Databarracks Acquires PlanB Consulting

Databarracks Ltd. acquired Glasgow, Scotland-based PlanB Consulting to enhance its operational resilience and cyber continuity consulting practice.

Chris Butler, resilience director, Databarracks comments: “We are thrilled to have PlanB join us. PlanB has been a powerhouse in BC and resilience for almost 2 decades. They’re widely known, highly respected and one of the true thought-leaders in our industry. Led by the highly respected Charlie and Kim Maclean-Bristol, they are a multi-award – winning BC consulting business and stalwarts of the resilience community.”

Kim Maclean-Bristol, co-founder and director, PlanB explains: “We’re pleased to find a home with an organisation that gives us a broader market reach and shares our values and vision for changing the way we make organisations resilient. Together we bring a wide range of consulting skills, real-world expertise and can now offer a complete range of BC, crisis management and cyber resilience services.”

Customers of the combined business can now benefit from a full suite of end-to-end operational resilience services. From data protection, DR, BC and incident response, through to cyber incident exercising from a national cyber security centre assured service provider.

Mike Osborne, chairman, Databarracks, commented: ‘There is no better independent BC consultancy than PlanB. I’ve spent 30+ years in the industry and over the last few years the market has fundamentally changed.

“The old guard of BC specialists has been absorbed by generalist IT service providers. Sungard Availability Services sadly went into administration in the UK. Throughout the pandemic, many of the smaller consulting providers took in-house roles, leaving ‘the big four’ as an expensive alternative.

“The operational resilience market has become fractured across cyber, data protection, IT recovery and BC planning, now leaving few, if any, genuine specialists dedicated to end-to-end resilience.

“This acquisition creates a market-leading data protection, technology recovery, BC and cyber resilience business offering in one.”

He further comments: “The world is undoubtedly more volatile and uncertain. Supply chains have come under extreme pressure and business interruptions remain highly likely. The cyber arms race shows little sign of peaking, and by the end of the decade there will likely be few businesses that haven’t been targeted and impacted.

“The organisations that thrive will be those who are prepared for this changing environment. PlanB strengthens this integrated approach, cultivating dynamic leadership, adaptive operations, robust technology and supportive supply chains to enable businesses to survive and prosper.”