05-Jan-2009
Fusion Business Solutions End of Year Update 2008
Revenue Growth of 13% in a tough year
Mark Lyttle, Managing Director, Fusion Business Solutions
2008 has been an extraordinary year in business terms with extreme volatility on the markets, the credit crunch and a slowdown in spending but our commitment to our customers remains the same. We will continue to serve prospective and existing customers as best we can.
We also finish the year feeling positive. Why so?Our customers are seeing a signification transformation in IT and we believe this will continue over the next 5 to 10 years – delivering more with reduced cost at higher quality, increased speed and more compliance. This is the industrialisation of IT where business and IT processes become embedded with the technology moving us away from a “cottage” industry towards consistency and repeatability with increasing levels of automation. Where resources are also removed from “silos” and are shared across the IT department. We believe BMC is well positioned to be part of this transformation.
When BMC Software acquired Remedy, it was the start of building a solution set called Business Service Management spanning IT Service Management and Operations. In the last 6 years alone, BMC has completed 16 acquisitions and, although many were mainly technology assets, most have been eclipsed by the $1bn acquisition of Bladelogic in April 2008. It not alone brings great technology for managing servers and applications in a virtualised world, but also brings along many new customers.
In this time Fusion’s business has also changed. In 2002 we were solely a Remedy focused business but today, while it remains very important, it is one part of our business as we focus across the full BMC solution set and, having become an independent company during the last technology recession, we feel our business model has proven itself over the last 6 years.
We remain an ITIL and Service Management consultancy and systems integrator specialising in BMC Software solutions. We are now the largest consultancy in Europe that focuses exclusively on BMC Software solutions. Our strategy, which remains unchanged, is to:
- be a niche consultancy providing depth and breadth of experience within our domain;
- provide excellent customer service and partner with our customers over the long term; and
- run the business prudently.
There have been a number of highlights in 2008:
- Our best practice consulting business has grown significantly working with major organisations on Service Improvement Programmes
- We won BMC’s European partner of the year award at the Lisbon BMC UserWorld
- We ran our 4th Annual Fusion User Group in November featuring Tom Bishop, the BMC Software Chief Technical Officer and Peter Armstrong, as the key note presenters;
- We had a major presence at the SITS show in Olympia where we were one of the main sponsors;
- Our Resource Management business is now the leading IT Service Management resourcing business in the UK and has expanded into Europe and India; and
- Of course we continue to deliver key projects for our customers.
Our financial position is strong. We have had 26 consecutive quarters of profitability, have no debt and a strong credit rating and we have grown our revenue significantly in the last 3 years. Even in 2008 we saw 13% revenue growth on 2007 – not a bad result in a difficult year.
Looking ahead to 2009, we know many of you are looking closely at each of your planned IT projects. If you planning to invest in technology to drive automation and efficiency, we believe we can help you with appropriate solutions (e.g. server management with Bladelogic or service request management). If on the other hand, you are looking to get the most out of existing technology, let us demonstrate how our best consulting services around people and processes can help to achieve real benefits.
On that note, I’d like to thank you once again for your interest in Fusion and wish all of you a very successful 2009.
Best regards
Mark