Zoom In: 'Most people have time to work together for a while' - IT Lab boss on acquiring two weeks before lockdown

Peter Sweetbaum says public sector spent on IT is accelerating

IT Lab has seen increasing demand for the services offered by the business it acquired two weeks before lockdown, according to CEO Peter Sweetbaum.

The firm acquired Sol-Tec in mid-March, just before industries across the UK were shuttered.

"We acquired Sol-Tec about two weeks before lockdown which was interesting," he said. "Most people usually have time to work together for a while.

"But we have seen demand for Sol-Tec services which is focused on the public sector and Azure migration services.

"The public sector is clearly one that has the capacity to continue to invest and has made a declaration of its intent to continue to do that."

Sweetbaum said that the broad spread of IT Lab's customers is mitigating slowdown with other large clients that can't operate under lockdown, such as Café Nero and McLaren.

But he said that, in many cases, projects have been paused rather than completely scrapped.

IT Lab has itself played a part on helping the UK deal with lockdown, first helping to connect a consortium of firms sourcing and manufacturing equipment for the NHS and now working with the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Google to model how different industries can recover from the pandemic.

"It's essentially a data analytics alliance, and they're using big data to try and predict areas of recovery."