• Major step forward as Claranet expands reach and capabilities across Europe
• £90m in a Tikehau Capital-led minority equity funding
• New banking group providing significant scope for further growth

Claranet, a leading managed IT services provider, has today announced the acquisition of three IT services providers in the UK (Sec-1), France (Oxalide), and Portugal (ITEN Solutions), significantly increasing its revenues and service capabilities. Claranet has also completed a refinancing exercise, which provides the company with long-term financing and an incremental committed acquisition facility of £80million, and taken on new minority shareholders, including Tikehau Capital, who has invested alongside existing shareholders.

The three new acquisitions bring additional Security, DevOps, Systems Integration and IT services capabilities to the Claranet Group and cement its position as one of the largest independent providers of cloud and managed services in Western Europe and Brazil. The expanded Group has annualised revenues of £310million (€360million), more than 1,800 employees, and over 6,500 customers, and an international footprint in eight countries on two continents (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, and Brazil).

Based in Leeds, UK, Sec-1 is a security solutions provider. Established in 2001, the company provides penetration testing and vulnerability assessments for applications and infrastructure, firewalls and malware protection, and security training services. Sec-1, which has a turnover of £6million and approximately 60 members of staff, adds significantly to Claranet’s security expertise. Its founders, Matt Hawnt and Gary O’Leary-Steele, will remain with Claranet and will work with the wider senior management team to continue to grow the business and take its services to Claranet’s customers in the UK and across Europe.

French DevOps and cloud specialist Oxalide will reinforce Claranet’s capacity to deploy and manage critical web applications. Established in 2003, the company already has a turnover of €17.5million (£15million), and its 95 staff serve customers ranging from Canal+ to Direct Energie. Oxalide’s management team will remain in situ and will develop the company’s proposition whilst benefiting from the financial stability and an enlarged portfolio with Claranet.

Founded in Portugal in 2013 through a merger of two of the largest companies in the Portuguese ICT sector, ITEN Solutions has annual revenues of €80million (£69million) and 360 staff. With this acquisition Claranet has become one of the largest IT services providers in Portugal and aims to help its customers to take advantage of new technologies.

The refinancing has been provided by the following financial institutions: ABN AMRO, Bank of Ireland, HSBC, Natixis, Partners Group, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, replacing current debt suppliers.

Charles Nasser, founder and CEO of the Claranet Group, commented:

Claranet’s organic growth, combined with acquisitions, has meant we have established a significant operation in the managed IT services market at the European level, which we believe puts us ahead of many of our competitors in the region. These latest acquisitions represent a significant step forward for Claranet, confirming our market-leading position in France and Portugal and boosting our Group-wide security and application management capabilities for the benefit of our customers.”

We’re pleased that investment management firm Tikehau Capital has acquired a minority stake in Claranet, which along with our refinancing is a great endorsement of our strategy. The refinancing, and these latest acquisitions, means that we are even better positioned to meet the opportunities and challenges of a rapidly evolving technology services sector. We expect to see a continued consolidation of the European managed services market over the next 24-months and we are on a strong footing in all major markets in Western Europe to take advantage of this opportunity to help our customers do amazing things.”

Work anywhere capabilities of Office 365

Despite moving away from being an agrarian economy over the past two centuries, Britain is still a country that can be affected dramatically by the weather. Then there are other factors to consider, like fire, theft or negligence that threaten your organisation. For business both large and small, the impact of a system outage or data loss event can be severe.

Take weather for example. From heavy snow, to April showers that become May flooding, weather extremes can knock a business off-line – sometimes for several days.

As the name would imply, Big Data is indeed getting bigger. Not only are businesses analysing more and more metrics, but the actual size of the information store is growing exponentially.
For the IT manager, this is a technical challenge – but the rest of the business is most interested in the insights being generated.
However, there are two problems with many Big Data projects:

UK IT departments spend just 8 per cent of time on innovation; the least amount of time in Europe, finds Claranet

Research by managed services provider Claranet has revealed that UK IT departments are spending less time than their European colleagues on innovation, instead demonstrating a preference for operational projects and maintenance tasks. This indicates that the UK is at serious risk of falling behind its European counterparts, most of whom are embracing innovative IT practices on a much larger scale.

