Viadex continues global expansion with Dubai base

Infrastructure provider says international sales now make up 51 per cent of its revenue

Viadex has continued its international expansion with the launch of a Dubai operation.

The firm has launched into the US and Singapore over recent years, and had previously pondered a move into Dubai before opting for other regions.

"Our expansions follow our clients' needs, which is quite a common-sense thing," Viadex CEO Dino Cooper told CRN.

"We won't go speculatively into a territory; we will build a book of business. Typically we will have accounts that have branch offices in a region.

"The channel for these guys is broken in that it was a construct of 30 years ago where, pre-internet, every country was very separate. The vendors set up a system where every country had its own distributors and resellers, which was great at the time because you could count the number of geo-dispersed businesses on one hand.

"Now you have a ton of mid-market businesses that are dispersed."

Cooper explained that the current model forces businesses to buy the IT for each individual base via the channels in place in that specific country.

Viadex, however, peddles a different model that sees businesses buy all their IT centrally, before distributing it to each base.

"They have to buy from 20 or 30 different partners, depending on how dispersed they are, for each of their offices which, frankly speaking, is a mess," he said.

"Typically what we do is talk to our clients about them going from being ad hoc in their approach to dealing with dispersed infrastructure, to being strategic about it by centrally procuring everything out of the UK (if that is where they are headquartered).

"They can do this by having us provide an ops and logistics service that deploys, delivers, plugs in and switches on the infrastructure."

Earlier this year Viadex's overseas credentials were recognised by the Sunday Times International Track, which ranks the UK's fastest-growing exporters.

The firm now has capabilities in 130 countries, with regional hubs in Singapore, the US, South Africa, Gibraltar and the UK. It claims that international sales now account for 51 per cent of its total revenue.