-19, the growing challenges to business resilience such as unpredictable revenue, operational changes, and cash flow pressures will force organisations to innovate and disrupt themselves to not only stay relevant but to survive,” he added. 

“In addition, a massive shift to mass remote working has led to an increase in security vulnerabilities. Organisations will need to focus all their resources on differentiating their business. They will increasingly leverage managed services to oversee their IT security and operations so that they can focus on growing again.”

ARN Advance is a centralised editorial resource designed to help partners access forward-looking content as the Australian market attempts to reposition for growth.