INTERVIEW Lawrence Jones - UKFast
“When your business is fundamentally underpinned by innovation you’ve got to expand that area and put
significant resource into that.” Lawrence Jones, CEO & Founder, UKFast
UKFast Gets off to a
Quick Start in 2019
COMMS BUSINESS MAGAZINE (CBM):
CLEARLY YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN
IPO IN THE NEAR FUTURE; WHAT KEY
OBJECTIVES DO YOU ANTICIPATE
ACHIEVING BEFORE YOU ARE READY
FOR THAT STEP?
LAWRENCE JONES (LJ): It’s no
secret that we are keen to IPO
UKFast at some point. We went
to the market and had some very
positive conversations, but the
sentiment was that pre-Brexit,
and even after March 2019, the
analysts were anticipating quite
a dicult time for businesses on
the stock exchange.
At the same time a number
of organisations, including
Inexion, threw their hats into
the ring.
We looked at Inexion’s track
record and they are the highest
performing private equity house
of their size in our sector. ey
also had a brilliant record of
oating businesses, like On
the Beach in Manchester and
various others.
When we met with Inexion
there was a clear synergy and we
gelled with their management
team. It was a very easy decision.
Life is about timing. We’ll
oat UKFast when the market
is right and the business is in the
right position. We’re likely to get
to that position more quickly
with shareholders like Inexion
on board.
CBM: NOTHING EVER SEEMS TO STAND
STILL FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME AT
UKFAST AND YOU ARE PARTICULARLY
PROUD OF YOUR STAFF. COULD
YOU SINGLE OUT ANY TEAM
ACHIEVEMENT(S) HERE IN RECENT
TIMES THAT STAND OUT FOR YOU?
LJ: I’m especially proud of
the team run by (MD and
co-founder) Gail Jones. Gail
Manchester based communications provider UKFast has rapidly grown to become a
northern powerhouse within the sector and Ian Hunter talks to their CEO and Founder
Lawrence Jones about some of the many recent developments at the firm
oversees the R&D and DevOps
capability, which is expanding
and delivering more API
control for our customers to
provide instant access and
instant capability. ey’re also
working on new products and
features that enable our clients
to do things their competitors
can’t do.
When your business is
fundamentally underpinned by
innovation you’ve got to expand
that area and put signicant
resource into that. We’re just
beginning to see the fruits of
our investment in R&D.
e commercial nance
team, which is one of the
newest teams within UKFast,
is really coming into its own
and shedding new light on
the nuisances and the exciting
opportunities within our
business, helping us make even
more informed decisions.
CBM: TOWARDS THE END OF 2018
UKFAST ANNOUNCED THE NEW DATA
CENTRE, MANOC 9, SPECIFICALLY
TARGETING THE PUBLIC SECTOR.
WHY THIS SECTOR AND HOW ARE
YOU MANAGING TO ACHIEVE SUCH
SUCCESS IN A MARKET WITH
HIGHLY CONSTRAINED BUDGET?
LJ: It makes sense to encourage
British government to use
British cloud, hosted in the UK.
Acquiring Secure-IA gave
us a key into the public sector
and a deep understanding of
doing business there, which is
very dierent from the sectors
we dealt with before. We now
have the technology and the
capability to make a massive
dierence to the public sector.
In terms of saving the public
sector money, look at our
entrance to Health and Social
Care Network (HSCN) for
example. We’re providing cloud,
connected directly to the new
network for people to consume.
at saves organisations so
much money in terms of setup
costs because they bypass the
need to connect themselves
physically to HSCN. Our
investment in the infrastructure
and connectivity, shared across
the hosted services that has
enabled us to be successful and
help our customers reduce their
costs.
CBM: WHAT DO YOU PUT DOWN THE
FAST START AND INITIAL SUCCESS
OF YOUR CLEARCLOUD DOWN TO?
LJ: Businesses use dierent
services for dierent needs and
they don’t want to put all their
eggs in one basket.
We are able to support our
brilliant customer base full
of clients who are interested
in a multi-cloud strategy,
using some of our eCloud
and some services from Azure
or AWS. When you’ve got a
great technical oering that’s
underpinned with world-class
service available 24 hours a day,
you have a great combination
that people are interested in
accessing.
Lawrence Jones, CEO at UKFast
52 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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