Life In The Digital Marketplace, 7: Carrenza, London

Feb 26, 2016

In the next in our series looking at options for the UK public sector tech supply chain off the former CloudStore, we meet Matthew McGrory, MD of cloud service specialist Carrenza

Tell us about your company and its value proposition, please Matt.

Carrenza is a cloud service provider delivering IaaS and PaaS to public and commercial sector organisations for whom guaranteed security, compliance and performance are key. With three compute zones for public sector use in the UK and Europe (two in the UK and one in Holland) and 11 global compute zones for Commercial sector use, Carrenza is able to provide innovative, secure IaaS and PaaS to organisations regionally and globally in sectors including public, financial services, and retail as well as through key partnerships with ISVs and global system integrators

The fact we've been delivering cloud services since 2006 makes us one of the earliest entrants into the cloud market, today we bring that sector leading depth of experience to bear in delivering services which live and breathe the value delivered from orchestration, automation, DevOps and agility. Our core offering focuses on:

Delivering compliant cloud infrastructure
Leveraging orchestration to improve reliability
Using automation to increase efficiency
Our ability to be workload agnostic
Hybrid services combining Carrenza with AWS and Google.

We also sector specific services for Central and Local Government, System Integrators, Independent Software Vendors (ISV) & SaaS, Financial Services and Retail & Ecommerce.

Great, thanks for the detail there. Why did you enter onto the G-Cloud/The Digital Marketplace? What did you expect to get out of it - and did you?

It looked like a positive step in engaging with suppliers when we first looked at it in its third iteration as G-Cloud 3, back in 2013. We had watched the early adopters in the first 2 versions and decided it was worth pursuing as a means of reaching out to a potential new audience in government. We expected some engagement as we were relatively early into the G-Cloud process and we found some initial success with in-bound queries... but quickly realised that we had to approach the marketing in the same way we always had - that we still needed to engage your audience.

G-Cloud gives you a window but you still have to encourage people to come and look at it, you could say.

Interesting. How did you find the process of applying?

Initially, I was worried that the engagement process would suck up time and energy from the Carrenza team. The good news was that our products fitted well into the format of the G-Cloud submission framework, and therefore the tender processes was easier than those previously experienced in both private and public sector.

How have things been working out for you on the Marketplace?

In the last year, it's been a positive source of opportunity for us; the work we’ve done with the Government Digital Service (GDS) to help deliver GOV.UK has given us a good stepping stone in terms of building experience in the sector.

Sound great! Based on your experience, do you have any top tips for other (smaller) suppliers on how to make the most of the G-Cloud opportunity?

The main piece of advice I'd give is to treat G-Cloud like a bookseller would treat Amazon.com. It's a route to market but YOU still have to get your prospects to come and have a look at your products and services - they won’t magically appear!

Awareness, even in public sector, still has dark spots in places, so you need to make sure you don’t assume everyone knows how it works and what it’s for. The team at the Digitial Marketplace have been trying to build the brand which is starting to work well, though, and we are seeing a much wider awareness, but there is always work to do.

Hmm, ok. Any other thoughts about what you see as the future for cloud as a delivery mechanism for UK public services?

Cloud is clearly becoming key in delivering the digital transformation strategy of citizen services across government. I can’t see a future without it really, and the credibility of the incoming Government as a Platform projects will be critical in maintaining the good work done over the last six years by GDS and the trailblazers across the rest of Central Government.

Thanks - and good luck on G-Cloud 7!

To find out more about this G-Cloud-7 supplier, go here

We are looking for other companies enjoying success on the Digital Marketplace and would love to feature your experiences in this new on-going editorial series. Please get in touch with us here to kick start that process.