As a mix of rugby and soccer, Gaelic Football is a fast, rough and exciting sport and Joe Murray, the new Channel Director at essensys, is as passionate about the game now as he was when he ran out at Dublin's famous Croke Park to take part in the All Ireland minor championships in front of 20,000-plus raucous fans.
Murray well remembers the adrenaline rush of that memorable day, but prefers to forget the result. "It was the semi-final and we lost - nothing worse - and it just proves that you should never take anything for granted," he said. "But I'm proud of what I achieved in the game, and playing in that team gave me an enormous sense of pride and a real understanding of teamwork and leadership."
His high level Gaelic football experiences gave Murray the mind-set to develop a successful career in IT and telecoms and he's not in the least fazed by the challenge of building a reseller channel for London-based essensys because he has the pedigree and passion, plus what he believes is a rock solid proposition to take to market.
Murray's life in IT/telecoms started when he gained a sponsorship from BT for university. Since then he worked in corporate sales at BT Global for seven years and sold undersea cable systems for Hong Kong Telecom and Telstra before becoming a founding member of Viatel's channel division where he signed and grew Vodafone as its largest reseller before taking management positions as the business grew through the MDNX, Griffin and Easynet acquisitions.
"Extensively, I have been in channel for over 10 years," he said. "Before joining essensys, my team were responsible for growing a channel consisting of over 1,000 resellers with revenues in excess of £50 million. They are all exciting businesses at different stages of development and that's what makes it a fabulous industry to work in."
Murray has known essensys CEO Mark Furness for 10 years and has '100 per cent' bought into his cloud evolution vision and giving resellers the capability to self-serve their services on a fully automated software platform. "Mark's knowledge and confidence in the channel has enabled me to push wholeheartedly into getting the proposition perfected for resellers," added Murray. "Fifty per cent of essensys staff are software engineers. Based on requests from our customers, essensys rolls out updated functionality of our software platform almost on a weekly basis.
"My previous position granted me a broad view of the market. The key aspect was joining a company that was going places and knowing I can have a real impact on the future performance. essensys works in an intelligent way, from both technology and customer focus perspectives."
Recent Gartner Cool Vendor and Tech Track 100 accolades have rubber stamped essensys' reputation and now Murray is aiming to scale up the company's outreach by taking its managed services proposition to new markets via channel partners keen to step up their game. "The deciding factor in working with Mark at this stage was perfect timing," commented Murray. "essensys has performed brilliantly over the past decade in building its proposition and is primed for the channel.
"We have now opened in the US which demonstrates how our core business is fast growing and expanding. I will also continue to drive innovation in essensys by recognising what business problems can be resolved using technologies within our control.
"The channel knows that the market is evolving. Likewise the players who will be successful in the market will evolve. essensys offers a wide ecosystem of services that is truly cloud-based, meaning that end users or resellers can self-serve their requirements on an automated platform. Resellers need to decide if their traditional suppliers are the suppliers that will ensure they can defend and grow their revenues in the next three years."
So what's the big opportunity for channel partners working alongside essensys? Murray firmly sees the mid-market as a prime goal for partners to aim at. "Medium-sized enterprises are acknowledged as being under-served," he explained. "The large service providers focus on the FTSE 250 while many resellers service the lower end of SME. Cloud technologies now allow resellers to scale in a manner not previously possible. essensys has a history of delivering to sites with hundreds of seats and we are now offering channel partners the opportunity to grow expansively using our innovation."
Murray is seeking dialogue with ambitious resellers who can change their sales mentality, understand that IT and telecoms are merging and that customers want one supplier to 'do it all'. "The sales role has changed. Customers often know what they want; they want it all and they want it now. Empowering the end user is the valued service and self-serve platforms are the enabler. Owning hardware means managing the decline of a physical asset. Resellers should now sell profitable services from the cloud. "
"We're also looking for resellers who think big. Software is most powerful when services are required across large customer estates. You do not have to target customers that have an average of 12 seats. This new way of working allows scale that was not possible previously. We have small resellers working on opportunities up to 700 seats."
Murray believes the channel should recognise that they own the digital infrastructure that enables the Internet of Things, or more specifically, the SMART Office. He added: "Why stop at telco and IT? essensys is investigating expanding our capability of delivering the digital office beyond our current core focus. Watch this space!"