Local cloud provider Virsae is on track to double sales within the next six months after securing $3 million of equity funding from local investors.
Ten new investors, including Auckland-based Ice Angels funding entity Ice Funds Limited, have taken a stake in the company as it builds on early success in an emerging category known as unified communications service management - a market worth an estimated US$2 billion.
Since launching in 2013, Virsae has notched up seven-figure revenues, 85 percent of which come from overseas markets, principally the US.
According to the growing business, sales revenue has doubled in each of the last two six-month periods and is on track to double again.
“Investors sat forward when they saw the considerable early success we’ve achieved in what is a largely untapped global market,” says Tony Jayne, CEO, Virsae.
“Through our partners, Virsae already supports hundreds of customers in the US - a market that many New Zealand technology providers have struggled to crack.”
Jayne says Virsae recently signed two new partners, including US East Coast-based provider Continuum and UK partner Kaptec, opening the door to hundreds of potential new customers.
Going forward, Jayne believes the new capital will accelerate further development of the company’s flagship product Virsae Service Management (VSM) and add horsepower to sales and marketing.
On the latter front, Jayne says Virsae plans to add salespeople in the UK and on both coasts of the US.
Virsae’s indirect sales model rides on the shoulders of partners, principally large systems integrators, who resell VSM as part of their managed services to corporates.
At present, Virsae’s largest US partner Arrow SI, alone, manages communications for an estimated 10 million end-users.
Jayne says the company has more than 30 staff, including a team of New Zealand-based developers with VSM currently processing more than four billion transactions a month.
“We’re really pleased with our progress, but we’re only scratching the surface in what is a multi-billion dollar category,” Jayne adds.
“We don’t have to wrestle a dominant player to the ground; our biggest job is educating the market and getting customers to recognise that maintaining reliable enterprise communications is much easier with a specialist tool like VSM than trying to do the job manually or shoehorning traditional IT management tools.”
Last year Virsae signed up global distributor Westcon Group to distribute VSM to resellers in Europe, the Middle East, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
In addition, the company also has re-sales agreements with California-based Altura - one of the largest communications solutions and services organisations in North America - and UK-based Azzurri Communications.
