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Andrew Gilbert, the Managing Director of data centre firm Node4, has been named as a finalist for a prestigious industry award.
Andrew, who has already won a string of high profile prizes, has made the shortlist for the Channel Entrepreneur of the Year award. The award, which will be handed out by trade publication Comms Business, will be presented in a ceremony that recognises excellence and innovation among IT resellers, vendors, distributers and service providers.
The winner of this, and other prizes at the Comms Business Awards 2012, will be announced at an awards dinner at Lancaster London on 21 June.
Having started Node4 at the age of 23 and growing at an impressive rate, Andrew has already been recognised as European Data Centre Entrepreneur of the Year last year at a separate awards ceremony.
He said, “I am overjoyed at being recognised in this way and being nominated for this award. It’s always an honour when you are shortlisted for prize within the industry you are passionate about.
“Entrepreneurship is about listening to the demands of the marketplace, finding the product or service that caters to that need and doing so in a way that pleases and surpasses the expectations of your customers. In everything we have done at Node4, we have taken every care to remain relevant and cutting edge with our offering and solutions such as the n4Cloud have helped a number of companies to take advantage of the many benefits of the cloud. As the technology evolves, our challenge will be to maintain our reputation as an industry leader.”
Consumer credit company Provident Financial has outsourced its data centre with Node4 in a move that will allow a more scalable solution as the company grows.
Provident Financial, the UK’s leading provider of personal credit products, used the move of its Bradford headquarters as an opportunity to reassess its IT infrastructure and decided to relocate its data centre, which was formerly on site. The new deal, which builds on their previous relationship with data centre provider Node4, will allow Provident Financial to keep control of their equipment but have peace of mind that it will be housed in a suitable purpose built environment.
Provident Financial issued a tender to find a company that would help facilitate its move by providing it with a data centre that would be secure enough to host all of its vital data. At the same time, it was also important that this data centre would be within a close enough proximity to enable the technicians to gain easy access. As a result of this, Node4’s data centre in Wakefield was an ideal location for Provident Financial’s service.
Node4 supplied Provident Financial with data centre space with an infrastructure spanning two separate sites. It also provided a wide area network that connects the two data centres together resiliently, and also incorporates the Provident Financial head office. Within the service, Node4 also included ‘remote hands’ where its technical team can carry out minor jobs on Provident Financial’s behalf so frequent trips to the data centre aren’t necessary.
Andrew Clark, IT Transition Manager at Provident Financial, said, “Our original head office had a data centre in it that had grown organically. It wasn’t a purpose-built environment as such and there were a number of issues that arose as a result. We looked at building our own data centre within our new head office but there were a number of constraints such as space, power and cost. Being a data centre provider or builder isn’t our core competence. That’s what led us to go out and do an ITT to have a look at the market and ultimately we decided to work with Node4 for the project.
“The remote hands facility in particular gives us confidence. We can rest assured that the Node4 team know our environment and are more than capable to action our requests when needed and do the job as an equivalent to one of our IT staff when smaller tasks need performing.”
At its old data centre, Provident Financial had a large server estate which had a lot of dated equipment. There was a number of large enterprise class storage arrays, and the data on there was key to our business. Despite this, Provident Financial had just one weekend to make the transition. They were confident, however, that they would be moving their data to be housed with a provider that understood their needs.
“Node4 are an extremely capable, flexible and agile company who are at all times happy to meet our needs”, says Andrew Clark. “We put some non-standard requests to them, and they go out of their way to help us in any way, shape or form. The relationship we have with Node4 is one of the best ones we have with a third party. The service that we get, the sort of value-add, and the confidence that we get from the Node4 team is exceptional.”
Companies can still have British-based call centres with high productivity without excessive costs, according to data centre and communications firm Node4. The company says that a move to creating more efficient call centres based in the UK, through the use of smarter technology, will create jobs and enhance customer service.
The comments follow a speech from the Employment Minister Chris Grayling to the Policy Exchange. He argued that firms should repatriate their overseas call centres to boost the number of jobs available in the UK at a time when vacancies are scarce.
