08 August 2017

UKFast co-founder Gail Jones will spearhead the company's growth initiatives.

Cloud and colocation firm UKFast has announced the 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’s Enterprise division, whilst UKFast co-founder Gail Jones takes on the role of MD to facilitate the business’ next stage of growth.

CEO Lawrence Jones says: “Sir Richard Branson once explained to me how he divided his companies in two when they reached 100 strong.

"It was Richard who also helped me choose Jonathan as MD – I was too close to see who should be my successor.”

According to Jones, UKFast continues to grow in spite of pressure from AWS and Microsoft Azure. He says that since Bowers was appointed in 2012, the company has expanded from 100 to 400 employees, more than doubled its turnover, and quadrupled profits.

The company’s Enterprise division is said to have grown rapidly and already accounts for 43 per cent of its overall turnover from just four per cent of the customer base.

Bowers says: “To continue this momentum, we’re taking the exciting step of splitting into two parts, to ensure that the clients of both areas get the care and attention they require.”

Manchester-based UKFast was founded in 1999 by husband and wife team Lawrence and Gail Jones. 

Earlier this year, it announced a £2.3 million upgrade to its data centre complex as part of its ambition to usurp London and make Manchester the UK’s number one tech city (see News, p1, Jan 2017 issue). 

And in May, the company gained approval to supply 21 separate cloud offerings, across hosting, software and support, through the latest iteration of the government’s G-Cloud framework.

Gail Jones says: “Across all our companies we’ve grown to more than the £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.”

This is not the first time UKFast has divided itself.

Last November it separated areas of its operation into individual registered businesses. They include building and office refurbishment firm UKFast Space, technology magazine BusinessCloud, and cyber security and ethical hacking specialists Secarma.

UKFast said the aim was to create more opportunities for top talent to develop leadership skills, thereby increasing staff retention.