IT business is booming for some

Three UK IT companies this morning announced booming results in the fields of mobile communication, software and logistics.

Business process management software specialist Staffware boosted licence sales of its flagship iProcess Engine by 128 per cent to £16.4m, with a 10 per cent rise in the value of an average order to £103,000.

Maintenance-support revenue jumped 41 per cent to £12.8m, which is a strong indicator of the continued loyalty of its customers, according to John O'Connell, chairman and CEO.

Annual turnover was up 9 per cent to £42.7m, with profit after tax up 38 per cent to £2.2m. The company pulled in 9 major (more than £500,000) deals with top companies in three continents.

At PC distributor and installer Computacentre, chairman Ron Sandler saw the beginning of recovery after years of downturn. Group revenues were up 29 per cent to £2.5bn with pre-tax profits up 18 per cent to £65.2m.

But Computacentre revenues were hit by falling hardware prices of up to 25 per cent. Only its German and Austrian acquisitions stopped it from showing a revenue fall. Computacentre France 'performed poorly in a difficult market' but its recovery was on schedule.

Sandler remains optimistic as the company is seeing an increasing number of XP rollouts. Its UK managed-services revenue increased by 10 per cent.

For iTouch, the mobile services provider, 2003 has been a year of transformation according to CEO Wayne Pitout. Chairman Ivan Fallon said the Movilisto acquisition in Spain in June has transformed the company and it has successfully launched the Movilisto direct channel model into the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Morocco.

iTouch's unaudited turnover for 2003 jumped 79 per cent to £60.3m, with an 88 per cent increase in Q4 over Q3. The company moved into an EBITDA profit of £100,000 after last year's loss of £8.8m.