INTERVIEW Tom O’Hagan - Virtual 1
“We have just launched our SD-WAN product in April which is a big opportunity.”
Ready for the recovery
Tom O’Hagan, CEO of Virtual1
In this interview Tom O’Hagan, CEO of Virtual 1 spoke to Comms Business about how his company is handling
the lockdown situation and why he is already getting ready for the recovery
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): How has V1 handled
the lockdown?
Tom O’Hagan (TOH): We are
an ISO 22301 business so we
had all our remote working
in place. Every quarter we
had a department working at
home. We did a DR (Disaster
Recovery) test for the whole
business on a Monday and then
on Wednesday, this was before
the lockdown was announced,
we put everyone at home
anyway. We just felt it was the
right thing to do watching the
COVID-19 situation escalate.
In November last year the
power into the building went
out on our oor also. We had
to put half the team downstairs
and they worked in various
cafes, others worked in transit
on the way home! Not one of
our customers noticed.
Right now we are doing
Teams catch ups and calls
frequently, company updates,
virtual coee shops, so we are
trying to keep the culture in
place. I do think you have to
have a bit of fun where you
can. I have been randomly
calling people at Virtual1 just
for a chat!
Obviously the Openreach
situation is impacting all
operators. e decision to
not install any circuits for
anything non-critical has
eectively stopped everything
from t and testing up until
the 1st June. at has had a
big impact, although we are
still open for business and can
accept orders we can only take
them right up to the stage of
t and test. It’s a big call but
peoples health and safety has
to come above all else.
e other challenging bit for
lots of organisations, including
us, is it’s the beginning of
our nancial year and we
are just about to sign o on
the budget! How do you
budget for COVID-19? At the
moment we are looking at it
month by month, but we may
go to week by week as things
unfold.
CBM: How do you think the
Channel will react to the
changes going on?
TOH: e Channel is quite
resilient, a lot of it is recurring
revenue. e Channel went
through this transition a few
years ago where they moved
away from these one-o sales
and is now recurring revenues.
ey should be far more
resilient than ten years ago.
Another big impact from
this is when we get back to
normality, whenever that is
and whatever that looks like,
the organisations that were not
embracing home working are
now going to have to embrace
it because that will be part
of the new normal. It proves
that organisations can do it
and people can be trusted. I
know of many organisations
that haven’t previously done
it because they haven’t been
trusting of their people.
e challenge is the
longer this goes on the more
companies will go under. is
will make the recovery slower.
I am condent it will all come
back quickly though. You have
to look at what is happening
elsewhere in the world as that
is a good indication. If you
look at China things are slowly
getting back to normal now.
CBM: You had some launches
planned, have they gone
ahead?
TOH: Yes! We have just
launched our SD-WAN
product in April which is a
big opportunity. While a lot
of these big projects will be
going on hold our focus is on
helping our customers operate
during this period. SD-WAN
is a prime example. With all of
the circuits we have installed,
where they have Juniper
hardware in the ground we can
turn that into an SD-WAN
device and turn on the security
applications for them, it is a
great value-add.
We have our new user portal
interface going live this month
also. We are still delivering for
the market because business
is going to come back and we
want to be ready for that.
20 | Comms Business Magazine | May 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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