Umbraco has established a UK office in Bristol to support its growing network of UK partners and enterprise customers. The Umbraco content management system (CMS), which became open source two decades ago, is one of the top three web platforms used by the UK public sector. Public sector organisations, including the British Army, Royal Navy, Sheffield Council, and the NHS South West Digital Transformation Team, have built sites and digital services using Umbraco.
Data compiled by SamsonMay shows that Umbraco is the most popular open source CMS chosen by FTSE 100 organisations, and one of the top three CMS platforms used by the largest UK companies on the London Stock Exchange. Memberwise’s Digital Excellence Report also lists Umbraco as the main platform used by medium and large membership organisations, such as the British Medical Association, Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, to create websites and digital experiences that help them to attract and retain new members and increase revenue.
The open source CMS is backed by the Umbraco commercial organisation, which ensures that the platform remains supported, updated, and robust. Over the past two decades, the company has developed a highly-engaged community of digital agency partners and over 250,000 open source contributors.
Mats Persson, CEO, Umbraco, commented: “Thanks to our highly-professional digital agency partners, we’re already well-established in the UK public sector and membership organisations. A number of our partners are now building digital platforms for large enterprise clients and we want to support that momentum with key personnel based in the UK. We’ve appointed outstanding developers, relationship managers, and salespeople to deliver the technical, commercial and after-sales support expected of a professional organisation serving the enterprise sector.”
As part of this investment, Frederik Klerens has been appointed UK and Ireland manager and will be relocating from Copenhagen to Bristol. He said: “Bristol provides us with an ideal base that’s home to some of Umbraco’s largest digital agency partners, one of which, Gibe Digital, hosts the annual Umbraco Spark developer conference in the city. I’m excited to build on these firm foundations and add boots on the ground to ensure that our largest customers have everything they need to continue growing their businesses with Umbraco.”
Klerens’ appointment has been followed by a number of others to the Umbraco UK team. Aaron Green was appointed UK partner manager in June and will also be based in the Bristol office. Jacob Howell was appointed UK enterprise partner manager in August. In September, Rick Butterfield was appointed senior developer with responsibility for working on Umbraco’s commercial add-on products and the core CMS. Butterfield has 14 years of web development experience, having worked for UK digital agencies including Wattle, Nexer Digital, and Shout Digital. As a member of the Umbraco community Sustainability Team, he has been involved in educating peers about the environmental impact of digital services and has helped to create software tools that allow clients to measure and reduce the energy consumed by their websites.
Image source: Umbraco (Mats Persson, CEO)
