UKFast CEO buys another security firm
Lawrence Jones snaps up S-IA in bid to bolster UKFast's public sector datacentre prowess
UKFast's CEO has bought a second cybersecurity firm inside a year in a bid to bolster the hosting provider's public sector credentials.
Lawrence Jones has snapped up Secure Information Assurance (S-IA) in a deal he said would give UKFast access to IL3 and IL4/Official-Sensitive accreditations.
Warrington-based S-IA - which focuses solely on the public sector - also holds a List-X, an accreditation allowing it to hold confidential government information.
The move follows on from Jones' acquisition of ethical hacking firm Pentest for a reported £10m last July and a £2.3m datacentre investment in January.
It also comes after US-based rivals such as Microsoft and AWS launched datacentres on UK soil in a public sector charm offensive.
UKFast co-founder Gail Jones, who helped oversee the deal, said: "The moment I looked at this business I knew it was perfect for us. We've looked at 15 potential deals in the last year and this one was really head and shoulders above the rest. It was further reinforced when we spoke with the cabinet office, who gave S-IA a glowing report."
Lawrence Jones added: "This deal has been exactly a year in the making. Acquiring S-IA is a strategic move, not only because of its high-profile government clients, but also because of its security product set. They are already delivering accredited services from List-X facilities to a number of clients.
"It's a business that's very much on the rise and the deal was an extremely competitive process, but the S-IA management team sees the clear advantage of partnering with UKFast, seeing the instant scalability of our eCloud platform as the perfect offering for the government.
S-IA CEO Martin Knapp (pictured, left, with Jones and S-IA technical director Steve Jewell), who will now head up Jones' G-Cloud team, added: "This is a hugely exciting move for all of us at S-IA. The conversation started when we went to UKFast to look at their data centre facilities. We initially planned to host our cloud with UKFast, but we were so impressed that we started a conversation about becoming partners and that quickly became a conversation about Lawrence buying the business."