Colt is delighted to announce the appointment of Rajiv Datta as Chief Technology Officer. Rajiv joins Colt on 1 January and will be a member of Colt’s Executive Leadership team under Carl Grivner who takes over as CEO on 1 January.

In this role Rajiv will be responsible for the development of Colt’s network technology strategy, the creation of its next generation of products and services, including the evolution of its SDN- based network capability, and the delivery of its digital customer experience.

Rajiv has held a number of very senior strategic positions in the telecoms and communications infrastructure industry, most notably at AboveNet Communications Inc. where he was most recently, Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Rajiv was responsible for the day-to-day management of the company including sales, marketing, service delivery, network management, IT, engineering, and infrastructure.

Rajiv played a very significant part in recasting AboveNet from a carrier-centric fibre infrastructure company into an enterprise-focused provider of high-bandwidth data services with industry-leading financial performance.  During his time as CTO and COO at the company AboveNet grew annualised revenue from $190 million to $500 million, achieved 45%+ EBITDA margins and increased enterprise value from $280 million to $2.2 billion.

Commenting on the appointment Carl Grivner said “We are delighted that Rajiv has decided to join us at such an important point in Colt’s ongoing journey.  His track record of transforming business performance speaks for itself and, as we look to Colt’s future, this will be invaluable in creating the levels of focus, speed and innovation that we need.”

About Colt

Colt provides network, voice, and data centre services to thousands of businesses around the world, allowing them to focus on delivering their business goals instead of the underlying infrastructure. Customers include 18 of the top 25 banks and diversified financial groups and 19 out of the top 25 companies in both global media and telecoms industries (Forbes 2000 list, 2014). In addition, Colt works with over 50 exchange venues and 13 European central banks.

Colt operates across Europe, Asia and North America with connections into over 200 cities globally. It completed the acquisition of KVH in 2014 – which now operates under the Colt brand – an integrated data centre and communications services business, with headquarters in Tokyo and operations in Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore.