Qld IT firm gets Dubai investor and plans national expansion

Smile IT is gearing up for aggressive growth in south-east Queensland with a new investors, the opening of its second office and its first acquisition on the cards.

The managed service provider, which is based in Carindale, Brisbane, was founded in 2007 by Datacom veteran Peter Drummond. 

Late last year, Smile IT was buoyed thanks to the buy-in from Ralph Steven-Jennings.

Steven-Jennings is relocating to the Sunshine Coast from Dubai, where he has a 25 percent stake in IT-Serve, one of the biggest MSPs in the region.

"Ralph has bought a half share in the business," Drummond told CRN. "He has migrated from Dubai to the Sunshine Coast and we are expanding our operations there and regionally. Our plan is to expand Australia wide."

The investment is already paying off with a new office opened in Pelican Waters in the Sunshine Coast.

Smile IT expects to follow this up with an acquisition of another Sunshine Coast-based IT firm later this month.

Drummond said he hoped that to learn from the experience of his new partner. "Ralph's company started the same size as us, five or six people, and now they have 50 techs on board plus administration staff."

The pair plan to aggressively grow Smile IT. “If we don’t double the business, we aren’t doing our job very well,” said Steven-Jennings.

The big growth area for Smile IT is cloud integration, said Drummond, especially Office 365.

"SharePoint is also a big growth area for us. We have a section of a data centre here in Brisbane, which is where we host all of our servers and we offer offsite back-up.

"Another big growth area is the telecoms side. We are wholesaling with TPG's parent Soul and AAPT, offering their suite of products, from their fibre, CIP services, ethernet over copper and our own VoIP," added Drummond.

Global credentials

The partnership with Steven-Jennings will also allow Smile IT to offer its clients round-the-clock service through the IT-Serve's offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman and Qatar.

Steven-Jennings brings broad-ranging credentials to Smile IT.

"I have a bit more experience running large organisations and want to take Smile IT to the next level."

His CV includes system engineer roles at the South African Department of Transport, ICL in the UK and Fujitsu-Siemens.

Cloud will be a major focus for Smile IT, Steven-Jennings told CRN, especially Office 365.

"For clients with very little IT knowledge, building a predictable IT infrastructure is very valuable. The know what their spend is."

Steven-Jennings admitted to some initial wariness with Office 365 due to the local arrangement with Telstra, which is unusual on a world scale, but said the recent decision to open up the SaaS product suite to all partners was "one of the reasons why we have changed our tack".

"I was originally a bit hesitant. Coming from an area where Office 365 was available at US pricing to the prospect of having to pay virtually double via Telstra, it wasn't as compelling an offer," he added.