VIDEO: Swindon tech company plans to triple in size within three years

Old Town-based cloud technology provider Appsbroker, a Google Premier Partner, is planning to grow to 600 staff within the next three years to keep up with continually-increasing levels of customer demand.

In a recent video interview for Switch on to Swindon, CEO Mike Conner explained how Appsbroker started, its plans for growth, and how Swindon needs to adapt to the changing tech landscape to find the new workers of the future.

Business ambassador partnership Switch on to Swindon launched the TechSwindon campaign with over 400 business partners in June. Already reported as home to the UK’s third-most productive technology sector (supported by local businesses such as Appsbroker) Swindon is set to continue to grow its 2,800-strong tech provider base.

Mike has called on Swindon’s business community to embrace the future of tech collectively through projects like TechSwindon. He said: “It’s easy to sit in a bubble of your own business, but it’s so important - especially for finding the right talent - that we are also shouting about why Swindon is a great place to live and work.”

One of the main reasons Mike chose Swindon to launch and operate his business is financial. “The economics of building a business in Swindon are compelling,” he explained. “You can buy a four-bed house here for £300,000 and be cycling in beautiful countryside within minutes - you can’t do that anywhere else along the M4. It’s been a real driver for recruiting staff.” 

Mike, who started his company in his garage in 2007, knew cloud-based technology was part of the future for companies’ IT solutions. “Only 10 percent of corporate IT service hosting is in the cloud at the moment, but this is expected to grow to 70 per cent over the next five years. My hope is that as a company we can keep pace and grow with the market to a company of over 600 in the same period.”

With all this growth, recruitment remains a critical focus. Mike said: “We are always hiring. Not only do we have to think of innovative ways to attract potential staff, but we have to create new avenues into employment for the younger generation. Swindon needs to develop more young people into software engineers. To help this we’ve created an apprenticeship programme and we also support Swindon’s Institute of Technology.”

Mike, a keen cyclist and surfer, also believes in building a staff culture around opportunities. “We listen to what our staff want to do - whether it’s pub quizzes, mountain cycling trips, away days on a private island or even helicopter tours, it’s all vital in recognising our amazing staff and having fun with them,” he said.

Appsbroker was founded in 2006 and has kept its headquarters in Swindon ever since, while expanding internationally and opening additional offices both in London and Romania. The company finished 2018 as both the number one vendor of G Suite licences in the UK and the highest driver of Google Cloud Platform revenue across Google Cloud’s partner base in the UK.

Its client base covers a wide range of large enterprises in sectors from manufacturing through retail to financial services. One of the biggest areas of recent growth has come from work with a number of large global investment banks, specifically looking at solutions to enable compliance with regulations such as the upcoming FRTB (Fundamental Review of the Trading Book) initiative.

“Appsbroker’s focus remains on Google Cloud as a leading technology provider,” said Mike. “The bit that really interests us is the use of data platforms and how machine learning is evolving. It’s an exciting time to be working in tech, especially in Swindon.” 

For further information visit www.appsbroker.com/careers