Meet The Team

Work Background:

An IT industry veteran, whose origin to the industry came via the distribution channel.  Starting out at Frontline (that became Westcon many years later) which was such a great place to learn about so much of the industry.  Graduated into a networking specialist which in the late 90’s meant ATM and Token Ring as well as Ethernet.

That kind of background gave an obvious step into a more corporate position, moving to Telia in 2000. Telia were the first MPLS provider in the UK so as long as MPLS has been proposed as a solution, I’ve been pushing it.

Times and technology have moved on, but the baseline knowledge formed in those early days at Telia are still touched on 20 years later.

Over those 20 years I’ve been involved in over £100M of private WAN sales and solutions, working with the smallest SMB’s, to the largest enterprise buyers in every continent around the globe.  Working in large corporates to smaller niche network operators.

In recent times, the focus has been on emerging technologies that will benefit from the fast, Secure, Reliable network Securus has built.  However, MPLS is still at the forefront of our solutions, although now enhanced with SDWAN.  Our specialisation on the most complex of WAN’s is driven by our thirst to learn and be a trusted source of technical advice.

Cloud adoption is massive, and the connectivity to that cloud has become more than critical. That led us to building our own cloud allowing true end to end SLA’s, but also adding in the public clouds, to give an absolute covering of all possible eventualities for Private, Public and Hybrid set ups.

Our newest focus is around Security.  Whilst it’s always been a solution consideration, in the last 4 years it’s become a central offering within all solutions.

Personal Summary:

The proudest achievement for me has been Fatherhood.  Two Children, a boy and girl, the perfect pair.  Family is my driving force and the number 1 priority, and provides my ‘happy place’.

I spend most of my spare time following my Children from one event to another.  Be it Dance, Musical Theatre or Auditions for one, or Rugby, Football or Cricket for the other, there is always something on.

Work Background:

I came into IT after working at the student union at the University of Birmingham doing IT support part-time during my studies. I quickly realised I preferred earning money instead of studying, so became full-time at the union and never looked back. A swift promotion to IT Manager gave me further experience, culminating in successive promotions to become Head of Telecoms for the University of Birmingham.

I then moved to Marston’s PLC to run Marston’s Telecoms, their separate telco/ISP business. The business at that point just resold all their services, so I quickly identified a business case to install their own ISP platform and gain more control and better value over the services. This grew significantly over my tenure, and provided increasingly complex services to customers.

A particularly proud moment was signing the first ISP customer external to Marston’s PLC, a deal worth £1m TCV. An opportunity then arose to invest in Securus Communications and this became real in 2017! I lead on operations for the business, focussing on pre-sales support / consultancy, implementation management, and in-life service and support.

It is my job to ensure that what is provided to customers remains relevant, provides value for money, and is underpinned by a great support experience. As a smaller business, Securus is able to quickly adopt new technologies and implement them into bespoke solutions for customers. We are proud to work with our customers to help them have better, more reliable and more relevant services for their business, and we relish the challenges that our customers throw at us.
Discussions with customers tend to now be focussed on Security and SD-WAN, and our customers seem to respect that we are able to talk with authority on all of these.

The experience I’ve got implementing IT in businesses, as well as helping design them more recently, helps me to understand what our customers are likely to want, and allows me to work with them to deliver this. Newer technologies such as edge computing, 5G connectivity and private/public/hybrid cloud and considering how we can leverage that for our customers ensures that my job is never boring.

Personal Summary:

I’m the father to two amazing children and my partner’s three children. It means our house is never boring nor quiet! I love spending downtime as a family, and also (badly) playing golf with friends, or alternatively relaxing with a good glass of wine and some delicious food with friends. Also trying to get back into running, but the good food and wine keep interfering in that!