Speaking to iTWire at the TechnologyOne Evolve conference for users and partners, Di Marco has a demeanour of self-assurance that makes it hard to dismiss his words as mere  bluster.

With 800 employees, about 1000 delegates to its latest event and a newly burgeoning business in the UK, there does indeed appear to be more than a glimmer of hope that TechOne may take that next step from mid-sized local tech company to multinational player.

In contrast to other substantial local IT companies, TechOne is very much product rather than services focussed, with a portfolio of 11 applications that span a large portion of the enterprise market. The focus on products is highlighted by the company's stated commitment to spend $27 million on R&D in the coming year and TechOne proudly differentiates itself from its rivals with its strategy of issuing free new releases every six months.

Aside from its impressive growth and financial track record, TechOne has another important factor that could help the company achieve global glory - a charismatic leader with a substantial stake in the company who knows how to deliver for stakeholders.

Di Marco owns about 20% of TechnologyOne and fellow foundation investor the Mactaggart family owns another 20%, leaving 60% of the company in the hands of public ownership, including institutional investors. According to Di Marco, this could theoretically make a hostile acquisition possible. However, it's not likely to happen if the company continues to achieve.

With annual revenues of $107 million in its recent fiscal year ended 30 September, representing 45% growth, TechOne has projected a more modest goal of of 15-20% for the coming global financially challenged year.

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"Part of that (lower growth) is because market conditions have had some impact but part of it is also just the cycle that businesses have generally," Di Marco told iTWire.

"We look back and see that we've grown 30-40% one year and then the next year we've grown 15-20% and the year after that we're back to 30-40%. The economic environment does have some impact to some extent but not as much potentially as a lot of other companies because the sectors we target are reasonably resilient such as federal, state and local governments and utilities."

Di Marco, a stalwart for keeping the ownership of TechOne in Australian hands, admits that the recent foreign takeover of fiercely Australian accounting software company MYOB took him by surprise.

"We want to stay Australian but as a public company after what happened to MYOB you start to realise that there are other shareholders involved," said Di Marco.

"The trick really I think is to continue to deliver the results and continue to keep the shareholders happy. If you do that, I think you're safe. the challenge for us is to continue to deliver the results and stay close to our shareholders and convince them of the value of staying involved with the company."

Part of that strategy to keep shareholders happy, says Di Marco, is to pay healthy dividends.

"We've always paid great dividends; we've always been a strong dividend paying company," he says.

"Analysts have told us that we're a very unusual company because we pay very good dividends but at the same time we grow very fast. Our return on equity is exceptionally high at around 45 (actually about 36 at time of writing).

"So because of that I think we've got our shareholders on side."

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With all this in mind, Di Marco believes that TechOne has a realistic shot at becoming Australia's first truly multinational products focussed IT software company.

"We are already have a growing presence in the UK now so the next stage for us is to become a multinational corporation with an operational presence overseas," says Di Marco.

The UK, however, has not proven by any means to be a cake-walk for TechOne but rather a slow two year ramp up of activities. However, Di Marco is adamant that the investment has been worth it.

"Initial results are great in the UK and we've got some big deals over there, including big hospitals, big universities, and we've just broken into the council market so we see lots of growth in the UK," says Di Marco.

"We are the only enterprise vendor in the world that ships major new release functionality every six months. Our competitors, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP ship a new release every two or three years.

"Their customers are typically upgraded four to eight years whereas our customers can upgrade every six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years - they choose. We have such a vastly superior business model to our competitors and that's really the value we have that gives us a unique position in the market place. We're working real-time with our customers whereas our competitors are working with an archaic dinosaur model."

According to Di Marco, the TechOne strategy has now reached the stage where it is successfully hitting its large multinational rivals where it hurts. In fact, he sees SAP and Oracle sites in particular as a huge market for the Australian company.

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"We're seeing now that companies are replacing Oracle, SAP and Microsoft products with ours," Di Marco says.

