About Arkessa

You may have already heard of us because Arkessa was formed from a management buyout of the M2M division of Vianet, a company with ten-years of experience in developing and building pan-European M2M business applications. Located in the Cambridge area, we take advantage of the strong culture of technology and innovation that exists in what is one of Europe’s greatest technology clusters and is pre-eminent in the wireless sector.

Arkessa uses internet technology over 2G and 3G mobile phone networks to link things with things. Sometimes called M2M (machine to machine) this connection enables a wide range of companies to offer services to end users by virtue of being able to manage, control and monitor equipment and processes remotely.

Our network operations and data centre is established in a new facility at Telehouse London. Called ‘The Ark’ it enables Arkessa to offer service levels beyond that of any of its competitors, including ubiquitous coverage. The infrastructure supports mission-critical IT systems using secure, private, 2G and 3G across European mobile wireless networks.

“With no limit to the scalability of our service all client requirements can be provided for, whether they need one or a million connections, a simple control message or a major data exchange”, said Ian Orrock.

Arkessa is operating in a market that has, until now, been ignored largely by the major mobile phone networks. A key problem for these network operators is the need to guarantee network coverage at all remote sites and at all times. Arkessa is able to do this because of its operating independence, elements of its technology and the fact that it has service agreements with so many network operators.

Arkessa is a founding partner in the “m2mglobal” network, which enables it to provide services throughout Europe, the Americas, the Far East and Australasia.

Background, origins and founders

Although only recently re-branded and expanded with its new world class infrastructure, Arkessa is a fast evolving but well established business in the European machine to machine sector.  Having formerly traded as Vianetm2m, the founders and the Arkessa service concept have their origins in the late 80’s and 90’s when telemetry services were beginning to take off as mobile communications and device technologies became commercially viable. 

Two of the founders of Arkessa – Ian Orrock and Paul Green – were responsible for the creation and development of Vianet’s telemetry offerings using mobile networks.  They had earlier cut their teeth on the technical and market issues at GEC Telecoms, Marconi, Serck Controls and Racal where they were responsible for developing similar services and applications offered to global Utilities, Oil & Gas and related sectors for control and monitoring.

Our sector focus as a virtual mobile network operator, enabling local and global users to securely connect to the internet has gained greater traction in the past few years enabling us to both create new services and tools for end-users as we invest in additional experience and talent to support user demand.  As part of this our relationships with multiple networks, specialist vertical market partners and the m2mglobal.com alliance have enabled us to provide true worldwide connectivity with a closely coupled customer focus and support ethic.

In recent time considerable investment in the restructuring, relocation and expansion of the business has enabled us move a step beyond our competitors and develop a clearly differentiated service offering from that of the mobile networks.

People

Ian Orrock

CEO

Ian’s business objectives are much more than the pursuit of profit. He’s more excited by the challenges and the sense of achievement that come from creating and building businesses. Profit and growth, however, are what he delivers.

While a student and studying for a BA in Business Administration he was making a small fortune trading in sports cars. By the time he graduated he owned his own house and then embarked on a career in sales in the early IT services industry at ITT. Recognised as being without rival in sales, his success was rewarded with rapid progression.

After two years he founded his first software house building a career that has seen him found, lead and rescue a number of companies across the landscape of today’s IT. Ten years later he sold out to United Telecom and Raytheon and after two years of US corporate life he moved to
Racal Electronics, growing its electronics CAD/CAM group four-fold in as many years.

In 1987 Ian co-founded Intermediate Management, an interim management firm, and built a $1bn group under the Meridian banner. After it was sold he continued with a series of public company recoveries and built other companies in the Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) sector

Most recently he has helped build other TMT specialists, has led the management buyout of VianetM2M, creating Arkessa, and delivered a long-term strategic partnership with KDDI Europe to service the demand for virtual networks.

As a manager and an optimist, Ian is ever aspirational for the people who work with him, nurturing their talents and giving them room in which to develop and progress.

His work has taken him to almost every part of the World setting up businesses in Europe, the USA and Japan. He travels extensively and with a large extended family now concentrates on his UK interests. He lives with his wife in Scotland and Portugal.

Paul Green

Marketing and Technical Director

Paul is the visionary in the business. His ability to anticipate how businesses will operate in the future is what enables Arkessa to be doing what it is, today.

His professional life has combined engineering and science with rare ability to spot business
opportunities. Where others falter, he has the imagination to succeed and he believes in leadership rather than management.

Armed with degrees in chemical physics and mathematics from Reading University, his career has taken him through a variety of roles, including design and production engineering, business planning, marketing and corporate sales.

Telecommunications has been the central theme of his work which has been for leading bluechip companies, including STC, Nortel, GEC, GPT and GPT Siemens.

Achievements and ‘firsts’, such as the creation of new factories, new designs and new technologies are mentioned throughout his CV. While at STC he put the first single chip radio
pager into production for Nortel; an example of which is in The Science Museum.

A passionate and committed Christian, Paul is as excited about materials science and quantum physics as he is interested in railways, water colour painting, walking, skiing and the natural world.

Philip Chaplin

Operations Director

With responsibilities lying both in procurement and sales, Philip is a director with an unusual past and a passion for service delivery.

He gained a BA in Geography from the University of Wales before joining the Police. As part of his degree he studied systems analysis and programming, and while serving, both in uniform and as a Detective in the CID, Philip became aware of a growing need for in computer-related investigations. An opportunity to specialise led him to becoming one of the first Computer Forensics Officers in the police.

After leaving the police he joined One2One, and then T-Mobile, as an investigator of both internal and external fraud.

However, the recognition of his skill as an organiser, and his ability to understand complex technical issues and translate them for non-technical audiences, took him into a UK service delivery and technical support management role.

He joined VianetM2M in 2006. The ethos and passion he has for service delivery, developed while a policeman, remains with him and is still growing.

A keen sportsman, Philip runs half marathons to keep fit and cycles for fun. He is married and has one daughter, 18.

Steve Neale

Sales Director

Steve’s career demonstrates extraordinary ability, passion and commitment. He has been the top selling salesman in most of his previous engagements, and has often been responsible for spearheading the selling of new technologies, ideas and systems into new territories. This is what he does for Arkessa.

Having studied Business in London he joined energy giant Shell International where he traded fuel oils. After 12 years he took his sales skills into the sunrise territory of business, computer and telecoms equipment.

His expertise now includes data and voice systems, both in hardware and software, wireless and fixed line. For a time he specialised in Bluetooth wireless LANs and this work took him closer to the mobile network operators.

While at T-Mobile, Steve pioneered and led the selling of Machine to Machine (M2M) services. He was the organisation’s leading salesman in Europe.

However, in 2007 he was recruited by Vianet Group, where he continued to sell M2M services into new markets and for applications that, previously, had not been considered.

A Spurs fan, Steve watches and plays football. He also is a keen cyclist. He lives in Hertfordshire and has four children.

Halam Rose

Technical Director

Having joined Vianet in 2006, Halam manages Arkessa’s technology interests and is its technology troubleshooter. He works with customers, helping them to set up and
maintain trouble free connections.

Having studied Manufacturing Systems with Business at the University of Teeside he emabarked on a career in industry.

He was swiftly recognised as one of the UK’s leading authorities on Bluetooth and wireless technology and became Chairman of the Bluetooth advisory board.

His expertise includes the writing of GSM basestation software and the testing and approvals relevant to the hardware and software required for wireless communication.

Outside of work he is a keen amateur rocketeer, building rockets from scratch that ascend 1000s of feet. He is an instructor of advanced level amateur radio, has built his own hovercraft and has been a dedicated motorcyclist since the age of 16.