However the facilities are fine if you just have a few racks and pop down every now and again, however we’d grown to around 300 which requires a large team working around the clock operating in the buildings. The facilities are not conducive to a happy working environment. They are cold, noisy and uncomfortable and as we did not control the building, it proved impossible to raise the standards to those we have in at head office.

We had to fight to get a kettle in to the building, then a table and after a stalemate over a microwave I realised that although you can attempt to influence decisions, people might change for a short period, however they inevitably revert back to their core traits when they get comfortable or put under pressure. My suppliers simply had a different vision to mine and whilst I respected it, I wanted to create something different.

From my perspective I believe there is always another level to everything we do, there has to be. Even when you have a break-though moment, there is someone somewhere doing it better than you. You either compete or die. And so the cycle continues. I wanted to find this other level. I wanted to put a stop to the tribulations the DC engineers were encountering.

The project was simple. Create something that is more “environmentally” friendly, both to the planet but also the people who work with in them.

However every site we found that was perfect for our new data centre, came back with the same answer from the United Utilities.

“There is not enough power available.”

We were given this answer to 22 preferred sites. It was explained to me that we require to more electricity to power our network than all the hospitals in Manchester combined.

Now there is an argument that the internet is helping reduce emissions, and people are now able to do more from home communicating better with people all round the globe. It’s an argument that I should support because it protrays UKFast in a positive light. Can you imagine the power saved from the millions of time and energy saving ideas of every UKFast client combined?

However, it doesn’t wash. I dont know about any of you, but I am not slowing down in other areas of my life. If anything I am busier. The mobile devices and information on tap from all these “time saving” gadgets just make us busier!

Either way, without power, there could be no data centre. So for a number of years we settled, focussing on our core business, building our cash reserves.

Sure enough the problem didn’t go away, it just got bigger. Our 1000 servers, soon became 2000, which became 4000 and then 6000. In the last year we have taken the 6000 t0 10,000 and in 2012 UKFast is on target to to add a further 10,000. And as our clients grow so does our need for electricity.

I woke up one day and decided nothing is going to stand in our way of progress. We took one of the sites we preferred and agreed that we’d take some of the £2m we’d saved and use it for the electricity dig and substation. From the initial £450,000 quote the actual cost of bringing the power to the new UKFast DC ate up £1.1m after we’d finished building the substation and with all the associated costs.

However the the game was on. We now had our first building and with roads being dug up all round Manchester for power and dark fibre, for the first time in my life I sat in traffic jams savouring every minute knowing that with every shovel they were busy improving the UKFast network.

The next move was designing the building. It had to have the technical space to power the equipment to the very highest standard, but it also required a space for people. Somewhere comfortable for them to operate and a place to relax.

We worked out that one of the problems for the people in the DC was the lack of human contact and interaction for the small team that worked around the clock. So we designed a training facility on site and built it in the roof space. A place where all new recruits now arrive eager to learn and start their journey at UKFast. Rather than the old Induction process, where the new starters go for a tour of the DC, we reversed the process and the new starters now do a tour of City Tower.

We also got a number of requests for people to work at the facility which proved to me we had done something right, so we moved the team who provision our solutions there too, giving everyone car park spaces with their names on.

We also added a “Clean Room” to the facility so that we have the ability to recover data in the event a disk gets corrupted, a valuable service when confronted with an issue in the dead of night.

A great many of our issues trying to accurately plan our growth are now vastly simplified and what started with a facility to house just our own operation rapidly developed into offshoots.

In the last 3 years my unit price for space and power have more than doubled. Our profits would have been wiped out if we’d not taken control. But I realised that the same is happening to others in our industry who require similar technical space. I was hearing rumours of businesses getting bullied and beaten up at renewal negotiations with one of my key suppliers, so when one of our contracts came up for renewal I took the trouble to engage with the Managing Director personally.

After experiencing what I can only describe as the worst customer service experience in the history of my 24 years as a business man, I realised I had a duty to build more of these facilities for anyone else needing space in Manchester.

The result, we now build Data Centres as well as filling them with dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure. Our list of latest recruits includes electrical engineers, a building company and  a General Counsel with plenty of experience of digging up roads and wayleaves after heading up the legal team at Orange for a decade.

Its amazing what can happen from a single meeting. 12 years ago, UKFast was born after we experienced poor customer service. We didn’t have a penny back then, and we have been valued at in excess of £70m.

To quote Ross Warburton, “every businessman needs someone to hate” and whilst I don’t hate anyone person, I certainly hated the way I had been treated that week of negotiations with our supplier. The day after we resigned the agreement, I acquired 3 more buildings to turn into data centres which will be ready before the year is out.