Andrew Gilbert, Managing Director of Node4, said, “We witnessed a period of seeing far too many companies outsource their contact centres overseas in a bid to save costs. However, this is a false economy when you factor in the dissatisfaction many customers have when speaking with customer service staff that don’t match their expectations. We have found that through making an investment in the right technology and implementing it in UK centres, companies can add value instead of detracting from it. At a time when there are falling loyalty rates among customers, areas such as this demand immediate attention.
“There is a growing trend among more progressive companies who are investing in call centres in the UK and are making a positive feature of it in their marketing and communications to the customers and target markets. This is helping drive growth and differentiate them from their competitors.”
Node4 recently struck a partnership deal with multimedia contact centre specialists Zeacom to offer a hosted calling platform that helps businesses to become more efficient and help contact centre staff to deal with customers more effectively. It is delivered through Node4’s cloud based infrastructure and is offered on a ‘pay as you go’ basis. It includes a dashboard that details how quickly calls are answered, how many calls are received and peaks and troughs during each day. Managers can then act on this data by having the right amount of specialists available for most types of enquiries, route calls to the most suitable members of staff and use sophisticated techniques to make various cost savings in many areas.
Andrew continued, “Customer demands have changed drastically over the last few years and so must the way they contact customer service departments. They expect their experience to be smoother and to have their queries handled by the right person without being passed from pillar to post. If companies have the tools to facilitate this without having to pay for the costs upfront, there will be no need for overseas centres that are quickly falling out of favour. At a time when there is the requirement for improved customer service and a need for jobs in the UK, this presents a fantastic opportunity to take action.”
With another rise in youth unemployment expected in this month’s official figures out today, questions are being raised as to whether a new generation of young entrepreneurs will be created as enterprising young people go into business for themselves.
Andrew Gilbert, Managing Director of data centre and communications firm Node4 began his company at age 23, being a part of what is now considered the troubled 16-24 age bracket. He seized an opportunity to set up his company that has grown 363% over the last five years and now has a turnover in excess of £11m per year.
He said, “The 16-24 age range is a very significant period for young people in the formative years of their working lives. Many talented young people who are struggling to get their foot on the career ladder will be forced by the economic conditions to set up their own enterprises. Many people had great ideas in the past for new businesses but may not have had the courage to go it alone. In the current economic climate, the severe constraints we currently have make starting up a business a much more appealing option.
“At the age of 23, I was very fortunate in that I had an idea for my business which I felt could work but I also had the courage to follow through along with supportive investors. But at the centre of my plan was the desire to control my own destiny and develop my idea to empower businesses to save money through technology. Today, that dream has resulted in Node4 owning a string of rapidly growing data centre sites across the UK, making us Britain’s largest independent provider of local data centres. What UK industry needs is for more young people to be more enterprising by researching their ideas and applying their talents, bright minds and aspirations to the world of business.”
With the transport and logistics sector looking to maintain growth, companies are capitalising on the many operational and cost benefits offered by cloud computing to help them extend their bandwidth and create efficiencies.
Transport and logistics companies are currently looking at keeping costs low as they manage the myriad of challenges that growth presents. These include erratic consumer demand, supplier risk brought about by fuel worker disputes, fluctuating foreign exchange rates and increased transport costs. Managers in the sector are being urged to outsource their IT to the cloud in a move that will mean operational costs are more manageable with a rental based solution as opposed to upfront capital expenditure fees.
The hybrid cloud (a combination of public cloud and internal infrastructure) is now emerging as one of the foremost trends in IT for the next three years. Data centre and communication specialist Node4 has strengthened its offering by including hybrid cloud options within its new n4Cloud solution to respond to the changing needs of its customers and has received positive feedback on its services.
Andrew Gilbert, Managing Director at Node4, said, “A one size fits all approach to cloud computing doesn’t work and that’s why our cloud solution has been well received. When companies have the freedom to pay only for the services they need and do so on an ongoing basis it immediately becomes an attractive proposition. As a number of challenges in the transport and logistics sector are affecting the bottom line, the cloud will help to steady ongoing costs.
“We need to get away from the thinking that ‘the cloud’ is just one solution that will either work for your business or it won’t. It’s a wealth of options that can be applied in many instances so whether you’re using it for storage, applications or unified communications, there are benefits to outsourcing to the cloud. Hybrid is just one way that IT management can evolve in a way that keeps many processes in tact but at the same time adds functionality, boosts flexibility and has high levels of security.”
