Arkphire, an Irish IT solutions and managed services company, has announced plans to accelerate its cloud business in the west of Ireland.
Arkphire is set to expand its operations in Mayo with the creation of 15 roles. This expansion represents an investment of more than €1.7m over two years.
Last year Arkphire announced its acquisition of specialist cloud solution provider CloudStrong, which is based in Castlebar. These new roles come as a result of having consolidated the CloudStrong business into Arkphire’s cloud services division.
This announcement will bring the Mayo-based headcount up to 27, and the overall headcount of the Arkphire Group to more than 115.
Arkphire CEO Paschal Naylor said: “The new investment in recruitment will provide Arkphire with the ability to do more for our customers by expanding our cloud service portfolio so we can support them in accelerating their journey to the cloud across all of the major public cloud platform, covering Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
“Now more than ever, businesses are investing in cloud technologies, with market research showing that over a quarter of IT budgets go to cloud services.”
In this recruitment drive, the firm is hiring across a broad swathe of roles including digital transformation consultants, cloud engineers, data analysts, support desk engineers and marketing staff.
It has also launched a new internship programme designed to facilitate apprenticeship-type training and development for people hoping to fast-track a career in this industry. “This company internship route provides an excellent opportunity for many of our local people to consider pursuing another exciting career option that may not have been a possibility up to now,” commented Oliver Surdival, head of cloud services at Arkphire.
Global cloud boom
Arkphire claims to be the largest Microsoft cloud specialist in the UK and Ireland, and boasts clients including TG4, Portwest, Boston Scientific and Topflight.
According to the latest data from the IDC Cloud Spending Guide, global spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will reach $210bn in 2019, which represents almost a 24pc increase from the previous year.
Just this week, we reported that Microsoft had officially unveiled its first cloud hubs in the Middle East, based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Amazon and Google are expected to follow suit soon with centres in the region.
