By Business & Finance 
Paul Rellis is the CEO of Viatel Technology Group. Rellis began his career in the United States as an internal auditor for Coca-Cola before joining Microsoft Ireland where he was made CEO. He took up his current role with Viatel Technology Group in 2018.
Our customers are our North Star, so ensuring that our own people are energised and motivated at work is key to making our customers happier.
What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
I believe the most important element for me to focus on is making sure we have a motivated and energised team, that are doing the right things for customers. I have always believed that happy team = happy customers = happy business! We set the bar high in terms of performance expectations, we work hard together.
We take our business seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously! We are deeply committed to support people in their personal and professional development.
Our mission at Viatel Technology Group is to deliver products and services that make a positive impact on people’s lives. This is at the core of everything we do as a business. Guiding the team on that journey to deliver this to our customers and wider communities is my main priority.
We are proud to be leaders in the technology space and with our recent investment in cloud services and cybersecurity, this has added extensively to our already comprehensive portfolio of products and services.
Our customers are our North Star, so ensuring that our own people are energised and motivated at work is key to making our customers happier.
What are your biggest challenges as CEO?
The Viatel team is now over 300 strong and continues to grow thanks to some fantastic people who have joined us through businesses we acquired, and also directly.
Navigating change while supporting our people will naturally come with its own challenges. I’m fortunate to have the support of our amazing people team, along with the wider leadership team, who care deeply for our people, and are relentless in ensuring these changes are made as seamlessly as possible.
How do you keep your team/staff motivated?
We have high expectations of ourselves to do our best by customers, and continually improve. I believe the best people are motivated to go above and beyond, and that mindset means we set the bar high.
We try to live by the “1% better every day” rule. With that in mind, our strategy is to create a vibrant and dynamic workplace where our team can achieve their professional goals while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Our commitment to this was reflected in our recent ‘Best Place to Work’ win at the Tech Excellence Awards which we are so proud of. We listen to our people – they told us time is their most precious resource, so we introduced summer flextime; and we are giving everyone the chance to pursue personal interests; whether they be studying, volunteering, getting outdoors, spending quality time with loved ones, or simply relaxing.
We’ll get back to work refreshed, reenergised, and poised to make an even greater impact.
We also offer fully hybrid working and we have improved all our leave policies in the last 12 months. Our team is made up of people from over 24 different countries, so we introduced a working from abroad policy to ensure that our diverse team has that extra piece of flexibility.
When the team is mobilised and energised to hit all the targets together, then creating a more flexible and trustful environment comes naturally.
We are a relatively small business competing against the giants in the market place, and so we have that natural ability to be more flexible and move faster than others.
What are the challenges facing the industry going forward?
Cybersecurity is one of the biggest challenges facing all industries at the moment. The threats get more malicious and pervasive with each passing day.
Organisations are struggling to keep up with the challenge of ongoing threat management. Very few organisations have the skills or resources to manage this in-house.
They are relying on technology partners that they know and trust to guide them. That’s exactly what led us to us introducing Viatel Managed Security this year, and the response from customers and the market has been tremendous.
What new trends are emerging in your industry?
We’ve witnessed security move from an IT concern, to top of the CEO’s agenda.
Those cybersecurity threats, cloud, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are front of mind for most organisations, and rightly so, as each of these continues to move at such a rapid pace. We’ve witnessed security move from an IT concern, to top of the CEO’s agenda.
Within Viatel Technology Group, we also have a team of experts who are in the final stages of developing a bespoke AI solution for Microsoft Teams that is going to revolutionise modern work for business who are ready to embrace the benefits of AI, but want to do so in a truly secure environment.
Are there any major changes you would like to see in your sector?
The technology sector is traditionally quite male dominated and there is an onus on all businesses in the sector to work on bridging that gap. It is a key element of our business strategy (happy team = happy customers = happy business!)
Equity of opportunity is something we are continuously working towards at Viatel, and are committed to nurturing and supporting our diverse workforce.
We are proud that our Senior Leadership Team is a 50:50 gender split. We published our Gender Pay Gap report, which revealed that at 4.3%, Viatel’s pay gap is less than half the national average of 11.3%, but we committed to reducing that even further.
