James Smith

Three companies, one obsession

I am James Smith. I have spent my whole career inside services businesses: the firms that sell skill, judgement and delivery rather than a boxed product, and that live or die by utilisation and the rate card. I have built one from nothing, scaled it, nearly lost it, rebuilt it and sold it. Before either, I was an engineer at Dell and CTO at Adactus. Everything on this site comes from doing the work, not watching it.

Dell and Adactus, 1998 to 2013. I started as a Senior Software Engineer at Dell in Reading in 1998, building European online commerce when buying a computer over the web was still a novelty. In 2001 I joined Adactus, a software company based in Oxford, as Head of Software Development, and by 2006 I was its CTO. Over twelve years we drove 10x growth, scaling the business to more than 50 people with a turnover exceeding £3 million. I led the product work that included Pizza Hut's first online ordering system in the UK, which grew to two million users and £50m of annual recurring revenue within twelve months, and I engineered a global e-commerce platform with Oracle MICROS that scaled to process six million orders and more than $100m of annual recurring revenue for multiple blue-chip restaurant brands. Twelve years of shipping software that other people's customers depended on taught me the first law of services: the client's deadline is your deadline, and hitting it is the whole brand.

DevOpsGroup, 2013 to 2021. In March 2013, Steve and I incorporated the company that became DevOpsGroup: two technologists, one from development and one from operations, selling what we knew about building and running software in the cloud, at a time when the word DevOps still needed explaining in the room. Within a year Rackspace made us a Consulting Partner. AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and Microsoft Gold DevOps partner followed. By October 2017 we were more than 85 people across the UK, working for names like BAE Systems, Vodafone and gocompare.com. In April 2018 BGF backed us with £3m of growth capital, its first investment in Wales, and in November 2021 we sold DevOpsGroup to Sourced Group, an Amdocs company, for over $30m.

Critical Cloud, 2024 to now. Critical Cloud is a services business that helps companies keep their software and cloud systems running reliably. I founded it in Cardiff in June 2024 and launched it at Wales Week London in March 2025, with a team in Cardiff, London and Dublin. In December 2025 it won The Sir Michael Moritz Tech Start-up Award at the Wales Technology Awards. It is early. The ambition is not, and this time I am building with everything the first two companies taught me.

DevOpsGroup, 2013 to 2021: two laptops to a sale for over $30m

It did not start by accident. In February 2013 Steve and I were already testing the idea: sounding out a reseller route, pitching it, taking the feedback on the chin and sharpening the pitch. On 27 March 2013 we incorporated CloudOpsGuys Limited. By September it was DevOpsGuys Limited, and I was writing as The Dev Guy by night while we sold by day. In March 2014 Rackspace made us a Consulting Partner, our first badge, and in May 2014 we stood up at the very first DevOps Cardiff meetup and explained what DevOps was and why it mattered. Wales was about to find out.

From 2015 we sold into government through the G-Cloud framework. DVLA, Defra and Companies House became customers, and in November 2016 the UK Government published a case study about us under the headline 'Award-winning Welsh start-up: government is open for business'. That year we won two Wales Start Up Awards: Creative and Digital Start-up of the Year, and Cardiff Capital Region Business Start-up of the Year. In 2017 I was named IoD Wales Director of the Year for small business, and ESTnet, the technology network for Wales, named me Technology Leader of the Year. By October 2017 we were more than 85 people across the UK, and the Secretary of State for Wales came to Cardiff to see what a Welsh tech company at full stretch looked like.

2018 was the year we grew up. In February we made the call to walk away from contractor augmentation, a large line of revenue, because we wanted to sell outcomes, not bodies. In April BGF invested £3m, its first investment in Wales. In June we rebranded DevOpsGuys as DevOpsGroup, appointed a proper board with a chair, a non-executive director and a CFO, and acquired Agile Snap, a Cardiff training firm, to create the DevOpsGroup Academy and train the engineers the market did not have. That autumn the BGF deal was named Venture Capital Deal of the Year at the Wales Dealmakers Awards, we placed 13th in the Wales Fast Growth 50, and we opened a London office at Rise in Shoreditch.

The work I am proudest of is Skyscanner. We were the delivery partner for its exit from five global data centres onto AWS, a migration that landed on schedule at the end of 2018 and that both Skyscanner's own engineers and the AWS Partner Network wrote up publicly. In 2019 we made the Wales Fast Growth 50 again, and the legal entity finally caught up with the brand and became DevOpsGroup Limited. And behind the awards, my notes from that spring show the first signs of the hardest chapter: longer sales cycles, softer utilisation, a budget we were going to miss.

