UKFast Sets Sights on DC Expansion amid Financial Growth
Firm focused on bringing best data centres in UK to Manchester
Manchester hosting and cloud specialist UKFast is ploughing major investment into creating a data centre complex after posting a five-fold surge in annual profits from £720,000 to £3.5m.
Turnover in the year to the 31 December 2011 rose from £12.1m to £16m, and is on course to exceed £20m for 2012. Ebitda this year is set to double from £5m in 2011 to between £10m and £11m.
The 170-strong Manchester business, founded and run by award-winning entrepreneur Lawrence Jones, set a focus on data centre development, launching its first in August 2011. Jones will officially open a further three sites in December, taking the firm’s investment in Trafford Park to more than £14 million.
Jones said: “It’s a really exciting time for UKFast. Financially we’re performing really well and operationally we’re working on the new data centres 24 hours a day.
“Our investment and growth in this area will bring much-needed competition to the data centre market in Manchester. Our high standards, fair pricing structure and excellence of service will, I am sure, be welcomed by the business community.”
Jones recently revealed that he has been offered a £25m facility from two lenders which he said would be used to fund further expansion in data centres, if a deal is agreed.
The launch of the data centres gives UKFast much better control of one of its biggest costs – server space. And with listed company Telecity buying up a number of smaller providers such as UKGrid, price competition in the region has been reduced.
When completed, UKFast’s four data centres will have capacity of 5.5MVA and will place the firm as significant player in the colocation market as Manchester’s largest privately-owned data centre provider.
Jones said: “I want to put Manchester on the map for the best data centres in the UK. We’ve got cash to play with – our marketing budget for this year is more than our turnover was five years ago, so we are ready to compete.”
About UKFast
UKFast is one of Europe’s fastest-growing technical companies as ranked by Deloitte and the Sunday Times Tech Track. In the past year CEO Lawrence Jones has been named Ernst & Young North Technology Entrepreneur of the Year 2012, while his team has collected the Greater Manchester Award for Innovation. In addition to winning the Data Centre Solutions Awards Private Cloud of the Year, UKFast was named the 7th best medium-sized workplace in the UK and 31st in Europe by the Great Place to Work Institute.
Previous accolades include being named the ISPA UK’s Best Hosting Provider four years consecutively. UKFast has over 400,000 web domains on its network and over 4,000 clients across all industries. Clients include Virgin, Microsoft and UKTV. UKFast is a founding-member of the Cloud Industry Forum.
