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iomart Group
LSE: IOM
Industrycloud computing
information technology
Founded1998 (1998)
FounderAngus MacSween
Headquarters
Lister Pavilion, Glasgow
,
UK
Productscloud storage
Remote backup service
web filtering
business mail
servers
Number of employees
360+
Websitewww.iomart.com

iomart Group is an information technology and cloud computing company that was founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Angus MacSween.

The group takes its name from a derivation of the Gaelic word "iomairt" meaning enterprise. iomart offered the first UK consumer broadband connection and was the UK’s first broadband reseller through its Madasafish brand. Headquartered in Glasgow, iomart operated a call centre in Stornoway which today is still operating and owned by Talk Talk. The company was floated on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market AIM in 2000.

Iomart Group has expertise in Vendor, platform and technology agnostic cloud hosting.[1] As of September 2015, iomart owns and manages data centres in eight locations across the UK. iomart Group operates a number of different brands including Melbourne Server Hosting[2] which serves the SME market, Backup Technology[3] which provides cloud backup, disaster recovery and business continuity, as well as Easyspace, RapidSwitch and Redstation.

As of September 2015, iomart employs more than 360 staff, two thirds of whom are based at its offices on the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow.

History

iomart was founded in 1998 as an integrated internet and telecommunications company by former Scottish Telecom senior executives Angus MacSween and Bill Dobbie.[4][5] In 1999 the company received its first revenue from the launch of its business service in conjunction with Richard Branson's Virginbiz.net.[4]

In 2000 iomart Group incorporated and floated on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market AIM. Through its Madasafish brand iomart offered the first UK consumer broadband connection. It also launched Scottish consumer Internet Service Provider, Jings![6] In the same year iomart launched the UK's first outsourced large-scale email hosting platform, ThinkMail.[7]

In 2002 the Telco businesses were sold for £2 million to Centrica and in 2003 the group acquired Web Genie Internet Ltd[8] for £437 thousand.

In 2004 iomart bought web hosting brand easyspace for £12m as well as hosting and domain company Internetters for £250k. In 2005 it launched the UK business directory Ufindus and launches Netintelligence Managed Services Platform.

2006 saw the launch of Netintelligence as the worlds first security Software as a Service product.[9]

In 2007 the group bought its first four data centres across the UK.

In 2008 iomart sold Ufindus to BT for £20m.[8] The following year iomart acquired dedicated server hosting specialist RapidSwitch for £5.5m.

In 2011 iomart were awarded First UK Kite Mark for Online Child Safety. The company also acquired Titan Internet for £4.2m, Switch Media for £1.25m, Global Gold for £1.2m, and EQSN for £2.5m.

In Autumn 2012 iomart Group made a multimillion-pound investment in creating its own resilient dedicated fibre network to connect its data centres. The group also went on to acquire Melbourne Server Hosting for £7m and launched Host Your Kit youth football campaign.

In 2013 the company made two more acquisitions, Redstation for £8m and Backup Technology for £23m.[10]

In 2014 the company expanded further with new data centre and infrastructure operations on the east and west coasts of the US[11] plus a £multi-million extension of their existing Maidenhead data centre. At the end of 2014 the company made an announcement that they had acquired rival cloud service provider ServerSpace to further expand the group.

In 2015 the company made two more acquisitions, the Cloud Consultany; SystemsUp for a deal worth around £13m and United Hosting in December, in a deal worth up to £11m.

In 2015, iomart were also voted the Best Cloud Service Provider of 2015, by HostReview (http://www.hostreview.com/awards/2015/cloud-service#ixzz3yWWLTOhm)

Promotional campaigns

In 2010 iomart launched the "Racks 4 Acres. Powering the Cloud. Preserving the Clouds" campaign.[12] Working with environmental charity Rainforest Concern, the group sponsored an acre of Ecuadorian cloud rainforest to mitigate the additional megawatts of power that is consumed within their data centres. Following this, iomart launched the "#Savethecloud365" campaign with their partner Microsoft. iomart pledged to donate £3 to Rainforest Concern for every Office 365 licence they sold during 2015.[13] In addition, iomart is also giving tablets to forest rangers working for Rainforest Concern in the Cloud Forest in Ecuador.[13] "Host Your Kit" is a scheme for UK youth teams to have sports strips provided by iomart. In 2012, over 500 youth football teams entered the competition.[14] The campaign was expanded to include basketball kits in 2013 and again in 2014 to include rugby and hockey kits. The Group has also supported the conservation work of the Elephant Family since 2009, when it became involved in London’s Elephant Parade. iomart are also involved in Edinburgh’s Jungle City where they enlisted the help of Balfron Art to help them design and produce a hornbill.

Products and services

iomart offers Cloud Storage.[15] The groups Cloud Storage service are hosted in their wholly owned network of secure UK data centres. iomart offers Cloud Backup services, based on enterprise grade EMC Avamar and VMAX platforms.[16] The iomart group route over 20 Gigabits per second of traffic at peak times and have over 100 Gbit/s of internet capacity available at any time.[citation needed].

Hosted Desktop

iomart were the first UK cloud service provider to deliver their VDI platform using VMware Views leading technology which allows them to integrate and deliver an enterprise Windows 7 desktop experience with Microsoft Office 2010® for collaborative working.[17] Their customers can choose between a private, hybrid or managed cloud platform solution to host their virtual desktops.