Vanson Bourne surveyed 900 IT leaders and decision makers across the six European countries in which Claranet operates – the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Benelux nations. The survey results have shown that UK IT leaders devote just 8 per cent of their time to innovation, compared to an average of 11 per cent across all the countries polled. The UK figure is well behind Benelux and France, spending 12 per cent and 13 per cent of their time respectively.

In addition, IT departments in the UK are responsible for driving the least amount of innovation in their respective organisations, at just 34 per cent. This is compared to 43 per cent in France and 44 per cent in Spain.

This data suggests that a culture of inertia has been allowed to develop in IT departments in the UK, in which IT managers have become more concerned with keeping the lights on, rather than finding ways in which they can add value to their businesses.

Andy Wilton, CIO at Claranet, commented:

Given the workloads that IT departments have to cope with, it is understandable to an extent that decision makers might choose to focus on running a tight ship rather than taking a step or two into the unknown. However, innovation across all aspects of a business is crucial to maintaining competitive advantage, and IT departments should not be exempt from this.”

Other countries in Europe are demonstrating that a focus on innovation is very much a possibility, and appear to be leading the UK in this regard. It is vital that IT departments prioritise closing this gap before ang long-term damage is done to the UK’s reputation as a centre for innovative business practices.”

To help address this imbalance between the UK and the continent, Wilton believes IT departments should focus on being less inward-looking in their approach, and look to how more innovative companies are leveraging technology and business practices to help position their entire business more favourably in the market.

He added:

Embracing a DevOps approach enables IT departments to be much more agile in terms of how they carry out their projects, and helps to better connect the role of the IT department to the business as a whole. In addition, making the most of the expertise and fresh approach offered by external IT service providers can give departments a much greater deal of flexibility when it comes to choosing solutions that work best for their individual needs.”

The statistics should serve as a stern warning to IT departments across the UK: bring innovation to the top of the agenda, or risk being left behind.”

Charles Nasser, CEO of Claranet, to give keynote speech at Cloud Expo Europe on the real-world challenges of digital transformation.

Digital transformation must start with customer needs if it is to be truly innovative, meaning leaders need to move out of the IT department and onto the front line of their organisations more than ever. The message Charles Nasser will take to Cloud Expo Europe is that for IT to be genuinely transformational, it has to leap-frog the current activities of businesses and listen to the basic needs of customers – the purpose of any business.

Charles Nasser, founder and CEO of Claranet, commented:

Businesses are always looking for new ways to serve their customers and from our experience IT leaders must be at the forefront of this improvement. Companies that embrace change are moving faster, but organisations that are slower to react face a challenging future, with legacy systems and old-fashioned business processes impeding progress. In order to foster innovation, and to prevent companies from lagging behind, it is recommended that senior decision makers need a highly strategic mind-set that sits right next to the customer, to help their businesses become digitally mature organisations.”

However, there is an idea that digital transformation means wholesale, overnight change. For most, this is simply unrealistic and a more iterative process of change is a better way to serve customers. Businesses cannot afford to reimagine their entire IT estate all at once. Companies are recommended to focus on building flexibility, agility and the right security into their IT environments so they can respond to changing conditions and can get the IT department in a position to lead innovation.”

For Claranet, ‘digital’ refers to applications and data and in implementing an effective customer-first approach. Organisations should consider where their applications and data are best located for maximum customer and competitive benefit. Having applications and data managed in the right location enables organisations to continually optimise availability, performance, security, scalability and cost.”

Organisations want to focus on continuously improving their business but if they don’t have the right infrastructure foundations, automation and customer-centric culture, it’s almost impossible to make improvements at a pace that customers now demand. Businesses can reduce this burden by working closely with a trusted provider who can help them to gain and sustain competitive advantage. The right partner is increasingly viewed as an extension of the IT team – freeing businesses up to focus on activities that lead to differentiation.”

