A desktop computer aboard a naval vessel has an unusually unforgiving landlord. Space is fixed. Heat has to escape. Noise matters. In Centerprise International’s account of a Royal Navy refresh, a standard small-form-factor chassis simply would not do. The company designed an aluminium enclosure for a 5,200-device requirement, then tackled the awkward business of making the components fit and stay cool.
Its Renatus M61 needed a volume of 6,188 cubic centimetres. Ordinary fans were too noisy and supplied insufficient cooling, so the design used centrifugal fans. This was a purchasing problem that became an engineering problem. For Centerprise, that transition is familiar territory: the useful work begins where the catalogue runs out of answers.
The UK-owned company sells devices, integrates systems and runs technology services for Defence, government, education and enterprise customers. Its portfolio now reaches from manufacturing to cloud hosting and equipment retirement. The thread connecting those activities is responsibility for what happens after someone says, “We need new IT.”
From Tulips to the services business
Rafi Razzak started the business in 1983. A retrospective TechRadar interview put its initial capital at £100,000. The original name was Tulips Enterprise; PC manufacturing followed in 1984, and the Centerprise International name arrived in 1987. Its history includes public-sector procurement, distribution and the kind of physical expansion that requires buildings as well as business plans.
Asked in 2013 what had driven its success, Razzak offered: “Good leadership of course! (Just joking.)” He then credited customer relationships and committed employees. That answer had some company biography behind it. Today’s leadership page includes long-serving executives, while chief executive Jeremy Nash brings a different sort of institutional memory: 24 years in the RAF before moving into commercial technology.
“Good leadership of course! (Just joking.)”
Rafi Razzak · Founder · TechRadar, 2013
Hardware remained commercially important, but Nash told CRN that public-sector resale had become “a transactional, highly commoditized marketplace”. Building services capability offered a way to compete on the customer’s problem rather than the next device order. It required recruitment and investment in technical knowledge, not merely a new description on the website.
The numbers illustrate the shift. IT Channel Oxygen’s 2025 ranking reported group revenue of £121.9 million for the year to August 2023, up about 1%. Services rose from 13% to 18.7% of the total as service and project income helped fill the gap left by lower end-user computing sales. That is a historical snapshot, but a revealing one: a modest revenue increase concealed a changing business underneath.
Services’ share of revenue, up from 13% the previous year.
The classroom plan that changed
One of Centerprise’s more instructive projects began with a plan that did not happen. The Ministry of Defence had intended to centralise Defence College of Technical Training sites at Lyneham. When that was shelved, the question became how to modernise teaching across separate locations.
The Defence Education Assured Network, or DEAN, combined common cloud services with infrastructure tailored to individual schools. The published case study describes an organisation training around 20,000 people annually. Its design offered shared learning and office tools while preserving the networking, devices and specialist software needed locally. A naval engineering classroom and an RAF training environment could share foundations without becoming identical.
That is a useful distinction for any distributed organisation. Standardisation becomes expensive when it removes something a local team actually needs. DEAN suggests a more selective approach: agree the common services, then leave room for the work that differs. The lesson travels beyond Defence, although the technical and security requirements would have to be established afresh for another customer.
Whitehall’s daily IT obstacle course
At HM Treasury, the frustrations were more recognisable to anyone who has tried to start a video meeting. Centerprise’s historical case study describes legacy conferencing equipment that staff scarcely trusted, meeting rooms needing routine checks and a wireless estate requiring expansion.
The department was also changing how it bought technology. It wanted to reduce dependence on its incumbent, Fujitsu, by dividing services among several suppliers under a coordinated management model. Centerprise worked on printing, media and wireless services, with OKI supporting the print operation. The opportunity was to own a defined part of the job inside a wider system.
The work included maintaining meeting-room equipment and providing a pool of loan devices, erased and rebuilt after return. It is wonderfully uncinematic IT. Yet the everyday details explain why buyers pay for service: equipment must be available, usable and ready for the next person. A box arriving at reception achieves only the first few inches of that journey.
A separate NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps project tackled older, unsupported infrastructure that lacked virtualisation and flexibility. Centerprise supplied a deployable virtualised server environment with configurable security domains, training and support. The comparison shows its range: meeting-room readiness at one end, infrastructure designed around military deployment at the other.
