'This isn't a defensive move' UKFast CEO Jones on the launch of AWS and Azure arm

Lawrence Jones says that customer demand for multicloud infrastructure was driver behind new subsidiary

Manchester-based hosting provider UKFast has launched an Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure consultancy business.

ClearCloud is a subsidiary of UKFast and has been launched with the intention of providing multicloud infrastructure to customers, CEO Lawrence Jones told CRN.

Jones has previously been critical of the public cloud giants, but said that the market is now in a state where customers need to have different workloads in different infrastructures.

"Amazon has some very clever capability, Azure has its plus point and our eCloud has its plus points," he said.

"Nowadays people have a huge array of technology and they need it hosted in different ways.

"It would be naïve to think that we could beat everybody on every front, but at the same time there are many things that AWS and Azure can't do compared to UKFast.

"There is no mass hosting provider on the planet that could provide that level of detail [that we offer] and that is the whole idea; they don't intend to. They are relying on companies like ourselves to step in and manage those workloads."

ClearCloud will be headed up by MD Matt Bibby, who was previously a global architect at AWS.

There are currently under 20 people assigned to the business, but Jones expects headcount to rise to over 50 by the end of the year.

He also stressed that the move has not been made out of fear of losing business to the likes of AWS and Azure - both of which have opened datacentres in the UK.

UKFast saw growth of 18 per cent last year, Jones said, while its public sector arm has more than doubled its business this year. The firm's enterprise division, eCloud, meanwhile, now brings in 43 per cent of the business' overall turnover.

"I'm really excited about the growth for UKFast in general," Jones said.

"This is by no means a defensive move, it is very much an exciting growth move. There is no point fighting this; it is important to embrace this, take advantage of it, and help customers decide which environments they want in each area.

"A lot of our larger customers were saying it would be great if we'd manage their AWS. We fought it for a while because it isn't our core business, but when you think about it support is our core business. It doesn't really matter what we're supporting.

"We have already won clients that we have never had dealings with, and we've also won clients that have moved away for UKFast and had extraordinary pain because they've been used to our type of handholding."