Charles Nasser will be discussing ‘Reimagining the Business of IT’ in his keynote speech at Cloud Expo Europe 2017.

Meeting the rigorous standards reinforces Claranet’s depth of experience on Google Cloud Platform and its ability to help customers’ business transformation

European managed services provider Claranet is now part of the Google Cloud Partner Program and has achieved Premier status and the Partner Specialisation in Infrastructure. This is in acknowledgement of the strength of its Google Cloud practice and its proven success in migrating and managing Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. This announcement was made at the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco.

The Google Cloud Partner Program is designed to help partners build their practices or products on the Google Cloud Platform in order to help them reach higher levels of success. The Partner Specialisation recognises strong customer success and technical proficiency.

Claranet is one of the launch partners recognised for the Infrastructure Specialisation, due to its deep Google Cloud Platform expertise and strong track record in building Google Cloud Platform infrastructure and automation.

Claranet offers a holistic hybrid IT approach and has made strategic investments to build centres of excellence for delivering managed services on third-party cloud platforms that extends across Europe, and recently Brazil. These latest recognitions from Google Cloud demonstrate the strength of Claranet’s offering and its place at the leading edge of cloud deployments.

Charles Nasser, Founder & CEO, at Claranet, said:

Achieving Google Cloud Premier Partner and Infrastructure Specialisation status is an important step forward for Claranet. Google Cloud provides opportunities for significant business transformation by allowing customers to rapidly develop high-performance applications and leverage data assets. Helping customers improve through effective use of platforms such as Google Cloud is central to Claranet’s proposition and reinforces our commitment to customers and our ability to help them gain competitive advantage.”

We see partner accreditations like this one as an important element in helping customers select the right partners to enable them to leverage the highly innovative infrastructure available on Google Cloud Platform. Claranet services and support provide the assessment, migration and ongoing application management to help deliver the right levels of availability, performance and security. Meeting the rigorous standards required to be one of the first companies to join the Google Cloud Partner Specialisation Program recognises our ability to help our customers win in their respective markets.”

• Rely is the leading IT provider for the Dutch notarial sector
• With the new acquisition, Claranet continues its growth strategy and doubles its size in The Netherlands

Leading pan-European managed services provider Claranet has acquired Dutch IT services provider Rely, in a move that has significantly expanded the company’s size and reach. The company, which has a leading position within the Dutch notarial sector, offers its clients a wide range of IT infrastructure services, including public and private cloud solutions and application management services.

Founded in 2012 and with offices in Barneveld and Hilversum, Rely has 50 staff and an annual turnover of € 6M. It has a long-term partnership with software company Van Brug Software and recently partnered with notary services and products company Dirict, enabling it to integrate private cloud infrastructure with specialised notarial software.

As well as being the primary IT partner for notary organisations, with more than 2,000 notary seats, it also manages more than 3,500 seats in other types of organisations, including those in the media, cultural, and financial services sectors. Before being acquired by Claranet, Rely was partly owned by the DaVinci Group, which remains an important partner for the organisation, particularly in the fields of office automation and public cloud.

Wiebe Nauta, Managing Director Claranet Benelux, commented:

“The acquisition of Rely is a real opportunity for Claranet to strengthen its leading position in The Netherlands. We now have over 100 employees in The Netherlands, a turnover of €16 million, and one of the broadest IT portfolios in the country. We are now in a great position to further accelerate our growth. This is great news for all of our customers, who will benefit from our expanded service offering, and is a great opportunity for our employees who will be able to benefit from new career opportunities.”

Rely will be absorbed in full into Claranet and the company’s founder, René Fouraschen, will remain in the enlarged business as Business Development Director in the region.

