Bytes powers past £350m revenue as cloud sales surge

MD Neil Murphy highlights Azure and AWS as key to sales increase

Bytes has flown past the £350m-revenue mark after seeing considerable growth in cloud sales.

For the 12 months ending 28 February 2018, Bytes saw sales jump 49 per cent to £354m, while operating profit grew 31 per cent to £11.3m.

Speaking to CRN, Bytes UK managing director Neil Murphy said that the reseller has seen strong growth in cloud sales, and also with the vendors that have adopted cloud-first strategies.

"We experienced a lot of subscription business, particularly around cloud applications," he said.

"We did an awful lot of Azure and we have started to make our first good Amazon sales as well.

"What was particularly strong for us was Mimecast as well and we expect to see more of that in the years ahead, particularly working with Office 365 solutions."

Murphy picked out Sophos, Check Point and VMware as key vendors for Bytes over the last 12 months as well, which he attributed to their cloud approaches.

He also highlighted growth in Bytes' services business. Services revenue grew by 30 per cent over the course of the year. Service now account for five per cent of Bytes' overall revenue.

During the course of the year Bytes expanded its operation by opening two new offices - in Reading and Watford - and increasing its salesforce by over 20 per cent. The group now has a headcount of around 400.

Revenue was also bolstered by the acquisition of Phoenix Software, with the Software firm contributed £49m to the top line during the five months it was under Bytes' ownership.

Taking Phoenix out of the acquisition, Bytes still saw organic revenue growth of 28 per cent and operating profit growth of 14 per cent.

Murphy said that over the course of the next 12 months Bytes will be looking to bolster its Amazon Web Services practice, and is also focusing on achieving growth in its Irish business.

Expanding the NHS team will also be key, he added, particularly after Bytes secured a £150m Microsoft healthcare deal.

Further acquisitions are not on the horizon with the focus still on integrating Phoenix, but Murphy said that the reseller may begin to look at potential targets at the start of its next financial year.