UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones says door is open to Datacentred staff

Tech entrepreneur rules out rescue of fellow Mancunian cloud services provider, which hit the buffers earlier this week, but says he would take on impacted staff tomorrow if they needed a home

The CEO of UKFast has ruled himself out of the running to buy fallen Mancunian cloud provider Datacentre, but has stressed that the door of his firm is "always open" to its staff.

Datacentred, which was headed up by Telecity founder Mike Kelly, went into administration earlier this week after just four years of trading.

It was rumoured to have lost a deal with its largest client.

UKFast's Manchester headquarters are situated nearby Datacentred's premises in Salford's Media City, and the duo operate in a similar market space, but Jones said UKFast had no interest in buying another datacentre, particularly one that is on a long lease.

"If someone is desperate for a datacentre, it could work," Jones said. "It's the old Fujitsu datacentre, so it's got a history of being a datacentre. It's just not one we would be interested in. The equipment is a bit old, but it's more about the fact that it's on a 15-year lease with a landlord we wouldn't want to work with."

Datacentred, which provides public and private cloud, based on open source cloud platform OpenStack, was founded in 2013 by Kelly, who built Telecity into a £1.3bn business.

Jones expressed sympathy with his fellow entrepreneur.

"Mike Kelly is a seasoned executive, and there was quite a lot of noise when Mike set Datacentred up. People expected great things, so it's quite sad to see it's not work out. While we would potentially be slight competitors, I'm a great believer that the internet needs lots of strong businesses to push each other and drive off, and it's never nice to see a company going into receivership, especially one in Manchester, and one that's been funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as well as Barclays.

"These things happen, and we all fail from time to time, but Mike will bounce back."

Jones said cloud and hosting specialist UKFast had ruled itself out of the running based on the initial information provided about the business by the administrator.

However, he said UKFast would take on any staff that approached him in the event that rescue attempts prove fruitless, in a similar fashion to when it provided a home for 50 apprentices from another Media City firm that hit the wall, Bright Future Software.

"We placed every single one of those 50, and they have been instrumental in shaping the forward trajectory of UKFast," he said. "Without a shadow of a doubt, I would open my doors to anyone from Datacentred as it's another Manchester company. If you don't have a job or at some point that job goes, we're here for you 100 per cent, and I'd take them all tomorrow."