CRN

Daisy plans to build £100m channel services arm

Comms provider gives 'cast-iron guarantee' that it won't compete with the resellers and SIs served through new Daisy Partner Services operation

mini brick wall
  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
0 Comments

Daisy has set out its ambition to build a £100m channel services business as it brings together three recent acquisitions in this area.

The comms provider this week launched Daisy Partner Services, which unites the capabilities of 2009 purchase Servassure and 2013 acquisitions NetCrowd and Indecs.

The combined operation – which will go head to head with the likes of Comms-care and Maintel – will be based at Servassure's offices in Harlow. NetCrowd's office in Welford was shut on Friday as part of the centralisation drive.

Talking to CRN, Jason Spring, managing director of Daisy Partner Services, claimed the market for providing outsourced maintenance and professional IT and comms services to resellers and SIs boasts untapped potential.

"Our customers want to focus on the centre and core and then rely on someone else to have that scale and fixed cost in the field," he said. "That is why Daisy acquired these businesses and that's why we expect to deliver growth."

Nathan Marke, group chief technology officer at Daisy, added: "As a group we believe this can absolutely be a £100m business. It is a natural evolution of our Daisy Wholesale business."

Daisy Partner Services currently provides outsourced voice, networking and datacentre services to about 540 partners, from large SIs to owner-managed VARs. Key Jason Springvendor partners include Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP and Aruba. It currently turns over £20m.

Spring (pictured, left) said the firm marks itself out from the competition by offering white-label services and by delivering 95 per cent of services via its 250 full-time employees, rather than sub-contracting to third parties.

The UK partner services market remains nascent, Spring admitted, and is currently large enough to support only a small handful of players.

"This isn't a marketplace full of players falling over that we can sweep up behind," he said. "We and the likes of Comms-care and Maintel have to make this market and convince SIs they are better off using our flexible resource [than doing it themselves]."

Marke suggested the outsourced service model will thrive as more complex cloud and Internet of Things projects requiring collaboration between multiple suppliers rise in prominence.

"No one player can deliver these projects from end to end and we believe that by having a skilled capability that is trusted by partners they will look to us as they build out these new models."

Unlike Comms-care, Daisy Partner Services is part of a £350mNathan Marke-turnover end-user-focused business, something Spring admitted had caused tension with some partners.

"We as partner services business would be dead in the water if we didn't put ethical walls up," he said. "If something comes across our table where a partner is talking to customer X and a Daisy sales guy is talking to the same customer, the cost of that relationship to the partner is of much higher value to us. We are creating a much bigger channel business and we can't do that if we slip up at any point."

Marke (pictured, right) added: "We will give a cast-iron guarantee that we will never compete with our partners."

Further reading

  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  

More news