Inside Brennan IT's first $100 million year

Brennan IT has opened the books on its first year as a $100 million company, as the Sydney-based managed services provider invests millions to improve its core network and cloud businesses.

Over the past 12 months, 370-staff Brennan IT has implemented a new strategy to simplify its product portfolio to focus on three key areas: infrastructure-as-a-service, networking and managed IT services.

As reported by CRN in July, the 20-year-old company's revenue was up by nearly 15 percent to $107.7 million in the year ending 30 June 2017, with net profit up 38 percent to $4.6 million.

The company's financials are roughly split into three key areas: IT services, product sales and voice and data, each of which generated more than $30 million of revenue, plus a smaller share of telephony sales.

Chief executive Stephen Sims, who took over day-to-day operations at Brennan in December 2015, said the company recently made its biggest-ever investment to upgrade its core network.

The new multimillion-dollar network, based on Juniper Networks gear, will allow Brennan to roll out its SD-WAN product towards the end of the next financial year, as well as provide direct interconnections with the major carriers. Brennan is also looking to launch a Cisco Meraki managed service next year.

The new network will also allow Brennan to automate provisioning, and simplify customer requests. The company has set up a dedicated automation team with 15 staff to help simplify workloads for the rest of Brennan.

Another multimillion-dollar bet is Brennan's cloud business, which mainly covers private and hybrid cloud solutions.

Sims said cloud is now one of Brennan’s most profitable businesses, growing 20 percent year-on-year in 2017. Brennan is in the midst of upgrading its private cloud infrastructure to prepare for the next stage of growth and the incoming launch of Azure stack.

Brennan IT’s Microsoft applications business, Superfluid, was broken out as its own entity two years ago and is led by founder Dave Stevens.

“We’re growing that business really, really quickly and that is more with the newer products coming out from Microsoft. That business has doubled year-on-year, it’s up to about 20 staff now and within 12 months will probably have 50 staff,” said Sims.

Melbourne-headquartered Superfluid is managed by GM consulting services Matthew Tan, and GM sales and marketing Alex Papli.

Brennan has also been expanding through acquisition.

In 2015, the company took a 50 percent stake in business performance and transformation firm State of Matter, which turned over $9 million in its first year and is led by Dave Stevens. Brennan IT sold its stake in State of Matter on 1 December.

It also invested in a 50 percent stake in Fastrack Technology earlier in 2017, with options to increase its shareholding over two years. The deal grew Brennan's credentials in enterprise connectivity, device management and Microsoft consulting.