Former Oliver Wyman Partner Ian Brown leads UKFast
Cloud management firm UKFast has appointed industry heavyweight Ian Brown as its new Chief Executive Officer. Former Oliver Wyman Partner Ian Brown joins having spent the last five years with what is now Booking.com’s transport business unit.
Richard Bishop, UKFast Group chairman, said, "At UKFast, Inflexion is committed to making significant investments in capability in specialist areas such as cloud security, networks and remote desktop services. Ian brings a unique experience to UKFast of what it takes to really scale a UK tech business into multiple markets by focusing relentlessly on customers."
Founded in 1999, UKFast is one of the UK's leading cloud, managed hosting and colocation providers, supplying cutting-edge technology to some of the country’s biggest brands. The firm’s hosting solutions are designed to help businesses grow, with constant support and dedicated account management offered to all clients.
Brown's appointment as CEO follows private equity firm Inflexion becoming the majority shareholder of UKFast in May, in a move which saw founders Lawrence and Gail Jones exit the business. The investment was made by Inflexion’s dedicated minority investment fund, Partnership Capital, and saw the firm valued at £405 million.
Prior to joining UKFast, Brown spent more than five years as in the same role at Manchester-based Rentalcars.com, which in 2018 also became Booking.com's transport business unit. Earlier in his career, he worked as a Senior Partner at strategy consultancy Oliver Wyman, where he headed three of its global practice areas.
"The sheer pace of change right now in areas such as cloud, home working, and security all point to multiple opportunities for UKFast and its customers," stated Brown. "Many people don't realise quite how large the B2B partnerships business is inside Rentalcars and Booking. Regardless of whether it's B2B or B2C though, the goal is always the same: take away all the hassles and anxiety, and just make it massively easier for your customers to do what they want to do."
