A Dundee IT company that began life in a redundant jute mill has grown into a market leader with plans for further expansion and a 50% increase in revenues next year.
LogicNow, rebranded from its former title of GFI Max, has grown turnover by 50% year on year over the past four years, increasing its customer base to 10,300 and raising its workforce to 370 around the world.
A total of 100 software development, marketing, sales, finance and human resources personnel are employed at its Dundee headquarters in the Vision Building at Greenmarket.
That is where the company plans to bring in another 25 staff in the next 15 months.
Up to 15 jobs will be added to its operation in Edinburgh, where 50 people already work, as the company aims to raise its global workforce to 500.
Other targets are for its customer numbers to pass through the 12,000 mark, and to have more than 1.5 million devices around the world under management with LogicNow products within the next six months.
LogicNow has flourished in the competitive digital and online business market, where it provides cloud-based (internet-hosted) toolkit products to IT service companies to run and manage clients’ IT systems.
The rebranding took effect from October 1 and encompasses the four product lines of GFI Max: GFI MAX RemoteManagement, a systems monitoring and management platform; GFI MAX Mail, a cloud-based email security service; GFI MAX Backup; and GFI MAX Service Desk, a cloud-based service management platform.
General manager Alistair Forbes said: “We started as HoundDog Technology building software for use by IT service companies with a handful of people in an old jute mill in West Henderson’s Wynd.
“We’ve grown and evolved into a worldwide market leader in internet technology solutions employing hundreds of people with thousands of clients around the world.
“From an old jute mill we now work from an 18,000ft2 suite in one of Dundee’s most modern office blocks and are about to move into a 14,000ft2 premises in the heart of Edinburgh. Our story is in some ways a metaphor for Dundee’s reinvention and economic revival.”
Finance director Guy Mitchell said: “It is appropriate that out of the old industry that made Dundee’s name around the world has grown a new modern technology industry which has grown and is exporting around the world.
“We now have customers in over 100 countries and over the last 12 months we have invested in expanding the business in Latin America,” he said.
“We are continuing to invest in our product range, and in the coming 12 months we intend to expand further into targeted markets in Asia where we think our products can deliver value.”
Having started as a UK-focused business, British-derived activity is still growing but now accounts for only 23% of revenues.
The global profile is further illustrated by the workforce growth being extended to operations in the USA, Netherlands, Belarus and Australia as well as in Dundee and Edinburgh.
Turnover rose from £7.7m to £18.4m in the last three years, and a further rise is on the cards this year.
Mr Mitchell said: “It is our intention to grow our customer and product base revenues from an expected £30m in 2014, which was an increase of 60% on 2013, to over £50m in 2015.”