The top twenty Cloud companies in the UK

Transcription

1 Summer 2013 cloudex 20:20 The top twenty Cloud companies in the UK In 2013 we launched Cloudex 20:20, our search or the UK s 20 leading independently-owned Cloud technology businesses. Having drawn up a shortlist, we then invited a panel o industry experts to adjudicate on a inal top 20. Cloudex 20:20 is based on more than simply turnover or proit growth. Panel members took into account other metrics including growth prospects, innovation and global competitiveness. Our top 20 (in alphabetical order) next The shit to the Cloud poses challenges and opportunities in equal measure or industry players. There can be little doubt now that the Cloud represents a critical strategic area or the IT industry. As one o our judges Neville Davis sums up: "The Cloud has been talked about or 15 years but it is only over the last three or our years that all the components have come together and the drive towards the Cloud has gained real momentum or suppliers and customers alike. I a customer is not thinking about the Cloud then there is something wrong, while on the supply side i there is not a Cloud component in your oering then you are in trouble. There are a lot o businesses that have absolutely got it though, they have got the shit and are addressing it." It is precisely these companies which we have proiled in our Cloudex 20:20 programme. As Davis adds: "The study conirms that the UK has grasped these opportunities pretty well and that we have some very interesting businesses in this market." The theme is echoed by ellow judge Angela Eager. "The UK now has a host o good Cloud companies and a lot coming through," she adds. "We have the innovation and the talent, and the UK has been one o the most willing countries to adopt the Cloud." Judge Stephen Warshaw says the best entries on oer tended to be straight SaaS companies providing real services to b2b customers, while a number really caught the eye in terms o the oering they were giving to customers. "There were deinitely some companies to watch who were doing some unusual things such as analysing social networks or SMS messages, or who had strong value-added oerings in areas such as tourism, insurance and local government." Challenges Davis says there are now two clear types o companies in this ield, those that were pure play Cloud businesses rom day one, and those that have had to re-engineer their businesses rom a more traditional model to a Cloud model. He says that the companies in the latter category ace signiicant challenges as they grapple with this transition. "They have realised that they have to substantially change their business, and it was clear rom the entries that some companies are urther down this path than others. Aquarium Sotware Acturis Cobweb Solutions Concirrus Conversocial Covalent Sotware Dynmark Exceedra FairFX Fourth Livebookings MPP Global Solutions NetDespatch Rivo Sotware SecureData Skyscape Cloud Services Sparesinder Stacare Valueworks VOSS Solutions

2 cloudex Summer 2013 Most are doing the right things but they still have a way to go beore they are ully established. For these irms the most crucial thing is to be ruthless about it. Once your business has shited you then need to say 'that's it, we're not doing traditional sotware anymore'. There is no alternative." Davis says a particular challenge is to radically redesign sotware and make it unction in a totally dierent way. He says another challenge is keeping investors on board. Revenues and proits or these companies will all beore they rise again so investors have to keep aith. The days o the traditional model where you sold a licence on day one or a chunky ee have long gone and have now been replaced by a pay-as-you-go system. Although you can sustain customers or the longer term there is a short term dip in inances which can be quite painul." Ultimately cash is cash, says Davis. "These types o companies will invariably need extra cash to bridge this period. But investors need to keep aith because the company will come out o the other end stronger with more resilient revenues and cashlow. There is also a cultural shit in the business to deal with. The salesorce will be used to being rewarded or selling big licences. Now it is selling something that does not come with a big slug o revenue so you are having to change the selling mindset." Eager says there are "changes and challenges" on every ront or these companies whether it be the revenue or business model they adopt or how they develop the sotware and then support it. "You cannot just change one thing at a time, there are major operational challenges," she adds. Eager agrees that a lot o these companies are struggling to make proits. "Everyone is involved in a market share land grab and so a lot o money is going into sales and marketing. Proits are a long way o on the horizon or some o these companies." However Eager doesn't think we are going to see another dotcom crash. "Ultimately this is an industry based on real products and good technology. Companies have good business propositions which gives good visibility." However Eager does think we have now been through the golden age o SaaS pricing. "Suppliers are now going