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Hosting provider UKFast has strengthened
its cloud offering for Government
organisations with the acquisition of
cloud and cybersecurity service provider
Secure Information Assurance (S-IA).
Established in 2003, S-IA exclusively
provides secure cloud hosting and
cybersecurity services to UK government
organisations including the UK Ministry of
Defence and the Cabinet Office.
The acquisition gives UKFast access
to IL3 and IL4/Official-Sensitive
accreditations, as well as the UK’s highest
security rated hosting, known as List-X.
S-IA CEO Martin Knapp is to head up
UKFast’s G-Cloud team, targeting a share
of the £1.69bn currently spent through the
government procurement framework.
Commenting on the acquisition, UKFast
founder and CEO Lawrence Jones MBE
said: “Acquiring S-IA is a strategic move, not
only because of its high-profile government
clients, but also because of its security
product set. We’re bolting on a new level
of expertise and technical capability to
UKFast’s existing product range. Combined
with our exclusively UK-based data centres
and best of British service, it’s an offering
that other large providers dealing with the
public sector simply can’t match.”
Catherine Houghton, UKFast director
of mergers and acquisitions, added: “This
is an exciting step change for the UKFast
group, allowing us to provide a full range of
hosting services at the higher IL3/Official-
Sensitive standard. With an estimated
30% of all cloud spend coming from the
public sector, this opens up a massive
market opportunity for us and is an area
we expect to see rapid growth in.”
UKFast is one of the largest
independently owned hosting providers
in the UK, with over 300 staff, offices in
Manchester, London and Glasgow and four
fully owned, custom-built data centres. It
provides dedicated servers, cloud services
and colocation to government, public
sector and commercial organisations
and is the current CRN Cloud Provider of
the Year. A cybersecurity arm, Secarma,
specialises in ethical hacking and
penetration testing.
Last year, revenues from UKFast’s
eCloud range of cloud services rose by
38% to £13.79m. Just under one third
(32.5%) of the company’s overall revenue
now comes from cloud services. Almost
two thirds (62%) of this increase was
generated by existing customers extending
their services.
to address a growing information
management requirement.
“Businesses are dealing with an
explosion of data, which is complicated by
the mix of paper and digital – according
to InfoTrends, more than 58% of external
inputs companies receive is still in paper
format. Organisations should be getting
smarter about data, taking steps to adapt
their business models and processes to
combine both hard copy and digital files,
to ensure that information is no longer
an under-utilised asset. This presents an
opportunity for the channel to get stickier
with customers, by opening up a new
conversation that encourages them to look
closer at their document management
and archive processes and to propose a
solution that will help them to use data
to drive business efficiency, growth and
profitability,” she said.
Growth areas
Kodak Alaris has identified a number
of traditionally paper-intensive sectors,
including financial services, legal and
healthcare, as huge growth areas for
the channel. Digital transformation, for
example, is central to the Government’s
plans for transforming the NHS as it works
towards achieving a paper-free health and
care system by 2020.
Odile argues that the AIIM report
Paper-
Free in 2016, Are we there yet?
confirms
the significant opportunity that the move
toward digital transformation and paper-
less working presents. “Twenty-five per cent
of the businesses polled indicated that
they run a totally paper-free environment,
which suggests that the majority of firms
are still ripe to target,” she said.
In the same report, 42% of respondents
cited higher productivity as one of the
biggest benefits of removing paper; two-
thirds said that the demand for paperless
processes is on the rise.
For Odile, another stand-out finding is
the fact that 39% of businesses surveyed
cited a lack of understanding and
awareness when it comes to paper-free
options. “Herein lies a fantastic opportunity
for the channel to increase their customers’
understanding of digital transformation and
talk to them about the better, faster and
more cost-efficient technological options
that are available to them,” she said.
Kodak Alaris officially launched the
new programme in the EMEA region on
February 1 during its Partner Summit in
Lisbon. Other regions will launch later
in the year. For more information on the
Kodak Alaris partner programme please
visit
/
b2b/partner-programs
.
Twenty-five per
cent of the
businesses
polled indicated
that they
run a totally
paper-free
environment,
which suggests
that the majority
of firms are still
ripe to target
UKFast strengthens cloud offering
...continued
Northern power house
UKFast has made a £2.3 million investment in its Manchester data centre, including
a security upgrade to its dedicated colocation space and the construction of a high
security, high density, high resilience compound within the existing facility.
The new extra-secure facility is equivalent to IL4 security standard and designed
in line with List-X standards, primarily to meet the heightened regulation needs of
government, financial services, international telecoms and utilities clients.
The addition of a DC Support Hub building provides an additional layer of physical
security and a security network operations centre that can also be used by colocation
clients to accommodate technical staff while they carry out maintenance work at night.
The investment in UKFast’s data centres follows an earlier property deal in October,
which is set to double the footprint of the firm’s HQ.
