On 23 October, Proact announced the acquisition of Cetus Solutions Limited. Based in Manchester and London, Cetus is one of the UK’s leading workplace and hybrid cloud solutions specialists.
As we welcome Cetus into the Proact family, we wanted to give our customers, suppliers and colleagues a chance to get to know more about Cetus and what they do.
We’ve spent some time getting to know Mike English, the founder and MD of Cetus. He told us a bit about himself, the company’s strengths and what makes Cetus who they are. Read the Q&A below to find out more.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and Cetus?
I’m Mike and I’m the MD and founder of Cetus. I’ve lived in Manchester most of my life with my wife Jane, son Lewis and Hauzer the Schnuazer. In my spare time (when I get some!), I compete in motorsport and rallying. I’m also a race and rally instructor at Oulton Park. I have built, raced and endlessly tinkered with competition cars over the years.
Making sure everyone unplugs from work has always been a really important part of the culture at Cetus. We’re really lucky to have a very talented and hardworking bunch here. However, it’s vital for staff to switch off and re-energise.
I’m an electronics engineer by trade, but moved into the computing and reseller channel in the early 1990s. I’ve held board-level positions in a number of companies in the industry, then went on to form Cetus in 2001. The market was undergoing a rapid change towards faster communications and faster processor capability. We quickly built a talented team and grew both market presence and a quality offering in a short space of time. Project number three was a large Citrix project for Alliance & Leicester Building Society and there were only four of us!
Since then we’ve grown into one of the UK’s strongest workspace and hybrid cloud providers. This is testament to the team around me and the service they provide to our customers. I just steer the ship! Cetus proudly plays amongst the ‘big-sheds’, as we affectionately and respectfully name them. We sit as one of the most trusted and highly accredited Citrix partners in the UK.
It is the team, dedication and culture we breed within Cetus – the core DNA and fabric of Cetus. One of my frequent sayings is, “We do this work thing more than our home lives, so it has to be good right?!”
How are Proact and Cetus similar?
We share a lot of synergies that run right through the business. Our core values and cultures are almost identical. We have a strong focus on looking after our staff and building that sense of community. The most important synergy is that both companies have a strong focus on ensuring we deliver the best version of who we are to our customers. It’s not about proposing a technology for technology’s sake. It’s about truly understanding the needs and pain-points of our customers and delivering well-thought solutions that solve our their problems and help them grow.
We’re also very complementary in our service offerings. Our specialisms add value to the Proact offering, and Proact’s add value to ours. Together we can deliver an even stronger service portfolio that will benefit customers across the group. We share relationships with key partners, and together we’ll be even stronger.
What are Cetus’s core strengths?
We’re specialists in hybrid cloud and workplace solutions. Our internal skills, services and accreditations are focused on these two areas, and it’s where we really drive value for our customers. We enable customers to link together their legacy infrastructure and traditional applications with the latest cloud platforms, web/SaaS applications and AI/ML. We do this on platforms that are truly accessible from anywhere and are appropriate to the needs of our customers’ businesses.
We’re the highest accredited Citrix partner in the country. We’re the only UK Advocacy Partner and lead the way with the Citrix Customer Success accreditation. We sit on the UK Citrix Partner Council and P-Tech Technical Councils too.
We’ve been in business for 20 years and have retained a strong focus throughout. This enables us to carry more experience than many similar partners in our space. This is demonstrated through our accreditations and the sheer number of large-scale projects we have undertaken.
How do you see the Proact and Cetus relationship developing?
As I alluded to before, I think our teams will fit really well together, and we’ll soon see the benefits of each teams’ specialist expertise flowing throughout the group and delivering positive results for customers.
We’ve got a lot of hard work to do in the background to make sure these benefits are realised in a controlled and considered manner. However, I’m really excited about the future for Cetus, Proact and our joint customers. Watch this space!
