Vapour will “attack and scale” a new direct business in 2021 as it sets its sights on £7m turnover, the firm’s CEO has said.
The cloud technology provider has announced the growth aspirations along with a series of partnerships with Microsoft, Fortinet and Veeam, a £350,000 investment from the Barclays Innovation Fund and a rebrand of the business to Vapour, dropping ‘Cloud’ from the name.
Speaking to UC Today, Vapour CEO, Tim Mercer, said that it is not “forgetting” its partner base, adding that Vapour has long held an ambition to develop a direct arm.
“I don’t want you to think that we’re just going straight into the direct channel or forgetting our partners because we’re not,” said Mercer.
“Some partners only buy one or two services from us, and they wrap it into their own supply chains.
“Where our value lies and how we grow this business moving forward is because of the complexities around customers at the moment, where the customers are looking for one or maybe two players to support their whole cloud journey”
“That’s come from everything becoming more complex today, and the more people you have in that journey, the more complex the support tends to be. So having one or two players in there that can support the clients in the best way is much more prevalent in today’s world than it was five or six years ago.”
Vapour will be looking to increase its annual turnover from “just over £4m” to hit £7m by working with partners in industry verticals including automotive, healthcare, legal and education, with the new direct business carrying it through to reach its target.
The firm is now a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, thanks to its work with Tech Data, and will offer Teams licences, Azure, hybrid cloud, and back-up solutions from the Seattle giant.
The CSP will also be bringing a security-first SD-WAN network solution to market with Fortinet this year and a new suite of hybrid backup, data management, servers, storage and disaster recovery solutions, for customers large and small with Veeam.
