About Workbooks

A Software-as-a-Service pioneer, John Cheney launched one of the first software as a service companies back in the late 1990s.

He is a successful entrepreneur with over thirty years experience in the IT industry; twenty of which have been running IT companies in Europe and North America.

Prior to Workbooks Online, John founded two previous successful SaaS security companies. He founded BlackSpider Technologies in 2002 and successfully grew the company to become an award-winning provider of in-the-cloud email and web security services to over 2,500 organisations world-wide before the company was bought by SurfControl in 2006. John then led marketing and product management at SurfControl and was a key member of the senior management team which led the Company through to its acquisition by Websense in October 2007.

Prior to BlackSpider, John was the Founder and CEO of Activis, a managed security services company which was acquired by Articon-Integralis in 1999. Activis was a leading provider of managed firewall and VPN services in North America and Europe, winning awards from SC Magazine for its services and Frost and Sullivan for its business strategy.

With thirty years’ IT industry experience, James Kay is responsible for architecting the Workbooks solutions and for directing the technical team.

Prior to co-founding Workbooks, James held similar roles. As a co-founder of BlackSpider Technologies and Activis, he led the development of world-class infrastructures supporting millions of users with extremely high levels of service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Following BlackSpider’s acquisition by SurfControl and then Websense, James remained responsible for the design and delivery of their Hosted Email Security and Hosted Web Security services. James’ technical interests are the creation of very scalable and robust on-demand systems, which are easy for customers to put to use.

Previously James has held development and architecture roles for IBM and Hewlett Packard. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Manchester University.

Brendan’s role as Head of PS is to ensure customers are successfully on-boarded onto the Workbooks platform, that projects are delivered with minimal problems, and to ensure that customer’s desired outcomes are delivered.

Brendan comes from a software development background, and has led IT projects for many clients (e.g. Allianz, Capgemini, Nissan, Virgin, BMW, BT, NATO) in many business sectors including Finance, Retail, Automotive, Aerospace, Pharmaceutical, Defence & Technology.

He has been responsible for running solution development and deployment projects with budgets ranging from €100k to €4m+ and has a proven track record – over his 35+ years in software before joining Workbooks – of building, leading and inspiring strong, multi-skilled teams in the implementation of solutions to deadline and budget.

Brendan endeavours on every project to offer the total commitment required to deliver quality solutions and exceed customer expectations.

Ben has been a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales since qualification in 2008. His audit role was performed with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which involved moving to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. After 5 years in practice, Ben chose to move into industry to gain insight into commercial business. Since 2010, Ben has worked within commercial entities as the Finance Director. He became Finance Director for Workbooks in May 2021.

His area of expertise includes company growth and SaaS business modelling, analysis and forecasting.

Dan Collins was a co-founder and COO of Integralis, a Value Added Reseller (VAR) and a pioneer in the adoption of the Internet and associated security infrastructure. Apart from the day-to-day running of the business, Dan was involved in the spinning-off of several businesses during the early years including Qusa, an ISP acquired by Racal Telecommunications and Content Technologies, an email security vendor acquired by Baltimore Technologies. As well as the creation of Allasso, a security focussed distributor. Dan also led the integration of several acquisitions including Activis, a managed service security provider and Atlantic Data Systems, a US based security VAR.

Integralis merged with Articon of Germany to form the Articon-Integralis group which resulted in a listing on the Neuer Markt, the then German equivalent of NASDAQ and representing the most successful investment by 3i Group (Investors In Industry) to date. At that time, the group was comprised of Integralis, Activis and Allasso, all market leaders in Europe and well established in the USA.

During his time at Integralis, Dan saw the business grow from 5 initial employees and a small office in the UK to over 700 employees and operations in nine countries.

Following Integralis, Dan became an Angel investor and non-executive director for a number of companies in the UK and USA including BlackSpider Technologies, and VRSim Inc.

Dan was one of the early Angel investors in Workbooks and is now relishing the opportunity of building Workbooks in the United States.

Penny works closely with Dan to develop our client base in North America, and is responsible for identifying successful outcomes for US clients, ensuring these outcomes deliver Client Value as soon as possible.

She has almost 30 years consulting and service delivery experience, over half of which have been focused on delivering business applications. Penny’s CRM experience includes helping customers with the full CRM project lifecycle from developing CRM Strategy, Vision and Roadmap, Change Management, Systems Integration architecture, Phased Implementation and ongoing support plans.

Organisations Penny has helped include London Stock Exchange, IPC Media, Misys Banking & Healthcare, Coopervision, Reed Business Information, Univar Europe, Guardian News & Media, Coats, Norwich Union and Marks & Spencers. Penny is used to working collaboratively at all levels from front-line operators through to C-level executives.

Prior to joining Workbooks, Penny successfully launched Bluewolf’s expansion into Europe, establishing Bluewolf International as one of salesforce.com’s largest European implementation partners.

Phil has extensive experience of high technology businesses beginning with co-founding an application software business following an early career in automotive design engineering.

He then spent 19 years at Hewlett Packard in various senior positions including Director of Telecom EMEA and finally, Chairman and Managing Director of Hewlett Packard, UK and Ireland.

He has subsequently been a non-executive Chairman of a number of IT solutions companies whose offerings have encompassed software, digital printing, service management, telecom, digital display, ecommerce and SaaS. These businesses have included publicly listed – main market and AIM (two of which were successful IPOs), Private Equity and Venture Capital backed organisations including the successful Blackspider Technologies (founded by John Cheney, Workbooks CEO back in 2002).

He is a Chartered Director and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors.

A Software-as-a-Service pioneer, John Cheney launched one of the first software as a service companies back in the late 1990s.

He is a successful entrepreneur with over thirty years experience in the IT industry; twenty of which have been running IT companies in Europe and North America.

Prior to Workbooks Online, John founded two previous successful SaaS security companies. He founded BlackSpider Technologies in 2002 and successfully grew the company to become an award-winning provider of in-the-cloud email and web security services to over 2,500 organisations world-wide before the company was bought by SurfControl in 2006. John then led marketing and product management at SurfControl and was a key member of the senior management team which led the Company through to its acquisition by Websense in October 2007.

Prior to BlackSpider, John was the Founder and CEO of Activis, a managed security services company which was acquired by Articon-Integralis in 1999. Activis was a leading provider of managed firewall and VPN services in North America and Europe, winning awards from SC Magazine for its services and Frost and Sullivan for its business strategy.

A self-made business man best known for helping to create the UK’s Driver Improvement Schemes, including Speed Awareness Workshops. A winner of the IOD Director of the Year and Bank of Scotland £25m Entrepreneur Challenge.

A former police officer, he set up DriveTech as a sole trader and sold the company to TheAA in 2009. Since then he has invested and worked in other companies, including owning 50% of Stewarts Coaches, which was sold to National Express in late 2018.

With thirty years’ IT industry experience, James Kay is responsible for architecting the Workbooks solutions and for directing the technical team.

Prior to co-founding Workbooks, James held similar roles. As a co-founder of BlackSpider Technologies and Activis, he led the development of world-class infrastructures supporting millions of users with extremely high levels of service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Following BlackSpider’s acquisition by SurfControl and then Websense, James remained responsible for the design and delivery of their Hosted Email Security and Hosted Web Security services. James’ technical interests are the creation of very scalable and robust on-demand systems, which are easy for customers to put to use.

Previously James has held development and architecture roles for IBM and Hewlett Packard. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Manchester University.