Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is Somerville?

Craig Somerville cuts a succinct figure. As Managing Director and CEO of Somerville, he has led the technology services company through over three decades of change and growth. Speaking in a recent interview, Somerville offered a rare insider's perspective on how the business has evolved and what lies ahead for the IT industry in Australia and New Zealand.

At its core, Somerville is a technology service provider with a diverse and ever-expanding range of solutions. "Overall, we're a technology service provider - a blend of the traditional systems integrator, managed service provider, and an internet provider," Somerville said. This comprehensive approach, he explained, enables the company to serve customers with diverse requirements, from managed IT support to delivering core internet infrastructure.

Recently, Somerville undertook a realignment, distilling its operations into four foundational technology 'pillars': Connect, Cloud, the Modern Workplace and Secure. "That was all about simplifying who we are as a relatively complex organisation to customers," he explained.

'Connect', as Somerville put it, is "all about the IP network carriage services, LAN, WAN, data centre connectivity, remote worker, SD-WAN - all critical parts of connectivity today." The Cloud division covers applications and data, underpinned by Somerville's own private cloud services and growing practices in major public cloud platforms. When it comes to creating a "modern workplace", they focus on user environments, devices and operational processes. Finally, Secure is about "wrapping security all around all of the other pillars", which the CEO believes is vital as security is now central to almost every aspect of technology provision.

Customers rely on Somerville to keep up with - and, ideally, ahead of - rapidly changing technology demands. "Somerville's been a managed service provider since 1997," the CEO reminded. "Over the years, we've continually developed a suite of solutions as tech and technologies have developed and come commercially available."

Today, their offerings cover a broad spectrum, from security posture reviews and gap analysis to endpoint protection, firewall, email security, continuous vulnerability scanning and SIEM as a service. And, as Somerville pointed out, "this list and our capabilities are continually being augmented as the industry changes."

Much of that change has been stark in the last two years, with the pandemic and digital transformation accelerating the need for innovation. Somerville reflected on how the company responded: "Through 2020, we made a number of significant investments in our core infrastructure. That was all about laying the platforms for now and moving into the future."

One of the major investments was a cutting-edge core network, leveraging Cisco's latest technology. "It's what we call our fifth generation of our national network and it's all about bringing high performance connectivity," he said. Now based on a 100/400 gig platform, the system offers improved visibility and automation for customers' increasingly complex networks.

Alongside network improvements, Somerville has invested in a multi-petabyte object storage platform to match "customers' growing data needs - to be able to store it, manipulate it and retain it, cost effectively and in a resilient platform." This storage will support the company's private and public cloud customers alike.

Compute, too, has evolved with the adoption of a composable compute platform. "That's really the next generation of workhorse compute and storage," Somerville said, suggesting that customers are now increasingly demanding portability between public and private clouds. Security has remained a constant theme, with Somerville migrating to newer, leading technologies and vendors.

Looking ahead, Somerville described how each 'pillar' is undergoing its own transformation. For the Connect team, the focus is on "delivering the Gen Five network … to continue to provide cost-effective, enterprise grade networks in a heavily commoditised market." While bandwidth may be a commodity, the CEO stressed, "performance, availability and security are what customers need."

The cloud team, meanwhile, is intent on deepening its expertise with public cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS. "That's the future and a growing part of the future," Somerville noted. "We've got a laser focus on growing our Azure and our AWS skills so that we can help a customer on the journey in their hybrid environment as they go forward."

Security, unsurprisingly, remains one of the company's top priorities. Somerville said, "Our laser focus in security right at the moment is probably visibility - it's all about having technologies and platforms in place so we have visibility and can see what's going on." This, he argued, is the only way to constantly know the security posture and protect against ever-changing threats.

In terms of infrastructure, the company boasts a network "spanning multiple commercial data centres stretching from Perth to Auckland... we can quickly and efficiently connect a new customer, a data centre, an application, a user - it really doesn't matter, but bring them quickly into the ecosystem," Somerville said. Their object storage platform, too, is "connectable from anywhere", enabling customers across the Australia and New Zealand region to access it as their needs evolve.

Somerville's technical capability is a great source of pride and, he argued, a key reason for the company's longevity. "We're a deeply technical organisation and we've got a strong technical team - strong technologies - and they've been the mainstay of the business for 38 years," he said.

Asked about the easiest way for enterprise end users to reach out to Somerville, the Managing Director was clear. "Give us a call - it's always the easiest way. We're very personal. Enquiries via the website, absolutely. Feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn or through the social media channels," he said, adding, "We're recognised as a personal and proactive business, so if you contact us I'm sure you'll get a speedy response."

For Somerville, the secret of the company's success is deceptively simple: "That's why we keep at the forefront," he concluded.