Skyscape defends G-Cloud from 'naïve' critics

Amid UK recruitment drive, Skyscape offers insights into how to be successful on G-Cloud

Cloud service provider Skyscape has spoken up in defence of G-Cloud, saying those who speak negatively about the framework tend to be "naïve" about its capabilities.

The company, which delivers cloud services to the UK public sector and works with the majority of government departments, made the claims as it plans to launch a recruitment drive that will see its team grow to 95 with the addition of 30 new jobs across the business.

Simon Hansford, CEO at Skyscape, told CRN that negativity aimed at G-Cloud is driven by the system integrators (SIs) that previously served the government simply not liking there being competition now that G-Cloud has "opened up the marketplace".

He added that other negativity comes from SMEs who are new to the platform and are puzzled as to why they are not automatically receiving orders.

"The truth is, it's like anything to do with selling – you have to have a sales and marketing plan, and you have to work on it," he said. "I think there are a lot of vendors on G-Cloud that just didn't expect that and didn't think that is what it was about – and that is just naïvety."

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Offering some advice on how to be successful on the cloud platform, Hansford commented: "You need to have steely determination and a proactive team behind you. You have to treat this as a campaign in its own right; you have to have sector expertise.

"You have to have people who live and breathe working in government, have the relationships, understand the language, understand their organisations and what they are trying to do in this market."

CRN research last year found that the majority of suppliers accredited on G-Cloud have yet to make a sale through the framework.

Hansford said some suppliers had expectations of the framework which were too high.

"I see some of them [partners] on G-Cloud and they have miss-set expectations that there is going to be a sudden flood of interest and orders from government departments. That doesn't happen."

The Skyscape boss admits that a number of aspects of G-Cloud could be improved, such as the understanding of tools for developer operations and the running of native applications as opposed to traditional ones.

Hansford said Skyscape is one of the biggest and most successful SMEs on G-Cloud at the moment, due to hard work and a decent sales and marketing team both direct – which accounts for 40 per cent of its business – and indirect, which claims 60 per cent of its business.

As part of its plans to grow the team, Hansford also mentioned that he hopes to double the yearly revenue and grow its partner base to become a more channel-focused business, as opposed to selling direct too much.

"We are continually looking to expand; we want to be a large scaled platform – therefore anyone selling applications or solutions into government will see us as their cloud platform of choice," he said.