UKFast injects £3.5m into channel

CEO Lawrence Jones pledges to spend even more than that if plans to build out indirect business go well

Web hosting firm UKFast is injecting £3.5m into the channel as it builds out its indirect route to market.

Speaking to CRN, UKFast chief executive Lawrence Jones said he is ready to spend big on developing a partner base under the guidance of commercial director Lee Hull, who recently joined from Virgin Media Business.

"We've got a £3.5m budget and Lee has been given a go-expand remit," Jones said.

"A lot of my competitors have expanded because they have resellers in the channel selling their products, and it made sense for me to develop that arm of the business. We're prepared to put even more in if we get the right results early on."

Jones (pictured) said UKFast has a number of cloud offerings for the channel, including eCloud, which is built on Dell, 3PAR, VMware and Cisco hardware and comes in public, private and hybrid flavours. Jones singled out open source alternative eCloud Flex, which it developed primarily for universities, and eCloud Vault, a "Dropbox/S3-style" storage offering, as among its other key offerings.

"We're just a good one-stop shop. We also do colocation and can even build a datacentre if that's what you want," Jones said.

Reseller partners currently account for seven per cent of UKFast's revenues, which are tracking at a run rate of £34.5m, but Jones said the goal is to grow this "enormously" by stepping up its efforts in areas such as training and joint marketing. The firm is also adding dedicated channel staff, having only this week poached former ANS head Sophie Cornock as channel marketing manager.

Jones singled out UKFast's net promoter score, which he said is around 75 or 76, as a key reason why resellers may want to jump ship from rivals and partner with UKFast for cloud.

"You find me anyone in our space with an NPS as good as ours," Jones exhorted.

"We are the largest British, privately owned hosting company, so obviously we are doing something right. We are very good at nurturing clients so we make the perfect partner for anyone looking to sell any type of cloud technology to their customers."

Hull – one of five strategic hires for UKFast this year – is a "big hitter" who was instrumental in growing Virgin Media Business to a £700m-turnover outfit, Jones said.

"Lee was instrumental in taking Virgin to another level and luckily came on my radar at the right time and I've given him the remit to develop the channel side," Jones said. "The market is strong for everyone right now and so we are looking forward to growing that business."