We rebuilt, and we came out stronger. By December 2020 AWS had approved our Migration Competency and we were listed on AWS Marketplace with a repeatable eight-week migration assessment: the practice had become a machine. In November 2021 we sold DevOpsGroup to Sourced Group, an Amdocs company, for over $30m. BGF, our investor since 2018, lists the exit on its portfolio page. I stayed inside the acquirer through the integration and left in early 2023 to build again.

The hard chapter, and why it is the best part

Any founder story worth reading has the chapter where it nearly ends. Ours came in 2019. Revenue had plateaued while the cost base, built for the growth we had raised money to buy, had not. I knew the numbers to the pound every month; the hard part was never finding them out, it was moving them fast enough. Between November 2019 and February 2020 the board agreed a cut order: bring the cost base down hard, narrow what we sold, narrow who we sold it to, narrow the channels we sold through. Utilisation had drifted and gross margin had followed it down to a trough in the first weeks of 2020 that I can still draw from memory.

Then the pandemic landed on top of all of it. In March 2020 we moved the whole company to a shorter working week with pay to match, protected every job, and preserved cash. Full pay came back on 1 November 2020. Over the two years that followed, gross margin climbed well clear of that trough and stayed there, the managed and recurring line grew, and the company that came out the other side was tighter, sharper and far more valuable than the one that went in. Less than two years after that trough, we sold it for over $30m. That turnaround is the most useful thing I know, and it is where most of the stories live.

What I am building now

I am founder and CEO of Critical Cloud, a services business that helps companies keep their software and cloud systems running reliably. I founded it in Cardiff on 14 June 2024 and launched it at Wales Week London on 4 March 2025. The team is in Cardiff, London and Dublin, and it is growing.

The milestones so far: an AI Factory offering announced in November 2025; The Sir Michael Moritz Tech Start-up Award at the Wales Technology Awards in December 2025; Certified Datadog Advanced Partner status in January 2026 and designation as a 'Powered by Datadog' partner in March 2026; and a place on the OVHcloud Startup Program in July 2026. The results will speak for themselves when they are ready.

Alongside it, I write Million Dollar Services: real stories and practical playbooks for building, growing and selling a services business, for anyone running a consultancy, agency, managed service provider or cloud firm. I sit on Technology Connected's Technology Leadership Council and I am a director of a school in Cardiff.

Why I am doing this

I built, I shipped, and I let the work speak. The work spoke quietly. This is my time to change that, and the reason is bigger than me.

I want to inspire the next generation of founders and talent to go and build bigger and better businesses than I ever could. I want them to skip the mistakes I paid for in full and keep the ambition I never lost. And I want at least one of them to be Welsh, and to build the unicorn I have always believed the Welsh tech economy is capable of, because that will be truly game-changing for Wales.

Everything on this site is in service of that: the stories, the playbooks, the numbers, the calculators. Take them, use them, and go further than I did.

How I work

The stories were written down as they happened, in my own notes and diaries, and I check the dates and figures as I write. The company's records passed to the buyer with the business; what I have is what I kept and what I remember, and I say so where it matters.

Where a figure appears it carries its currency, its period and whether it was an actual or a forecast. Where I cannot source one, I give you the method instead. Worked examples are labelled as invented. People appear as roles: the CFO, the chair, my co-founder Steve. Clients are named only where the relationship is already public, and technology partners only where the badge was.

Recognition

Work that is on the record

• Skyscanner: five-data-centre exit to AWS. DevOpsGroup devised and delivered the migration strategy that took Skyscanner out of five global data centres onto AWS, completing on schedule at the end of 2018. Written up publicly by Skyscanner Engineering and on the AWS Partner Network blog. Source
• UK Government G-Cloud work: DVLA, Defra, Companies House. Public-sector DevOps and cloud engineering sold through the G-Cloud framework from 2015. The UK Government's November 2016 case study names DVLA, Defra and Companies House as customers. Source
• Enterprise clients: BAE Systems, Vodafone, gocompare.com, ASOS, Admiral, RBS. Named as DevOpsGroup clients in company-issued releases and a UK Government release between 2017 and 2019. Names only; no project detail or metrics are public. Source
• DevOpsGroup Academy (Agile Snap acquisition). The 2018 acquisition of a Cardiff, BCS-accredited training firm added certified Agile and DevOps training as a third line alongside professional and managed services. Source
• AWS Migration Competency and AWS Marketplace offerings. A repeatable cloud-migration practice: AWS Migration Competency approved 1 December 2020, with an eight-week Cloud Migration Assessment and a Migration Readiness Assessment listed on AWS Marketplace. Source
• Online ordering and e-commerce at Adactus: Pizza Hut UK, KFC, wagamama. As CTO at Adactus I led Pizza Hut's first online ordering system in the UK, which grew to two million users and £50m of annual recurring revenue within twelve months, and engineered a global e-commerce platform with Oracle MICROS that scaled to six million orders and more than $100m of annual recurring revenue for multiple blue-chip restaurant brands. Source
• Critical Cloud. A services business that helps companies keep their software and cloud systems running reliably, with a team in Cardiff, London and Dublin. Launched March 2025; winner of The Sir Michael Moritz Tech Start-up Award 2025. No results claimed. Source

