Ambitious growth plans at cloud and colocation firm UKFast see the firm today announcing the聽appointment of two managing directors.
The move sees the business formally split into two arms with current MD Jonathan Bowers making a lateral move to head up the firm鈥檚 fast-growing Enterprise division, whilst co-founder Gail Jones takes on the role of managing director to facilitate the business鈥檚 next stage of growth.
CEO Lawrence Jones said: 聽鈥淪ir Richard Branson once explained to me how he divided his companies in two when they reached 100 strong.
鈥淚t was Richard too who helped me choose Jonathan as MD. I was too close to see who should be my successor.
鈥淪ince Jonathan’s appointment in 2012 we have grown from 100 to 400 teammates, more than doubled turnover and quadrupled profits.聽It was obvious that it was time to reapply the formula.”
UKFast Enterprise has grown rapidly and already accounts for 43 per cent of UKFast鈥檚 turnover from just four per cent of the customer base.
UKFast Enterprise MD Jonathan Bowers said: 鈥淚n the past five years we have seen the business go from strength to strength. To continue this momentum, we鈥檙e taking the exciting step of splitting into two parts, to ensure that the clients of both areas get the care and attention they require.鈥�
Jones added: 鈥淔or the last six months we have been recruiting for an MD for Enterprise and we鈥檝e seen over 200 candidates, none of whom I felt were as well placed as Jonathan to take Enterprise division forward.
鈥淗e knows our customers incredibly well and understands our culture better than anyone.
鈥淯KFast continues to grow in spite of pressure from AWS and Azure, and with the enterprise side of the business responsible for 43 per cent, I realised the perfect scenario would be for Jonathan to take Enterprise and Gail to take the role of managing director of UKFast.鈥�
Gail Jones聽said: 鈥淚 am very excited to taking on the managing director role working closely with both Lawrence and Jonathan to continue to provide the greatest level of service in the industry.
鈥淎cross all our companies we鈥檝e grown to more than the 拢50 million turnover mark and I am excited to take on one of those brands to ensure our customers get exactly what they need, whilst pushing the business to the next level.鈥�
Lawrence Jones added: 鈥淭here is no one in the business that knows UKFast better than Gail. She founded the business with me in 1999 and has been with me every single day since.
鈥淪he has all the traits that I value in a leader; she is patient, incredibly smart and she鈥檚 a great listener.
鈥淚 know that with Gail alongside Jonathan at the helm the two of them will make a formidable team.鈥�
Manchester-based聽聽UKFast is seeing extraordinary growth in cloud sales in recent years and posted turnover of 拢40 million in 2016-17 with EBITDA of 拢17.6m 鈥� up 6 per cent on the previous year.