UK-based cloud service provider iomart Group has announced pre-tax profits of £14.6m for the end of the financial year – and vows to continue towards bespoke private and hybrid cloud as opposed to mass public cloud.

Revenue stood at £55.6m compared to £43.1m in 2013, representing a 29% increase, whilst revenues from iomart’s hosting segment were up by 40% to £44.7m – higher than the company’s overall revenue last year.

This represents a solid year for iomart, and represents a further base on which to build following successive profit-making years. The company bought Backup Technology and Redstation in September 2013 to bolster its attack in terms of data protection, cloud backup and dedicated hosting, as well as upped its data centre count to eight and adding an extension to its centre in Maidenhead.

Phil Worms, marketing director at iomart, told CloudTech the results were ‘solid’ and ‘slightly above expectations.’

“Over the last three or four years, we do what we say on the tin as far as our investors go,” he said.

What iomart does – provide infrastructure, computing and cloud services off that infrastructure – has had “unfair” comparisons with Amazon and Google’s hyperscale offerings impacting the UK CSP, according to an analyst note from Arden Partners seen by CloudTech.

“Obviously people can have their own views on whatever they like, but I think…there is a lot of cloud wash, shall we say, within the market,” Worms said. “Because we provide cloud computing services are we an Amazon, a Google, a Sony Cloud? No we’re not.

“We’ve had to not so much fight, but be quite strong in getting our message across,” he added.

Angus MacSween, iomart CEO, wrote a bullish letter to shareholders. “We continue to be well placed to deliver an ever wider range of cloud services to our increasing customer base,” he wrote. “With our growing reputation and ongoing investment in leading edge technologies, alongside our own development skills, we are well positioned for further significant growth.”

And according to Worms, that growth will be fuelled by storage and backup.

“I guess over the past two or three years [storage] has spun out of being a commodity into quite a specialist area now,” he said. “The whole area of storage and backup is a very important part of our play moving forwards.”