Turnkey data-centre solution provider Hanley Energy has won overall exporter of the year at the Irish Exporters Association (IEA) Export Industry Awards.
The company, whose European headquarters are in Co Meath, is a global innovator in critical power and energy management solutions.
The win comes on the back of enormous growth for the business, which was established in 2009 by Dennis Nordon and Clive Gilmore, and today has offices in the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa.
Uniquely, Hanley Energy won the exporter of the year accolade after having already been named both IEA manufacturing exporter of the year and services exporter of the year, the triple-award win testament to its success as a full-service provider.
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Now an international success, the firm’s origins lie in a classroom at a forerunner of State education and skills agency Solas.
“My business partner Clive Gilmore and I first met on September 9th, 1986, in a government training facility called AnCo, where we were both starting to serve our time as electricians,” explains Nordon.
Although they moved on in their careers, the two men kept in touch and, in the mid-2000s, spotted an opportunity to work together. Nordon recalls beginning to hatch a plan in 2006.
“Back then, not many people even knew what data centres were but I had had a lot of experience in my previous family business, where we had built switch gear and control gear for large facilities such as Intel and the Channel Tunnel,” says Nordon.
It had also done a lot of work around Dublin on what were called “web farms”, he explains.
But the market was changing fast. “The advent of the smartphone meant that, straight away, demand for data was really starting to grow. With the rise of social media, everyone wanted to store their photos. As a result, all of the facilities that had been built in the 1990s were starting to be filled out by companies nobody had ever heard of, like AWS. Today everyone knows Amazon Web Services, but back then, Amazon was mostly known as a place that sold books.”
It, and data-driven companies such as Microsoft, required new facilities with power and connectivity. “So we formed Hanley Energy in 2009,” says Nordon.
Humble beginnings
Given that it was a period of deep recession, it didn’t seem the most auspicious time to start a new business. “People thought we were crazy. There’d been this big crash; they said ‘What are you doing?’ But we followed our gut and by 2011 had won our first big contract – with AWS.”
More contracts followed, Hanley Energy leveraging contacts Nordon and Gilmore had built up over the course of their careers. “We had relationships, track record, and trust,” Nordon recalls.
They also began growing their team which, hard to believe though it might now be, started with just two-and-a-half people: “Me, Clive and a part-time book-keeper.”
The pair grew the business on the basis of what, in retrospect, seems a very simple premise: “We make sure the lights stay on. If you were to compare us to a steamship back in the day, we’re the guys shovelling in the coal to make sure the fire stays lit, that every service required by the customer stays on.”
Nordon continues: “We do that by designing and manufacturing solutions for the data centre industry. That includes the switch gear and the control systems within the switch gear, the auto controls to make sure that if the electricity does go off, it changes over to a generator in a timely fashion, and that their backup UPS [uninterruptible power supply] is healthy and can switch in when needed.”
The company provides every aspect of the hardware required, “from the grid all the way down to the rack in the server room”, he adds.
That’s down in the “steamroom”. Meanwhile, up in the “bridge”, Hanley Energy is also responsible for developing the bespoke software and service that runs the ship – or, rather, data centre.
“Every status input, everything that might go wrong, we’re watching, providing real-time information for our customers, like the dashboard of a car that shows you if you’re running low on oil or need more petrol.”
It is the comprehensiveness of this wraparound service that has powered the firm’s global success. Today employs just under 1,000 people worldwide.
Supportive environment
As well as the strong relationships it has built up with client companies such as AWS, Nordon credits the support Hanley Energy receives from the Irish Exporters Association, as well as State agencies such as Enterprise Ireland, as being instrumental in its exporting success.
“Enterprise Ireland helps you gain access to markets, and the Irish Exporters Association helps to demystify all the stuff involved in getting there,” he explains.
“The IEA helps with the nitty gritty detail required to do it, like the best way to book a shipping container or what ports are best to avoid. Its team is just so knowledgeable and helpful; it has been absolutely superb,” he says.
Winning the IEA overall exporter of the year award is not just recognition of past success, however; it is a waymark on the road to future growth.
“The ambition now is to grow the business sustainably. That’s a key thing for us and for the biggest hyperscalers and tier-one companies that we work with,” says Nordon.
“But the ambition is also to keep the innovation going and create more jobs here in Ireland, so that we can continue to export and continue to contribute to this great little country we have.”
Supporting Ireland’s exporters
For Niall Savage, partner and head of private enterprise at KPMG, sponsor of the exporter of the year award, the calibre of the entries this year is cause for celebration, especially given the challenging geopolitical environment.
“There was great optimism in the room on the night, and very much a sense that we’ve dealt with challenges before, whether Covid or Brexit,” says Savage.
“What was also remarked on was that, as a small country with a small market, we have to be brilliant at what we do because we need to get to export as soon as possible. It’s why we don’t compete on price; we compete on quality.”
IEA chief executive Simon McKeever, who is not involved in the judging process, was delighted at Hanley Energy’s win.
“It is an extremely worthy winner of the overall exporter of the year award not just because of the level of innovation it has shown but because of the strong growth of the company and the reach it has developed in markets around the world,” he says.
As such it is a strong role model for other Irish businesses as to the importance of research, development and innovation as a way of driving growth through market diversification.
“Our members know how important it is not to be dependent on a single, critical market, which is why they are resilient, in relatively robust health and, in my view, will continue to prosper,” says McKeever.
“That was very much the sense in the room on awards night – onwards and upwards.”
