{"id":657600,"date":"2026-06-25T14:01:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/657600\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:01:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:01:36","slug":"former-ans-big-hitters-unite-for-midmarket-data-and-ai-push-at-obt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/657600\/","title":{"rendered":"Former ANS Big Hitters Unite For Midmarket Data And AI Push At OBT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OBT \u201cfeels like ANS before PE got involved\u201d, its CEO Paul Shannon asserted as he revealed the Microsoft partner he co-founded three years ago has reinvented itself as a midmarket data and AI specialist.<\/p>\n<p>Shannon launched OBT Live in <a href=\"https:\/\/itchanneloxygen.com\/football-mad-duo-aim-to-score-with-new-microsoft-partner\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">late 2023<\/a> after resigning as CEO of Manchester-based midmarket Microsoft partner ANS in the wake of its takeover by private equity firm Inflexion and subsequent merger with UKFast.<\/p>\n<p>OBT Live originally started life with a laser focus on growing the market for Microsoft\u2019s PlayFab LiveOps platform in the media and retail verticals.<\/p>\n<p>But after acknowledging he was \u201cslogging his guts out\u201d for an idea that wasn\u2019t working, Shannon revealed that \u2018OBT Live\u2019 has now been rebranded as \u2018OBT\u2019 and will focus on data and AI.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels like ANS before PE\u201d<\/p>\n<p>OBT\u2019s 13-employee team now includes several former ANS big hitters including Marketing Director Olivia Jaskolka, CSO Robin Lee and Operations Director Daniel Rebic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just feels like ANS used to before PE got involved, and it makes you want to go to work every day put in the 50-60 hours a week in a startup mode \u2013 rather than just being like slogging your guts out for something that\u2019s not working,\u201d Shannon told IT Channel Oxygen.<\/p>\n<p>Although it will go up against midmarket Microsoft partners including ANS, OBT will focus on smaller, quicker \u00a350,000 to \u00a3150,000 data and AI projects to get its foot in the door with customers, Shannon revealed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d done quite a lot of data and AI integration work in the projects we did [as OBT Live], and I thought, \u2018do you know what, there\u2019s a market for a smaller, agile AI partner\u2019,\u201d Shannon said of OBT\u2019s about-turn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re staying away from end-user Copilot deployments, which are not our bag, and the big discovery pieces. We\u2019re trying to deliver really powerful use cases as quickly as we can, and then provide a managed service for the customers after it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to find that one critical, safe use case where at the end of it, the customer goes, \u2018wow, this is really powerful; what else can we do\u2019?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Paul-Shannon-OBT-1-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Paul Shannon, OBT\" class=\"wp-image-20819\" style=\"width:554px;height:auto\"  \/>Paul Shannon, OBT<\/p>\n<p>While some partners\u2019 motto is \u2018we\u2019ll use any vendor you want; but it\u2019s got to be Microsoft\u2019, OBT is agnostic outside of the data layer (where it uses Microsoft exclusively), Shannon claimed.<\/p>\n<p>Its arsenal of tools therefore includes Anthropic, which last week sensationally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c932g3v3e13o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">banned<\/a> the use of its new Claude Fable 5 model among foreign nationals.<\/p>\n<p>Despite characterising it as \u201cunnerving\u201d, Shannon said the move would not impact OBT\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s quite rare for us to need the very latest model,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, part of our value proposition is managing the cost of what we\u2019ve delivered to the customer \u2013 and not just using the latest model for the sake of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally, really tough\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is in fact OBT\u2019s second reinvention in its short history, Shannon revealed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had some problems with a Canadian partner who\u2019d written some software on top of PlayFab. They went bust, and it left us quite badly stranded \u2013 both financially and just with directionally with customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo then we decided to pivot into writing our own version of software that can sit on top of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be frank, it was really, really tough from a sales perspective. We had a great team technically who could write the software. The software was great. It was just that it was in retail and media, which really wasn\u2019t the heritage of ANS \u2013 they were two of the few commercial private sector sectors we didn\u2019t work in, which made it particularly difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But OBT is already gaining traction with its favoured midmarket customers in its new guise, Shannon claimed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is really working, and we\u2019re having a whale of a time,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"m-a-box-avatar-url\" href=\"https:\/\/itchanneloxygen.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Doug-Woodburn-image-close-up-Aug-2023-e1691340225154-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-150x150 size-150x150\" alt=\"\" itemprop=\"image\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OBT \u201cfeels like ANS before PE got involved\u201d, its CEO Paul Shannon asserted as he revealed the Microsoft&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-657600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}