A razor sharp focus on the public sector has given Farnborough-based Skyscape Cloud Services an almighty boost, and that's just the start of a bigger story according to CEO Simon Hansford.
Skyscape's mature and disciplined approach to a rich seam of opportunity has paid off in spadefuls. The company is focused on one product, one market and has no distractions. Immersed in constant innovation Skyscape is prepared to disrupt current products, services and costs at the drop of a hat. Furthermore, Hansford never takes his eye off the ball and brings rare experience to the game plan. Prior to co-founding Skyscape he was the CTO and VP of Service Strategy of Attenda, one of the UK's major MSPs which he also co-founded in 1997. Previous positions include senior technical, sales, product and marketing roles at Novell and Dell Computer Corporation.
It was the Government's ICT strategy to boost efficiency and reduce costs within the public sector that caught the attention of Skyscape's founders in 2011. The G-Cloud Framework fuelled the adoption of cloud-based computing capabilities by easing the ways in which public sector bodies could buy and use ICT services from small and medium-sized businesses. After building and selling a previous business, Hansford set about connecting with a group of like-minded people to drive forward a new concept. What followed was Skyscape Cloud Services, the brainchild of Jeffrey Thomas, Jeremy Saunders, Phil Dawson and Simon Hansford.
The company's share holders invested approximately £25 million to create a cloud platform specifically to address IT procurement and security issues within the UK public sector. The firm has been on G-Cloud since its first iteration and secured early big wins with organisations such as the Home Office, HMRC and DVLA, earning it recognition from Gartner and Deloitte. "Our cloud services have been designed to be easy to adopt, use and leave, without any start-up or exit fees," said Hansford. "Skyscape charges by the hour, allowing departments to scale up or down based on their needs, and only paying for what they use."
In November last year the company announced its eighth successive price drop, made possible by growing economies of scale which have led to storage costs falling by 90 per cent this past year alone. In the years ahead, the company aims to more than double its size and accelerate growth in the public sector based on a proven formula. "Skyscape doesn't serve commercial customers but chooses to invest its expertise in understanding the digital transformation challenges affecting the public sector, and how our cloud platform can be used effectively by customers," added Hansford. "This enables the us to provide an environment that puts customers in control, delivering value and ultimately benefitting UK citizens and businesses."
Skyscape's headcount currently stands at circa 130 and revenues have increased almost nine fold in two years from £3.7 million to £32.1 million this year, a compound annual growth rate of 195.8 per cent driven by high consumption of compute hours. In its next financial year Skyscape is forecasting strong growth in both revenues and profitability as new customers, additional partners and more workloads transition to the platform. The company now has over 100 customers, 200-plus workloads and partners with a 60 per cent direct and 40 per cent partner split.
Hansford's main challenges are recruiting and retaining appropriate technical, operational, commercial and leadership talent in the face of a national skills shortage. "Despite having a recruitment and human resources management programme to identify, recruit, develop, motivate and retain talent, we have over 30 roles to fill but finding and competing for people is a challenge," he said.
Another challenge is bidding for and winning large scale contracts on a G-Cloud platform that has a vast and complex legacy estate. The solution? Enabling a robust risk management strategy with a formal bid review process, and certified service delivery with simple terms and conditions in line with G-Cloud.
"I genuinely see the market moving in our direction," stated Hansford. "Cloud adoption remains low, less than eight per cent, and is forecast to be over 30 per cent within the next four years. It's about focus, getting to scale and delivering a quality service at the right price point. We're doing something that makes a difference in terms of services delivered to citizens and saving taxpayers' money."•