Technology Reseller v35

01732 759725 14 NEWS : RESELLERS Alison King Simon Howitt Manchester-headquartered Cloud Technology Solutions (CTS), Europe’s largest dedicated Google Cloud partner, is celebrating a record year of sales for its cloud services, with revenue for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) up 213% in 2020, and a spate of new business wins including Village Hotels, South East Water and Haymarket. Much of this growth has been driven by successive lockdowns when organisations urgently reviewed their collaboration and communications tools, increasing adoption of Google Workspace – formerly known as Gsuite. They also pushed to modernise their IT infrastructure and, in many cases, chose to become more data driven, using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) technologies such as BigQuery. CTS Managing Director Tom Ray said: “When we first went into lockdown, like most other businesses in our industry, we were quite cautious about the year ahead. As it became apparent lockdown was going to last longer than three weeks, our customers quickly realised how important cloud technology and data analytics would be to help them through the pandemic. “We saw a real spike in demand from June onwards from customers wanting to undertake data projects. Organisations were increasingly looking to get under the skin of their business to understand what their key drivers were, to ultimately help them make more informed and strategic decisions.” Enquiries were strongest from public sector and retail organisations, with respective increases of 80% and 100%. Ray added: “As we move into 2021, our focuses are to double down on our work transformation strategy with Google Workspaces, including partnership development with CTS sister company CloudM and Okta; to enable our customers to become more data driven with GCP and Looker; and to spark customer initiatives to modernise their IT infrastructure so that they can really look at IT as a value provider rather than a cost. We believe that CTS and Google Cloud are uniquely positioned to do this next year.” cloudsolutions.co.uk Record year for Google Cloud Premier Partner CTS inTec expands technology division Enterprise IT support company RivaNET has become the latest company to join the inTec Business Group, bringing complementary technology skills to inTec’s core IT & telecoms alliances. The business will continue to trade as RivaNET and will be led by founder and current MD Nick Donoghue. Simon Howitt, Chairman of inTec, said: “This is a great move for us. RivaNET will be joining a high performing technology division alongside Titan Networks and iTek Computer Solutions who have seen exceptional growth of over 50% in the last 12 months.” Cloud transformation CTS customer South East Water is migrating its CRM system, My Account, to Google Cloud as part of the organisation’s five-year strategic plan. Doing so will allow it to make use of Firebase – a Google platform that enables businesses to build their own apps – improving communication and interaction with its 2.2 million customers. CTS will deliver a full change management service to ensure a smooth transition to Google Cloud and once that has been done will build functionalities into South East Water’s CRM systems to enhance the customer experience and, where possible, automate operational processes. Mary Sabalis, Head of Business Systems at South East Water, said: “Our business plan over the next five years is centred around innovation and optimising customer interaction. Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be key to us achieving this. Creating the infrastructure where our customers can report a leak using their phones and having Google Cloud’s ML technology automate the workflow will free up our customer service teams so they can focus on more detailed queries.” Alison King, Account Manager for Government at CTS, added: “South East Water has more than two million customers and, as a result, it collects huge amounts of data in the form of meter readings, bills etc. Moving to the cloud allows the organisation to store that data centrally, securely and in easily queryable formats, which will completely transform how it makes its strategic decisions.” Two more acquisitions for Air IT Air IT Limited has grown its headcount to 175, increased its customer base to 1,000 companies and expanded its geographical footprint with the acquisitions of Oxford-based MSP Riverbank IT Management Limited and Coventry-based Nexus GS Limited. The addition of these two businesses follows the acquisitions of London- based Netstar and Birmingham-based Microtrading in October. Air IT, backed by August Equity Partners LLP, specialises in delivering IT support, cloud, telephony, cyber security and business intelligence solutions to SMEs throughout the UK. CEO John Whitty said: “We are very excited to be able to welcome the Riverbank and Nexus GS teams to the Air IT family. Both businesses bring significant value to the table and will be integral in helping us realise our plans to grow and cement our position as the outsourced IT services partner of choice to the SME community in the UK.” Comtec to kickstart 30 careers in IT IT solutions provider Comtec Enterprises is taking on 30 new staff members, in partnership with the government Kickstart Scheme, following a big increase in demand for its data centre, infrastructure and communications offerings. Half of the new positions will be in Comtec’s 24/7 service centre, with the other 15 in sales and presales. Each is for a minimum of six months. Nick Claxson, CEO of Comtec Enterprises, said: “I set up Comtec as a teenager more than 20 years ago and believe IT is a great path to start out on, develop skills and be successful. That’s why we want to fuel future growth by training up our own people, all under the age of 24, in partnership with the government Kickstart Scheme.”