With contributions from Jon Topper (Founder) and Kyle Probert (Head of Growth)
Six months ago, The Scale Factory became part of the Ten10 group. Since then, I’ve lost count of how many people have asked me the same question: “How’s it going?”
The honest answer? It’s been fascinating, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately positive. But probably not in the ways you might expect.
The Art of Doing Nothing (Which Takes Everything)
Here’s something I genuinely underestimated: the sheer amount of work required to change absolutely nothing. Our day-to-day work hasn’t changed one bit. We’re still solving the same cloud architecture challenges, still helping SaaS businesses scale efficiently, still having the same conversations about cost optimisation and security. Same problems, same solutions, same approach.
But behind the scenes? Consolidating back-office processes and systems has been like rebuilding the foundations of a house whilst everyone’s still living in it. Payroll systems, accounting processes, CRM integrations, reporting structures - none of it visible to clients, all of it essential, and every single piece requiring careful coordination to ensure nothing breaks.
I genuinely thought this would be straightforward. How naive that seems now. The complexity of maintaining business as usual whilst fundamentally changing how everything operates behind the scenes has been both a masterclass in project management and occasionally quite frustrating. But that’s the reality of doing acquisitions properly, the boring stuff that nobody sees is often the hardest part.
The irony isn’t lost on me. I spent years architecting cloud migrations for clients, understanding the complexity of seamless transitions. Yet somehow I still underestimated the effort required for our own internal “migration” to the Ten10 infrastructure.
Why Ten10 Made Sense
What drew us to Ten10 wasn’t just their size, though being roughly 10 times larger certainly opens doors. It was their expertise in solving the tech talent challenge that every growing business faces, and their focus on quality assurance, test automation, and quality engineering. Their Tech Academy trains brilliant engineers, and their consultancy knows how to make software actually work properly through smart testing and automation.
The power of combining forces is immediately obvious. We now have a much broader set of services to better serve our customers. When we migrate a system to the cloud, our colleagues in the quality team can perform load testing and QA on what we’ve built. They might even go easy on us, though to be honest, we’d rather they didn’t, because we want to know if we’ve missed something.
The Academy angle adds so much more than just expanded services. These smart, ambitious people can form part of our business whilst also working directly with our customers. Combined, we can give opportunities to more people whilst delivering an even broader range of expertise to the businesses we serve.
As our Founder, Jon Topper, puts it: “It’s always been an ambition of ours to invest in early career talent but in a bootstrapped business such as we were, time and resources are often too constrained to make those sorts of bets. With the Ten10 Academy, we have access to a pool of enthusiastic people, from a range of backgrounds, who’ve been trained in the fundamentals of DevOps and are keen to develop their career in cloud technology with us."
Our Superpowers Aren’t Going Anywhere
Let me be absolutely clear: The Scale Factory brand isn’t disappearing. Our team isn’t changing. Our fundamental approach to solving problems remains the same. If you’ve worked with us before, you’ll recognise exactly the same people doing exactly the same quality of work.
Our particular strength has always been working with SaaS businesses, understanding the unique challenges of multi-tenant architectures, helping with the transition from startup to scale-up infrastructure, and solving the complex problems that arise when you’re growing fast. That’s not going anywhere. If anything, being part of a larger group means we can invest more heavily in developing that expertise whilst bringing those hard won lessons to Ten10’s broader customer base. The scalability, security, and architectural challenges we’ve mastered in the SaaS world are valuable across industries.
Our Head of Growth Kyle Probert, who worked at Ten10 before joining The Scale Factory’s sales team, has seen both sides of this partnership: “The acquisition lets us take our cloud expertise from the SaaS world and apply it to other industries. We’re strengthening our SaaS position whilst expanding into new sectors.”
The Freedom to Focus
Perhaps the biggest change for me personally has been focus. As a leader in a small consultancy, I wore countless hats - technical architect, business development, direct sales, business intelligence, you name it. Someone once described it perfectly to me: as a leader in a small business, you have to be ready to solve anything, even if that means unblocking the toilet. They were right … although I didn’t quite do that. But whenever something needed sorting, no matter what it was, I’d likely get pulled in. The variety was engaging, but it also meant I was constantly context switching between strategic thinking and getting stuck into the details.
Now I can focus on what matters most: our clients and what we deliver for them. I have more time to think about technical strategy, more bandwidth to invest in our team’s development, and more opportunity to engage with the complex architectural challenges that originally drew me to this field.
Bigger Ambitions, Deeper Impact
Being part of Ten10 means we can now pursue ambitions that were previously just wishful thinking. We’re expanding our support services and adding genuine value to AWS reselling - not just another margin focused partnership (there’s plenty of that in the market already), but real advisory services that help clients optimise their AWS investments.
We’re also working towards gaining additional AWS competencies that properly reflect our team’s capabilities. AWS remains our biggest partner by far, and anyone who’s worked with us knows the depth of our architects’ and engineers’ expertise across the platform. Formal recognition of that expertise opens doors to larger opportunities and more complex challenges, whilst reinforcing our position as AWS specialists who truly understand the platform.
Most excitingly, we’re building new practice areas that complement our existing strengths. For example, take security and compliance: capabilities that have always been strong because they have to be when you’re architecting systems for regulated SaaS businesses. Now we can invest properly in developing this as a distinct service offering.
We’re reinforcing our AI capabilities as another key area. We’re already combining AI with our SaaS expertise in fascinating ways. These operate as independent practices whilst coming together to deliver real value. Take combining AI capabilities with security expertise: whether for SaaS businesses or traditional enterprises, the potential is compelling, and the client demand is already there.
Jon says “I’ve always been confident that, at The Scale Factory, we’ve built a team with world class AWS expertise, but without external investment it’s been difficult to take this to as wide a market as we’d have liked. The Ten10 acquisition provides us with the resources we need to really take the business to the next level. It’s an exciting time!”
The Honest Truth
Six months in, here’s what I’ve learned: acquisitions are simultaneously exactly what you expect and nothing like you expect. The admin is more complex than you imagine. Cultural integration takes longer than you think. But the opportunities are also bigger than you dare hope for.
Change brings questions for everyone, and that’s been part of our journey too. There have been bumps along the way, but what’s struck me most is how the team has navigated this transition whilst keeping focus on what we do best. Thanks to everyone who’s made this work.
We’re still The Scale Factory. We’re still solving the same problems for the same types of businesses. But now we have the backing, resources, and complementary expertise to solve them at a scale and scope that was previously beyond our reach.
The best part? We’re just getting started.
This blog is written exclusively by The Scale Factory team. We do not accept external contributions.
