As a pan-European business communications provider, Gamma Communications is building a significant presence across Spain, Benelux and DACH regions, with the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany emerging as key growth markets. David Macfarlane, CEO of Gamma Enterprise Markets, on why Europe’s Digital Transformation moment is Gamma’s moment too.
Gamma Communications has spent two decades disrupting Europe’s telecommunications market. Now, with AI reshaping the competitive landscape and a deliberate expansion across Germany and Benelux, CEO of Enterprise Markets, David Macfarlane, says the most disruptive chapter is still ahead.
How did Gamma become a pan-European enterprise provider and what’s your vision for the next phase of growth?
The evolution was driven by our customers. Gamma Communications began as an organisation which predominantly served the UK SME market, but with large enterprises typically preferring a direct relationship with their provider, we had to grow.
Almost 15 years ago, Gamma formed a systems integrator within Gamma Communications Group. That system integrator is headed up by me along with 400 other people that deliver highly scalable digital and turnkey solutions to medium and large enterprises on a pan-European basis.
We have some of the largest enterprises in the UK, some of the largest financial institutions and some of the largest public sector bodies, where we deliver communications solutions to them in collaboration, networking, digital, AI and Customer Experience.
Our real momentum now is with multinational organisations that have challenged us to support them at global scale. We’ve been executing a strategic build-out within continental Europe, focusing on Germany and Benelux, replicating exceptional product solutions services across the European market.
We’ve also been building out our global infrastructure which means if you’re based in Singapore, Gamma can still deliver its services seamlessly. One provider, worldwide.
As a pan-European business communications provider, what progress are you seeing across the region and how do customer expectations or market dynamics differ between countries?
Each market needs to be looked at in isolation. Every country has unique differences at various stages of Digital Transformation. For instance, in the UK, fibre deployment is almost complete, with ubiquitous coverage perhaps three or four years away. In Germany, we’re roughly five years behind that. The Netherlands and Belgium sit somewhere in between.
These nuances mean we can’t operate with a one-size-fits-all approach. We have to build out our portfolio and managed services capability to meet each country where it is, while still delivering a consistent, pan-European solution for customers operating across multiple markets. That tension – local maturity, pan-European consistency – is one of the more interesting challenges we navigate daily.
How are emerging technologies and varying business demands reshaping the role of networks, communications and customer experience platforms – what impact is this having?
We’re in the third digital revolution – industrial, then digital and now AI and Agentic AI. Our customers need guidance to help them deploy these solutions to drive operational efficiencies or improve their customer service and make them more competitive.
That’s where Gamma is focused. We work with customers on implementing transformational AI across their customer experience and operational delivery, with the goal of making them leaner, faster and more profitable.
What are the most common challenges or priorities you’re noticing when speaking with customers and how is Gamma helping them navigate that change?
The first is data sovereignty – in an increasingly conflict-driven world, knowing where your data resides and keeping it secure has become a strategic priority for many CIOs today, not just an IT consideration.
The next challenge, unsurprisingly, is cybersecurity and more specifically, deepfakes. There’s been a meaningful shift in the way we’re experiencing breaches, with many organisations grappling with how to protect themselves against AI-generated deepfakes. There are already well-documented cases of businesses being defrauded through surprisingly simple deepfake attacks. It’s moved from theoretical threat to boardroom agenda item faster than most expected.
What has been the biggest lesson from your 30 years’ crafting and delivering managed services for enterprise organisations and how do you implement this into your leadership approach?
It is quite simple – we put the customer at the centre of everything. If we can’t deliver something faster, cheaper or better than a customer, we shouldn’t exist. That’s how we have built our MSP business and is what keeps us moving from strength to strength.
How do strategic partnerships support Gamma’s wider growth ambitions and roadmap to meet the needs of modern organisations across Europe?
The digital world has changed and unless you have billions of pounds in your bank account for research and development, you can’t build much of the transformational AI or associated solutions. Gamma has chosen to partner with some of the world’s biggest and best Digital Transformation or AI organisations.
However, that doesn’t mean we’re simply taking their technology and reselling it to our customers – we’re embedding it into assets we own and delivering market-leading solutions by combining the two, but adding a whole layer of managed service, deployment services and layering these services out to our customers as a turnkey solution. This allows customers to focus on their core business, whether they’re a merchant bank, major retailer or large public sector organisation.
We find partnering with the digital giants and hyperscalers to be extremely enriching and we’ve formed valuable relationships with Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft and Google, which are at the core of everything we do today.
What’s your go-to-market approach across Europe – and what makes it work?
Gamma is uniquely positioned, so for large enterprises we take a direct approach. For the SMB market in Continental Europe and Germany where the SMB base is proportionally larger, we operate through an indirect channel of partners who bring genuine local knowledge and customer relationships.
Our products and solutions are built to work through both direct and channel routes which is what gives us real coverage across the European market.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of Gamma and the wider business communications landscape?
I firmly believe Gamma is a challenger. I’ve never liked the idea of being an organisation that does the same old thing. The telecommunications space has been disrupted by organisations like ours.
Telecommunications and Digital Transformation infrastructure has been the same for 100 years. We entered this market 25 years ago and turned it upside down. We’re now at the next level of transformation.
By working with hyperscalers to embed AI tools directly into our core infrastructure and taking those capabilities to market as genuinely disruptive solutions, we have an opportunity to reshape the European communications landscape again. We’ve done it before, but the difference now is the scale of what’s possible.
Watch the interview here.