My new goal is to become the largest supplier of Data Centre space in the UK with in 10 years.

What started as a power struggle is about to result in one.

Back in 2001 after the bubble burst, no one could have predicted how technology would evolve at such a pace.

In a decade everyone’s lives have changed. The internet is bigger than TV, Radio and Press put together and it’s just the beginning.

Google came out of nowhere, (or rather a garage in San Francisco)  to challenge Microsoft with alternative ways to search the net providing innovative ways to advertise and attract customers. It facilitated the long awaited revolution and in the process lost its “cool” status and became a corporate giant.

Google was so successful it was difficult to imagine a challenger. But then along came Facebook and although the ranking for Top Performing sites looks like this:

1   Google         9.16% of internet traffic

2   Facebook    7.69%

3   You Tube    2.48%

Google has to be worried, because unlike many other sites that rely on Google’s ranking system to attract clients, Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook grew from the dormitories of Harvard University and permeated  through the university networks before entering the real world. It is the ultimate viral marketing machine and works on a referral basis and it literally is mapping the entire world.

It is too big for Google to influence now and it has done something far cleverer. It knows its audience far greater than Google does. Although Google pioneered very clever technology recognising IP addresses to predict your searches and preferences, it is limited as it cannot determine who is behind the IP address. So when different users in the same household search the internet or at work, Google tars everyone with the same brush. It can be really frustrating when it makes inaccurate assumptions about your searching and buying habits, whereas Facebook knows you inside and out.

Facebook knows everything. It knows who the most popular people in every corner of the globe are. It knows where you go, what you like, your birthday, your sex, your girlfriend, your spouse. Whether or not it is far more sophisticated than Google remains to be seen. In my opinion it is a great deal simpler and this maybe why it is so popular.

What is proven about Facebook, is the fact that everyone in the Google head-office corridors must realise the threat to the myth and their domination they created.

If you have any doubt, check out the latest figures tracking popularity and visitors to their websites. Whilst Google grows less than 15% over the past 3 years, Facebook grows in excess of 300%.

Facebook climbs faster than Google. And meanwhile the Internet is on the move again, with Mobile Apps making everything possible from wherever you are. Apple is helping, making user experiences a far cry from the pain created with setting up programs via a floppy disk back in the 90′s. I watch my 4 year old manoeuvre around an ipad with the ease of someone who is growing up in a new era, yet my Uncle Phil who is still alive remembers being taken to hospital as a child on the back of a horse drawn ambulance.

It is safe to say, the world we live in is an extraordinary place, made so by a few extraordinary people. It is an industry I love being a part of. I’d love to think that I had the foresight to have predicted all of this, but it was not part of a larger strategic plan. One thing I have learned since setting up and running UKFast, is think on your feet, be nimble. Never assume what works today will work tomorrow. If its not growing its dying. You have to keep evolving with one eye firmly on the future.

So whats next?

That’s a good question. It was one a friend asked me minutes before going on stage in front of the world’s press with Al Gore in Frankfurt last year.

It has to be virtualisation and although its a 15 year old technology, it is only just beginning to work and if I am honest, it still isn’t quite there yet. Dedicated servers have dominated the hosting world for the past 5 years and are essential when trying to compete on the internet with e-commerce and lead generating websites. However, if you are looking at cost savings and consolidating a large number of machines, there is new technology available that offer some amazing solutions to what traditionally have been very expensive problems. (If you are interested you might want to check out VMWare and HyperV for virtualisation and cloud hosting solutions)

Where it will stop ? You can rest assured it wont! You embrace it and ride it like the raging bull it is, holding on for dear life. Its a good analogy because that’s how UKFast feels and we are only a tiny part of the internet as a whole, yet we are accelerating to a new level(*). And with hundreds of thousands of websites on our network , it’s a wonderful responsibility and one I take very seriously. And round the corner, I have no idea what is next.

I host thousands of businesses and anyone of them could have a break-though moment at anytime. Thats part of the fun of what I do. I get to help people grow their businesses far quicker than they could ordinarily do themselves. It’s something that is bone deep in UKFast and is embedded in Lighting our purpose. Watching and helping businesses succeed and compete is incredibly rewarding and I cant imagine doing anything else. It’s become a way of life. Somewhere on our network lives the next Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page just waiting to light the fibres of future.

Can you imagine the internet 10 years from now?

Go create.

Loz

(*) UKFast has a new DC coming live in May 2011. It’s large enough to host 12,500 dedicated servers and is the first of an extra 100,000 sq ft we are intending to bring to the UK market in the next couple of years.

Yes people do seem slightly more cautious. But this is partly to do with the fact we were told we were heading for recession. I remember backing out of a property deal after the Nothern Rock crisis. Thank goodness Gail and I plucked up the courage and pursued the deal, it was Castell Cidwm, the UKFast training property which is now an integral part of our successful recruitment and training strategy.

The reason for my comments are not flippant, I know a great many people have been through difficult times, my point is this. Is this a recession, or is it merely a change in the way people do business? What do I mean by this? Well, it is safe to say that people have changed the way they buy things.

When you purchase something there are 2 decisions that you make.

1/ do I want/need this product or service?

2/ where shall I buy it from

In the old days! People went to shops and bought there and then.

Then came the internet. Now people looked online, researched and then once they’d narrowed down what they wanted, they headed to the shops and bought it there.

But, then came the new era. An era of confidence where people simply go online to do research and then simply buy it without hesitation.

Well this is a massive shift. It surely makes sense that if you as a business have not embraced this you are going to be in a huge amount of trouble.

I believe the cultural shift in how we buy is SO extreme it is literally wiping businesses out who do not have a credible online presence. Look at Woolworths, they felt that the internet would not work for their business. Yet Argos who embraced it is now one of the biggest online retailers in the world.

I was at a round table this week discussing the economy and budget. I heard numerous businesses explain that they had zero growth. The same businessmen stated clearly when I asked them do they use the Internet to attract new business, “people  in our industry do not use the internet to research our product!” The irony is I have helped a few businesses in the exact same sector generate millions of pounds worth of new business, all via the internet! But how do you educate people who simply do not believe it is possible. These sort of limiting beliefs are lethal and often are the main reasons why businesses simply stop evolving.

If only I got a pound for every time I heard business people say “my customers wouldn’t use the Internet!”

Over the years, I have won a few £1 bets to people I have met at Sale Sharks who said, exactly that.

Caunce O’hara, now giants in the Insurance industry were about to spend a fortune on a website. I asked them to consider a different option. For less money I helped design and build a new system that not only worked out an accurate price for the insurance premium, it took the money and attracted new business. I won my pound.

It’s not a business model I’d advise people to follow, I am lucky enough to be able to do this as a hobby as I have a huge R&D team, I also have done this enough times to know, I’d succeed.

I have done the same in a variety of industries. Debt management, clothing & retail, one business in particular (again who said it cant be done) is now invoicing more than £1,000,000 per month from online sales!

I can guarantee these people dont think we’ve just been in a recession.

The problem is, “you don’t know what you are missing until it is too late.” It’s people’s own shortsightedness that is simply holding their businesses back, or in some cases damaging their business.

I have 15 year old kids who are customers and a great many small businesses who are doing extraordinarily well. It’s never the brands who are riding the crest of the wave, they simply think they are. A lot of the high traffic sites are below most peoples radar. The people who win, are the ones who realise that customer experience is everything, and they build a super fast and effective site and host it on a dedicated server for that added umph. Before they know it, they are getting customers from Google, and the customers are coming back in their droves because the experience is perfect.

When we explain to people that their site is slow, they don’t understand. They look at their own site and say, “it seems fast to me!” This is the biggest misconception. They are ususally viewing a cached version of their website on their own local machine. What does this mean? Well basically, your machine stores images of sites that you visit regularly. So it stands to reason that when you look at your own site, you do so though rose coloured spectacles. You are in effect getting an artificial view of how your business is really NOT performing.

On the flip side through your customers eyes, it doesn’t hide the harsh truth, that for new visitors, your site is like jelly waiting to set.

This is particularly noticeable for people who end up hosting in the US to save money. People can simply drop out of the UK arm of Google once the search engine picks up the foreign IP address. Google simply assumes that your main focuss is probably aimed at the foreign market, as your site will perform better in the country where it is hosted. Some of the largest hosting providers in the UK, host their customers in the US and Germany. Rackspace host thousands of their clients sites in the US on their Cloud environment. One and One (1&1) a German company who also own Fasthosts, who market themselves a the hosting worlds market leader , host their servers in Germany!

Personally I believe keeping it simple is the best way. Host your site as near to your customers as you can. We are lucky, by being in Manchester we couldn’t really be more central to the whole of the UK.

I hear horror stories all the time on this subject. One thing worse than going abroad to host, is taking it in house! The ultimate in stupidity. Let’s stick our server on the end of our broadband connection or a leased line. So what if it is 100Mb. You may as well attach it via string! Yes it might work occasionally but not enough to get noticed on the search engines. Telcos for years simply resold 100Mb lines time and time again, and guess what? They attached them to a 100Mb line. The ultimate in bottlenecking.

