Aussie IT outfit takes on big boys

The founder of Australian services provider TechFlare is hoping to show that the "small guys" have a shot at taking on the might of vendors like Microsoft with the launch of a home-grown ERP suite.

Geoff Olds believes he has spotted a gap in the market and will launch his first product in July with the goal of attracting 5,000 subscribers in five years.

"We've got the resources, we've certainly got the ticker, and we've already got a nice base of initial users," he told CRN.

The launch is the culmination of a five-year process he describes as "enormous". In 2010 software company FlareWare was founded, which provided access to approximately 400 developers via an outsourcing firm in India.

Since then investment has gone into building a cloud suite called Working Cloud that is slated for a July launch.

The suite includes business planning, CRM, staff management, reporting, invoices, inventory, marketing and other features.

Olds hopes this will be the first of many product launches. He wants to extend out to US and UK as well as establish what he hopes will be a network of 500 partners in the next five years.

"You can imagine this thing rolling out," Olds said. "We're projecting 5-10,000 people on this platform. To achieve that level you need not only good hosting and support but a scalable team to continue to grow the product."

While price is not the only selling point of Working Cloud, it's a significant one. The entry price starts at $99 a month for a three-man company, while at the top end it costs $299 a month for a 100-person business.

Olds argued it's a significantly lower price than some competing products, such as NetSuite.

"The pricing is extremely low, if you can put it that way. Comparing it to other products on the market [where] you pay for extra modules or on a per user rate. It's one fee, one month, one organisation."

He said Working Cloud's ease of use, fast setup and inclusion of features like business planning make it competitive.

Olds also has something else up his sleeve - a relationship with Xero. "If you took the 100 top [Xero] partners, we would like to sign them as well," Olds said.

"A lot of people say accountants are not software sellers. The paradigm has very much shifted. The good accountants are interested in providing business advice, not just compliance."

Meanwhile, the 30-person TechFlare team continues to provide IT services from Sydney and Canberra. Olds said the business continues to grow at a 15 percent rate year on year.

While the move beyond IT services is something he said required a lot of time, money and unique IP, the way he sees it, it was a case of "disrupt or be disrupted".

"There's 40-odd thousand computer consulting firms in Australia, of which there are 16,000 or 17,000 in Sydney alone," Olds told CRN. "How do you compete when there are so many options and so many competitors?"