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Managed service provider (MSP) Interactive believes its customers’ business acquisition has provided it with an opportunity to expand and scale its offerings and revenue over the last decade.
In an interview with ARN, managing director of systems at Interactive Simon Durkin said in Australia, global companies have been acquiring local businesses.
“[This] is part of the global consolidation trend, where businesses grow through acquisition and take competition out of the market,” he claimed. “Often, they want to stick with the incumbent domestic provider, so we stay in place as the long-term service provider.”
An example of this is Interactive’s work with New Zealand-founded company Fletcher Buildings.
“We’ve been working with Fletcher since 2010,” said Durkin. “We initially worked with a business in the building industry called Crane Group, which was acquired by Fletcher.”
Since then, Interactive has continued working with Fletcher with IT support in around 720 locations across Australia and New Zealand. This spans 25 of the construction company’s business units and includes hardware maintenance as well as break-fix services for infrastructure assets.
Interactive also provides on-site with an engineer and spare parts to fix any issues problem, Durkin said.
“Fletcher has acquired several businesses and that’s allowed our services and revenue to increase. We typically start with one business unit and grow to support all their infrastructure across Australia and New Zealand,” he said.
According to Durkin, Interactive consolidates service delivery across these acquisitions and with Fletcher acquiring more companies, it means the service provider will continue to support the new assets.
“We review monthly how best to support [its] business requirements and locations,” he said. “It’s a dynamic relationship. We’re in a unique position to help customers leverage existing assets.”
Durkin believes with the building industry under pressure, MSPs like Interactive can help them reduce costs and avoid capital expenditure by continuing with operational expenditure.
“We’re always looking to help customers leverage their current assets,” he said.
Interactive has had a busy year; in April the service provider worked on a public cloud migration for data and analytics company illion. It also provided a range of IT projects to Victoria-based eldercare provider Homestyle Aged Care in September while also expanding its computer, network and database offerings with the addition of NetApp storage solutions to its infrastructure portfolio in the same month.
To help with Interactive’s continued growth, the service provider appointed Alex Coates as CEO, effective from 28 January 2025. The former Datacom managing director for Australia has already started with Interactive, part-time, Durkin said.
“Our executive chairman has temporarily stepped in, but Alex will fully take over soon,” he added. “She comes from Datacom, a well-known MSP, and she’s really well connected with our key partners like Microsoft, AWS and Cisco. I believe she’ll help us continue to grow.”