In conversation with Lorcan Cunningham, Savenet
Savenet is a prolific winner at the TechExcellence Awards, having received its third consecutive project of the year award in a row at 2024’s ceremony. TechCentral.ie caught up with founder and CTO Lorcan Cunningham to hear about its recent architect of the year win, and see what the future holds.
Tell us about your project of the year win in 2024
We built our whole cloud services business on VMware. In late 2023 Broadcom bought VMware, and in January we were notified that we had to move to its new partner programme or we would no longer be eligible to be a VMware cloud services provider. To move to the new programme we would have had to buy 3,500 CPU licences for our environment at a cost of about €1 million a year, up from about €50,000 a year.
The old programme was licensed based on active running virtual machines, while the new programme was based on licensing every physical CPU core regardless if it was in use or not. It wasn’t sustainable. Our support was ending around April, so we had to move all of our cloud services (more than 1,000 virtual machines) into Azure and everything had to be completely re-architected in that short time window. We were operating under the pressure of ensuring our survival as a business.
Do you feel like winning IT architect of the year is a follow-on to Savenet winning IT project of the year three times in a row?
I think there may have been a riot if we had won four in a row. I think it is a kind of natural progression, alright. The project itself was very strong and it was a really important project. It was an internal project that if we didn’t do it, it could have been the end of Savenet.
What new challenges are your customers facing, and how are Savenet creating solutions to help them meet these challenges?
Firstly, there’s the uncertain global environment we’re in at the moment where anything could happen, like the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. If you think about it, VMware once held about 75% of the virtualisation market, and it will essentially become a footnote, a product used only by very large companies. I expect most other companies will move away from VMware to alternatives like Nutanix, or public cloud like Azure, and we’ll see a significant decline in VMware’s presence and relevance in the broader market. That’s something you simply couldn’t have predicted even two years ago.
We also have the rise of AI and other disruptive technologies which are adding to the landscape of uncertainty and are requiring businesses to adapt quickly. With that rise in AI, we’re seeing a dramatic increase in ransomware and cyber security attacks. These attacks are more prevalent and sophisticated, and businesses are having to increase their spend on cyber security to ensure they’re prepared.
What does the future hold for Savenet? What are your growth plans?
We’re ambitious and growth-oriented. We are currently pursuing an aggressive growth strategy, aiming to replicate our recent 350% growth over the next five to six years. We are investing in AI tools to streamline operations and improve efficiency. We’re recruiting more staff, and maintaining our strong focus on security standards – ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials, which are our baseline and ensure consistency across our security offerings.
We want to be recognised as one of the top IT managed service providers in the country. I think it’s going to take us about five or six more years to get there, but I’m very confident that we’re going to get there.
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