2023 CRN Australia Fast50 rankings revealed at gala awards in Sydney

Novo3 has been crowned the fastest growing business at the Macquarie Bank-powered 2023 CRN Australia Fast50 award ceremony in Sydney attended by Australia’s IT and digital services community.

Celebrating its 15th year, the CRN Fast50 recognises the fastest-growing IT and digital services providers in Australia, based on year-on-year revenue growth. See details about each 2023 Fast50 company and photos of award recipients on stage at the awards dinner.

The naming rights sponsor of the 2023 CRN Fast50 is Macquarie Bank and the awards are also sponsored by Arrow, Dicker Data, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kaseya, Pax8, ScienceLogic, Westcon-Comstor and World of Workflows.

Despite a challenging 2022-23 financial year for some in the IT industry, this year’s Fast50 grew revenue in FY22-23 by an average 79 percent. Businesses had to have grown by at least 36 percent to earn a place in the group.

Victorian-headquartered Novo3 rocketed into first place by quadrupling its revenue in FY22-23 to $11.3 million, by far the fastest revenue growth in this year’s Fast50. It grew off the back of bespoke infrastructure deployments for some of the largest independent schools in Victoria, and its work in the health sector. More than three quarters of its revenue came from hardware for the midmarket - more than half of which was for HPE products. It also started providing 24 x 7 NOC and helpdesk services.

In second place was Canberra business CBR Cyber, which more than tripled sales to $15.4 million in the last financial year. The company has been building a name in Federal Government and also lists education and utilities as key verticals. Arrow and Westcon-Comstor are among its partners.

In third place was Accelerate Tech, a Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and Azure specialist which had Power Platform Centre of Excellence wins at large New South Wales and Queensland state government bodies, worked with Queensland government to build out its internal OpenAI chat capability, and went live with the first instance of Microsoft sustainability manager in ANZ, for Arnott’s Australia. It more than tripled its revenue in FY22-23 to $3.6 million dollars. 

The rest of the Fast50 included analytics specialists, process design firms, digital consultants, a provider of IT infrastructure lifecycle services, a Monday.com partner, Salesforce and ServiceNow partners, a serial acquirer of MSPs, a governance risk and compliance specialist, integrators, MSPs, customer experience specialists, networking providers and software developers, among others.

Several Fast50 companies and people also received Editorial Awards.

Virtual IT Group was the winner of the Leader Award for having the largest overall revenue of this year’s Fast50 businesses. That growth was off the back of more acquisitions for the serial acquirer, which helped drive a 70% increase in revenue in the last financial year to $65.3 million.

The Resilience Award went to Arinco for how frequently it appeared in the Fast50 and for its performance. Founded in 2019, the company pulled in more than $30 million dollars in revenue in its last financial year and delivering projects for the likes of The Smith Family and St Vincent De Paul.

CyberCX was voted winner of this year’s Icon Award by the 2023 Fast50, with some voters congratulating the cybersecurity heavyweight for its growth, and others for being a strong collaborator with a focus on services with community impact. The firm has made its presence known in dialogue about Australia’s cybersecurity and has won numerous awards.

Martine Campagna, co-founder of Salesforce consultancy and Fast50 company Sauce, received the Female Business Champion Award. Described by a colleague as a powerhouse and fearless leader, she was credited with contributing more than a quarter of Sauce's revenue in FY22-23 while playing an instrumental role in the delivery of strategic projects and running the financial side of the business.

Sha Bharadwaj received the Young Leader Award. The 30-year old’s career has progressed in less than a decade from Ericsson software engineer to Oracle solutions engineering and presales team lead, to Managing Director of Monday.com partner Work Perfect. The company appeared in this year’s Fast50 and has a customer portfolio that include the likes of McDonald’s, Hilton, Bunnings, Channel9, Tyro and HBF Insurance.

Here are the 2023 Fast50 rankings:

CRN Australia thanks the sponsors that have made it possible for us to celebrate the Fast50’s success – naming rights sponsor Macquarie Bank, in addition to Arrow, Dicker Data, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kaseya, Pax8, ScienceLogic, Westcon-Comstor and World of Workflows.