Overview
Portal is an award-winning business and technology consultancy.
We specialise in helping organisations derive insight from information. We use
technology to help our customers share and collaborate on that information, at
any time and on any device.
Portal was formed in 2006 from a merger of several IBM business partners, each expert in their own field. Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength, culminating in being named the IBM Business Partner of the Year in 2011 and entering the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 in 2012.
Blending our deep understanding of customer challenges with expert knowledge of best-of-breed technologies enables Portal to deliver solutions that transform its clients’ ways of working. Portal helps organisations to find clarity among the complexity. We transform data which frustrates into knowledge that enables; good people into great teams, and anonymous buyers into loyal customers.
Portal was formed in 2006 from a merger of several IBM business partners, each expert in their own field. Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength, culminating in being named the IBM Business Partner of the Year in 2011 and entering the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 in 2012.
Blending our deep understanding of customer challenges with expert knowledge of best-of-breed technologies enables Portal to deliver solutions that transform its clients’ ways of working. Portal helps organisations to find clarity among the complexity. We transform data which frustrates into knowledge that enables; good people into great teams, and anonymous buyers into loyal customers.
Management
Shamus Kelly | Managing Director
Shamus has been Portal’s Managing Director since 2007 and is responsible for driving the business strategy. Shamus gained entrepreneurial and smaller business skills by founding and growing NetInfo, which became part of Portal in 2006. He enjoys spending time in Donegal, Ireland, loves sporting pursuits such as golf, cycling and skiing, and is a keen supporter of his beloved Watford FC.
Pete West | Financial Director
As Portal’s Financial Director, Pete is responsible for financial, legal and operations aspects of the business. Trained as a Chartered Accountant, Pete has worked as Chief Accountant or Finance Director in a number of IT businesses. He has played football in many interesting parts of the world, loves skiing and getting worked up about matters political and economic over a glass of wine. He is particularly passionate about mangoes (Alphonso only)!
Steve Seymour | Technical Director & Head of Social Consulting
Steve is Technical Director & Head of Social Consulting at Portal, responsible for overseeing technology and infrastructure projects. Steve brings an astonishing amount of technology knowledge to his role and works closely with customers and partners to promote the technology skills within Portal. He is a Volunteer Instructor and youth worker with a local Windsor & Maidenhead Outdoor Education Project. He also does voluntary work as a course tutor and expedition assessor for the Duke of Edinburgh's award, and enjoys travelling to far off places.
Catherine Nottage | Head of Marketing
As Head of Marketing, Catherine is responsible for Portal’s brand and marketing strategy, the development of marketing content and campaigns as well as PR and events. Catherine has worked in marketing communications for a number of international IT vendors including Trend Micro and Kingston Technology. She loves to cook and her colleagues get to sample cakes and cookies, as well as her homemade scotch bonnet chilli sauce.
Melissa Wynn | Head of Insight Practice
As Head of Insight at Portal, Melissa manages the portfolio of analytics, information management and enterprise content management (ECM) offerings from Portal. Melissa's years of experience and passion for engaging with customer culture and challenges allow her to help large and small customers see real value from their information.
Adam Lacey | Social Practice Leader
Adam leads the development of solution offerings in our Social Practice, working closely with our customers and partners on enterprise portal, collaboration and social business solutions, helping both enterprise and SME businesses to change the way they work. Previously Adam has worked as an infrastructure consultant and solutions architect. He has travelled extensively and has a keen interest in portrait photography.
David Peacock | Head of Mobile
As Head of Mobile at Portal, David is responsible for managing our team of mobile application developers and consultants and advising companies on developing and implementing mobile strategies. David was previously Head of Service Delivery at Portal, responsible for delivering large-scale projects with a number of our enterprise clients. David enjoys being occasionally off the grid walking in the nearby forest, exploring historical sites at home and abroad, science fiction, music, theatre and cinema.
Rob Wirszycz | Chairman
Rob brings almost 30 years of experience in growing businesses. Prior to joining Portal, Rob has had a number of notable experiences including growing a value added reseller business from 4 to 300 people in the early 90s, running the UK IT industry trade association (now called Intellect), working as Marketing and Strategy Director for EDS (now HP Enterprise Services), and running two well-funded ‘dot-coms’. Rob works with a number of IT and media businesses and brings strategy, marketing, sales, partnering, and business growth skills and expertise to Portal.
Nicholas Birtles | Non-Exec Director
Nicholas, known as Nic, has over 40 years of international IT business experience. Prior to joining Portal, Nic held a number of notable positions, including establishing Ingres, the main Relational Database competitor to Oracle in Europe and grew it from scratch to over 1500 staff in 17 countries including Asia Pacific in 5 years. Nic has worked with a number of fast growing IT companies to help them expand their sales and marketing. He has also established a very active Entrepreneurship mentoring group within the Information Technologists' (Livery) Company, where he is also very active, helping to give something back.
Strategic alliances
Technology powerhouses IBM and Amazon are continually developing new, state-of-the-art IT solutions for businesses around the globe. As Alliance Partners we benefit from their expertise, innovation and creativity and so do our customers.
IBM
We're one of IBM's top five software partners in the UK. We have grown our relationship with IBM over more than 10 years and believe we have a unique and valuable understanding of working with IBM and building customer solutions utilising IBM's software portfolio. We frequently work with IBM teams in delivering solutions for our joint customers.
Excitor DME
Excitor is the company behind DME (Dynamic Mobile Exchange), a software solution that enables companies and organizations to deploy, use, manage and control mobile services and all company mobile devices easily and effectively without compromising security. DME’s comprehensive approach to enterprise mobility and mobile worker management sets it apart from other solutions and represents a number of unique benefits for organizations with mobile workforces.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon’s technological advances in cloud computing make them a natural Portal partner. Offering a high level of reliability, scalability and flexibility to businesses of all shapes and sizes, this is is an all-powerful infrastructure – it’s always available because it’s always on and always self-restoring – enabling operations at a massive scale. Also it’s platform agnostic, so businesses can choose the best operating system to suit their unique needs.
Arrow ECS Education
Portal partners with Arrow ECS to offer a wide range of training solutions that will enable our valued customers to achieve maximum return on their IT investment. Arrow ECS is one of the UK’s leading training providers Arrow ECS and a recognised specialist in IT training services across Europe.
