Oriium takes on Comms-care with channel-only ploy

CommVault partner aiming to hit £10m revenue within three years

The UK channel services market's newest entrant has not ruled out acquisitions as it seeks to do battle with the likes of Comms-care, Networks First and Company85.

Oriium, which began life in 2008 as a CommVault training and support partner, has spent recent months overhauling its sales structure, CRM system and branding as it re-invents itself as a channel-only service provider.

Specialising in data management and infrastructure consultancy and managed services, Oriium already worked informally with about 75 partners alongside its legacy direct business.

Oriium founder Chris Kiaie said he recognised that operating a parallel direct and indirect model could cause conflict with resellers.

"There's a big difference between running a channel partner scheme and being a thoroughbred channel services and support provider. This sends a clear message to partners that Oriium is absolutely a channel company," he said.

As well as offering consulting services, Wetherby-based Oriium is in the process of launching its own backup and disaster recovery managed services based on the CommVault stack. Other key vendors include HP, Dell, Nimble, Microsoft and VMware.

"We are not in the hardware break-fix space," said John Burrowes, head of sales at Oriium.

Burrowes added that his firm tends to use its own full-time staff rather than contractors, which he claimed marks it out from bigger players such as Comms-care.

"We focus on infrastructure, data management and end-user computing, with a heavy focus on utilising internal resource for consulting with a view to picking up managed services or cloud solutions on the back end," he said.

Although 33 per cent of Oriium's sales remain direct, Burrowes said any remaining end-user customers are exclusively small firms in Oriium's locality, causing no conflict with its target market of mid-market resellers.

Burrowes agreed with arguments expressed in CRN's recent feature that demand for third-party services has grown since 2008, when resellers became more wary about taking on full-time staff in-house.

"Unless they have the pipeline there already, partners don't necessarily want to build a practice around a new technology set," he said.

Having experienced 796 per cent growth over five years, Oriium was recently listed in the Deloitte Fast 50 and Kiaie said the goal is to break through the £10m turnover barrier within three years.

"We are going through round one of financing to fuel both organic growth and also potentially looking outside for opportunities in inorganic growth," Kiaie said.

"We are looking for IP – not in the traditional product sense but in terms of technical skills and capabilities."

Richard Eglon, marketing director at Comms-care, said he didn't always view new entrants in the market such as Oriium as a threat.

"They have offerings that are often quite complementary to our own – we don't often get involved in the CommVault side of things," he said.