Our Austin hub: A spotlight on our U.S. expansion

At the beginning of February, we announced the opening of our new office in downtown Austin, a milestone for our U.S. operations and the overall growth of Hyve. As the team is settling into our new Austin hub, we spoke to Charlotte Webb, Marketing and Operations Director, and Stoney Reynolds, Head of Region for the U.S. for further insight into the day to day operations, and the long-term vision for the U.S.?

Can you share why U.S. expansion is a central part of the growth strategy for Hyve?

Charlotte: We started expanding internationally in 2017, when the team set up an office in California, inspired by our ‘American Dream’ of a Silicon Valley tech office. We have had significant success with U.S. customers who connected with our culture, personal service, and focus on best-in-class architecture, but our dream of settling in California did not come true. While we made inroads in the U.S. market, Los Angeles was exceptionally costly, with high tax and salary rates, and the talent pool made hiring the right people challenging. When covid hit in 2020, we couldn’t continue with our U.S. hub in the California market.?

We knew we needed to operate in the U.S. - the market provides so many opportunities, and managing U.S. business from the UK is not sustainable. We dedicated our time to analysing the country’s business landscape and nuances. Austin felt like the natural choice - as more and more businesses move away from California, Austin is emerging as a tech hub. The rapid growth in job opportunities, relatively low cost of living, and welcoming lifestyle of Austin has brought a huge talent pool, filled with the skills and culture we need to grow.

Stoney: It’s a huge market - the U.S. makes up the largest market for managed services globally - so it's imperative for us to operate in the market to be competitive. You really have to be ‘boots on the ground’ in the U.S. to build and keep that momentum and growth.

Having an office here in the heart of downtown Austin allows us to continue the growth from the California operations, while supporting U.S. customers with a dedicated sales force, marketing department and technical support team.

We are prioritising specific verticals where we can fill gaps in the U.S. market - logistics, aviation, fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce. Each of these verticals comes with its own specific demands - logistics and e-commerce for example will prioritise scalability and flexibility for fluctuating demand, fintech and healthcare will prioritise the highest security levels and compliance, aviation has high-compute needs requiring HPC servers.?

What makes Austin a natural fit for Hyve?

Stoney: Well, if you ask me, you'll get one answer and if you ask someone else, you’ll probably get a different answer. There’s a saying - ‘Keep Austin Weird’ - and Austin’s always had a unique vibe, especially back in the 80s and the 90s when I used to come here as a kid. It was a kind of another world from the Dallas area where I'm from.

Our UK headquarters is in Brighton, which we’ve described before as the ‘Silicon Valley of the UK’. With the boom in tech companies and startups moving here, Austin has overtaken Silicon Valley as the centre of the U.S tech scene. The two cities have a lot in common, and both fit seamlessly with the creative, forward-thinking culture of Hyve.

Austin is a very fun city with a lot to do; restaurants everywhere, bars everywhere. It's very diverse, very busy, very high energy - it is an absolutely natural fit for Hyve.?

Charlotte: The first time I visited Austin with some of our UK team, I was blown away. We completely fell in love with the city - the culture and way of life is worlds apart from what we experienced in California. Having come from Brighton, the similarities were clear. There’s a certain atmosphere where everyone genuinely has passion for what they do and for the place they live and work.?

Austin is a big city, but with a strong community feeling - you can go out and listen to live music at a local venue, and you’ll start conversations, and feel welcomed. In terms of the talent pool - almost everyone I spoke to, even chatting in a cafe or bar - worked in tech or had a connection with the scene. There couldn’t be a better place to find the fill the roles we need.

The Austin hub is already providing space for the U.S. team to grow. Can you elaborate on the hiring process for the new office and the type of talent you are looking to attract?

Charlotte: Our presence in the heart of downtown Austin is strategic. Texas is a huge tech hub - tech giants such as Tesla, Amazon, Google, SpaceX and Apple are choosing Austin for their offices and expansions. Having a physical presence in Austin gives us access to a fantastic local talent pool.?

We have had some employees already come to us from resellers and competition - the people working here understand the industry, and the competitive landscape. It’s important to have people on the team that really know what they’re doing and can deliver our extra-mile support.?

Now we are up and running in Austin, we’re pushing for rapid growth in the team. We’re hiring across departments - tech support, marketing and sales - utilising the wealth of talent in the area.

Stoney: The Austin hub gives us the opportunity to really showcase the investment that Hyve has made in the U.S. We've got a fantastic office here, it’s open air, with plenty of spaces to work, eating areas, and common areas. It's important to offer those perks, especially in a competitive employment market like Austin, when you're looking for fantastic talent that will fit the culture.

The Hyve culture is very high energy, and the team are all passionate about what they do. If you have a fantastic culture, you attract people that are passionate, and you're going to be successful.

When recruiting to the team, we are cultivating that culture where we have openness, trust,? and honesty. Not everybody does everything the same way, but we want to make sure that we have people on board that want to learn, and will give their ideas too. Having the right people in the right positions, and encouraging them to contribute, gives us the edge to set us apart in Austin.

How will Hyve continue delivering extra-mile support and offering great value for money while expanding within the US market?

Stoney: So that's a challenge, right? We want to keep our personalised service a priority, while growing our customer base at the same time. It's about culture and enablement, where we can hire the right people for the right job that are committed to putting our customers first, and giving them the environment to do so.

It's always a journey, we’ve never arrived - we always want to be looking for ways to improve our customers' experience. As we expand, we will keep an open dialogue with our customers, taking on their feedback and putting their needs at the centre of our strategy.

Our Management Services and personalised support also stands out from the hyperscalers in the market. Customers have a named Account Manager, and a number they can call to talk to us straight away - they are not just a ticket. We understand that we're supporting another company's business, and they're supporting their clients as well.?

Charlotte: Interestingly enough, while we think of price as a determinant in the decision-making process, we have found that customers are more and more telling us that customer service is the most important. The staff time, stress, and negative impact on your business from poor service can end up costing you more in the long run. We're concentrating on making sure that those customer service levels stay ahead of the industry.?

You also need to consider the longer-term costs. Often businesses choose to use a public cloud provider as the cost initially looks low. They don’t realise that once they are on board, there are often massive price hikes, high charges to scale up resources, and egress fees if they try to leave. Over the lifetime of the infrastructure, our private and enterprise cloud solutions provide genuine cost savings to customers

Customers are often looking to offload the Capital expenditure (CapEx) that can come with IT infrastructure, as this can bring tax advantages and improve their bottom line. When you move to a managed provider, you avoid large upfront CapEx costs, instead having predictable operational expenses (OpEx), which can greatly increase affordability.

What are your long-term goals for the company's presence in Austin and the broader American market?

Stoney: The share shift from our biggest competitors here in the region is paramount for me.?

We will always try to understand our customers' needs on the base level and take care of them with the best service that we can possibly offer, because that's our differentiator. You can buy servers and infrastructure anywhere, but the difference is the people inside Hyve. Long term we want to recruit and bring in people that have that same vision and perspective to deliver that difference to our customers.

By embracing what makes us stand out, we can grow as leaders in the market.?

If you want to find out more about how our U.S. team can support your business growth, get in touch with our cloud experts today.