Kao makes two key appointments

Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of advanced, carrier neutral data centres for high performance colocation, has announced two senior director appointments to underpin its next phase of campus growth and bolster its leadership team. Following the recent appointment of CEO Lee Myall, Rod Faul joins as Senior Client Director from VIRTUS, and Tom Bethell joins as Business Development Director from Next Generation Data (NGD), bringing over 40-years combined data centre, HPC and telco experience to the business.

“I am delighted to be welcoming both Rod and Tom to Kao Data,” said Lee Myall, CEO, Kao Data. “By strategically investing in our team and differentiating ourselves through the talent of our people, we’re ensuring the right foundations are in place to deliver our vision of becoming the UK’s world-class home for high performance colocation, HPC and AI, and support the company’s next phase of growth and development.”

With 30-years experience within the telco and data centre sectors Rod Faul joins Kao Data from VIRTUS where he, and the sales team, were instrumental in growing the company’s data centre portfolio. His large-scale commercial contract wins contributed to transforming the organisation from a single location data centre operator to a brand now responsible for operating 100MW’s of capacity. Prior to that, Rod’s experience across telco also led him to secure sales of more than £70m in revenue for organisations including Level3 and Telefonica.

“During a time of market consolidation, mergers and acquisition, Kao Data offers significant opportunities to innovate and work with clients outside of the industry norms,” said Rod Faul, Senior Client Director, Kao Data. “I’m delighted to be joining the team at Kao Data, and believe that our location and the expertise of our industry-leading technical team offers customers within the hyperscale, HPC and AI communities a scalable, resilient and highly-efficient home for their digital infrastructure.”

Tom Bethell also joins Kao Data as the new Business Development Director. Tom has spent many years servicing customers in the data centre, HPC and telco sectors and notable experience includes his work to identify and close high-value deals including FTSE 500 companies, and his work alongside

the HPC, MSP and Telco communities at NGD. Tom also worked at China Telecom, Six Degrees Group and Pulsant selling voice, network, cloud and data centre services to mid-market enterprise organisations.

“Kao Data’s ability to meet and support customer demands for HPC and AI infrastructure is unrivalled in our industry, and I’m excited to be joining the team,” said Tom Bethell, Business Development Director, Kao Data. “Our location within a hotbed of HPC, AI and start-up innovation presents incredible potential to be the UK number one colocation facility for intensive and GPU-powered compute. I believe that this, combined with the depth and expertise of our leadership team and our growing cloud capabilities, will be a recipe for long-term success.”

Kao Data has recently signed a connectivity partnership with Megaport, a leading Network as a Service (NaaS) provider, expanding its capabilities to provide on-demand cloud connectivity from hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The partnership increases the data centre’s global cloud and connectivity capabilities and will provide a strategic location north of London, as well as the closest Megaport on-ramp to Cambridge’s academic, high-tech and scientific communities.