COA execs bolster Calyx board

Executives in a business meeting

Following its recent acquisition by Jon Moulton’s Better Capital, Calyx has unveiled some new faces joining its management team.

Moulton has brought over a couple of key execs from business software vendor COA Solutions which he acquired (when it was called Cedar) in 2002. Back then he made Fiona Timothy CEO of the company, and is now repeating the move at Calyx, which was in administration when he purchased it in September.

As well as Timothy, ex-COA managing director Mark Thompson has been named MD of MentecPlus, while Martin Mackay takes the role of managing director Calyx Managed Services. All three will also sit on Calyx’s Board of Directors.

Says Timothy: “With the financial backing of Better Capital, Martin and I will expand Calyx’s suite of managed service solutions through acquisitions and organic means.”

Mackay, meanwhile, takes over from Tara Brady who has moved on to take the reins at Southend United. He was latterly as VP International for VeriSign which has been acquired by Symantec. He says: “Customers’ requirements are set to evolve rapidly towards public and private cloud based solutions, which means innovative managed services will become an even more critical component in IT infrastructures in the years ahead. Calyx is ideally placed to emerge as one of a handful of strong players in the fast-consolidating mid-market managed services segment.”

Mark Thompson will be based in Dublin as managing director of MentecPlus, a Calyx Group subsidiary in Ireland that develops business software for SMEs. At COA Thompson oversaw COA Solutions’ revenues increase from £12m to £60m.

Richard Fisher, who was sales and marketing director of COA Solutions, is also now with Calyx.

Christine Horton

Christine has been a tech journalist for over 20 years, 10 of which she spent exclusively covering the IT Channel. From 2006-2009 she worked as the editor of Channel Business, before moving on to ChannelPro where she was editor and, latterly, senior editor.

Since 2016, she has been a freelance writer, editor, and copywriter and continues to cover the channel in addition to broader IT themes. Additionally, she provides media training explaining what the channel is and why it’s important to businesses.