UK Cloud Services Start-Up Kicks Offs on $94 Million
October 10, 2011
Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.
London start-up Six Degrees Group kicked off Monday with nearly $94 million in its pocket, a staff of close to 100 people, claims of over 1,200 business customers and designs on some of Amazon and Apple’s business…
The 60 million quid comes from private equity firm Penta Capital, which scored a 70% return in 12 months on Six Degrees CEO Alastair Mills’ last start-up SpiriTel and evidently expects lightning to strike twice.
The managed data services house, targeted at the mid-market, says it’s developed a cloud-based voice business continuity and disaster recovery solution called Livenumber that’s already seen "significant" adoption in legal and financial services companies.
The firm has also invested in expanding its core network and data center assets to improve its reach and capabilities as well as developing in-house expertise in managing web-based services, user profiles and secure workflows to support capabilities like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), its particular passion.
It says its newest data center was purpose-built to support cloud services, expecting to displace public clouds like Amazon Web Services and Apple’s new iCloud with a private cloud more appropriate to the enterprise.
Mills said in a statement, "That’s why we’ve seen nearly 800% growth in 12 months in our cloud solutions, and why we’ve made a big investment in more data center space to help us grow."
Apparently it’s got a suite of applications, evidently culled from a handful of acquisitions, covering compliance, information security, change management, BYOD, business continuity, disaster recovery and business optimization.
Mills said, "In January, I sat down with a clean sheet of paper to think about where I should next look to build a business. Cloud-centric convergence is the most exciting growth area in the market so we made that our focus. Nine months later, we’ve raised GBP 60m in funding, one of the largest fundraises in the sector, and we’ve got nearly 100 people, we’re growing at over 20% year-on-year, and we’re solving real business challenges. That’s great for our investors and our staff but it’s also great for the country. We’re growing as a company and we’re doing it in technology areas that will spur growth for UK plc. It’s innovation and ideas that will drag Britain out of its slump and that’s what we promise to deliver."
Mills is hiring, expecting headcount growth to be 20% a year.