Member Article

Behind the business with ServerSpace

Tim Pat Dufficy, managing director of cloud hosting service ServerSpace, takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

As a young company that has grown at a phenomenal rate over the last few years, one challenge we face is finding great people, with the right skills, to fill the roles we have.

We take recruitment very seriously, and are always on the look out for talented young graduates to drive and inspire our business. People are our most valuable asset and we want to employ the best people we possibly can.

We’re keen to give promising young people a great start to their career, giving them great prospects for the future, as well as providing them with the necessary training to help them grow and develop. We want to give the right people a chance to be part of a vibrant, young and fast growing company.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

It’s been such a busy year, but by far our biggest achievement has been growing the company so successfully in a period of great economic uncertainty and instability. Since founding the company in 2006 we have been through two recessions and achieved an average annual growth rate of over 1,500% Over the last 12 months, we have also increased our head count from 11 to 18, something that we’re very proud of.

This achievement culminated in us being ranked tenth in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the UK. In fact, we were the highest ranking managed hosting company in this list, meaning that we are the fastest growing managed hosting company in the UK at the moment.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

As well as continuing to grow the business, one of the key focuses for the next 12 months will be to ensure that our move to the Silicon Roundabout, near Old Street, runs as smoothly as possible. As part of the move, our aim is to provide super fast connectivity and cloud services to companies in the area. These are really exciting plans for us, and we can’t wait to be operating out of such an up-and-coming location.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

I have learned how important it is to always read supplier contracts extremely carefully. This includes finding out when and how you can terminate any contractual agreement, and establishing when and under what circumstances the supplier is able to increase fees. This is an important lesson for start-up companies, and many can end up learning the hard way.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in your region or generally, and where your organisation sits within it?

We work in the hosting industry which is, essentially, the internet industry. On the whole the sector is performing well, mainly due to the fact that more and more companies are moving to the cloud, which provides great opportunities for companies like us. We now have a wide range of customers, both large and small.

We set ourselves apart from our competitors in that we work on developing relationships with our clients that continue for years, rather than focusing on maximising revenue in the first year. We do not missell services to clients and will even stop a client from buying more services than they need. In essence, we help our clients to sleep well at night by taking responsibility for ensuring their service is up 24/7/365.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .