Thomas Peer gears up for 'data-centric' era

Andreas Nikolakopoulos and Udara Dharmadasa (TPS)

Victoria-based managed services provider Thomas Peer Solutions (TPS) has been undergoing a transformation as it gears up to tackle opportunities in the cloud and data-centric era. 

“We’ve been through a transformation in the business and we’re moving into a modern, data-centric era,” CEO Udara Dharmadasa explained. 

“We want to actually position ourselves as a modern solutions integrator, who's ready for the future challenges in the data era.”

This transition includes aligning its managed services with whole infrastructure offerings such as security and data centre offerings.

In July, TPS underwent a change in directorship, which saw Dharmadasa become CEO, while Andreas Nikolakopoulos became sales director following Mike Reed’s departure. 

TPS also recently nabbed a star recruit in the form of Sam De Silva as its new CTO. De Silva previously worked for Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex and Southern Cross Computer Systems. He also worked for E-W Information Systems and IBM in Sri Lanka. 

“With Mike departing, I believe the business has taken a new kind of new image because now our team is different,” he said. 

“We are no longer focused on only the services side and with that transition, the business also has been transformed more into the data and security-centric era.”

One of Dharmadasa’s priorities is to also delve into more cloud services. 

“Cloud is going to be our next big thing. We haven't expanded into the cloud as much as we would have liked, but now we are going to emphasise it and launch more into cloud-centric offerings,” he said. 

When TPS was shaping up 10 years ago, the company initially started out as a VMware professional services specialist. 

About five years ago, Dharmadasa said it became a full solutions integrator bringing on-board brands such as Dell, Veeam and Trend Micro, expanding into New Zealand and launching a managed services operation in Sri Lanka. 

“The future is all about security and aligning that with your data centre products and managed services offerings,” he said. 

“That's kind of what inspired us and we thought let's take this opportunity as a catalyst and basically position ourselves for the next five years.

“We want to keep the core operation lean and mean, especially with the current challenges around employment.”

TPS isn’t alone in the quest for skills but this has opened up avenues in partnering with other solution providers to use top resources for customer projects. 

“We want to focus more on managed services and grow that to around 60 per cent of the business that includes our backup as a service, our data protection side and infrastructure as a service,” he said.