Pure Technology Group edges towards acquisition

VAR sees revenue breach £20m barrier

Pure Technology Group is hopeful of completing an acquisition this year after seeing revenue jump to over £20m.

For the 12 months ending 31 May 2017, Pure saw revenue increase 19 per cent to £22.7m.

The Pure Technology moniker was launched last year, bringing together Pure Data Solutions and Servatech - the firm Pure acquired in 2014 - into one entity.

Speaking to CRN at the time of the launch last year, Pure's COO Cliff Fox (pictured) said the firm was in talks regarding 11 possible acquisitions.

Pure has now narrowed this down to two firms, Fox explained, and is hopeful of completing an acquisition this year.

"It's important that we get the right company," he said. "We acquired Servatech in the middle of 2014 and, truth be told, we would have rather acquired another business by now, but we're being sensible about it and it's far better to get the right acquisition rather than just an acquisition.

"We've looked at a few and are in detailed dialogue with two companies right now and I'm hopeful that this year we'll complete another one."

Fox said that any future acquisitions will likely be around enterprise-grade cloud and networking, to build out Pure's capabilities aimed at larger customers.

"We're looking at enterprise network level and what I call large cloud, in terms of Azure.

"We have a very good SME platform in our own right, but we have customers that are much larger than that that want to go on their cloud journey and there is a lot more legacy issues with what they have. In terms of that, the large cloud piece is a factor for us."

Organic growth

Commenting on the 19 per cent revenue growth, Fox said that Pure has overachieved on the plan it laid out last April and highlighted its platform-as-a-service offering as a key component of the growing turnover - following Pure's decision to partner with Huawei a year ago.

"We've put a lot into the first year of the strategy," he said.

"We wrote the strategy last April and we've now completed a year against it. In terms of the organic targets we set ourselves we're ahead of that.

"In terms of key deals we've signed recently they've been platform as a service, so Huawei have helped our design guys in that respect."