‘Hard stuff done well’ - Roc Technologies CEO talks strategic realignment

Simon Furber on the MSP’s push into cyber, recurring services and proprietary AI

After a period of pandemic-era stabilisation, Roc Technologies is firmly back in growth mode.

Under CEO Simon Furber, the sharpened focus on cybersecurity and repeatable services, as well as on IP development that’s starting to attract the attention of a swath of public sector clients.

Speaking to CRN, Furber, who joined Roc to reignite its growth strategy, said the past 12 months have been about “restarting that growth engine” through investment in people, services and strategic alignment – all under the wing of minority investor BGF.

“During COVID, the focus was on retaining customers and securing as many of our people as possible,” he explains.

“Now it’s about standardising our offerings, making them easier to consume and deliver, and building repeatability.”

Roc’s partnership with Juniper Networks has been a standout growth driver, particularly across key sectors like higher education and defence, Furber says.

That relationship hit a high last quarter when Roc was named Juniper’s AI Partner of the Year globally, just as the vendor was being acquired by HPE.

“To be recognised as top of the tree technically at a time like that is brilliant,” Furber said.

Internally, Roc has been working hard to streamline what Furber described as a “brilliant but bespoke” services model.

“We were doing everything for everybody, almost starting again each time. Corralling that into something coherent has been key,” he said.

The CEO specifies that some of that bespoke work is still going on, particularly where it involves proprietary IP.

However, the company now has a much sharper focus on cyber and recurring revenue from services.

As part of its cyber push, in December, the firm launched a sovereign Security Operations Centre (SOC) housed in a secure facility, serving customers with highly sensitive environments in sectors such as nuclear, police, and MoD.

Originally focused on responding to customer tooling, Roc is now moving into delivering its own full-stack SOC services, with major initiatives underway with both Microsoft and Google.

“There are customers who prefer non-Microsoft options for looking at Microsoft environments, and others for whom Microsoft Sentinel is exactly the right fit,” Furber notes.

While Roc’s revenue splits roughly into thirds - managed services and recurring tech, repeatable framework-based work, and traditional product or one-time software sales, that last segment has recently spiked thanks to major university campus rollouts.

But Furber emphasises that those deals are a foot in the door for longer-term managed relationships.

“Once we deploy, we’re typically in life for five years,” he adds.

One of Roc’s most exciting recent developments has been the creation of its own software house, Coria (Roc AI spelled backwards), focused on building and scaling intellectual property.

Its first major success story is a big data tool built for National Highways that uses AI and ML to drive cost assurance across parts of the organisation’s annual infrastructure supply chain.

“What used to be sample testing by very qualified quantity surveyors on hundreds of thousands of line items is now automated,” Furber says.

“What we’re deploying is a big data tool that can ingest contracts, purchase orders, invoices, timesheets, even weather forecasts, because concrete costs more on a wet day than a sunny one.

“It processes all those variables and, within the first hour of the assessment period, identifies the five to ten per cent of line items that are worth deeper scrutiny by quantity surveyors, because that’s where the real value lies.”

The platform not only reduces errors and overpayments but also cuts churn among surveyors by automating the repetitive work they never signed up for, according to Furber.

With Cabinet Office-level conversations now taking place, Roc sees big potential for the software across public infrastructure.

“The historic model was too manual. Now we can assess everything within an hour of the payment window opening,” Furber says.

“There’s a real opportunity to deploy this across government.”

While BGF has been a patient investor, with a 39 stake held for seven years, Furber acknowledges that inorganic growth, particularly in cyber and software, is firmly on the table.

“There’s real quality out there, and we’ve got the team and experience for M&A,” he notes.

Looking ahead, Furber is optimistic about Roc’s trajectory, anchored in proprietary services, intelligent automation, and a laser focus on complex environments.

“Hard stuff done well, that’s where we differentiate,” he concludes.