Azure has unsettled Amazon more than us, says UKFast CEO

Lawrence Jones claims UK hosting provider is holding its own against hyperscale rivals as he talks through his firm's latest results

UKFast claims it is continuing to land blows on its US hyperscale rivals as it reported a 17 per cent revenue hike.

The UK hosting specialist says its revenue hit £40m in 2016, a £5.7m leap on the previous year, with sales of its eCloud range - a competitor to AWS - rising 40 per cent to £14m.

EBITDA hit £17.6m, according to the Manchester-based firm.

The top three global hyperscale cloud providers - AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google - grew 43 per cent, 94 per cent 74 per cent year on year in Q1, according to analyst Canalys.

But UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones, who recently faced off with two Microsoft partners in a CRN UK versus US cloud debate, claimed UKFast is drawing blood on a regular basis against the global providers in the UK. This is despite AWS, Azure and Google all recently launching UK datacentres.

Jones (pictured) cited key wins with the Cabinet Office and an unnamed international hotel reservations website as evidence.

"I think there's a definite slowdown from when Amazon got momentum a couple of years ago," he said. "Bringing Azure into the game has unsettled Amazon more than us, and it's got Amazon customers back into the market and comparing everything.

"The only thing they're winning on is the marketing. Yes, they've got some great features to their systems, but those really lock you in and make leaving very difficult.

"It's the sheer cost that people are getting frustrated at. [AWS'] model is really clever, because it gets you involved with them really cheaply because you can spin something up for a few pounds. But as you get busier, it become expensive, because you're paying for load balancing, bandwidth, CPU etc - that's where we're seeing customers coming back to us or in those sorts of discussions. We don't charge for those things, you get a fixed fee."

Jones claimed UKFast has also won business based on its consultative approach.

"The Cabinet Office is a very shrewd organisation and will have looked at [the US hyperscale providers] as well. Data sovereignty played a part, as well as being able to interact with us and pick up the phone and get straight through. We've written an algorithm in our phone system so if a customer is used to talking to one of my Linux geeks, the algorithm would know that and always put that customer through to them. The companies you are comparing us to don't have this kind of support, not as standard anyway."

Having doubled sales since 2012, UKFast is poised to expand into a second 40,000 sq ft building in Manchester Science Park in October.