Physical servers

iomart's cloud servers platform, CloudSure, is a fully resilient platform architecture built with blue chip hardware and software managed 24x7 by their onsite technicians.

Cloud email

iomart offer a complete email service including mailboxes, archiving and storage as well as a full set of email and collaborative features. Email filtering from iomart is a solution that combines threat protection from SPAM, viruses and inappropriate content into a unified email security solution. It can be fully managed from a simple web-accessed Control Panel. Email filtering is a cloud based service which protects end users and networks prior to mail reaching it, with all mail checked for spam, viruses and inappropriate content before delivering clean mail to the end users inbox.[18]

Awards

2014

  • Rittal Data Centre Excellence Award 2014.[19]
  • Chief Executive’s Award, City of Manchester Business Awards.

2012–2013

  • International Data Centre & Cloud Awards 2013 – Private Cloud & Infrastructure Service of the Year 2013[20]
  • Storage Awards – Archiving & Compliance Product of the Year 2013[21]
  • Global Telecom Business Innovation Awards –Fixed Network Infrastructure Innovation 2013
  • 2012 Scotland PLC Awards – Scottish plc of the Year[22]
  • 2012 Scotland PLC Awards - AIM/Mid-sized Cap of the Year[23]

2010–2011

  • CTO of the Year – Bill Strain[24]
  • 10th in World’s Top 100 Global Managed Service Providers[25]

2008–2009

  • UK Data Centre Operator of the Year 2009[26]

2006–2007

  • 2006 Global Excellence in End Point Security Award[27]

References

  1. ^ "Iomart Group plc Overview by Bizofit".
  2. ^ Keighron-Foster, Daniel. "iomart Group acquires hosting company Melbourne". www.manchestereveningnews.com. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
  3. ^ Glenday, John. "Iomart Group purchases Backup Technology in £23m deal". www.thedrum.com. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
  4. ^ a b Fitzgerald, Neil (5 December 2000). "Trailblazers in their Sphere". www.HeraldScotland.com. Herald Scotland. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  5. ^ Williams-Grutt, Oscar (1 October 2013). "Tech entrepreneur Angus MacSween nets millions with iomart stake sale". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
  6. ^ "By Jings! Iomart launch an ISP for new Scotland". www.scotsman.com. The Scotsman. 18 October 2000. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  7. ^ "Iomart launches email innovation". The Scotsman. 17 January 2001. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  8. ^ a b "Company Overview of Web Genie Internet Ltd". bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 3 July 2014. Cite error: The named reference "Bloomberg" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  9. ^ Smith, Mark (17 November 2006). "Iomart sees solid rise on back of net security product". The Herald. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  10. ^ Cameron, Greig (23 October 2013). "Iomart buys data firm in its biggest-ever takeover". The Herald. Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  11. ^ "iomart buys ServerSpace". Business Cloud News. Business Cloud News. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  12. ^ "iomart Hosting Launches Racks 4 Acres Campaign to Support Rainforest Preservation". www.scotlandis.com. ScotlandIS. Archived from the original on December 13, 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ a b "iomart Office 365 campaign supports rainforest charity". http://www.charitytechnews.co.uk. 18 March 2015. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ "iomart Hosting Celebrates Start of Olympics by Announcing Host Your Kit winners". findcloudhost.com.
  15. ^ "iomart Cloud Storage Service". govstore.service.gov.uk. Crown Copyright. Retrieved 11 August 2014. {{cite web}}: External link in |ref= (help)
  16. ^ "Vendor:iomart". ultimabusiness.com. Ultima Business Solutions. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  17. ^ "iomartcloud and Paragon Development Systems (PDS) to Deliver Backup to the Cloud Services Based on VMware vSphere Data Protection™ 5.5 Advanced". vmware.com (Press release). vmware. Retrieved 11 August 2014. {{cite press release}}: External link in |ref= (help)
  18. ^ "iomart email filtering". govstore. Crown Copyright. Retrieved 11 August 2014. {{cite web}}: External link in |ref= (help)
  19. ^ "iomart Wins Data Centre Excellence Award from Rittal". PR Web (Press release). PR Web. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  20. ^ http://www.veooz.com/news/uJycJ.html. Retrieved July 2, 2014. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)[dead link]
  21. ^ "iomart Group wins International Datacentre & Cloud Award". www.benzinga.com (Press release). Benzinga. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  22. ^ dailyrecord Administrator (18 April 2012). "SCOTLAND PLC AWARD WINNERS: Well-earned plaudits for the pick of the plc bunch". dailyrecord.
  23. ^ "PLC Awards Previous Winners". 7 Days Scotland. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  24. ^ "iomart Group CTO Bill Strain Named IT Leader of the Year" (Press release). www.thehostingnews.com. 24 November 2011.
  25. ^ "Top 501 Managed Services Providers List (Ranked 1 to 20)". MSP Mentor. MSP Mentor. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  26. ^ "iomart Hosting Named Data Centre Operator of the Year". Market Wired (Press release). Market Wired. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  27. ^ "Info Security Products Guide Names Netintelligence Enterprise Manager Winner Of The 2006 Global Excellence In End Point Security Award". www.eworldwire.com (Press release). E World Wire. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
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