Having consulted at Acora for a year as a #gunforhire, I have signed up to the vision (no it wasn't the longest probation period in history;@). Along with my best business pal, Adrian Spink, we are heading up the Professional Services division, using our combined experience (and grey hair what's left of it) to drive Acora's ambitious growth plans.

If you know me you would agree I spend a lot of time in pubs drinking strong craft ales, particularly New England IPA. I've always wanted more than an excuse than I just love beer so decided to start a pub-related business with some pals to legitimise my visits. A lot of the pubs that serve my favourite beer either struggle to or no longer serve food. So we combined our tech and pub backgrounds to create an app that brings food to your table in the pub from your favourite local independent take-aways. It's a dream come true!Peckysh is coming to a pub near you in the very near future...Check it out here: www.Peckysh.com

I decided to create a forum for (present and future) ambitious leaders in my industry who share my desire for self-improvement to Accomplish More. My ambition is for this to be a respected community that attracts curious people who enjoy sharing their experiences and solving problems....

In the spirit of #notretiringyet I was very pleased to have several gigs on the go keeping me off the street. My first strategic part-time gig working started at Phoenix47 with my old friends from Symantec days in April 2021. (No I don’t only work with companies with a number in their name). They asked me to help them to accelerate the impressive growth they have already achieved. I’m really felt the vibe I enjoyed in the earlier days of Company85. It was familiar ground as Phoenix47 is a very channel-friendly, independent IT consultancy. With a broad spectrum of technical knowledge, Phoenix47 advises on and delivers customers’ digital acceleration goals in a secure way. Also, the offer of on-going support and managed services has been given a major boost by the successful acquisition of First Option Technical Support. So far so good, they are getting some great results, more than doubling sales from when I started!My second gig started in May 2022 working for Acora (see no numbers in that name). Along with my best business pal, Adrian Spink, we spent a year implementing an improvement plan we wrote for the Professional Services department and we are now division, using our combined experience to drive their ambitious growth plans.(Still available for golf on Friday's tho;@)

Company85 has become Telstra Purple, we’ve always been about PEOPLE bringing PURPOSE to technology. Put those two together and you get Purple. Makes perfect sense!The shift represents a lot more than just a name change. We’re still going to be the same tight-knit bunch here in the UK, with the same unique culture and focus on innovation, strong relationships and quality delivery, but being part of a 1,500-person Telstra Purple team globally gives us the ability to offer a far greater range of services to our customers. And we’re also going to be able to scale our services into Asia and Australia in order to support our international clients better.

A couple of ex-colleagues (actually friends) and I kept in touch over an all day breakfast every month at the Polo Bar opposite Liverpool Street Station. We would reminisce about the good old Company-i days and try and come up with Plan B. We all agreed once we had the right idea we would take the plunge and start a company together.They were still running the EMEA Consulting business when Symantec decided to shut it down and make everyone redundant to support the channel in adding value by building its own services business.We seized the opportunity and bid for a management buy-out of the consulting division. After a protracted 6 month negotiation , competing with Deloitte and CSC for the team we were delighted to be successful and Company85 was born!Rather than follow the crowd and jump on the Cloud and managed services bandwagons, we decided to stick to what we were good at focusing on project-centric IT transformation and security. Priding ourselves on delivering "Whiteboard to Keyboard" services.We picked up various awards on the journey such as UKIT Industry Services Company of the Year and IT Employer of the Year as well as Security Team of the Year at Computing's Security Excellence Awards.We always intended to grow an attractive business with a trade sale in mind within 8 years creating a journey along the way that our people and clients would benefit from in terms of experience.As a complete coincidence Telstra approached us in our 7th year and we quickly established we were on the same page in terms of culture and future plans. 6 months later Telstra bought Company85 to boost its international expansion plans in EMEA, by helping its transition from Telco to Techco through Enterprise Services.Since then Telstra has been true to its word by supporting our growth plans whilst not imposing too much corporate treacle. This is enabling us to focus on key areas such as:- Cloud and Managed Services- Data and Analytics- Security and Networks

See Company85 above....

An ex-colleague from Symantec was appointed UK MD for Kaspersky Lab and approached me to be his sales director. All of my sales experience had been with services to this point, plus I was just about to turn 40 so wanted to try something different to see if the grass was greener on the product/solutions side of the industry. Kaspersky sold 100% through the reseller channel so I had a lot to learn about building a partner programme and a sales and marketing team to support it. Did a bit of business travelling as well across EMEA and of course Moscow!

Fortunately I had experienced what it is like to work for a large american corporate having worked at JP Morgan and Sun Microsystems before, so the shock of going from a relatively small, agile, independent firm to the scale of Symantec was not too acute. It was certainly a lot easier to get a conversation with clients as Symantec had amazing market share. Whilst there, I managed Symantec Consulting's Strategic Alliance and Public Sector businesses.

Unix limited outgrew just Unix-related consultancy (into the previously avoided Microsoft space) and so needed to re-brand, we chose Company-i as it was a project codename I had been working on for Sun Microsystems and it was suitably generic. I had been honing my commercial skills whilst at Sun and eventually hung up my spurs as a consultant and became an account manager for them and was made a partner in Company-i. I took my experience of managing the Sun relationship to other best of breed vendors like Veritas, NetApp, HDS, IBM and EMC. At one point Company-i was delivering over 70% of Veritas' professional services on their behalf, and when Symantec acquired them, they also approached Company-i. This led to Symantec buying us as part of their strategy (at the time) to lead with services and we became their EMEA Consulting team.

This was my best blag to date and took "one page ahead" consulting to the limit. I was interviewed by Sun's Server and Sybase expert having just completed Sybase CBT the night before. I was successful and then thrown in at the deep-end as their Japanese Banking expert with projects in Fuji Bank, Fuji International and Nomura (picking up a bit of Japanese etiquette in the bargain). I was encouraged to apply and then appointed Lead Consultant for Servers and Solaris, responsible for all E15K projects (Sun's flagship product at the time - despite me being a Unix Limited external consultant). In this position I was able to spot opportunities to help with the wider scope of the projects and started using Unix Ltd consultants to help. This is where my commercial experience began and ultimately I decided to stop being a consultant and start being a sales person....

I always liked the thought of being a consultant so I over-sold myself as a Unix specialist.

As a Unix Limited consultant, I was dropped in at the deep end at JP Morgan in their European Client Server Group as an implementation expert. My first experience of the banking world with its associated pressures as well as being on a 24x7 support rota and being shouted at in the middle of the night if critical processes were failing.

In 1990 I left my job at Janson Green and became a mature student at university to pursue my dream of becoming a computer scientist (actually to compete with my younger brother who was just about to start a computing degree himself). I was then fortunate enough to find a job working for a software company servicing the Lloyd's market. Combining my newly acquired computing know-how with my previous insurance experience, I was able to quickly be promoted to manage the team. My career in computing was underway!

It was the 80's and I wanted to be in on the action so moved to the City! I joined one of Lloyd's of London's top insurance underwriting agencies, Janson Green, where the real business was done over good old fashioned long lunches....plus I learned a bit about the dark art of the Lloyd's insurance market.

My first job after A-levels. 20 minutes from my parents' house. I was living the flexi-time dream - building up credits so I could play golf on a wednesday afternoon and start my weekend on friday lunchtime in the Warwick Arms. Oh and I was doing some serious maths using actuarial formulae to reconcile group pensions.