Commenting on the acquisition, René said:

“We are delighted to join forces with Claranet. Being part of a larger organisation with a similar focus on providing the total IT package gives us several advantages. It gives us the opportunity to grow quicker and gain more customers, enabling us to develop effective economies of scale. We can now make far-reaching steps to achieve maximum security and flexibility in our services. Claranet is one of the best-established cloud service providers in the industry, both nationally and internationally. In a market that is growing consistently and is subject to constant change, it is important that we are in the right position to maintain a strong position and to grow.”

With an ambitious growth strategy, the Claranet Group has grown steadily in Europe, both organically and by acquisition. The Group has annual revenues of over €252 million, employs more than 1,250 staff and works with over 6,000 customers across the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Brazil.

The move marks Claranet’s entry into two new markets in recent months following the acquisition of CredibilIT in Brazil

Claranet, a leading European managed services provider, has today announced the launch of a new legal and operational entity, Claranet Italy. Claranet Italy has been established in response to a growing demand for managed public cloud solutions in the Italian market and will be focused solely on public cloud services.

The opening of Claranet Italy comes shortly after Claranet’s expansion into the Brazilian market with the purchase of public cloud services provider CredibilIT in December 2016. Claranet Italy is the first organic expansion for Claranet Group since the launch of Claranet France in 1998 and Claranet Germany in 2000. This new expansion positions Claranet as one of the most ambitious and dynamic players in the European hosting market following 17 acquisitions across the continent in the last five years.

The new entity will be based in Milan, meaning it is strategically positioned near major economic centres and the bases of major partners such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Like the six other existing European entities, Claranet Italy will have its own senior management team and its own operational and commercial teams. Fabrice Tetu, former CEO of French managed services provider Diademys, which Claranet acquired last year, has been tasked with the set-up of Claranet Italy and will work to grow its footprint in the country.

Charles Nasser, CEO and Founder of the Claranet Group, commented:

We are very excited to announce the formation of Claranet Italy. This move underscores Claranet’s intent to accelerate our geographic expansion and reinforces Claranet’s leading position in the European hosting market. The opening of Claranet Italy will help us further support the needs of our customers who have a foothold in Italy and allow us to generate new business in the country more effectively. Fabrice possesses a great deal of experience in the sector and in growing companies from his time at Diademys and I have every confidence that he will make a great success of Claranet Italy.”

Fabrice Tetu, Managing Director of Claranet Italy, added:

“Claranet has over a hundred engineers with the highest levels of certification in public cloud. We have developed expertise, tools and methodologies to help companies migrate to the cloud and transform their businesses. We are pleased to be able to bring this expertise to Italy and I am delighted to be developing the business in a new market. By building our own team of Italian public cloud experts, we will ensure a closer understanding with our Italian customers, which will, in turn, help them do amazing things.”

With an ambitious strategy and strong organic and acquisitive growth the Group now reports annualised sales of over £215million/€250million, more than 1,250 employees and 5,800 customers in Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the UK and Italy.

AWS and Claranet will discuss retail optimisation at a joint event at the AWS Auditorium, London, on 9 February

With ecommerce and mobile both acting as a significant driving force for retailers over 2016 and especially during the Christmas period, it is apparent that the capacity to continually optimise IT operations is now a key competitive differentiator in the retail sector. This is according to Claranet, which is hosting a joint event with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on 9 February to discuss how retailers can gain competitive advantage in this fast-paced environment.

The need for continual optimisation will only continue to grow in importance as technological developments such as the Internet of Things, predictive analytics, and machine learning all shape an increasingly personalised experience for consumers.

Online spending rose by 16 per cent in 2016, reaching £133billion, according to research from IMRG and Capgemini. Of this total, a significant proportion was spent in the weeks leading up to Christmas – £25billion. The Christmas period also saw mobile continue its rapid growth as a shopping tool, with mobile purchases up 47 per cent year-on-year.

