John Jones, CEO
Johns career with BT lasted almost 4 decades during which time he progressed through the ranks to the position of Head of Webservices until his retirement in March 2003 when the Webservices business was absorbed into BT’s Global Services organisation. It was as a direct result of this reorganisation that John left BT to set up the elinia business. His experience during almost four decades with BT has proved invaluable since founding elinia as a business with the highest possible standards of service and security. During his career in BT John’s roles also included Senior Systems Development Manager BTUK, Head of Information Services BTUK and Vice President BT Ignite Content Hosting.
A career littered with ‘firsts’, while working at BT Headquarters Information Systems Division John pioneered the use of secure portable computing within BT’s Data Services organisation. He was responsible for launching BT’s first Internet Server Farm leading to the development and launching of BT’s first eBusiness products and services from this facility in Cardiff in1995. Early in 1997 he founded BT’s Webservices business which successfully delivered end to end highly secure, bespoke, eBusiness solutions to customers of all sizes. After gaining a first class reputation for service and security with organisations such as those in the financial and health sectors that demand continued to rapidly increase and it was therefore as a direct result of the success of the Webservices business that led to yet another first for John in the development of BT’s £90 million, 60,000 square feet Data Centre facility in Cardiff Bay.
As one of the premier Internet Data Centres in Europe the acknowledged expertise within John’s team continued to develop and maintain highly reliable, scalable and extremely secure web-based ebusiness solutions for customers of all sizes and from all over the world.
From April 2003, John continued to demonstrate his commitment and loyalty to the highly skilled people and customers he had recruited and served over the years by taking up the position as CEO of elinia. At elinia Johns mission has been to recreate the successful Webservices business by continuing to deliver the first class services once offered from the new BT building but now with a major focus on the environment and use and development of new highly secure ‘Green’ Data centres. eLINIA therefore now also offers services from a number of Data centres in addition to Cardiff Bay. Since the elinia business was set up John and his team have once again completely demonstrated the outstanding service to customers gaining many accolades and bouquets by delivering highly secure and cost effective, flexible solutions from a new headquarters at Cardiff Gate Business Park. These have included work for Health, Finance, Police and Charity organisations which each require the highest levels of trust and security which is provided by the elinia team who are each individually Government vetted. One notable early success for John and team was when they came to the rescue of the London Olympics bid after being called in at the last minute to successfully deliver the Olympic bid platform.
Besides his role as CEO of elinia John continues his contribution to the success of business in Wales assisting the Welsh Assembly Government as a consultant on ICT and technology infrastructure issues, he is also a governor of University of Wales Institute and Chairman of the UWIC foundation which is a charity organisation.
