Chasing the Sun for faster growth

“You can’t be a generic software development company. You have to be good at something. You can pick up certain technologies, such as Apache, PHP, etc. But if you select products that are aligned to certain vendors then they can help you grow your business,” Silver says.

Remora took the challenge of moving from software maker to reseller seriously.

“You need planning and to understand the products you sell. First, getting in tight with the vendor is important, and understanding the products and why you’re selling them. Managingcash flow is a big one when you’re dealing with disties,” Silver says.

Another criterion was that the vendor had to be partner friendly. “There are some out there that only tend to focus on tier-one partners and not their emerging partners. Being undercut by tier-one partners was a major problem with other vendors.

“When a deal gets to a certain size, a lot of vendors will try to do the business direct. It’s not a very friendly way to deal with a partner that has grown a customer site. Those are the types of tactics that are not partner friendly.”

One of the most important criteria was innovation. Sun was a favourite because it had started to roll out an extremely substantial open source policy, which was a central interest to Remora’s software development. “They open source a lot of their products like Solaris and a whole lot of other technologies. And they also acquired MySQL.” It also required training engineers in Sun’s portfolio. Silver says he considers Remora to employ some of the best MySQL developers in Australia.

Remora checked out channel programs and partner friendliness with Apple, IBM, HP, Oracle and Sun but the high levels of interaction became “overwhelming” for the small company.

“After two and a half years we dropped almost all of them. We were spreading ourselves too thinly and we couldn’t be good at everything. Rather than sell what customers want we decided to go down a more specialised path. We dropped everything and became a dedicated Sun partner.”

It was a big change and the company took a big hit to the revenue, Silver says. “It’s somewhat risky according to some people because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. But it’s paid off.”

After Oracle bought Sun, Remora is now a pure-play Oracle partner. “And that’s going extremely well for us,” Silver says. The company more than doubled revenue by selling Oracle hardware and software.

About 35 percent of revenue comes from services, with the balance from hardware and software.

It is ironic that Remora ended up with Oracle, a vendor with a reputation for emphasising direct sales over channel. I put this to Silver who says his experience is the opposite in the wake of the Sun acquisition.

“That’s what we’ve heard as well. I don’t believe that. While any [merger] can be complex, it’s treating us incredibly favourably and we are enjoying the ride. It’s helping us formulate a much broader picture. It’s helping us grow our offerings and [move] into other states as well.”

Remora’s 10 staff are based in Melbourne but the company is on the verge of opening an office in Brisbane, and potentially South Australia. The reseller has established customer bases in the ACT and Tasmania. Sydney, a more saturated market, is not on the cards.