Paul Brown, business development director at Certus IT, is to head the company as its new CEO following the retirement of existing managing director, Lynne Fodor.
Lynne Fodor, who co-founded Certus IT with Paul Brown in 2000, will step down after 12 years at the helm, which has seen the company grow to become one of the largest specialist IT consultancies in south Wales.
Ms Fodor’s retirement is part of a long-term succession plan, which saw Mr Brown take the reins in August 2012.
After leaving school at 15 with no qualifications, Ms Fodor worked her way up to a senior position with Sega before leaving to create Certus IT. Together, Ms Fodor and Mr Brown turned over £350,000 in the first year and more than doubled this to £800,000 by the end of the second.
Talking about Ms Fodor’s time at the head of the company, Mr Brown said: “Lynne has been managing director at Certus IT for the last 10 years, and during that time we have worked together to see the business become recognised as the leading provider of IT services in Wales.
“I look forward to taking the company forward and establishing Certus IT and its new data centre division as the premium provider of IT managed services and private cloud services in the south of the UK.”
Certus IT, which originally started out with a staff of just two, now comprises a 30-strong team housed in the 4,500 square foot head office at the Celtic Springs Business Park in Newport. It also has established offices in London, data centres in Newport and Bristol, and serves over 200 customers across the UK and Europe.
Current clients include the Millennium Stadium, Freshwater, Broomfield & Alexander, Premier Global, Julian Hodge Bank, Tenovus and Watts Gregory LLP.
Paul Brown’s succession is part of an aggressive growth plan, which began with the creation of the Certus Data Centre Division 18 months ago. The resulting data centre, which was launched at the end of 2011 in partnership with Next Generation Data, enables Certus to meet the increasing demand for cloud computing services. It now accounts for 20% of Certus’ business.
Paul Brown, CEO of Certus IT, said: “The launch of our data centre marks the beginning of a new era for Certus.
“Since 2008, our core business has grown organically and we have seen a 20% increase in revenues year on year, resulting our current turnover of around £3 million.
“By expanding the services we are able to offer clients and, at the same time, undergoing a process of internal restructuring, we have set ourselves the goal of increasing this to £10 million by 2015. It’s an ambitious plan, but we are confident that we can achieve it with the right team in place.”
Together with the data centre, Certus IT offers a range of technology-based services including IT infrastructure design and implementation, managed IT support services, private cloud infrastructure solutions and data back-up and disaster recovery systems.
Paul Brown’s succession to CEO is the first of a number of new appointments to the senior management team at Certus IT that will be announced over the next few months.