Manchester cloud and dedicated hosting provider UKFast is bolstering its product development and marketing team with the appointment of former Barclays exec Garry Prior as Director of Product Marketing.
Prior brings 14 years’ experience in product management and joins the tech firm after successfully managing campaigns at Barclays, Rackspace and O2. The appointment comes as market demand drives rapid innovation across UKFast’s product portfolio.
Prior gained experience of building and running cloud hosting products whilst at Rackspace, and spent eight years with O2, coinciding with the launch of the first iPhone and the growth of mobile apps as a channel. He joins up with UKFast’s award-winning Dev Ops team to support the development of new and existing products.
UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones said: “Garry knows the importance of working closely with customers to provide them with the best service and has a vast understanding of product development and marketing strategy.
“The pace of change is so rapid in the tech industry that we’re ensuring we have the resources in place to guide our evolution. On G-Cloud alone we now have 42 products, so it takes a huge amount of management.
“We’re putting massive investment into evolving our products and providing support so that our clients get the best results from using them. The product team are listening to what our clients need and generating incredible offerings to meet the demands of the market. The industry’s changed. It’s important to create APIs so clients can evolve their own products to work alongside ours.”
Having relocated from London to Manchester for the role at UKFast, Prior is now tasked with recruiting new team members to grow the product management department.
He said: “What attracted me to UKFast is a combination of the culture and the environment. In finance it was sometimes hard to get things done. Every decision had to go through five different boards, regulations and compliance. I’ve missed the tech sector and I was well aware of UKFast’s excellent reputation during my time in hosting. This, as well as the opportunity to develop and grow a team, made my decision to join the company an easy one.”
UKFast has enjoyed 17 consecutive years of organic growth, generating revenues of ?34.3m in 2015. Earlier this year the firm opened up the option of a ?40m bank facility from RBS to fund acquisitions and drive new growth.
Jones said: “I see the product marketing team expanding quickly over the next 18 months on both the development and the commercial side. We’re creating a champion for each product line who is a specialist in that area, helping customers understand how it benefits their business.”
The tech firm announced a recruitment drive to bring 100 new team members on board in spring and the first half of the year saw a record 5626 applications for roles.
