Executive Team

Robert Arrowsmith
M&A Director

Entrepreneurial and proactive, Robert’s wide-ranging international experience in building Information Technology companies makes him the ideal complement to Adapt’s executive team. Throughout his career, Robert has consistently delivered profitability, recognising and developing areas of organisational strength and rationalising weakness.

Joining in January 2011 as Managing Director, Robert’s mission is to position Adapt for the next phase of strategic growth, developing market share via a mixture of acquisition and organic activity.

Robert’s proven ability to lead companies, build sustainable revenue streams, engage investors and broker seamless mergers and acquisitions have previously won him a wide variety of high-profile CEO, COO and FD roles. These roles include International Finance Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Consulting, Managing Director of Systems Union (Japan) and Chief Operating Officer at DCS Group Plc.

To date, Robert has been instrumental in the purchase and integration of over 20 organisations worldwide. Prior to joining Adapt, Robert was Finance Director at Xploite PLC, a highly successful UK-based aggregator of IT service providers.

Robert’s reputation for developing fast-growth IT companies is founded on his ability to identify and integrate complementary business, build strong management teams and raise finance packages that support and expedite organisational growth.

Mark Woodall
Finance Director

Joining Adapt as Finance Director, Mark has a strong track record of significantly improving the overall commercial acumen of the organisations with whom he works.

After graduating from Oxford University, Mark started his career at Ernst & Young as a professional advisor to entrepreneurial growth companies, moving on to become Head of Commercial Finance at Fibernet Group Plc, a listed telecoms business. Later, Mark joined Huntswood, a private equity-backed business as Group FD, in a 4 year role that culminated in a successful buy back by the founders of the business. Most recently, he acted as the Interim FD of managed service provider DCG Group Limited.

Mark's experience to date in PE-backed, technology-focussed businesses and commercial, pragmatic, down-to-earth approach are ideally suited to the challenges of the dynamic environment in which Adapt operates. Mark will be an asset as Adapt consolidates its position as leading enterprise-class managed service provider to mid market corporates.

Simon Fisk
Sales & Marketing Director

Simon is a Sales and Management strategist with a reputation for creating and leading some of the most successful teams in the IT industry. With over 12 years' demonstrable P&L history acquired in both private and listed companies, Simon brings a wealth of experience in infrastructure, managed services and software sales to Adapt.

As Sales & Marketing Director, Simon is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of Adapt's planned growth, restructuring and developing the departments within his remit to optimise performance and drive new business.

Prior to Adapt, Simon began his management career in the FMCG market place before moving into a sales leadership role in a start up IT / Telecoms business that was successfully grown and acquired by Alternative Networks, later moving to Computacenter to manage their Enterprise and Data Centre sales teams before joining Computer Associates (CA) as Head of Sales for the Commercial Markets sector. During this time, Simon delivered successive growth over 30 consecutive quarters by building and developing teams to drive transformational and large-scale data centre projects to FTSE 500 organisations.

More recently, Simon was recruited by Xploite PLC to integrate and restructure its multiple acquired entities under the Anix brand. Through the execution of targeted sales campaigns, aggressive market strategies and alliances, Simon delivered market-leading profit growth over 24 months, playing a pivotal role in the ultimate sale of Anix to ACS for 31.5m in June 2009.

John Soanes
Head of Architecture

Heading up the Solution Architecture team, John's extensive managed services experience spans a spectrum of markets and technologies. As chief technical strategist, John is responsible for developing Adapt's flourishing portfolio of cloud and managed services, designing solutions that exceed customer and service delivery expectations.

John's wide ranging technical expertise brings clarity and focus to complex and challenging customer environments. With over a decade of experience developing and managing multi-million pound managed service solutions for high-profile online retailers and financial institutions, his approach delivers dedicated end-to-end technical focus from initial design through to acceptance, live production service and beyond.

Prior to joining Adapt, John has worked in a number of technical lead roles at UK-based MSPs, overseeing the operational management of key managed service contracts and developing innovative, relevant business services to take to market.

In the last 12 months, John has delivered the enterprise-grade second generation of Adapt's virtual data centre, the eVDC, the first continuous availability platform to be offered by a UK service provider. The eVDC is the foundation of Adapt's on-demand and cloud services, including Infrastructure, Software and Desktop as a Service.

George Harwood
Director of Operations

George’s 20 year pedigree at leading national telecommunications and Internet Service Providers makes him the ideal addition to the Adapt team. Before moving to Adapt, George was Head of Operations at the UK’s second largest consumer ISP, responsible for delivering networks and services to TalkTalk’s 5.2 million B2C and B2B customers.

George Harwood brings enterprise service delivery capability to Adapt. Experienced in managing large technical departments with diverse support structures across multiple international locations, his expert governance extends from Service Operations to Network and Platform Support, Development, Data Centre Services and Compliance Management.

George is responsible for strategic planning for the Operations group against Adapt’s technical roadmap, designing, implementing and sustaining a programme of continuous improvement and consistent service excellence. His proven track record at delivering results against tight timelines and to SLAs will ensure that Adapt's technical services continue to represent 'best of breed' within the industry.

With a strong technology background across both networks and systems, George has worked at every level within an operational environment to ISO27001, ISO9001 and CESG2-2-4 best practice standards and policies.