Klikon goes all in with AC3 as it chases millions in govt work

Klikon is dropping its name after 17 years and rebranding as AC3 as it looks to close millions of dollars in government projects.

Chief executive Simon Xistouris established the Sydney systems integrator as a one-man show in 1998 and has grown it from strength to strength, acquiring shared services provider AC3 from the NSW government in 2013.

Simon Xistouris, now chief executive of AC3, said that the decision to drop the Klikon name was motivated by government clients. “AC3 is well-known in the public sector – the private sector would adopt a new name but we didn’t want to re-educate the government customers so we decided to go with AC3. In fact, in the next 12 to 24 months there is a going to be a lot of activities in the public sector.”

It is a change of tack from a year ago, when the company revealed two distinct go-to market strategies for the Klikon and AC3 brands, one targeting commercial clients, the other the public sector.

Xistouris would not disclose the company’s revenue or its growth projections, but said restructuring the two businesses had shown positive growth this year with more new products planned in the pipeline.

“We have two major initiatives that we will launch in the first quarter of next year. One would be a cloud management platform called Ozone and another an ITSM [IT service management] platform.”

He said the company had been working on the projects for the past eight to nine months.

Ozone is a "cloud service broker", Xistouris said. The cloud management platform allows users to choose between AC3's FlexiServer cloud offering, as well as "pre-canned virtual private cloud blueprints" and also supports OpenStack, Amazon, Azure and VMware vCenter.

He added that the company would also be looking at creating five to 10 "products" each quarter, mainly packaged service offerings.

This year alone, AC3 has signed new customers such as APRA, Barangaroo Development Authority and Fuji Xerox.

Xistouris said AC3 now employs 180 staff, a combination of contractors and full-time workers, from its headquarters at the Australian Technology Park, which was recently acquired by Mirvac and will house the Commonwealth Bank as its anchor tenant.

“Being in ATP is great and now that the place [has been bought], we are excited to be a part of the changes that will take place here,” he said.