Brennan IT negotiates 'major' global partnership

Brennan IT is looking to hire 50 new staff as it gears up to sign what the company describes as its biggest ever deal.

Managing director Dave Stevens told CRN the company had already signed a US-based software provider for local hosting of its applications in Brennan IT's cloud, and was in negotiations with another which, if successful, would be Brennan's “biggest ever partnership”.

The managed services provider recently inked a deal with data centre operator Equinix to utilise its data centres across the US and Asia, in addition to Brennan IT’s own data centres in Sydney and Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.

Stevens said he hoped the larger deal would be closed by mid-year, but declined to name the vendor nor the US company already signed on.

Brennan IT today revealed it would fill 28 technical pre-sales design roles and about 22 sales positions, supported by a new management structure, and hoped to begin placing new staff this week.

Stevens said Brennan IT currently holds 18 percent of the mid-market segment (defined as companies with between 50 and 1000 seats), up from 14 percent last year.

While declinining to provide specifics, he added Brennan IT reported “record” sales growth for the first half of 2012, up 43 percent on the first half of 2011.

“We’re seeing a significant uptick in systems integration companies, like CRM partners and application developers, which is a real growth area for us,” Stevens said.

“They’re coming to us to use our IaaS platform, that’s been a really interesting development and has driven some significant growth.”

Brennan IT will direct the majority of its new hires to its Sydney office. It also has offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Newcastle. 

Its points of presence in the US, Asia and New Zealand, thanks to Equinix, will not be met with physical offices and staff. Stevens said the strategy is to service the international offices of Australian-based clients from Australia.

“We can service them most effectively from here,” he said. “We are absolutely looking for more clients globally but the market is the most attractive with Australian-based companies with international offices.”