Role: CEO, Redcentric
What’s been your business high point of the last 12 months?
Having Redcentric recognised as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in a Big Company in the UK by the Sunday Times has been incredibly rewarding, especially given the organisation underwent a carve out of its Data Centre business and subsequential successful sale of it during this time. People really show up for each other and our customers so having it acknowledged was a high point.
Name one thing your company is looking to achieve in 2026
Our corporate goals are focused on achieving organic growth with new customer logos. As one of VMWare/Broadcom’s limited number of Pinnacle Partners, we have invested heavily throughout the business in achieving their highest level of certification, are refreshing our infrastructure and focusing on defining industry-oriented business outcomes with a new set of customers.
What keeps you awake at night as a partner leader?
Redcentric is one of the MSPs who will be governed by the new cyber security regulations coming into existence soon. The regulation itself does not keep me up – we helped consult on it – but it’s the acceleration and proliferation of attacks that AI is driving which concerns me and others in maintaining the first line of defence for UK’s critical infrastructure and national economy, the goal of the regulation. In previous companies, I have taken that middle of the night call relating to attacks and it’s not an experience I’d like to revisit.
Is AI being over-hyped?
I believe AI is following the classic Gartner Hype Cycle and now is trying to escape the ‘Trough of Disillusionment. This means we’ve all trialled AI, had endless pilots and in some cases have seen promising improvements. However, a large proportion of UK businesses still have a way to go in investing in their basic digital transformation in order to take advantage of the full benefits we know AI can deliver. Moreover, training our workforces, being willing to change workflows and understanding the impact downstream of using the AI tools needs to mature to convert the hype to value.
What’s been your most successful internal AI project to date, and why?
The introduction of AI into our service desk operations may not be the most innovative but it’s certainly driven the most tangible reward in productivity and performance for us. Intelligence service desk ticket triaging and analytics have improved our response times and the quality of customer interactions, all contributing to our NPS ratings now trending with or above the IT industry average of 55.
Can you share a surprising prediction about how UK IT channel partners or the UK IT channel will evolve over the next 5 years?
Not sure if will be a surprise but marketplaces, coupled with AI, will become the only route to market for many vendors, shrinking the channel further, finally accelerating the formation of more differentiated or proprietary ecosystem-centric channel partners. The UK channel universe will remain highly fragmented as more try to focus on co-creating customer value in different ways, like those who will be AI trainers not implementers while others will become micro-specialists in a specific technology, industry or business outcome domain. Our chronic shortage of skills in the UK will continue, due to a host of societal issues. So channel partners can become more valuable as customers won’t be able to invest the myriad of architects, analysts, engineers and specialists that are required to create these more bespoke solutions.
Which tech gizmo (hardware or software) could you not function without?
We all need our mobile phones and laptops to work but to personally function – I need my portable stereo speaker. I commute from London to Yorkshire and live out of a different hotel each week. I need music to energise me in the morning and to keep me company late at night at work or in the hotel room. I like the music to surround me as opposed to wearing ear buds. So, while a speaker isn’t super high tech, its essential gear for me.
Which three famous people, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party?
My first couple of bosses turned out to be famous and unfortunately, all have since passed: Senator Bob Dole, President George H. W. Bush, and President Ronald Reagan. Once they got over the shock of what has been happening in the world since we worked together, I would love to hear their take on the current state of affairs and what can be done to improve it.
If you had a warning label, what would it say?
Having lived in Kansas a good portion of my life, my teams often hear me deliver comments based on midwestern wisdom and the Wizard of Oz. One such warning label for right now might be: “Tornado-tested; unlikely to be rattled by corporate storms.”
Which tech figurehead has impressed you the most this year, and why?
Gwynne Shotwell, the longtime President and COO of SpaceX. (Hasn’t she got a great last name given her role?!) She is the one who actually turns Elon Musk’s blue-sky visions into actual rockets, launches and revenues – meanwhile having probably the toughest job in managing upwards as anyone of us could imagine. Her leadership steered the company to its historic IPO, as everyone has seen. Yet, for me, it has been her ability to consistently manage the company’s transition to high-volume, factor-style rocket manufacturing, an industry first, and deliver some 630 launches that set the foundations for where SpaceX is today. She’s earned every penny from her IPO!
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