This month in our Meet the Team series, we’re talking to our Head of Cloud and Support business unit Ken Willcox. As well as being kept busy with internal and customer facing work, Ken is a big sports fan and has ticked off enough sporting events to impress any sports enthusiast! We find out more about Ken and his role here at Bridgeall.
Tell us more about your role and what it involves?
As Head of the Cloud and Support business unit at Bridgeall, my role is diverse. As well as managing a sizeable team, my role covers both internal activities like developing strategy, identifying innovation opportunities, new products, services, financial performance, and operations. As well as customer facing work, including sales proposals and presentations, service delivery performance, and managing compliance and governance requirements.
How long have you been working at Bridgeall?
I joined Bridgeall in 2012 – it’s been the fastest 11 years of my life so far. This aligned with the dawn of Microsoft Cloud services which I came onboard to implement. Office 365 had recently launched and Azure was introducing Virtual machines in preview, expanding their service into Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to compete with AWS.
What do you like most about your job?
Bridgeall operates in a fast–paced environment, with constant challenges and demands. I really enjoy this, and we have a fantastic team of highly talented individuals that are great to work alongside. “Every day is a school day”, as they say!
What does a typical day for you look like?
Days are varied but will always involve some sort of meeting with customers, partners / suppliers, or internally with my team or Bridgeall’s directors. These are typically carried out over Teams nowadays. At the end of the day, I’m sometimes losing my voice as I talk so much!
What is your background?
I started my carrier in Architecture during the PC revolution in the 1980’s and quickly became CAD (Computer Aided Design) manager / IT manager for the business. This developed into a full time IT role where I eventually became IT Director for a large architectural business with UK, North America, and Asia locations. For many years I worked in Computer Graphics undertaking computer animations and visualisations, with this extending into BIM (Building Information Modelling).
I’ve completed many courses and exams over the years including Microsoft Certifications in Windows and SQL Server, Dynamics CRM, Office 365, and Azure. Cyber Security is a huge area of personal development as this comes under my business area and is ever changing.
What is it like working at Bridgeall?
It’s a fantastic company to work for. With lots of robust and mature processes that ensure you get the job done right, while being agile enough to respond to rapid changes.
How have you found moving to working from home?
Working from home is great, I recently moved house and have a dedicated office space setup, so it’s easy to separate home and work life. It also allows us to fully use and embrace all the technology we’ve been selling and implementing for our clients, while helping the environment by significantly reducing my travel.
Favourite project you’ve worked on?
There have been so many excellent projects delivered over the past 11 years, so it’s impossible to pick out one. What I really enjoy is when we deliver a migration or upgrade project and the users aren’t aware we’ve made the change, we cause no disruption or downtime, the switchover go seamlessly as if we were never there. We’re always developing new and innovate ways to deliver our work which makes work far more interesting.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
Sport plays a huge part in my life. I play golf and tennis, and enjoy going on skiing holidays; however, injuries have taken their toll over the past few years, so I struggle to play as much as I’d like. Originally from Liverpool, I have a season ticket at Anfield, so travel down for all their home games. At home I love cooking, usually washed down with a nice glass of red!
Something on your bucket list?
This is difficult because I’ve done so much, particularly relating to sport – Wimbledon Centre Court & Davis Cup, Open Golf Championship, Champions League, FA Cup etc. I’m sure Ryder Cup and US Masters would be good to add to that list.
I like to travel having visited lots of Europe, US, Asia, and Australia – I think India would be amazing as I love the food. I think learning to fly a plane would be good – I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was growing up.
