Rolling out technology in the UK

Having left the Royal Navy as a Weapons Engineer Officer my first " civilian " role was as a Sales Engineer for Ferranti - working out of Manchester - living in Cheshire - selling weapons systems simulators around the world.

Ferranti supplied computer and weapons systems to the Royal Navy and this was an easy and exciting transition.

I went from sailing around the world to flying around the world.

I got lured from the simulation side of the business to a division set up to sell IBM compatible PC's and Local Area Networks etc

My transition into " Civvy Street " continued.

This meant that I was competing with and selling against IBM directly. We sold thousands of Advance computers in the UK, beating IBM in the process, especially to government and military organisations.

This all set me up for my next move to Memorex Telex ( it was just Memorex when I joined ). My first experience of working with American companies in the UK.

People think of Memorex as computer discs and audio tapes ( see Ella Fitzgerald advert above ) and Telex as headsets ( especially for American football players ) but actually between them Memorex and Telex had a huge global market share of the IBM market place.

We sold everything for IBM mainframe computers and mini computers ( AS400 etc ) other than the computers themselves and everything was " plug compatible " and better, faster, lower cost, more ergonomic etc etc.

Trained in American sales techniques I went from Territory Sales to Major Accounts Manager eg Barclays Bank and Regional Sales Manager ( Midlands ) reporting to the UK Sales Director. I managed salespeople from eg Rank Xerox and Pitney Bowes.

It was also very interesting to merge the completely different cultures of Memorex and Telex. I learned a lot from that.

Memorex Telex also entered the PC, LAN, WAN market.

I also did some work with Network Systems ( mainframe controllers ) and Storagetek ( Tape storage silos ) ( both USA companies ) briefly.

As " the network became the computer " I jumped ship to be Regional Sales Manager ( Midlands and London ) at startup Fibernet who were building fibre optic LANs, MANs and WANs. ( Exited to Global Crossing ). We also brought into the UK eg Fibermux ( optical fibre multiplexors from Israel ) and Synernetics switches ( sold to 3Com from USA and another USA company).

Our CEO Charles was very good at spotting innovative technology from abroad and bringing it into the UK and EMEA. Hence this was always pioneering and evangelising work.

Accounts targeted were across the board but for me mainly financial services and investment banks in particular ( JP Morgan, Merril Lynch, Bank of England etc etc )

My first startup LanSwitch in 1993 ( became Voyager Networks and Internet ) was initially a LAN switching and fibre optic systems specialist. A High Performance LAN company.

Having started with 3Com/Synernetics switches we also added Cisco Catalyst ( formerly Kalpana and Grand Junction ) and became a Cisco Gold Partner when Cisco Systems first came to the UK.

Later Voyager became a pioneer of Cisco based corporate Voice over IP and later Unified Communications solutions and a Managed Services Provider.

We exited Voyager to US global Telecomms company RSL Communications for $110 Million. ( From zero startup ). Nearly all the top Cisco Distributors and Resellers were sold at this time.

My next startup was a Cisco Convergency and Unified Communications Consultancy business. Which was sold to another business and Private Equity within 7 years of startup.

Another UK roll out of a US Company I worked with was Hubspot the inbound marketing company.