'Joe Hemani has given us the freedom to create our own identity' - Westcoast Cloud MD

Mark Davies reveals the reasoning behind the rebrand of the distie's cloud business, as well as what he wants out of partners

Westcoast Cloud's rebrand is an effort to come out from under the shadow of its distie parent, according to managing director Mark Davies.

Davies has headed Westcoast's cloud division since it was set up more than three years ago, and he said that the relaunch of the brand is an attempt to make its presence more widely known.

The cloud division moved into a separate office last September and has a different theme to the Westcoast group.

"Over the last three years, we've grafted and got on with creating who we are, what we do and how we do it," he explained to CRN.

"The branding aspect of us as a separate entity has taken a back seat to us delivering, but now we want to make some noise and show our pride at our success.

"Before, we weren't focused on making a noise - that wasn't a driver for us - but now we see our numbers and what we are delivering so I think that's worth shouting about."

Westcoast Cloud's services predominantly revolve around Microsoft's offerings, but it has 30 vendor partners on its books, including Barracuda and migration specialist Skykick.

Davies said the cloud business is a separate entity within the Westcoast group, and manages all its business internally, adding that this "self-sufficiency" makes it right that it has a different identity away from its parent company.

"Because we are doing an enablement into the partners around ongoing recurring revenue, it is different to what we do at the overall Westcoast group," he said.

"It feels right to have our own identity around that, because otherwise people will look at Westcoast Cloud and Westcoast and think we are the same thing, and that they will get the same level of service and pricing because we are part of the same place - and that's not true."

Davies emphasised that he is proud of the Westcoast heritage and the rebrand isn't an effort to move away from it, rather that it is trying to establish its own independent identity as a cloud distributor.

Westcoast owner Joe Hemani has been a great supporter of the move, Davies added.

"I report directly to Joe and he is immensely pleased with the way the business has grown in the past few years," he said.

"That's why he has given me the freedom to split the office off and also create our own branding and show people what we are capable of as an individual organisation inside the group."

He claimed that the cloud division now has more than half a million seats and that it is the number one provider of Microsoft Azure and Dynamics in the UK - and that it has done that on its own merits.

"We are delivering the right things into the channel, but 60 per cent of our partners have never transacted with Westcoast anyway," he said.

"We're not dependent on them to pass us opportunities, because we are creating them ourselves through our services and the word of mouth of our partners."

As head of Westcoast Cloud, Davies has strong ambitions to facilitate the business' growth, including increasing its self-sufficiency in the Westcoast group.

Part of his strategy is to drive partners towards other opportunities, including artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT), and helping them to move into specific verticals, such as finance or legal.

The MD adds that when it comes to partner profile, he would prefer those who are willing to commit to cloud services and work together to develop the opportunities around their chosen verticals.

"There are competitors of ours who say they have 3,500 partners that they work with on cloud," he stated.

"We have 600 partners and that is because we don't have the size, scale or resources to properly manage and help 3,500 partners every month to deliver the right amount of solutions.

"But it's not just about signing them up; enabling them is what is important to me. Having 3,500 partners and 3,000 of them not transacting means nothing to me - it's by far about the quality.

"We are quite selective about the partners we work with because you can only work with those who want to do something going forward. If we signed 50 to 100 partners this year, I'd be more than happy."