Bytes has acquired a minority interest in an AWS partner based in the same town as arch-rival Softcat, the software licensing reseller revealed as it unveiled its full-year 2023 results.
Bytes saw gross invoiced income hit £1.4bn in its year to 28 February 2023, a 19.1% rise it chalked up to customer appetite for security, cloud, digital transformation, hybrid datacentres and remote working solutions.
But the LSE-listed outfit – a long-time ally of Microsoft – also used its results announcement to broadcast its acquisition of a 25.1% stake in an AWS partner based in Marlow. The Buckinghamshire town is also the base of one of Bytes’ closest competitors, Softcat.
Cloud Bridge Technologies’ “significant” technical workforce gives Bytes additional resources that will underpin its multi-cloud strategy, it explained. It has 25 staff, according to its latest accounts, and is a “long-term partner’ of Bytes.
Although the 19.1% growth Bytes logged in 2023 is down on the 26.1% uplift it registered a year earlier, the Leatherhead-based outfit said it took marketshare during the year.
Software GII grew 18.5% to £1.35bn, with hardware GII expanding 33% to £38.3m, internal services by 30.7% to £28.5m and external services by 22.8% to £26.4m.
Its headcount grew by a fifth to 930 during the year, with customer numbers swelling from 5,330 to 5,941 (gross profit per customers also rose, from £20,100 to £21,800).
Bytes also used the statement to reveal that it appointed its first Group Sustainability Manager in March 2023 to “drive forward social and environmental initiatives and align processes with both our operating companies [Bytes Software Services and Phoenix Software]”.
“We have maintained our track record of strong double-digit year-on-year growth despite ongoing uncertainty caused by the geopolitical outlook and macro-economic conditions, with our business benefiting from our wide-ranging product offering, with a substantial suite of software, services and IT hardware solutions from the world’s leading vendors and software publishers,” CEO Neil Murphy said.
