It may seem an unlikely story, but Intercept has taken on the virtualisation market at a difficult time, only to go and conquer it
Written by Ellie Duncan & Produced by James Pepper
Back in 2002, the virtualisation market was at its lowest ebb following the events of 9/11; in fact, the IT industry as a whole was struggling. It may seem an unlikely period in which to launch a virtualisation solutions company, but that’s exactly what Nigel Woods, along with eight others, did when the firm they were working for at the time collapsed. Now Technical Director of Intercept, Woods explains what it was that spurred them on. “We could see that the company was going down, yet our department was very profitable,” he says. “Our main aim was to have a company that focused on virtualisation and to leverage our skills in a specialist consultancy – that was the key.
“We identified that the market for Citrix applications was very strong, even in what was a very bad time in 2002.”
And so Intercept was born. Initially, Citrix was marketed as its main product but Woods and his colleagues soon realised the limitations of such a narrow solution focus. “That technology only fits a part of the desktop arena, and to provide desktops to people, you have to have a vast array of infrastructure in the backend,” he adds. “We noticed that the way companies put these solutions together had to radically change.”
Applications had become far too complicated, so Intercept embraced and pioneered application virtualisation: “Finding ways to easily install applications for vast arrays of people,” Woods elaborates – and hasn’t looked back. Thanks to its foresight, the company has doubled in size annually since 2002.
GREEN CREDENTIALS
Today, one of the biggest selling points of its applications is the cost-saving benefits and green credentials. “Green is very good, as long as you’re saving money at the moment, that’s the way it works,” Woods reveals. Cutting clients’ costs and reducing power requirements go hand in hand and Woods cites some instances where £60,000 in electricity savings can mean the equivalent in CO2 savings.
“For companies to expand, they have to find ways of getting more out of the power and the space they’ve got already, and that’s what we specialise in,” he explains.
One of Intercept’s biggest challenges then is also its greatest opportunity. “We’ve been working on a strategic goal of creating a company that will be turning over £30 million in 2012,” Woods says. “The market is there and the appetite for virtualisation is growing. “As people understand how the shift in delivering IT from a DIY approach to the benefits of consuming it on-demand as a service, we will see cloud computing as it is now popularly known become completely mainstream,” he claims.
Intercept’s managed services have been the powerhouse behind its extraordinary growth. Over the past two years, the firm has seen turnover grow 80 percent to £9.2 million. During that time, managed services have grown over 400 percent from nine percent of revenues to around 30 percent today due to overwhelming cost savings and efficiency advantages.
Intercept’s managed services consist of the traditional approach of managing clients existing on-site IT as well as its cloud computing services launched seven years ago.
Branded as online services, Intercept’s hosted cloud services consist of onlinedesktop, a familiar hosted Microsoft desktop together with business applications, then a series of specific hosted applications; onlinemail, a hosted Microsoft email; onlineworkspace, a hosted Microsoft SharePoint; onlinecomms, hosted unified communications; and onlineCRM, which hosts customer relationship management services. These services free clients to concentrate on their core business rather than be distracted by their IT provision.
In response to the growing market, Intercept is already setting up a storage division, and discussing the possibility of setting up offices outside of its London base. “We’re doing a lot of work around the country and in places like Jersey than ever before,” Woods states. “That’s probably a symptom of the economic climate growing awareness of our brand.”
CUSTOMER CARE
Employees are a vital cog in the Intercept wheel, and the key to its customer relationships. “People are coming up to six or seven years worth of service at Intercept,” he explains. “What we’re also doing is empowering them; we’re giving them the option to buy shares, so they actually feel part of the company.”
Staff retention ensures that Intercept’s customers receive consistently high service levels “from both the technical and sales perspective,” explains Woods. “We do a lot of events where we get to know our customers. I know most of these customers personally, so you build up a rapport and that helps when things go wrong – and this is IT, things do go wrong. You’ve got to be trusted to sort it out. That’s what we always aim to develop and has stood us in good stead.”
That customer confidence in the company has resulted in some of Intercept’s clients creating a virtualisation user group. Started in February, the group has since adopted more followers, allowing existing customers to demonstrate its product offering and range of services. “It’s letting our customers sell our solutions for us and that’s working brilliantly,” says Woods. “We have the confidence to allow the customer to do this because we have the confidence in what we do.”
In recognition of Woods’ own expertise and influence, this year he was shortlisted for the BCS Computing IT Professional of the Year and he also became a fellow of the British Computing Society. For Woods though, it’s simply a reflection of the way in which Intercept is developing.
“Our strap line is: ‘Virtual solutions, real people’,” he adds. “And that ‘real people’ is the key because, from my experience, people want to deal with people; they don’t want to deal with machines, or the traditional, sales-led companies.”
It seems the future looks nothing less than promising for the virtualisation experts.
FACTS AT A GLANCE
NAME: Intercept
CEO: Richard Gilder
OPERATIONS: Specialises in virtual solutions designed to reduce clients' IT costs
ESTABLISHED: 2002
REVENUE: £10 million
www.intercept-it.com
View Digital Corporate Profile of Intercept in Technology Digital October 2009