Our exec team

“What we do has an immediate effect on our customers’ business and success. At adapt, we pride ourselves on ensuring we are a strategic partner to our customers, helping them grow and succeed.”

Peter Knight
Chief Executive Officer

Peter is a technologist and dealmaker at heart with over 20 years entrepreneurial and leadership experience in the technology industry. He has built adapt up from scratch, and continues to reinvent the business to keep up with customer demands.

Recognising the need to improve internet-based solutions being offered to mid corporate business, Peter founded the company in 2001, leading a management buyout from the Margolis Group in 2006 and branding the company adapt in 2007 – he then led a major acquisition of Centric Telecom in the same year resulting in a combined forwarded contracted revenue in excess of 100 million. Never one to remain complacent, when the prospect to incorporate Centrecore, the managed services arm of News International Inc under the adapt Group presented itself, Peter seized the opportunity. The result is a fully managed end to end solution for our 1000 customer base.

“I love the people at adapt, and am proud to have built such a strong culture focused on customer relationships, new thinking for business challenges and company growth.”

Patrick Diggines
Chairman

Patrick was appointed as Chairman of adapt in 2006, following an extensive career in the city most recently as Deputy Chief Executive at Credit Agricole Indosuez (now Calyon), and Chairman and CEO of Alexander Mann, Europe's leading recruitment outsourcer. This experience which includes managing a $400M company means he is able to provide that all-important helicopter view on our investors, internal people and customer experience. Along with contributing to strategic decisions, he adds international experience to the management team.

Patrick boasts exceptional operational, HR, managerial and financial skills – as well as recruitment specialisation and the ability to recruit specialist partners to boost the company. Peter and Patrick's relationship has proved particularly fruitful for each of them as they draw upon each other's strengths. Patrick is the people person and Peter is the logical, methodical one.

“Both the management team and the business have impressive track records and together they provide an exciting platform for future growth.”

Toby Harris
Chief Financial Officer

Toby joined the adapt Group in May 2008 having gained over 10 years of senior finance experience within the financial services, property and leisure sectors. As well as his Board and Executive team duties, Toby heads up the Finance function whose primary responsibilities are reporting, cash management, procurement and corporate finance.

Since joining adapt Toby has driven through a step change in the financial discipline within the business and this has enhanced both operating margins and cash flow management. Another major achievement has been his implementation of a more rigorous system of commercial analysis for all major buy and sell side activity – critical given the multi-year nature of most contracts in the business.

Immediately prior to joining adapt Toby was Finance Director of the largest division of Hilton Hotels UK where he worked for 3 years and helped develop the business both strategically and operationally during a period of exceptional growth for the company.

Toby started his career in investment banking during which time he worked with adapt Chairman, Patrick Diggines, at Credit Agricole Indosuez UK. From there he joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) where he qualified as an ACA and spent a total of 5 years including 3 within their Corporate Finance division advising on mid cap private equity deals.

“adapt excites me because it's a dynamic company which embraces new technology and innovation, and has quality individuals to support it.”

Martin Ford
Chief Technology Officer

Martin is responsible for determining how technology can be used within adapt; evaluating and implementing key technologies to actualise business strategy. In this role, Martin also leads the assessment of technologies to ensure technical innovation within adapts Managed Service portfolio; providing market leading services to our customers.

With over 25 years experience in the IT industry, Martin is both technologist and entrepreneur. Before assuming his current position at adapt in 2009 Martin provided consultancy for a number of blue chip companies and successfully built a Network Integration Business that was acquired by News International (re-branded to Centrecore.)

Through Martin's technological leadership Centrecore established a solid track record and specialised in providing managed services in some of the toughest verticals with a significant media customer base that was to boast FOX, Aegis, The Guardian, The Independent, News International, Emap, Getty Images and many others.

CentreCore was acquired by adapt in 2009 for the managed services capability and Martin and his team are continuing to lead the Managed Service excellence within adapt.

"adapt's technical capability is second to none, with unique and innovative propositions that provide true value to our customers. Harnessed to a strong sales engine, adapt is well-placed to capitalise on this capability - I look forward to the next phase of adapt's evolution and the growth I know we can achieve."

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.