We are members of Connecting Women in Technology, a network of technology organisations throughout Ireland who are on a shared mission to attract, retain and promote women in the technology sector. There is still a lot to do in this area but we are on the right path.
As an employer are you finding any skill gaps in the market?
The tech skills shortage is a constant challenge. We always have our door open for talented people and work hard to keep expertise within our organisation.
Late 2022, early 2023, when the multinational tech giants were cutting their workforces, we were welcoming Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to our office to make a jobs announcement.
We work closely with a number of third level institutions to help nurture young talent. Of course, if as a country, a society, and an economy, we could tackle the gender gap in STEM, we could double our talent pool.
How did your strategy develop in the context of the banking crisis and economic crisis?
We focused our customer offerings to really drive value for their businesses: we learned so much during the recent years about how much customers rely on us. We stepped up with a renewed vigour on making sure customers got great value from us.
How has Brexit affected you?
I think Brexit affected every business operating in Ireland to some extent. We have many customers with UK operations who were hugely impacted.
We are a Guaranteed Irish member and we support fellow Irish businesses as much as possible. However, in the technology space we inevitably work closely with global partners who can be based out of the UK, or Europe, and many are headquartered in the States.
We had to be mindful of supply lines to maintain our agility in deploying solutions for our customers. Ultimately, we are still doing business in the UK, and we will do significantly more in the future.
How has the COVID-19 crisis affected your business/sector?
The pandemic moved the needle on technology. Business leaders now rightfully recognise technology as a linchpin of their organisations. Enterprises want infrastructure that is protected and reinforced, but is also agile and responsive.
It was of course a challenge at the beginning, that initial transition from what we were used to and having our world of work become virtual.
As a business, Viatel demonstrated that we are responsive in a crisis and resilient in maintaining services, despite the significant increase in demand on our networks.
We expanded our product offering rapidly to meet our customers’ needs and played a huge part in enabling them to change their mode of operations almost overnight.
The pandemic moved the needle on technology. Business leaders now rightfully recognise technology as a linchpin of their organisations. Enterprises want infrastructure that is protected and reinforced, but is also agile and responsive.
Whatever the world has up its sleeve next, they plan to be ready.
How do you define success and what drives you to succeed?
I believe that we should always strive to be1% better every day. Focusing on long term growth over short term gains is critical to long standing success. Understanding our own strengths and weaknesses helps us to learn and enables us to grow and do better.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given, or would give, in business?
It’s all about the people. Creating an environment that is a positive place to work enables growth is the baseline for any business. For leaders in particular, I believe it starts with making sure that you yourself are in a good place mentally, physically and emotionally.
Only then can you really mobilise others. Secondly, I learned that the worst thing for a leader is when they are the smartest person in the room – I really apply this in my role. I just want to make sure every single person is better than me!
What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
On a leadership level, nurturing talent within Viatel and helping people to become leaders has been so rewarding over the past few months and indeed years.
The past 12 months have been huge for us. We most recently acquired Sungard Availability Services (Ireland) which has been a significant addition to our cloud capabilities, adding deep AWS expertise to our existing strengths in Azure and private cloud.
We have also delivered some fantastic projects to our customers over the past year from delivering our managed cybersecurity solution to digital transformation services, enabling our customers to succeed.
On a leadership level, nurturing talent within Viatel and helping people to become leaders has been so rewarding over the past few months and indeed years.
What’s next for your company?
We have big ambitions. We aim to multiply in size in the next three to five years, and we are keen to expand our international footprint overseas. An international network and transatlantic data centre facilities underpin our global capabilities and ambitions.
The UK is an obvious target, but Viatel is also considering longer range opportunities in Western Europe. Creating a global business from where we are in Ireland is on the cards – we have the team and the ambition to make it happen.
Where do you want your business/brand to be this time next year?
This is a really exciting time for the group. There is a roadmap in place to propel Viatel Technology Group and its position in the global marketplace as we continue to expand.
We have the right products and solutions in place for the times we’re in. There are very few times in business where you have that feeling of momentum behind you, and that’s the feeling we have right now.
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