Cloud growth fuels solid Blue Chip numbers as it hits £20m sales

As-a-service sales nigh-on triple to give FY13 top line a sheen

VAR Blue Chip has its burgeoning cloud business to thank for a set of FY13 numbers that show a solid increase in the top line.

The Poole-based VAR, whose fiscal year runs to the end of September, claims that its turnover for the recently ended year stood at £20m. This represents a 6.67 per cent rise on the prior year's figure of £18.75m.

The extra £1.25m in total revenue is the same as the growth in sales of cloud services, which rose from £750,000 in FY12 to about £2m last time out, Blue Chip claims. Richard Cook, managing director of the Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware partner, claimed that his firm had invested heavily in "building an extensive computer platform to enable the business to deliver infrastructure as a service and online backup to customers".

Other investments reportedly made last year include sprucing up its office and training facilities, as well as recruiting 30 new technical staff. More spending is planned for coming months, with £1m to be spent over the next three years as it opens two datacentres in addition to the two it already operates.

Further investment in the business' office and training facilities, the recruitment of 30 additional technical staff to service a growing customer portfolio, plus a significant up-turn in the requirement for Projects as the economy starts to recover, are also key factors in this year's financial announcement.

"We have worked hard and invested in our infrastructure, service offering and technical capability over the past two years and are beginning to see how successful it is, both for our customers and for our business as a whole," said Cook.

Poole-based Blue Chip is not to be confused with the IBM specialist VAR of the same name headquartered in Bedford.