22 focus on Reading
BaxterStorey flies again with British Airways
BaxterStorey, the UK’s leading independent food service company, has been awarded a second major contract to provide catering for British Airways, this time for its offices at Heathrow, Manchester and Newcastle.
The five-year contract will see Reading-based BaxterStorey provide staff dining and hospitality for thousands of employees across 12 locations. British Airways staff will benefit from a specialist team, who with the support of the BaxterStorey Barista and Chef Academies, will exclusively develop innovative menus featuring a creative range of high quality, fresh, seasonal and local produce.
Mack Allan, BaxterStorey’s regional director, commented: “To be awarded a second contract of this prestige is fantastic news for BaxterStorey.
“Our key focus will be to enhance the hospitality experience for British Airways staff and concentrate on what we do best, which is to deliver excellence in food service by providing fresh, locally sourced, seasonal food.”
Noel Mahony, chief executive at BaxterStorey, added: “Our specialist team have worked extremely hard and have placed a lot of energy into securing this deal, so we are absolutely delighted that British Airways has selected us yet again to be its catering partner.”
Steve Probert, property operations manager at British
Speed: the measure of performance
Marking Reading-based Pulsant’s first anniversary, the British cloud, colocation and connectivity expert, today announces its support of the Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) world land speed record attempt.
Speed is a fundamental measure of performance for both Pulsant and Bloodhound. While the Bloodhound car will be capable of achieving an incredible 1000 mph, Pulsant’s Enterprise Cloud solution offers a six-fold performance increase, for the most demanding applications, over current levels of performance, plus a 40-50% increase in speed, says the company.
Pulsant’s Enterprise Cloud platform is the first cloud computing proposition in the UK to be built around HP’s latest Gen 8 severs. It harnesses the power of Intel E5 chips and the latest version of VMware’s Hypervisor virtualisation software to deliver an infrastructure that far outperforms previous configurations.
Noel Mahony
Airways said: “The vision of the Facilities Management 2013 programme was to provide ‘best in class’ services across all FM operations, in a cost-effective manner that delivers excellence to our internal and external customers. The decision to appoint BaxterStorey to provide colleague catering supports this vision and provides a flexible service provision and improved business processes. BaxterStorey clearly demonstrated how they will provide the value-add we need.”
In January, BaxterStorey was awarded the first major contract with British Airways to provide catering for British Airways lounges in the UK. The five-year contract will see BaxterStorey providing customer dining for tens of thousands of travellers a year at 14 First Class and Galleries Lounges across the UK, as well as the Concorde Room at London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
World-beating UK tech company
snubs London for Thames Valley The company has announced plans to hire 30 new members of staff at its new global headquarters in the Reading University Enterprise Centre over the next three years. The new offices are perfectly situated to attract graduates from the University and Henley School of Management and benefit from the latest innovations coming from the Reading Enterprise hub. Fairsail
Fairsail, the leader in global workforce collaboration, has announced the opening of its new headquarters in the Reading Enterprise Centre, earning the praise of innovation- focused MP for Reading East, Rob Wilson. This follows an outstanding year of growth, which has seen the human resources software specialist grow its customer base by 200% and increase revenue by more than 300%.
www.businessmag.co.uk
The Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) project aims to smash the current world land speed record, achieved in 1997. At seven and three quarter tonnes, 13 metres and 135,000 horsepower (the equivalent of about 160 Formula 1 cars) the Bloodhound car will have 16 cameras so the world can watch the event as it happens. Beyond the record attempt, the Bloodhound project is also a showcase for British science, technology, engineering and mathematics, aiming to inspire future generations to take up careers in these subjects.
Pulsant’s announcement comes after a landmark first year for the company. Acquisitions and strategic growth have made it one of the largest private data centre operators in the UK. Since launching in Spring 2012, following the merger of Lumison, DediPower and Bluesquare Data, Pulsant acquired leading Scottish data centre provider Scolocate for £26 million, providing its 10th data centre in the UK. It has also completed the first phase of a £14m, three-year investment programme to create a new South London Data Centre Campus and a £3.2m expansion of its Tier 4 Milton Keynes facility.
Mark Howling, CEO at Pulsant commented: “Contributing to Bloodhound’s outstanding British ambition is perfect for Pulsant. Involvement ensures we are recognised as an innovative, ground-breaking technology company and also showcases the speed and agility of our Enterprise Cloud platform. Following an outstanding first year of growth, we are celebrating our success by backing a spectacular British project, that will be a part of history.”
“We are thrilled that Pulsant is on board with Bloodhound,” said Bloodhound spokesperson Tony Parraman. “The two British companies have synergies of innovation, speed and service excellence that are widely respected. The record attempt is gradually capturing the imagination and interest of the whole nation and it is great to have Pulsant as part of the team.”
had considered and rejected a London base as the company found Reading offered better value for money, a better working environment and room to expand.
Fairsail’s global customer base includes IRIS, SolarWinds and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Over 100 organisations worldwide use Fairsail’s cloud-based Global Workforce Collaboration platform to rapidly expand operations into new countries, hire and retain staff – slashing the time required to
comply with regional working laws, holiday legislation and currency headaches.
Rob Wilson MP commented: “Fairsail is exactly the type of business Reading needs. A successful start-up, experiencing rapid global expansion, it helps to further Britain’s reputation as a technology innovator. I wish Fairsail every success for the future and hope it shows other companies who feel priced out of London that Reading is a viable option which can often offer better value.”
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2013
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