to have to look at dierent ways o pricing and packaging various assets." Eager adds that visibility is another problem or a lot o companies in this space. "When you are operating in a market that is dominated by larger names with money to put into sizeable marketing campaigns that creates challenges. Talent retention is another big issue or these smaller irms. Getting and holding on to experts in this ield is a big deal, skilled people are in high demand right now." Funding Warshaw says the challenge or Cloud businesses is to ensure they evolve and get the unding they need to continue, and are not "outrun" by larger, richer companies who can move aster. "Even i you only have a six or 12 month lead on the big boys you've got to get your marker down. These smaller players have to cut their cloth with the unding they have." Warshaw adds that a lot o companies in our Cloudex list are unded by private individuals but that shouldn't come as a surprise. "Many o these companies are too small to attract PE money although underneath that I was rather surprised that there weren't more true risk VC unds putting money into this market. That is probably a wider weakness in the UK. It remains a challenge to get early stage unding." Warshaw says timing is now criticial or these companies. "Most o our entrants were only turning over a ew million pounds. They have got to get through to the next stage and scale the business. The challenge is how quickly you can get to scale. For some o these companies there is even an opportunity to go international but how will they und that?" Eager says there are major opportunities abroad or Cloud players. "In terms o exporting what we do everyone thinks they should go to the US irst, but Europe is actually a market we should be taking a close look at too. Across the rest o Europe SaaS adoption is lower so there are huge opportunities there." Fellow panellist Emma Rodgers, rom Clearwater, said the Cloudex 20:20 survey Judging panel Neville Davis, Chairman, SecureData; Fourth; Amor Group; Ascribe Group Angela Eager, Research Director, TechMarketView Stephen Warshaw, Portolio Director, Hg Capital & Chairman, TeamSystem Steve Garnett, European Chairman, Salesorce.com Emma Rodgers, Director, TMT Market Intelligence, Clearwater Corporate Finance had shown just how rapidly the market or Cloud technologies is growing as businesses realise the beneits that come rom utilising the Cloud, such as scalable storage, access to superior technology and the ability to cut down on capital expenditure. Behind all o this there is a legion o innovative businesses that are among the astest growing in the UK, and our survey was able to highlight and celebrate these companies, many o whom all below the radar. As our judges remarked, our survey showed the tremendous opportunities and challenges that these companies ace as they race to become market leaders in their speciic ield.

3 Our top twenty Aquarium Sotware Location: Manchester / Aquarium recognised the beneits that could be achieved through a true SaaS solution and developed its multi-tenanted web based solution rom the ground up with SaaS at the oreront o its design. The provider's core 'Aquarium' product brings together into a single solution the core elements o CRM, business process automation and case management. The product lends itsel well to any repeatable process and especially those that are high volume in nature and administration-intensive. As such Aquarium's key markets are insurance, legal, consumer inancial claims, debt management and debt collection. The company says its price-point and transaction-based business makes it highly competitive against the more mainstream application providers. The business has also created two new businesses rom the core Aquarium solution that make use o its underlying technology. ChorusHR, a web-based HR solution that provides SMEs access to a HR solution; and Aquarium Card Management Solutions (ACMS), which provides pre-paid card solutions to both the public and private sectors in areas such as social care, housing associations, credit unions and debt management. Although the vast majority o revenue comes rom the UK, Aquarium also has clients in Europe and North America, and recently incorporated Aquarium Sotware Inc based out o New York to service its current and uture North American clients. next Acturis Location: London / Acturis is a SaaS platorm or the general insurance industry and its clients include many o the UK's top commercial insurance brokers. The company says its key innovation has been to introduce electronic trading and processing between insurance brokers and insurance underwriters in the UK commercial insurance market. The business provides a complete integrated solution or clients to help them run their business, ranging rom web quotes to claims administration, document management, accounting and management inormation. The company says the key beneit it can oer to clients is a complete, managed solution or their entire business process, and embedded within it is an electronic trading system which enables them to trade commercial insurance business electronically. Says the company: "The key beneit to our insurer clients is that they can deploy a multi-channel electronic trading platorm or commercial insurance at low cost, low risk and in a ew months without the need or huge, multi-year, high risk developments o their legacy systems. In eect they can shrink-wrap the legacy systems and eed the minimum data to them rom the Acturis System or completed electronically traded business." Cobweb Solutions Location: Fareham / Cobweb, which has gold status in Microsot's hosting category, is one o the largest independent hosted exchange providers in Europe, delivering a range o hosted communication tools to more than 5,000 small and medium-sized business customers. Starting out more than a decade ago as an application service provider and early adopter o Microsot Exchange, Cobweb is one o the longest established hosted exchange providers in the world, a longevity which has given it invaluable experience and the knowledge to oer its customers a specialist service. Cobweb continually ocuses on researching, creating and adapting technical solutions, and strongly believes in making investments that will cater best or its customers. In 2007 the company partnered with Parallels.com to provide customers with a management control panel and billing system that is active all the time, urther improving the simplicity and reliability o managing a customer s services. As well as the gold status, Cobweb is one o only a small number o worldwide MVPs (Microsot Most Valued Proessionals) and has a number o qualiied MCPs (Microsot Certiied Proessionals) as part o its team. The company says this close partnership with Microsot is critical to its success. Concirrus Location: London / Concirrus has built its business on organising a Cloud-based platorm and creates solutions that link remote assets such as smart meters, cars, ticket machines and vending machines to back oice systems to provide real-time inormation on their perormance. Customers can then see how remote assets are perorming and can provide preventative maintenance, bill more accurately, and drive eiciences through the supply chain. The nature o its solutions inevitably means it avours customers with remote ield based equipment such as utilities, vending companies and security irms. As the company says: "We are leading customers into the Cloud, challenging their status quo and helping them transorm their business rom product to service oriented." Concirrus operates the solutions on a SaaS basis and oers a complete connectivity solution including the provision o hardware, communications and Cloud platorms. The company operates primarily in the smart energy, insurance and custom solutions markets, and its revenue model is built around a mix o hardware, consulting and recurring monthly service ees.

4 cloudex Summer 2013 Conversocial Location: London / Conversocial is a social customer service solution used by social customer care teams to help them identiy, manage and respond to customer issues on Facebook and Twitter. The company speciically ocuses on developing sophisticated technologies that can help customers tackle high-volume, diverse social communication. Its prioritization engine uses machine-learning and natural language processing to highlight messages that need an immediate response. Its primary customer base is large b2c companies and it has customers in retail, inance, hospitality, telecommunications and the travel industries. Conversocial say that by eectively responding to customer issues online, its clients are able to decrease negative sentiment, increase productivity, reduce response times and improve the quality o customer insight extracted rom social data. The company says although many o its customers are not yet running ully developed ROI models on their social customer service programmes, they have justiied their purchase o Conversocial through productivity gains to meet customers' expectations or responses within a particular timerame. As the company says: "A model to protect the exposed revenue o these upset customers, and o the growing number o customers that see their complaints while these remain unanswered, has been eective in communicating the value o social customer care." The company is primarily ocused on the US and UK, recently opening an American oice, but also has customers across Europe and Australasia. Covalent Sotware Location: Taunton / Covalent is one o the UK's leading public sector Cloud providers with a client base in local government, housing and the NHS. As well as the UK, the company also has public sector customers in the US and Australia, as well as some UK private sector customers. It is capitalising on both the growing demand or Cloud applications and the increasing use o analytics sotware. The company has 13 Cloud-based business management applications grouped into two bundles - Corporate Perormance Management and Governance, Risk & Compliance which help managers monitor, interpret and act to improve both strategic and operational perormance at all organisational levels. Covalent say public sector organisations, particularly in the UK, are among the most advanced in their use o perormance and governance management methodologies and techniques, driven by regulatory regimes that place great emphasis on tracking achievement o perormance targets and reporting results to the public. As a result it says its business has developed considerable expertise in all aspects o perormance and governance management. Covalent also cites the recent NHS reorms as driving signiicant demand or its Perormance & Governance Management sotware, and points to growing customer momentum in this area. Dynmark Location: Cheltenham / Dynmark is a Cloud-based mobile intelligence and marketing platorm which enables companies to harness the power o aggregated knowledge to increase customer engagement and ROI through targeted SMS messaging and analytics. The company s intelligence services have been developed in the Cloud over the last 18 months, and with coverage o more than 80 per cent o all UK mobile device numbers Dynmark has built up a valuable understanding o mobile device behaviours which it is able to monetise in various ways. For instance clients use Dynmark s services to augment data sets currently lacking any inormation relating to device behaviour, and can go on to target campaigns to speciic devices. Such iltering capability is delivered in real time, through the Cloud. The executive team o the company was ormerly part o the successul MessageLabs team (now part o Symantec) and has a long history o looking at traditional services and delivering them in a better way through the Cloud. Dynmark say its success is down to harnessing the power o the Cloud to make millions o data calls in real time to make a decision on the outcome o a message. Recognising the volatile nature o messaging markets, the business has positioned itsel through the delivery o new technologies to prosper rom a move away rom traditional messaging (SMS) to other emerging orms (Social, OTT, InApp). The business has now expanded its geographical reach into 155 countries. Exceedra Location: London / Exceedra is positioned in the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) sotware market with solutions or Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, and says it is oten described as the "ipad o Enterprise Planning" due to its strong design, ocused on empowering user experience to drive higher value commercial plans. Initially the company's main ocus was on UK Tier 2 brands, but is now winning selection processes with Global Tier 1 brands, taking on established players such Accenture, SAP and Oracle. Exceedra say the level o spend by CPGs on trade promotions is increasing year on year, and to help optimise this Exceedra has developed a Cloud-based planning solution that integrates to existing legacy IT environments such as SAP. The solution uses guided analytics and best practice worklows to help sales and inance teams design the best commercial plans, including managing retail proitability and promotion and price strategy. The solution is based on Microsot technologies as is oered on a SaaS model. Exceedra says it is disrupting the enterprise planning space or CPGs by empowering them to make better decisions around promotions, investments and price strategy, and claims its solution is gaining increasing market traction.

5 FairFX Location: London / FairFX provides Cloud-based oreign exchange solutions in the UK or both retail and corporate markets. Having started with a retail travel card denominated in both US$ and euros in 2007, the business has grown signiicantly. Last year it released apps or both ios and Android compatible devices which enable customers to manage their cards and also perorm FairPay transactions eectively mobile FX Banking services. As well as the travel card and payment products, FairFX also oers a webbased cash delivery service and a phone-broked execution business. FairFX retail customers are typically drawn rom the ABC1 socio range who travel at least twice a year. Customers have generally been acquired via online channels, and FairFX say they preer their technology to larger and more traditional players in the sector. The company cites a growing corporate customer base too. For instance the FairFX Prepaid Corporate card is designed to help signiicantly reduce the cost o employee spending on travel and expenses. This is achieved by a combination o much lower oreign currency conversion, card issuance costs, and the potential control provided rom the use o prepaid cards rather than cash advances or charge cards. FairFX say while the cards were initially used or oreign expenditure, they are now used both domestically and overseas because o the enhanced control o expenditure and the reporting eatures available rom the platorm. next Fourth Location: London / Fourth is a leading pure play SaaS provider o management systems to the restaurant, hotel and leisure sectors. Its solutions ocus on the back oice area. The company s labour solution starts rom the point o recruitment, providing one platorm to train, schedule or rotas, track time and attendance, calculate pay and manage tips, and ulil the payroll to the employee. Fourth ood and beverage solutions allow customers to manage all aspects o their electronic procurement and payment, inventory management and consumption. This extends to recipe design and menu engineering so that theoretical margins can be established (as well as caloriic content and nutritional control) and set against actual margin inormation. The company s customers range rom single site hotels, pubs and restaurants through to large, multi-brand, multi-site operators. Fourth s platorm is a single instance, multi-tenanted model based on Microsot, and is delivered only as SaaS. As the company explains: We have never had a traditional licence model or legacy installed base. What dierentiates us, beyond the solid architecture, is the end to end nature o our solutions which allow customers to manage employees and inventory rom the point o hiring or ordering through to the actual pay cheque or use o product in their operation. Fourth has oices in London, Cheshire, the US and Ukraine and customers in nearly 50 countries. It opened an oice in the US last year via the acquisition o Adaco Inc, a leading provider o SaaS based inventory management solutions to the global hotel sector. Livebookings Location: London / With oices across Europe and customers in 23 countries, Livebookings is the largest online reservations provider in Europe operating a webbased restaurant reservations and marketing service which works with thousands o restaurants and many leading hotel chains. Livebookings reservations tools enable restaurants to provide their diners with a ree, easy-to-use online bookings service, to manage those reservations eiciently and to collect valuable customer data. Its marketing services also ensure restaurants can run promotions and deals and execute online marketing campaigns to attract and retain customers. The company s consumer restaurant reservations website, Bookatable.com, claims to be Europe's astest growing online restaurant booking website, operating in nine dierent languages and across 19 countries. It supports the irm s network o distribution partners, including tastecard.com, AternoonTea.co.uk, SquareMeal.co.uk and Restaurant-Guide.com to ensure it can spread news o deals extensively and help restaurant customers attract new business. Livebookings says using Cloud technology also allows it to quickly build prototypes and reduce time rom product inception to delivery. Whereas competitors oer a locally installed system or restaurateurs to manage their reservations, Livebookings has always provided a Cloudbased solution or them to manage, store and market to their opted-in customer database. MPP Global Solutions Location: Warrington / MPP Global Solutions is a leading provider o CRM, payment and ecommerce solutions to the media and entertainment sectors. Its vision is to enable organisations to orm a holistic view o their digital consumer so that they can monetise their content and generate revenue via any channel, in any ormat, to any device. The company now processes more than 250 million transactions daily to more than seven million subscribers. The esuite payment platorm is MPP s lagship oering with MPP s payment technology enabling the end user to register and purchase in the easiest and most eicient way. Consumer data and payments inormation is stored in the company s central database to allow the end user to purchase repeatedly via any customer touch point, such as connected TV, web and mobile. MPP say that today the development and advancement o digital content monetisation technologies helps media and entertainment companies unlock the value in both their digital and physical assets, and charge customers or access, products, subscriptions and downloads. The industry is moving at a ast pace and MPP says its ecommerce payment solutions are designed to deliver optimal perormance both now and in the uture.

6 cloudex Summer 2013 NetDespatch Location: Marlow / NetDespatch provide a web shipping, tracking and systems integration platorm or postal and parcel carriers worldwide. It enables organisations to provide business customers with solutions to integrate ecommerce websites, sales order processing and warehouse systems, print correct shipping labels and electronically pre-advise incoming parcels. The company irst introduced its SaaS model back in 1999 and the drive or seamless integration and automation within the post and parcels sector, and the introduction o business class broadband, has seen the company go rom strength to strength. Over the past ew years NetDespatch has grown to become a global market leader in the supply o internet-based IT integration solutions. The platorm not only provides applications but a ull web service underpinning hundreds o millions o ecommerce collection and delivery related transactions per year. The model is based on the carrier being billed on a pay-per-consignment transaction model, and the shipper being able to use the sotware ree o charge as part o their contract with the carrier. The company s strategy over the next ew years is to increase its customer base by targeting the major postal and parcel organisations in North and South America, Scandinavia, Northern Europe and Australasia. Innovation is key or the business and over the the past year the company has also created a barcode service or use on mobile devices to make it easier or customers to collect parcels rom click and collect pickup points. Rivo Sotware Location: Warwick / Rivo supplies a SaaS based