Techwork 2022: Victor Davies, Bregal Investments

Experience

Davies completed a bachelor’s degree in technology management at London South Bank University. He then embarked on a master’s degree in telecommunications and computing at Middlesex University. Having gained these qualifications, Davies joined Protek where he was a systems administrator for two-and-a-half years. After this, he spent 10 years as the IT manager for Atlas Venture, where he was responsible for setting up and maintaining the IT infrastructure for all the European offices across London, Munich and Paris. He left the firm in 2010 to join Bregal Investments.

Achievements

Davies joined Bregal as senior IT manager for the firm’s European offices and was subsequently promoted to IT director. As part of his role, he oversees the firm’s global IT infrastructure.

Since joining, Davies’ main goal was to make Bregal’s workforce more flexible, systems more stable and help reduce the firm’s carbon footprint by adopting a cloud-based model. “So far we’ve reduced our physical servers by around 90% by migrating all our company data to Office 365, and integrated our telephone system with Microsoft Teams,” he says. “We’ve also provided greater security by employing single sign-on (where possible) on all SaaS applications and multi-factor authentication by default.”

Davies has been a driving force behind the firm’s cyber security initiatives. “We adopted Mimecast for email filtering, domain name monitoring and email encryption options, as well as a mobile device management solution to manage and protect our mobile devices.” This is in addition to the yearly, mandatory cyber security training required by all employees.

As well as Microsoft and Mimecast, Bregal uses a variety of software solutions and outsourced providers as part of its tech stack. “For cyber security, we also use Critical Start, SonicWall and Cisco,” he says. “For wifi, we use cloud-controlled Merak.” These solutions work alongside enterprise print management software Printerlogic, Salesforce, iLevel and Investran. “We also added SaaS technology company Global Relay to the mix,” adds Davies.

Currently, Davies is focused on improving Bregal’s cyber security and cloud-based solutions. “I want to ensure we have a cloud-based backup of our Office 365 and Salesforce environments, as well as cloud-based print and patch management solutions," he says. “And of course any additional cyber security policies and procedures as required.”

The ultimate goal is for all of Bregal’s systems to be in the cloud and fully Azure Active Directory integrated. “We also want to build in more automation and use data in a
more intelligent way to make decisions, across our IT and investment teams.”

Considering how he interacts with his peer group, Davies networks mainly with the
external IT support companies his firm uses. “I also interact with an IT managers group of private equity and venture capital firms,” he says. Furthermore, Davies adds that Bregal recently hired a CTO who is adding a lot of value. “One of the areas he has already helped to address is ensuring we are aware of current and future technologies and trends which can add value for us.”