Timeline

1. 1998Senior Software Engineer at Dell, Reading, working on European online commerce. Source
2. 2001Joins Adactus, a software company based in Oxford, as Head of Software Development. Clients in these years include the RAC. Source
3. 2006Becomes CTO at Adactus. Over the twelve Adactus years the business grows 10x to more than 50 people and a turnover exceeding £3 million.
4. 2007 to 2010Restaurant online ordering at scale: Pizza Hut UK's first online ordering system in the UK, which grows to two million users and £50m of annual recurring revenue within twelve months; then Pizza Hut Australia, KFC and wagamama.
5. 2011Adactus partners with Oracle MICROS to serve hospitality and speciality retail. Its global e-commerce platform scales to six million orders and more than $100m of annual recurring revenue for blue-chip restaurant brands; Pizza Hut UK's first online ordering system reaches two million users and £50m of annual recurring revenue within twelve months. Source
6. 201327 March: CloudOpsGuys Limited incorporated in Cardiff, James and Steve appointed directors. 6 September: renamed DevOpsGuys Limited. Source
7. 2014March: appointed a Rackspace Consulting Partner. May: DevOpsGuys presents 'The What and Why of DevOps' at the inaugural DevOps Cardiff meetup. Source
8. 2016Public-sector work through G-Cloud for DVLA, Defra and Companies House; the UK Government publishes the case study 'Award-winning Welsh start-up: government is open for business'. Double winner at the Wales Start Up Awards. Source
9. 2017May: James named IoD Wales Director of the Year, Small Business; ESTnet Technology Leader of the Year. October: Secretary of State for Wales visits; more than 85 employees across Cardiff and London, clients including BAE Systems, Vodafone and gocompare.com. Source
10. 201820 April: £3m growth investment from BGF completes, BGF's first investment in Wales. Source
11. 2018June: DevOpsGuys rebrands as DevOpsGroup, appoints a board and acquires Cardiff training firm Agile Snap to form the DevOpsGroup Academy. Source
12. 2018Wales Technology Awards Best Tech Workplace (May); Wales Dealmakers Awards Venture Capital Deal of the Year (September); 13th in the Wales Fast Growth 50 and a London office at Rise London, Shoreditch (November). Source
13. 2018End of year: Skyscanner completes its exit from five global data centres to AWS with DevOpsGroup as delivery partner. Source
14. 201923rd in the Wales Fast Growth 50. 14 October: legal entity renamed DevOpsGroup Limited. Source
15. 2020Reduced working week and pay from March; full pay restored 1 November. 1 December: AWS Migration Competency approved; listed on AWS Marketplace. Source
16. 20219 to 15 November: DevOpsGroup sold to Sourced Group, an Amdocs company, for over $30m. James and Steve resign as directors on completion, 15 November. Source
17. 2023James leaves the acquirer in early 2023 after the integration. 8 March: the former DevOpsGroup entity is renamed Sourced Group Cloud Services Limited. James becomes a director of a Cardiff school (March) and of FIVESMITHS LIMITED (May). Source
18. 202414 June: Critical Cloud Limited incorporated in Cardiff; James appointed director. Source
19. 20254 March: Critical Cloud launches publicly at Wales Week London. 27 March: guest piece 'Why I Chose to Build in Wales and Why It Works for Tech' for Technology Connected. Source
20. 2025November: Critical Cloud announces its AI Factory offering. December: Critical Cloud wins The Sir Michael Moritz Tech Start-up Award at the Wales Technology Awards. Source
21. 2026Critical Cloud announces Certified Datadog Advanced Partner status (January), designation as a 'Powered by Datadog' partner (March) and membership of the OVHcloud Startup Program (July). Source
22. 2026September: Million Dollar Services, by James Smith, launches on Substack. Source

Where to start

• How to build a consulting rate card with no billing history
• We thought we could build something
• Why Most Founder Advice Doesn't Work for Services Businesses