CRN Fast50 2022 Spotlight: Cevo

Melbourne-headquartered Amazon Web Services partner Cevo made a comeback to the CRN Australia Fast50 for 2022 following growth from its New South Wales business and a period of consolidation.

Cevo traces its roots to 2015, when it was formed after Microsoft partner Kloud acquired a 50 per cent stake in Sydney devops specialist Ice Systems, which was then renamed Cevo.

Kloud was then sold to Telstra in 2015, with company directors shifting their focus to the AWS partner instead.

After growing the business out of Melbourne and securing the 2nd spot in the 2017 CRN Fast50, Cevo more than doubled its revenue in the 2021 to 2022 financial year to achieve No. 7 in the 2022 CRN Fast50.

Cevo’s chief executive James Lewis spoke to CRN Australia in late 2022 about the company’s success.

The company expanded into New South Wales in 2019 via a Sydney office to help fuel further growth as what Cevo called the logical next step for its growth objectives.

He said the NSW business saw very good growth, growing the team from zero to 50 people within just 18-months, and has now reached 60 people.

Lewis also added that period of consolidation helped slingshot some of that growth from recent years.

“Our growth just broadly comes down to just running a high-quality business,” he said. “Our goal is to hire really high-quality and capable consultants and engineers and really maintain a good quality business."

"We look to find people who want to work well together and want to deliver on really interesting and innovative projects that predominantly utilise the AWS Cloud Platform.”

“With the sort of talent pool within the business, we then have the ability to work with some really forward-looking and innovative companies, and then find companies that work really well together and have a transformation agenda and we can make a real impact in those organisations.”

Lewis said that combination helped cushion Cevo against the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and still grow in line with what the company’s plans and forecasts have been.

He also added that Cevo’s Victoria business has grown slightly faster than its NSW counterpart.

“It’s also got a bit of a sort of a competition internally just to make sure we keep each other honest in terms of their growth targets.”

Some of Cevo’s customers of note include franchising company Jim’s Group, which involved a migration from its previous monolithic stack to AWS, as well as David Jones, Insignia Financial, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, AMP and Fiduciary Financial Services.

The company also credits AWS itself for its ongoing and increasing investment in partner programs, saying the vendor helped contribute a 99.1 percent increase in influenced revenue thanks to a significant increase in co-selling opportunities with AWS sellers.

“Certainly, this year has been about doubling down on our partnership and our investment with AWS,” Lewis said.

“We're a partner that's focused purely on AWS and we're an advanced consulting partner.”

The company also hired Garry Asprey-Sharman as its partnership manager in April 2022 to focus on the AWS relationship.

Lewis added that the hiring of Asprey-Sharman has paid dividends, where he said that Cevo has since been more coordinated in the way that it works on different AWS programs and initiatives.

“We get better alignment with the industry verticals and the sales teams and the customers that we can make the most impact in and also making sure that we're tapping into the right level of funding and investment that AWS has for their partners to overall help our customers to move faster,” Lewis said.

Cevo is now also on the path to becoming a premier AWS partner within the next few months, according to Lewis.

“There's not too many privately owned Australian [systems integrators] that are premier partners, so that'd be a really good achievement for us.”

“Lining up the competencies and highlighting the really amazing case studies and technical expertise and team have with those AWS case studies highlights to the market what we can do and what sort of impact that we can have.”

Looking ahead, Cevo is set on long term sustainable growth, aiming to grow the team from the current 150 people to around 300 over the next two to three years.

“Growth is on our agenda over the next few years, and with growth brings opportunities for our team as well,” Lewis said.

“So, as we continue to grow our team, continue to develop their careers and grow with us. At the end of the day, that's what we're excited about - providing opportunities for a really talented team to take further steps in their own careers and obviously work with good customers.”

Earlier in July 2023, Cevo appointed Stefan Buchman as its first chief technology officer, based in Melbourne.

Last year in September, Cevo launched a product development program for its customers to build cloud native applications, called Cevo Co-Create.

Cevo is currently nominated as a finalist for two awards in the 2023 CRN Impact Awards, including the Business Transformation Award and the Modernising Infrastructure Award.

Applications are now open for the 2023 CRN Fast50!