Chris Bunch is looking to build an AWS partner with “several hundred” staff after joining D55 as its CEO.
The Cloudreach and CTS alumni took up his post at the 30-employee, Manchester-based outfit in March, five months after leaving CTS following its merger with Appsbroker.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Bunch said his mission is to build an application modernisation-focused AWS consultancy “of scale” via both organic and inorganic growth.
“It’s AWS only, and will be several hundred people minimum,” he said.
“The way I think about it is similar to the other businesses I’ve worked in – we’d look for some strong organic growth and then evaluate the inorganic opportunities as we find them.”
Who is D55?
Founded in 2018, D55 specialises in complex application modernisation and data modernisation services for UK businesses, with a focus on the energy and software development sectors, Bunch said.
It was named after the structured data bundle sent between suppliers when consumers switch energy providers (founders Jonathan Rothwell and Rhys Jacob initially met while working in the energy sector).
Bunch claimed no one currently does what D55 does at scale in the UK.
“I’ve got no interest in building an AWS migration partner,” Bunch said.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s still tonnes of opportunity in that space with people with old datacentres and all the nonsense going on with VMware and Broadcom. But there are lots of people doing that, and doing it at scale and, in many cases, from offshore locations.
“The play here is much more about the UK, onshore, high-quality, complex end of modernisation, rather than just mass-scale migrations.”
Pressing refresh on AWS
Having spent four years building Google partner CTS, Bunch has rejoined an AWS partner ecosystem he called home at his previous company Cloudreach. His arrival at D55 coincides with AWS becoming a $100bn-revenue runrate business.
News this week of Matt Garman’s appointment as AWS CEO was “taken as a positive” by the D55 team, Bunch said.
“He was the one everyone thought would get the job [when Adam Selipsky was appointed in 2021],” Bunch noted.
“That sales passion to drive the growth is something Amazon is going to need both this year and beyond if they want to keep growing what is now a very, very large business.”
“Best opportunity for growth”
D55 is privately owned, profitable and cash generative, meaning it can grow off its own steam, Bunch said.
“But there may well come a time in the future when we choose to do that a bit more aggressively with help from someone else,” he said.
“When I left CTS, there were a lot of conversations to be had with lots of businesses in this space across all the hyperscalers, most of which were private-equity owned. But this is the one that provided the best opportunity for growth.
“That’s what interests me in life. I’m not looking for a nice, relaxing, go-and-play-golf-on-a-Friday job. I’m looking for a fun, fast, friendly, big growth opportunity, which is what I’ve been doing in the cloud space since 2011.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
