VAR Gyrocom claims SDN has seen its 'pipeline explode'

VMware and Nutanix partner wants to be a £20m reseller in five years' time

VAR Gyrocom has claimed its move to focus on software-defined networking (SDN) has seen its "pipeline explode" as it expects its sales to almost double in 2016.

Based in Chertsey, Surrey, Gyrocom was founded by Graham Brown and Ryan Coombes in 2006 and began life as a consultancy-focused business around network infrastructure, Brown told CRN.

"About three years ago we decided to figure out ultimately what we wanted to achieve. We were quite fortunate to see a lot of the new approaches coming out of the west coast of the US," the firm's managing director said.

"What we saw was the movement around automation and the move to put intelligence into software. There was a light-bulb moment specifically around SDN, where we thought if we don't get a capability in this, then our traditional business will just become the plumbers of the IT industry."

Brown said Gyrocom invested heavily in SDN capability and "quite in advance of our peers".

With this SDN push, and particularly through VMware's NSX offering, Gyrocom has seen its sales shoot up and expects revenues to more than double by the end of 2015. He said he forecasts this growth to continue and said he wants to be a £20m-turnover company in five years' time.

In the last year the firm has seen a big upswing in demand around the software-defined datacentre from its customers, he said.

"We have VMware, Nutanix, and are also looking at Arista for the hardware switching fabric, and we have other technology that we can integrate into that environment. It's just delivering an end-to-end solution in the datacentre. And what we have seen is from a very consultancy-focused small business; we have seen our pipeline explode, and our revenues have gone up dramatically."

The firm has 23 permanent staff at the moment, but Brown said he was hoping this will increase by 50 per cent in 2016. He also said the company is looking at moving to a bigger office.

Gyrocom focuses on enterprise clients and counts a lot of financial institutions among its customers, he added.