Meet the team

Daren Bland

Toby and I founded Recarta in 2005 with a goal to becoming a leading and trusted IT partner for a range of Enterprise infrastructure and Managed Services.

I have a long history of working with IBM Power Servers – from engineering and brokering RS/6000 servers and parts from 1992 and then going onto create Powercore International – one of the UKs largest computer brokerage companies which was eventually sold in 2008.

I believe that a key part of Recartas’ success to date has been in how we develop open and honest relationships with our clients, partners and most importantly our Recarta team. We have imbedded a can-do culture along with a deep integrity, which I believe shines through in every contact you will have with us. This has enabled us to build one of the best IBM solutions and managed services teams currently in the UK.

Living in East Sussex with my wife and four children, I play hobby farmer, tending to chickens, pigs, sheep and goats. I enjoy politics and football (Arsenal), running and listening to any decent rock drumming.

Toby Harris

I am proud to say that I am a Recarta founder, shareholder, and the Sales Director of Recarta IT since 2005 and worked with Daren since 1996 – He’s not bored of me yet… I have a very challenging but exciting role in providing input to Recarta’s strategy, meeting our clients and managing some of Recarta’s largest clients.

I am driven daily by the relationships and responsibility that our clients have invested in us. We have generated an amazing technical and sales team and my role is to make sure that our clients are able to take advantage of this. Our culture is to build long term partnerships with our clients – we are not here for the short term and to this end many of our clients have been with us since we started back in 2005.

I live between Surrey and Somerset – I enjoy keeping fit with triathlons and enjoy watching any live sport especially rugby and motor racing. I enjoy travelling, visiting art museums, and supporting my daughters in the passions, one in drama and music and the other representing GB in Ice Hockey whilst studying in Boston, USA.

Anthony Lambert

I have been working for Recarta since 2014, and surprisingly to me is now the longest I’ve ever been in a job! My IT background is based around IBM Power and IBM Storage systems which started with operational roles. This led into management roles supporting teams that provided IT operations functions across multiple technologies which expanded my horizons. Over the past years I have worked within technical sales roles specially in Managed Services. My reason for working is to provide a great service for our customers. This is led by my desire to be open and honest at all times! As a team I believe there shouldn’t be any hidden elements in the services we offer to our customers, whether this be technical or service related.

Currently my role is Technical Solutions Director where I have responsibility for solution selling within Recarta. This encompasses hardware infrastructure designs to fully supported Managed Service offerings with performance driven Service Level Agreements.

Philip Trumble

I joined Recarta in 2017 having previously worked for another Business Partner since 1999, bringing with me close to twenty years’ experience of building annuity revenue streams. My primary focus in joining Recarta was to grow the existing Annuity Services Business and build a Compliance as a Service offering addressing software entitlements and client compliance.

Over the past 5 years our Annuity Services Business has grown exponentially: we now manage over 50 Vendors with 700+ contracts worldwide.

Part of my role within the business is to manage the Annuity Services Team with a view to increasing our presence across support vendors. We ensure we proactively manage our clients’ agreements in a strategic manner providing best value and support, whether that is a consolidation of contracts or providing multi-year agreements. Our core value is to protect our clients on the most effective basis to better manage their support arrangements in a cohesive partnership.

Outside of Recarta I live in West Devon, I enjoy sculling/rowing with my local club in Bideford along with tending to our kitchen garden at home.

Jan Fountain

I joined Recarta in 2013, so next year marks by 10th anniversary. I joined as a consultant and as we have grown I now head up the professional and outsourced services team as Technical Director.

I have worked in an end user role, in a business partner and technology provider role, so I understand the challenges and pressures across the board we all face in IT.

The best part of working with Recarta is the underlying ethos, team spirit and great relationships we have developed with our client base. We have a great technical team you can rely on.

I live in Hampshire and enjoy traveling, especially post lockdown, football (Luton Town), watersports and the abundance of coastal & countryside walks with our dog.

Jack Holt

I was lucky enough to start working for Recarta back in July 2007, straight after graduating from Portsmouth University. I started my career at Recarta within the internal sales team with a focus around IBM PowerSystems and Storage. It was a great grounding, and I was surrounded by some of the best consultants in the industry.

I pride myself on customer service and the part of my job that I enjoy the most is building new relationships, whilst maintaining existing ones. I have been very fortunate over the years to work with so many different organisations from all sorts of industries. I am proud to say that most of the teams I have worked with have become good friends.

My current role as one of the Account Directors at Recarta gives me the opportunities to continue working with the clients that I have built such strong relationships with over the last 15 years. As well as this, being part of the leadership team gives me the opportunity to help with the strategic direction of Recarta, the future is very exciting!!

Outside of work, I live in the glorious County of Somerset and like to spend my spare time with my daughter Willow, heading to the beach for a surf, going to gigs and festivals or getting the fishing rods out for some quiet time by a lake or river.
I am driven daily by the relationships and responsibility that our clients have invested in us. We have generated an amazing technical and sales team and my role is to make sure that our clients are able to take advantage of this. Our culture is to build long term partnerships with our clients – we are not here for the short term and to this end many of our clients have been with us since we started back in 2005.

Ben Spode

I joined Recarta in 2017 to help expand coverage and depth in our Enterprise Sales Team. As one of our Account Directors, I’m delighted to be the main contact for my clients and new prospects to bring new solutions and services to them, and to assist with requirements that may come up.

Prior to my tenure with Recarta, I previously had only had one role with an IT organisation that I started in 2003. During this period, I played a pivotal role in overseeing the transition from being just a single facetted infrastructure solutions business, to being a mature managed services organisation and was responsible for helping support that transformation from our customers perspective.

I’m proud to have played a role in one of the very early adoptions of VMware Server Consolidation at an enterprise scale – maintaining a lot of the very same connections that I still remain in contact with today. I believe that taking care of those relationships is my utmost priority, and I’m delighted to say I work with clients I’ve known for nearly 20 years. I wouldn’t class myself as a specialist in any one area of IT or industry vertical, it has always been important to me to learn as much as possible about technologies and help to contribute my expertise and guidance to our clients.

My background and experiences include: Technical Infrastructure Solutions, Managed Services, Cloud Solutions and Services around IBM Power Systems, Storage solutions and x86 solutions from a number of vendors, complementary software and professional services, along with optimisation of contractual business, be that managed services, maintenance or support.

I live out in rural Wiltshire, with my wife and daughter who grimly tolerate my dubious 80s rock guitar interests – I’ve been playing and collecting the things for more than 30 years.

I promise I’m getting better at it, and recently signed up with a professional tutor for the first time to make sure of it!

Paul Seaman

I have been involved with IT, and predominantly IBM, for nearly 40 years. It all started when I joined IBM in 1983. Technology has changed a great deal in that time but the process of building positive client relationships and working with them to solve business and technical challenges is still very much the same. It is working with clients as a partnership that gives me job satisfaction and keeps me in the industry.

I left IBM in 2010 and briefly joined Hitachi Consulting before working with SCC managing their IBM business in the South of the UK. In 2020 I joined Recarta and am responsible for driving now and existing client business as well as developing an eco-system of partners and looking after the IBM relationship going forward.

Outside of work I embrace the social possibilities of Sussex and Goodwood as well as trying to stay fit through running and going to the gym. I am an active grandfather of three which keeps me on my toes and alert.