CRN Fast50: Everyone needs IT, says Mercury IT founder

With the slow economy was biting last year, services-based reseller Mercury IT quickly decided the last thing it could do was sit on its hands.

"We could have sat there and said ‘there's a GFC. No one is going to spend any money'," says company founder and managing director Luke Halliday (pictured on right, with staff). "Instead we told ourselves, ‘Everyone needs IT'."

The company knew it needed to work harder to convince companies of the fact. "We needed to show more effort to show that we understood what the client needed and what we were offering actually addressed that need," Halliday says.

Founded in 2004, Mercury IT operates mainly on the Gold Coast selling a complete IT department, tailored solutions, help desk and remote support for satellite offices. The company sells on a contract or time-and-materials basis mainly to professional services industries such as law, accounting and medical specialists. Vendor partners include Cisco, HP, Samsung, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

Halliday says people operating in these areas typically have little ability or inclination to operate their own IT, and increasing numbers were turning to Mercury IT for help.

In response to this demand the company began offering a complete managed service which it expects will be an important driver of revenue. Halliday says that services represented the biggest growth area. While the product versus services split used to be 50/50, the previous financial year saw the ratio shift to around 40/60.