Iomart, the cloud computing and managed hosting company, put in a strong performance in the six months to the end of September. Revenues and profits were significantly ahead of the comparative period last year and consequently the firm is confident that the financial performance of the group for the full year will be ahead of current market expectations.In a pre-close trading statement, the group said: "The group continues to benefit from the growing trend of organisations seeking to reduce both operational risk and IT costs by moving their mission critical business applications to a trusted supplier." "We are encouraged by the growing pipeline of opportunities and expect our market to continue to grow significantly as businesses move their critical IT systems to the cloud. This, together with the forward visibility of revenues, underpins the medium and longer term outlook and accordingly we are confident in the long term prospects for the group."The acquisition of Switch Media, which was completed during the period, has been integrated into the group and is performing in line with expectations.The news comes as executive director Fred Shedden steps down as non-executive director, who will be replaced by Crawford Beveridge CBE. Chief executive Angus MacSween said: "There is strong momentum in the business and our pipeline of opportunities is growing. The group's business model continues to generate high levels of recurring revenues which provides excellent visibility of future earnings and we look forward with confidence to significant growth in the current financial year and beyond."The share price rose 4.99% to 110.5p by 14:05.NR