"We'll be talking more about this soon but this is happening across the board and we see this as a trend for us. One of our big growth areas over the next three years will be replacing SAP and Oracle sites.

"There is this huge dissatisfaction with their products. People really are very unhappy with SAP and Oracle products."

Aside from retail and manufacturing, where TechOne does not intend to play, Di Marco sees all enterprise sectors as viable targets to unseat the monolithic enterprise rivals.

"In the markets we target, people see us as a very strong alternative and they're starting to move to that alternative," he says.

"It is interesting to see that happening because we've not expected that. We expected that our growth would come from people that were replacing products from smaller companies but we're seeing that even the big multinational products are starting to be replaced with our products."

According to Di Marco, TechOne has now started to replace SAP as the number one supplier to Federal Government.

"We've now got about 40 or 50 agencies and it used to be us and SAP and it's now turning to be us number one and SAP number two."

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State governments, however, have been problematical for TechOne because of their closed long term contracts with large multinational suppliers.

"We tell them that to have a long term contract with one supplier is crazy - many of them go back 15 years before we were a viable alternative," says Di Marco.

"They should have what the Federal Government has - a panel with competition and let the best product win. If they opened it up and had a competitive environment we would win substantial amount of business from all the state departments because there are so many departments that we talk to that have had a gut full of Oracle and SAP. The costs are huge and what they give you is not that great."

So what's the cost differential between TechOne and its multinational rivals? Enormous, according to Di Marco.

"Over seven years, we're talking hundreds of percent difference. Not from a license fee point of view but the running cost of the environments. Our upgrades are free. If you buy a Technology One product, you pay an annual license and you get upgrades for free. With Oracle and SAP, every five years they hit you with a huge upgrade fee. And then when you get the upgrade, you've got the implementation costs to reimplement the system - they're huge.

"So what people are saying is that they can either upgrade their Oracle or SAP system or for the same price they can put in Technology One and never again have to do that because we give them new releases every six months with new features and new functions and they just work."

Di Marco predicts that the chickens will come home to roost for Peoplebank, J D Edwards and Siebel acquirer Oracle in particular when it releases its new generation product.

"Customers don't like to be taken advantage of; they've had a gut full. People are saying that they pay all this annual license fee and then when there's a new generation product they want us to re-license and pay the implementation costs to re-implement. When Oracle ships Fusion it's going to be a bloodbath out there. The customers are just going to walk."

While TechOne has set its sights on taking on SAP and Oracle, Di Marco admits that the company has geographical and market segment limitations in the scope of the business it intends to capture.

"What we have done is picked verticals and they are where we have got our products working really well," he says.

"Local, state and federal government, education, asset intensive industries such as water utilities is a big market for us and that will move into other utilities, not for profits are the major markets for us, financial services is also a new market for us. We're not into retail, distribution and manufacturing. Our clients are government or services related."

On the overseas expansion front, TechOne has likewise limited its aspirations to English speaking markets, starting with the UK, and later expanding to places like Canada and finally the US.

"The UK should be bigger than Australia for us over the next five to ten years. In the next five or six years we'll be a true global company. Our product suite today is among the broadest in the world."

Perhaps a sobering thought, however, is that at the time of writing, as good as its performance has been, Technology One has an ASX market cap of just A$188 million (US$121 million). For companies like Oracle, which paid US$10.3 billion cash four years ago to take  Peoplesoft off the market, or Microsoft, which last year was prepared to blow US$40 billion on a failed bid for Yahoo, picking off a profitable company like TechOne at today's prices would barely involve raiding their petty cash reserves.

If TechOne continues on its current success path, the question on the lips of many pundits going forward is likely to be when the hostile take-over bid is going to come. The problem for TechOne stalwarts like Di Marco is that if Australian IT history is any guide the company is likely to become a victim of its own success - especially if it continually takes business off its likely acquirers.

Di Marco and all supporters of home grown Australian IT companies no doubt hope that day never comes.