Nasstar is a leading provider of managed IT services and tailor-made cloud hosted solutions. We deliver innovative, secure and agile IT to help you accomplish your business objectives. Our offering ranges from fully managed IT solutions and hosted desktops to cloud computing, telephony and strategic consultancy services.
THE NASSTAR STORY
Nasstar started out as a company called e-know.net, founded in 1998 by David Redwood. David realised there were two key barriers to sales - high capital and operational costs on his customers' part.
The software being sold, and the server infrastructure required to run it was expensive, as was running a skilled and incumbent IT department to manage the whole software and hardware stack. Each of these factors were significant barriers to adoption of the software David sold at his previous company, and in retrospect the solution was obvious. This was when e-know.net was set up to host our customers' data and software, delivering it back to them on a per user, per month basis.
Present at the birth of e-know.net was Chief Financial Officer and daughter of David, Niki Redwood. Son of David, Nigel, joined the family business in 2002 as a Sales Manager, just as 3i had invested into the company. Between 1998 and 2002, the company focused on delivering Navision (before Microsoft bought them) as an ASP product (SaaS), but also mastered Citrix Metaframe to become one of the first in the UK to deliver applications in this way.
It was Nigel who realised that if the customer was going to get a full ROI then we needed to host all their applications, not just their core ERP application. In 2002, we changed our model to deliver fully hosted desktops and after proving to be highly successful, Nigel became Managing Director or e-know.net in 2003.
renewed focus & a reverse merger
In 2005, it became clear that in order to properly service our customers, we needed to fully understand their businesses. TO ensure that we understood how best to technically support our customers and their IT needs, we implemented specialisms and have since gone on to specialise in the legal and recruitment sectors.
In 2014, e-know.net merged with Nasstar in a reverse takeover to form the Nasstar Group. Nasstar was founded in 1998 by then CEO Charles Black and was one of the first service providers in the world to offer hosted virtual desktops. It was also the first to market with a multi-tenant platform designed for resellers, now known as 'cloud computing'. Charles was a pioneer pushing the boundaries of technology and floated Nasstar on AIM in 2005 to fund the R&D cycle and create scale through acquisitions.
vesk, kamanchi & modrus acquisitions
Founded in 2002 and acquired by Nasstar in 2014, Kamanchi was born out of an industry need for fast, detailed customisation to recruitment CRMs and databases.
Vesk was founded in 2005 and acquired by Nasstar in 2015 after quickly becoming the fastest growing hosted desktop provider in the UK, as well as being named by Citrix as their leading CSP Partner.
Modrus was founded in 2004 as a provider of managed IT services and telecoms to SMEs, offering a comprehensive cloud service which included virtual desktop, managed exchange and internet-based telephony services. Nasstar acquired Modrus and its full 24/7 in-person support offering, delivered by a team in New Zealand, in August 2016.
nasstar 10-19
In 2017, we launched our 10-19 program, designed to deliver an increased strategic focus to create one fully integrated business after a period of acquisition, by the end of 2019. This involved encouraging the team to focus on a clear mission and we set out to do this by consolidating technology, closing three of our seven data centres, employing more talent, improving customer satisfaction, aligning all acquired businesses to the Nasstar brand and ultimately increasing profit.
The three-year program set out the priorities and specific goals that each business function needed to focus on in order to operate efficiencies, drive innovation and continue to embed a first-class customer experience at the heart of what we do.
Milestones, awards & recognitions
Over the years we have had more than our fair share of internal milestones:
