1975 headquarters hertfordshire key people claude littner chairman lord sugar former chairman and major shareholder bordan tkachuk former chief executive website www.viglen.co.uk dead link viglen ltd provides it products and services including storage systems servers workstations and data voice communications equipment and services . a viglen ix9000 modular chassis contents 1 history 2 the apprentice 3 references 4 external links history edit the british company was formed in 1975 by vigen boyadjian and was acquired by alan sugar later lord sugar s company amstrad in 1994 . during the 1980s the company specialised in direct sales through multi page advertisements in leading computer magazines catering particularly but not exclusively to owners of acorn computers . in 1997 it was listed as a public limited company and amstrad plc shares were split into viglen and betacom shares betacom being renamed to amstrad plc. following the sale of amstrad plc to rupert murdoch s bskyb viglen is now lord sugar s sole it establishment . viglen is run by ceo bordan tkachuk a longtime associate of lord sugar who can be seen making special guest appearances on the apprentice . from 1994 to 1998 the company sponsored charlton athletic f.c. expiring when they won promotion to the fa premier league . viglen focuses particularly on the education and public sectors selling both desktop and server systems . viglen also has interests in other it markets such as managed services high performance clusters and network attached storage . in december 2005 viglen relocated from its london headquarters in wembley to colney street near st. albans into a building which also houses its fabrication plant . on 1 july 2009 lord sugar resigned as the chairman of viglen and most of his other companies handing over the reins of the company to longtime associate claude littner . the apprentice edit the new headquarters doubles up as one of the filming locations for the hit bbc show the apprentice with various scenes including the infamous job interviews being set there . the walk of shame exit sequence at the end of every episode showing the contestant leaving the building and boarding a taxi is also filmed at the viglen headquarters . the boardroom scenes are actually filmed in a west london television studio . citation needed on 15 december 2010 ceo bordan tkachuk during a mock interview situation on the apprentice told a candidate that isp stood for internet service protocol instead of internet service provider resulting in widespread criticism 1 i know what isp is . it s an internet service protocol . and that s what you re providing . it s not a telecoms operating licence . it s a protocol that allows telecoms over bandwidths . i ve been running alan sugar s companies for the last 25 years and that s why i know a little bit about technology . bordan tkachuk references edit barry collins why lord sugar needs to fire his technical expert 16 december 2010 pc pro retrieved 24 may 2012 external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title viglen & oldid 738118584 categories companies established in 1975computer companies of the united kingdomcompanies based in hertfordshireenglish brandshidden categories use dmy dates from october 2013use british english from october 2013all articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from september 2016all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from november 2009official website different in wikidata and wikipedia navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages simple english edit links this page was last modified on 7 september 2016 at 00 52 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view