Marcus Richards
5wire Networks is a Web Hosting, Cloud Server, Colocation and Dedicated Server provider. We help businesses gain access to these services with high quality support at an affordable price.
We have recently moved to be 100% carbon neutral with all the infrastructure and services given data centre facilities are one of the largest power consumers globally.
Tell us about yourself?
I started 5wire Networks in 2008 from my bedroom, working with small local businesses and individual customers across the Midlands. It was started as a hobby, and then in 2014 I turned the company into a LTD.
I have a Business Development background but in my spare time I have always loved working with computers/coding.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Network as much as you can! This has been a critical part to meeting new customers, being introduced to new people and getting our name out there!
What problem does your business solve?
We make digital transformation easy. If customers are looking to move to the cloud, or they are moving office and want to move physical hardware to a data centre – we simplify the process to ease impact of internal IT resources/skills.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The market is saturated with many companies. We want to offer outstanding support and service as a premium services without the premium price.
What is your magic sauce?
It is a pot of ingredients all mixed together… Personal service, fast support, high availability, competitive costs.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our objective is to continue scaling the business and expand to offer additional locations across Europe, North America and potentially APAC.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Amazon, Google Cloud and Azure! A lot of SMEs have moved IT operations to the cloud hosting providers. We are starting to see customers move back to data centre operations to have a fixed operational cost.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We want Independent and small businesses, Web designers/developers, SEO marketing agencies to start working with us.
We are open to partner with web designers/developers to take the the responsibility away from them for managing the websites for their customers in return for a referral fee.
(p.s thanks for reaching out to us!)
