Cloud Services Drive Growth for UKFast

Manchester, United Kingdom, July 22, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Manchester-based hosting specialist UKFast announces a record breaking first half to the year growing 38 per cent on the same period last year.

The results are bolstered by a significant increase in large customers and the growing trend for firms to outsource to the cloud. UKFast figures also show a retention rate of 99 per cent.

Managing Director Lawrence Jones is keen to emphasise that while virtual data centre solutions are on the rise the bumper period is also driven by a high volume of dedicated server sales to the SMB market.

Jones, who co-founded UKFast with his wife and business partner Gail in 1999 said: "Our success winning private cloud contracts this year is particularly satisfying. It's largely due to our enterprise division established in January. It was a bold move and we are clearly filling a gap in the market."

UKFast is no stranger to cloud technology. The R&D team were the first to market with Microsoft's Hyper-V cloud, working closely with the corporate giant from inception. "Choosing to develop dedicated cloud environments for others is extremely satisfying, knowing we are helping to increase their efficiency whilst reducing their carbon footprint," says Jones.

New contracts for this year alone already stand at £7.19m, which is up 68% on H1 last year. "We couldn’t wish for a better start to the year and it doesn’t look like it's easing up either," says Jones. "Contracts already in the first few days of Q3 mark the highest start to any quarter in the company’s history."

He cites March in particular as a double record breaking month. "We generated more revenue than in any previous month in the company’s history and we sold more servers than in any month before."

Within its hosting services, UKFast offers virtualisation in both Hyper-V and VMWare and Jones believes this flexibility is unusual in such a new era. "Typically, businesses specialise in one medium. We are able to offer a consultative approach and then deliver in a variety of technologies."

He says the results are stimulating discussions in the boardroom about new projects and innovative ways to propel the firm’s future growth.

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