If you imagine the internet works on the basis of regions. You can host your store on the main high street, the Oxford Street or you could host it on a back street. Which gets more traffic? Obviously the high Street. Yet so many businesses spend 10′s of thousands of pounds on their websites, yet they think they dont need to invest in their hosting. They think they can simply stick it on some shared space, or a cheap dedicated server (down a back street). Even worse, they dont realsie why it doesn’t work properly or why they dont get awesome results.

At the same time, we come across small businesses who take our advice or dip their toe in the water with UKFast. Experience the speed of the UKFast network and then get addicted. These companies listen to their customers and upgrade every time their site slows down by a fraction. These are the businesses who are the next generation. It is not the brands you know about, these are the new kids who a carving out a new horizon. They not only get my vote, they get my help and support in every way. They are the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

So be warned. If you have a business and you are NOT taking your online marketing seriously, or worse still you are spending the bulk of your budget on the design and leave nothing for the location of your window to the world, you will not get the results you are wanting, but you will get what you deserve.

This does sound harsh, but it is a really harsh world out there.

If you are a web developer or you run a business designing sites, if you are hosting your sites on a single server to save money or to create a revenue stream, although you may think you are doing your client a favour, you are actually suffocating their business. If you wish to try a server to see the difference, drop me an email at UKFast or post me a comment. Every business I have tried this with has increased sales. Its not  rocket science, but it will certainly pay for one!

Stood in the Great House on the hill looking at a photo of Sam Branson and his friends, I turned around and Richard walked up to me arm outstretch and with a warm smile he bowed his head gently and welcomed me to his home. It is the greatest thing for me to meet such a distinguished businessman. I have many friends who have become incredibly successful. Most of them though are particularly hard with their staff and rule their businesses with an iron rod. Richard is someone who clearly breaks this mold and it is refreshing to see that he is a million miles away from the ludicrous business ethics they portray on The Apprentice.

It didn’t take him long to suss me out and pretty soon we were discussing sport. He is currently in training for the Virgin sponsored London Marathon. He had already heard I was a keen exerciser and immediately asked if I’d like to run with him. A couple of Richard’s guests arrived for drinks, they were staying on the nearby island. They owned and developed Vale and Beaver Creek in the US. (An amazing Ski Resort) During the conversation with Janet and Paul from Beaver Creek, one thing stuck out and it made an indelible mark in my brain that I think will be there forever.

Richard said, “well, if you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

In my 41 years on this planet nobody has ever give me such great advice or such a great directive. And it makes perfect sense. How many of us just potter through life and procrastinate. I have only been on the island less than a week, but I am 100% sure you will never see Sir Richard Branson procrastinating. He is a decisive character, who doesn’t stop for breath.

Before leaving for bed, I asked what time we should meet. He said “pop around to the house at 6.45am and just shout me if I am not up.”

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, excited at the prospect of continuing a great conversation with a fantastic philanthropist and entrepreneur.

We have since run for a number of hours together and I have had some solid business advice during my time following in his great footsteps. Advice that once you have heard it appears like complete common sense. However you could read a 100 books and find 50 different ways from a variety of experts which all contradict each other. So to hear it from someone you respect, immediately fills me with confidence. And actually now we have discussed it, I totally understand and I cannot wait to get back to UKFast and start implementing some of these great ideas.

Yesterday I ran with him a little later than before, and I reminded him of what he had said to me and what an impact it had.

I explained that you could have written an essay, yet in one short sentence he summed up just how simple you need to make it.

“If you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

What a great piece of advice and for anyone setting out as a young entrepreneur, in business, in school, wherever and whatever you are wanting to do, this is good advice. It is a simple strategy that I can promise you Branson lives by. He is a man with a large appetite for life and it grows bigger by the day, and I am sure his positive attitude towards just doing things straightaway, off the cuff without procrastinating has to have something to do with his enormous success.

I am very interested in how he portrays his feelings on this subject, as he decided to use the line as subject matter for a column he is doing for the New York Times. It is definately something to look out for.

Lawrence Jones UKFast

Dedicated Server Hosting, Manchester

It was 11 years ago at Granada I first used the Grand Ballroom at the Palace for an event. It was to raise money for the Christie’s For Cancer Appeal. The night was a huge success and I fell in love with the room. It is the perfect room for hosting a ball.

