Teesside company Onyx is ready to go Stateside

Mar 18 2010 by Chris Knox, The Journal

DATA security group Onyx plans to set up its first international office in New York by the end of the year as well as hit its target of increasing annual sales from £12m to £20m.

The Middlesbrough-headquartered firm said it had spent the first three months of the year integrating its recent series of acquisitions and said that it had witnessed significant organic growth as a result.

Last year saw the company buy London-based Moffatt Communications, which provides disaster recovery services to hedge fund managers in the City.

Onyx is now looking to set up offices in New York as a result of its new contacts within the financial markets and said it hopes to provide its data recovery services in districts including Wall Street.

The firm, which services around 3,000 UK customers, also hopes to double its UK workforce to 220 by the end of this year as it continues to add additional business to its portfolio, as well as benefit from the increasing number of companies outsourcing their data management needs as a way of improving efficiencies during the downturn.

The company, which operates seven sites between the North East, Edinburgh and London, said it was still determined to become a £50m turnover business over the coming years, and that it was well on the way to growing this year’s sales from £12m to £20m.

Managing director Neil Stephenson said: “We don’t usually make any acquisitions over the first three months of the year, as these years are usually good for us anyway.

“However, as a our long-term plan is to get to £50m, we have a number of short term growth plans in the pipeline.

“As our software and services are sold around the world, it is clear we need an international presence, and as part of our move into the financial markets, New York would seem the perfect place to expand into.”

The last two years has seen Onyx grow from a regional IT company into a national firm through a string of acquisitions, which have also included the collapsed Newcastle Computer Services and Scottish technology companies Campbell Lee and Dundas IT.

Last year also saw it purchase London-based Disaster Recovery Solutions (DRS), which runs 70 data recovery offices across the country and allowed Onyx to win more SME clients.

This culminated in the company being named as one of Britain’s fastest growing technology companies of 2009 in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

Mr Stephenson said: “We are confident we can hit our projections and are on track to get the business where we want it. The recession helped us in a way as our customers have become more protective of their existing assets.”

The company said it was still determined to become a £50m turnover business.