Howard Roberts, chief technology officer; Paschal Naylor, managing director; and Tony Quinn, sales director, announcing the rebrand from A&O Systems Ireland to Arkphire this week
After an arduous two-year management buyout (MBO) process, the former A&O Systems Irish division has re-emerged as a bespoke cloud consultancy called Arkphire, with plans to double its workforce from 40 to 80 over the next two years.
Headed by managing director Paschal Naylor, sales director Tony Quinn and technical director Howard Roberts, Arkphire employs more than 40 people and has had a number of incarnations since it started up in 1981, when it was known as Memorex Telex. It then became known as EDS Global Field Services in 1998 before becoming the A&O Group in 2006.
Naylor told Siliconrepublic.com that the first contract the new company has been given has come from A&O.
“Our vision for the company is to become a services and consulting-led organisation that will help companies take advantage of the cloud trend and find new ways of providing IT services back to the business.
“We want to represent ourselves as a broker for companies that want flexible ways of providing services to their end users,” Naylor said.
Quinn explained that the revitalised company will work with four main cloud infrastructure vendors – VMware, EMC, Symantec and Dell Solutions – and it will focus on four key areas: cloud services, IT service management, IT product supply and logistics and IT services and solutions.
“I think there are great opportunities in Ireland,” Quinn said. “Every business is looking for a more cost-effective way to support their business.
“While the word ‘cloud’ has been over-used, the vast majority of businesses have built their infrastructure up over the years and many are resisting the cloud and are scared to embrace it because of security issues.
“We aim to identify apps that are ready to use and help them to get there. There’s a definite market in Ireland for that,” Quinn said.