Sam Bashton, Head of the Claranet Cloud Practice, commented on the significance of these trends:

There is now unparalleled convenience for consumers, allowing them to make purchases at any time from any place – and growing ecommerce sales indicates how well this offer is resonating. However, it is this very promise of convenience that puts such pressure on retailers – as consumers become more accustomed to the ease of shopping like this, their tolerance for technical issues and delays will decrease. This puts a competitive premium on ensuring that IT systems are agile and scalable enough to deliver a seamless experience.

Referring to Claranet’s own work with fast-fashion brand Missguided, Bashton spoke of the strategic importance of continuously optimising IT operations:

For disruptive brands such as Missguided, to be competitive you need to be ready to constantly sharpen IT performance in order to deliver the seamless experience that consumers expect.

In its own research, Claranet found that 48 per cent of retailers consider optimisation to be their biggest IT challenge over the next 5 years, as opposed to 39 per cent of other organisations. Bashton commented on why this might be the case: “As a result of technological developments the future of retail looks increasingly personalised, continuous, and immersive. Augmented and Virtual Reality and the Internet of Things will all be deployed to enhance the in-store experience and to make home shopping more enjoyable and more seamless.

Bashton concluded: “Retailers should begin developing this approach of continuous optimisation now, so that they can better take advantage of ecommerce’s current benefits and future developments. I look forward to discussing the topic further at the retail event with AWS on Thursday 9th February.”

To register for Claranet’s event – Relentless optimisation: the new normal – and for the full agenda, visit: http://landing.claranet.co.uk/aws-retail-event-relentless-optimisation-t…

Research finds 57 per cent rank security and compliance as biggest IT challenge

Research has found that UK IT departments are some of the most likely in Europe to identify security and compliance as the biggest challenge they are currently facing and, as a result, they are also some of the most likely to host their applications internally. For Claranet, as security fears inhibit risk taking and, by extension innovation, organisations must work to alleviate their concerns if they wish to remain competitive in their market and innovate in a controlled way.

Vanson Bourne surveyed 900 end user IT leaders from mid-market businesses in the six markets in which Claranet operates (Germany, Benelux, France, Spain, Portugal, and the UK) and found that 57 per cent of UK organisations rank security and compliance as the biggest IT challenge, joint highest with security conscious Germany. This concern is reflected by the fact that 50 per cent of applications managed by UK businesses are hosted on internal infrastructure, which can be attributed to prevailing attitudes towards cloud security and data ownership. Additionally, authentication and security are the applications that are most likely to be hosted internally, with 63 per cent of UK organisations doing so, due to the fact that these are often associated with highly secure data.

For Ian Furness, Hosting Services Director at Claranet, it’s critical that British businesses address these security concerns and maintain the integrity of their data so they can facilitate innovation and respond to changing market pressures.

He explains:

Security concerns amongst UK organisations are justified as businesses come under increasing pressure to keep up with the constantly evolving threat landscape, especially as more data is analysed and stored online. However, these security concerns make organisations a lot more risk adverse, which ultimately stifles innovation. Considering that today’s businesses are becoming much more software driven and the gate to competitiveness comes down to adapting applications that respond to increasing market pressures, security concerns, if left unaddressed, present a major stumbling block to the prosperity of businesses in the UK.

Organisations often equate security to having perceived control, which indicates why British businesses are more likely to host their applications internally. It’s understandable that organisations may want to take this approach for their applications, particularly those that are associated with high risk information. But just because your servers are under your roof, this doesn’t necessarily make them more secure. In fact, if managed and maintained correctly, alternative delivery models, such as public cloud, are suitable for even the most sensitive data and can bring massive transformational benefits to organisations.

Though security is not likely to change as the number one IT priority any time soon, the specific threats, and the ways businesses manage and respond to them, most certainly will. Businesses will need to stay alert to changes to legislation and the nature of prevailing threats as more and more data is stored and analysed. IT services provider (ITSPs) have a critical role to play here. A well-staffed ITSP with years of security expertise is likely to be in a better position to maintain the integrity of data, compared to an under-resourced in-house IT team. By working with trusted ITSP, businesses can benefit from transformational benefits and highly compliant security protocols in tandem,” concludes Furness.