UKFast lives up to its name as revenues leap
SURGING demand for cloud computing has led to another year of strong growth at data hosting firm UKFast.
Living up to its name, in the year ending December 2014, the Manchester cloud and colocation provider saw revenues jump 24%, meaning that the firm has more than trebled its revenue in the past five years.
The privately-owned company which has more than 500,000 web domains on its network and some 5,000 clients including RNLI, British Cycling and the English National Opera, said its eCloud hosting products and a focus on enterprise technology had driven recent growth.
Founder and chief executive Lawrence Jones said: “Last year was a fantastic year. We’ve grown from £23.4m to £28.9m turnover, that’s almost 24% growth, and our normalised EBITDA is in excess of £15m. It’s an extraordinary result for us.
“Whilst we’ve managed to expand, we’ve been careful about where we’ve concentrated our efforts. The big focus for 2015 is to build on the momentum and make it a special year for everyone involved with UKFast.
“We’ve had distractions in the last few years with the development of four new data centres and last year’s big head office move. There was a sizeable office refurbishment going on around us too throughout this growth period, so I am tremendously proud of the team for staying focused.”
Jones also attributed the firm’s success to a focus on enterprise technology, stating: “One of the biggest areas of our growth has been our focus on enterprise clients who want complex and hi-tech, bespoke solutions alongside an extraordinary level of service. Offering tin is just not enough. UKFast is about service, whether you are deploying a tiny cloud or the most complicated of cloud solutions that we host across multiple buildings. You have to be available to speak directly with the clients every minute of every day.”