The cloud has a postcode
CiCloud gives Centerprise another route into an existing customer’s operations. Its UK facilities include Newport and Ark Data Centres, and its services span hosting, object storage, backup and disaster recovery. The company describes the platform as built on HPE GreenLake. Customers can combine local infrastructure with hosted services rather than move everything in one leap.
The commercial argument centres on where workloads live, who supports them and how recovery works. Centerprise advertises continuous engineering support and service-level agreements. For an organisation buying around UK data residency, those operational details belong in the conversation alongside capacity and performance. The word “sovereign” is the opening question; the contract must supply the particulars.
The wider cloud portfolio now includes private AI environments for training, inference and experimentation with organisational data. In a release dated June 2025, Centerprise announced AI management system certification through Alcumus ISOQAR. The relevant point is governance of AI use. A management-system certificate should not be mistaken for a performance score for a model or an assurance that every possible use is suitable.
CiContinuity deals with the less cheerful side of computing: what happens when operations stop. Its advertised services include managed backup, recovery rehearsals, replacement equipment shipped to site and work-area recovery. Buyers should treat the rehearsal as part of the product. An agreed recovery time is useful only when the required people, applications and dependencies can meet it.
The purchase order is only chapter one
Centerprise’s business model combines product resale and project work with ongoing service contracts. Device as a Service packages hardware into a subscription with configuration, support and lifecycle handling. The company describes UK preparation, asset tagging, warranty management and helpdesk support, with service commitments set through agreements.
That changes the buying exercise. A monthly device charge has to be compared with the full cost of ownership: preparation, support, replacements and retirement as well as the machine itself. The sensible question is which work the customer is paying someone else to perform, and how that work will be measured. A subscription does not remove the need to read the scope.
- 01Build & deploySpecify, configure, tag and deliver.
- 02Run & protectSupport users, host workloads, rehearse recovery.
- 03Recover & retireReuse equipment, erase data, document disposal.
At the other end sits CiLifecycle, offering refurbishment, redeployment, remarketing and disposal. The company identifies its asset-disposition operation as ADISA Standard 8.0 certified. An organisation can therefore discuss the fate of its outgoing equipment while planning the replacement. The practical benefit is a more explicit chain of responsibility for devices and the data they carried.
This breadth places Centerprise between the reseller, the managed service provider and the specialist systems integrator. Which alternative matters depends on the tender. Some buyers need the keenest device quote; others need an engineer, a migration team or a tested recovery service. Centerprise’s case rests on combining those tasks where coordination has value.
Six million pounds of physical commitment
There is a substantial piece of real estate behind the service language. In January 2023, the Welsh Government described Centerprise’s new operations centre at Ystrad Mynach: a 17-acre site opened the previous October following a £6 million investment supported by government. The company aimed to create at least 70 jobs, including apprenticeships. Those were stated ambitions, not a count of completed hires.
The group’s mix includes Yoyotech, the custom gaming PC business acquired in 2013, as well as professional workstation specialist Boxx Tech UK. The range looks less surprising when viewed from a workshop: configuration, component choices, testing and delivery remain tangible skills across very different customers.
The physical investment also sharpens the company’s public commitment to UK delivery. Its stated culture includes recruiting veterans and reservists, working with community organisations and encouraging technology reuse. These commitments are most useful when buyers translate them into observable contract outcomes, such as training opportunities or documented asset handling.
What a buyer can borrow
Centerprise’s projects offer practical habits worth copying. Measure the physical constraints before selecting hardware. Decide which services genuinely belong on a common platform. Assign responsibility for the equipment after delivery. Ask for a recovery exercise and the records that follow retirement. These are conclusions drawn from the work, not a recipe that guarantees the same result everywhere.
The approach needs proportion. Bespoke engineering takes requirements work; a small, routine purchase may not justify it. Shared infrastructure needs enough common demand to earn its keep. Bringing more services under one supplier also makes clear responsibilities, performance measures and exit arrangements more important. Convenience still needs supervision.
Centerprise’s most persuasive claim is visible in the awkward jobs themselves. A school needs its specialist tools. A Treasury meeting needs to start. A naval desktop has to fit. The technology buyer’s task is to make those ordinary-sounding requirements precise enough that someone can be held to them.