SCC bets big on DevOps with new Vietnam office

Reseller invests in Ho Chi Minh City facility after growing profit in FY16

SCC is betting big on DevOps with the establishment of a new office in Vietnam.

Based in Ho Chi Minh City (pictured), the SCC Vietnam operation will initially employ about 60 people, a third of whom will be software developers. The remainder will provide third- and fourth-line support, to complement the first- and second-line support services offered by the reseller giant's base of 1,000 employees in Romania. The office will open in the autumn, SCC chief executive James Rigby told CRN, and if all goes well the intention is to rapidly increase headcount at the facility in the years to come.

"Developing our own applications is really important for the future if we are to be competitive," he said. "[DevOps staff] will be working on our cloud-management platforms. Our Universal Cloud Gateway is a brokerage portal, from which we can provision and build hybrid clouds."

Rigby added that Vietnam was the ideal location for both the software-development and support services functions of the new office. With 90 million inhabitants and an average age of 29, the country also has 300 universities offering IT courses and its young population possesses excellent English-language skills, he said.

The new Vietnamese operation comes after the publication of FY16 results that showed the bottom-line benefit of previous investments in cloud and services provision. Although UK revenue for the year to 31 March dropped 1.4 per cent year on year to £653m, EBITDA grew by 29 per cent to £24.9m. Elsewhere SCC turned over £812m in France and £47m in Spain in FY16.

The increase in UK profitability was fuelled by the growth of services turnover, which increased by 11 per cent to £177m. Included in this was some £43m in datacentre services revenue, an increase of two thirds on the prior year. In total, services represented 27 per cent of the overall top line and 66 per cent of margin.

Last year the VAR giant made a number of acquisitions during 2015, including investments in connectivity specialist Fluidata, hosted voice firm SIPCOM, and mobile player One Point. Rigby (pictured below) reiterated his belief that the addition of mobility skills that came with the One Point deal completed his firm's managed services proposition, but claimed this year could bring further investments in its existing capabilities.

"We are currently at about 70 per cent [capacity] in our two datacentres," he said. "We are doubling the size of the one in Fareham, while in Birmingham we are adding about another 400 racks. Once we have done that we cannot do any more - maybe that will be an acquisition.

"We set out on this journey five years ago, seeing that the world was moving off premise, more to a hybrid world, a mixture of on and off premise. We have a put a stack of money in, but now it is definitely paying back big time. To put these assets on the ground you need a lot of cash upfront, and it is quite a scary place to be. But then starts to create a lot of cash and profit."