FEATURE
Going for Growth Peter Russell, Ireland Managing Director of CANCOM UK & Ireland, talks to Ambition about his ambitious growth plans for the business across the island.
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ANCOM UK & Ireland’s new managing director in Ireland, Peter Russell, is well used to big challenges. He was part of the Ireland rugby team that rattled the All Blacks during a 1992 tour of New Zealand. And in business, the former fly half has held major, all-island jobs with BT, Microsoft and Neueda. Now in his new role, which he took up in January, he has a three-year plan to significantly grow CANCOM UK&I across the island of Ireland, with a big focus on cloud transformation and cybersecurity services. And while he admits that his plans are ambitious, he says the multinational CANCOM Group is entirely behind him. “We have presented our growth plan to Germany and they’ve fully supported us, and I’m pretty excited about it,” he points out. CANCOM Group is a respected Munichheadquartered company that acquired high flying Novosco in 2019, creating CANCOM UK & Ireland by merging the Belfast-based managed IT services provider with two other tech companies it previously acquired in England. The company is now working with both public and private sector customers here to provide four key digital transformation services: modern workplace, cloud and infrastructure, network and collaboration, and cybersecurity. Peter sees the latter as making up much of CANCOM UK&I’s workload in the coming months. “After the rush by organisations to invest in and upgrade IT last year, it’s now all about fine-tuning the productivity
and optimisation of those investments, including bolstering cybersecurity and transferring to the cloud. CANCOM UK and Ireland has a pivotal role in that process.” “Security in particular is a significant growth area. COVID-19 has presented over 80% of our customers with their biggest ever IT pressure to date. Companies have everyone working from home now using laptops and various devices, all remotely enabled. Previously, this would have taken years to roll out. But it has been pushed through in a matter of months and there is definitely a need to look at potential cybersecurity risks,” he says. “There is an ever-changing threat and cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated, so we are advising all of our customers to be extremely careful. Security is an area CANCOM UK&I is investing heavily in and last year we went through a very successful Skills Academy with the Department for the Economy, enabling us to recruit many new securityskilled staff and to set up a security operation centre in Belfast. This is now part of a much greater overall group security capability.” Skills are a big agenda item for Peter Russell. “To grow the business, we need to ensure the team culture remains strong, and we need to look after the outstanding people we have, develop and invest in them, and strive to genuinely ensure CANCOM UK&I is a great place to work. If we do that, we will maintain our outstanding customer satisfaction levels and our Net Promoter Score, which currently sits at a best-in-class + 84.”
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“After the rush by organisations to invest in and upgrade IT last year, it’s now all about fine-tuning the productivity and optimisation of those investments, including bolstering cybersecurity and transferring to the cloud. CANCOM UK and Ireland has a pivotal role in that process.”
