Four resellers cracked the magic $50 million mark; Integ Group (No.37), Southern Cross, NSC Group (No.39) and Brennan VDI (No.45). And despite being the oldest, Southern Cross showed that age was no impediment with the largest jump, up 24 percent to $67 million.
Southern Cross managing director Mark Kalmus says that maintaining growth in a 100-person company took a multifaceted strategy and a secure financial base.
Last year Southern Cross made a "huge" investment setting up a Canberra office which will take 18 months to two years to pay off.
"You need to be a profitable company that has sufficient funding and retained earnings that can reinvest in these things," Kalmus says (see breakout). "You have to take a longer term view and have deep enough pockets to make the investment work over a period of time. You can't expect to get a return straight away."
Anittel (No.1) showed that for superfast growth there is nothing like an acquistion spree to increase revenue. Led by mergers and acquistions expert Ilkka Tales, the national reseller-ISP shot up 310 percent to $21.78 million in revenue.
Anittel raised the money through a public listing and is still on the hunt for more resellers.
Software Traction, our second place-getter this year, gets a special mention for managing to grow 234 percent through organic sales of IBM gear to $9.6 million.
Software Traction is also looking to go public but has chosen to list on the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