I knew the hotel well, as I’d originally played the piano there in my early years when I first came to Manchester. I had some great memories of the place and I made some fantastic friends. It was during the era of Les Miserables. And the cast used to pile in there for a few drinks after the show, before dragging me out until dawn. It was a real experience and my links to the area so strong, I bought an apartment in Oxford Place next door.

Years earlier I had my first job in a shop called A1 music, right opposite the Palace on New Wakefield Street. I did a range of jobs, from brushing up, to decorating. The funniest of these jobs, (although not at the time) was when Ann the proprietor asked me did I know anyone who could do plastering? Fancy asking a 17 year old for advice on building. Of course I promptly answered, “I can.” I had seen people plaster many times  with the houses my father used to renovate when I was growing up. I failed to mention my specialty was demolition.

The plaster eventually went up and although not particularly smooth, I was quite proud of the job. I spent that evening building all the furniture for the room. The next day I was greeted by Ann’s husband Graham who was furious. He marched me up stairs to see my handy work. All the plaster had peeled off the walls and had covered all the brand new furniture. It had then promptly dried over night!

I did a variety of jobs at A1 including their book keeping, but it was the selling I enjoyed the most. As a “Saturday boy” the professional sales guys hated me in the sale floor, so I was only able to cover for people when they were on their lunch.

Guaranteed with out fail, every lunch I would have a field day selling. I learned that by being honest and directing clients to what they needed as opposed to what the thought they wanted was a great recipe for success. I also realised I only had an hour, so I concentrated my efforts and honed my craft.

As I held the record for the biggest sale in the company’s history, Ann was much aggrieved when the sales men clubbed together and convinced Graham to put me in the basement wiring up reconditioned speakers.

Happy to accommodate, to the basement I went. It was there I was told to answer the telephone and I learnt a knew skill. I was now only able to sell when carrying the speakers across the floor. So this is precisely what I did, and I learned how to get to the point almost immediately, and with in months, we had sold every pair, with me selling the lions share. On the telephone I was also developing relationships, there were a few massive deals where I convinced the keyboard player of a touring band who were playing at the Apollo, who were number 4 in the charts at the time to come in and part with £21,500. Eventually Ann forced Graham to concede that it was ridiculous to bury someone showing promise.

It was around this time that I got my first job as a professional pianist, and rather than rock the boat with the other guys, I moved on and decided to use my musical talent to further my career. Which brings me full circle back to the Palace.

The event on Saturday was seamless, from the outside at least! Behind the scenes, the band, Clem Curtis and the Foundations were without a drummer who had broken down in Nottingham, and with 45 minutes before the start, I called my brother-in-law to ask for help. Dave is a fantastic drummer and agreed to lend me his kit, so we could get it set up and sound checked whilst everyone enjoyed the champagne reception upstairs. He also offered his services as a stand-in drummer too!

There is a saying “you cant chose you family,” and if you could, I couldn’t ask for a better guy. His attitude and calmness meant I was able to enjoy dinner and even with 30 minutes to spare when the actual drummer turned up, I couldn’t have been more relaxed.

On hind site though, it reminds me why I dont do this sort of thing for a living anymore.  If you think computer hardware is unreliable, you should try managing musicians!

I also was reminded of what I loved about event organising too. Giving pleasure to so many people is so rewarding. Being on this side of the fence too, where I was the client and the organiser, meant I could make the right decisions there and then. The team comprising of Gail, Rach, Paul and Jonathan literally had the entire evening organised and scripted to the minute. I could not have asked for a better team. Jim Collin’s description “the right people on the bus can be moved anywhere” was demonstrated by the way my events team, comprising of a few of my senior management team, changed roles as efficiently as a chameleon changes colour. But although I had great fun revisiting this former profession, I would not swap what I do now for the world.

He is a worthy winner and the rapturous response he received when his name was announced reaffirms that he is a great entrepreneur and has the popular vote amongst the business community.

UKFast was a sponsor of the awards this year and I have to say I was pleased with the result. It is difficult to find another organisation that has done as much for Manchester as Bruntwood.

There are many awards nowadays and some people think that the sentiment behind the ceremony has been diluted. But personally I like to view them very positively.

I am honoured to have won a couple of awards. Most recently in 2007 I was happy to receive the IOD’s Young Director of the Year title. Plus this year, my company, UKFast, has won its fourth Best Hosting award in as many years at the ISPAs.

I’m currently a finalist for the Ernst & Young award, something I’m incredibly happy to have been nominated for.

But in a world where you can blindly beaver away for years, often the only reminder of your success comes from painfully increasing tax demands. I believe that to achieve an award is not just a pat on your back from your peers, but a reinforcement that you are doing something right.