sotware solution, Saeguard, primarily to large, complex multinationals in a variety o industry sectors. The company provides the sotware, implementation, consultancy, training, data hosting and on-going support to clients rom oices in Warwick, UK, and rom Stratord, USA. Saeguard is based on a conigurable risk engine that contains unctional 'building blocks' underpinned by advanced conigurable technology. Underpinning the Saeguard risk engine there are a number o basic technologies that provide unctions such as worklow, database services and coniguration services. These base level unctions give Saeguard the coniguration lexibility that clients need. The application is built on a platorm using Microsot Net, Microsot SQL Server 2012 and Microsot Server Rivo also has a longterm partnership with Rackspace, the provider o managed hosting solutions, to ensure optimised security or clients. Rivo says its leadership o Cloud-based compliance solutions comes rom the genesis o the Saeguard sotware itsel, which is among the most lexible and conigurable available within the SHEQS (Saety, Health and Environmental Quality Support) market. SecureData Location: London / Cyber security has become a key threat to organisations o all sizes and the complexity and ast moving evolution o security technologies is driving organisations to partner with Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs). SecureData is the UK s largest independent MSSP and is at the oreront o developing Cloud based security services or its customers, enabling them to beneit rom the attractiveness o the Cloud model and help them transer their inrastructure to the Cloud securely. The company s core oering is AinitySecure, a real-time security monitoring solution which has been developed by SecureData over the last 10 years. SecureData also oers its customers a number o Security as a Service solutions (SecaaS). The company operates in a number o markets including media, inancial services, legal services and the engineering sector, and is currently developing a number o new SecaaS oerings including Authentication as a Service, Incident response as a Service, Security device coniguration review as a Service, and ile integrity. Skyscape Cloud Services Location: Farnborough / Cloud services have a vital role to play in enabling UK public sector organisations to take a more lexible approach to IT, ultimately allowing increasingly overstretched departments to deliver services in a more agile and cost-eective way. With the government s recently announced Cloud First mandate, this has never been more true with government departments needing to purchase IT directly rom the G-Cloud ramework as part o its commitment to position Cloud services as the primary channel through which public sector organisations procure IT. Skyscape has been a supplier to the G-Cloud ramework since its inception and together with its partners accounts or the majority o the assured Cloud services available through the ramework. Skyscape says G-Cloud has transormed the way that public sector organisations can buy and use ICT services. As the company says: Deployments can now take hours rather than months, with simple, standardised call-o contracts. All o this reduces costs or UK taxpayers and enables better value public services. Skyscape has developed a range o Cloud services designed speciically or the UK public sector, to help increase eiciencies, reduce costs, signiicantly improve procurement times and increase transparency. The company is currently working on over 100 projects with central government, local authorities, the police, healthcare bodies and other publicly-unded organisations.

7 Sparesinder Location: Teddington / Sparesinder s Cloud-based application is used by numerous leading global corporations to manage their materials master data helping to reduce working capital, improve procurement processes and drive inventory eiciencies. Ater creating a single master record or each unique spare across a company, Sparesinder then implements a data governance structure to manage materials master data and provide quick, accurate data to multiple client systems. Over the past 18 months there has been a noticeable increase in the proile o master data management as witnessed by increased interest rom global consultancy irms. The company s Cloud-based applications, Masterpiece (or legacy datacleaning) and Gatekeeper (or on-going governance), integrate with customers' ERP systems such as SAP, Peoplesot and Oracle. next Stacare Location: Leatherhead / Stacare is a leading pure-play provider o SaaS-based employee beneits sotware in the UK, and has developed a suite o awardwinning beneits sotware centred on two key products. The irst is a beneits portal which acilitates the communication, enrolment and administration o employee beneits, including lexible beneits which are becoming increasingly popular with the UK's best companies to work or. The second is an auto-enrolment portal which enables employers to manage their pensions obligations, ensuring ull compliance with recently implemented regulatory obligations. The beneits market is undergoing substantial regulatory change at present which is disrupting the status quo and creating huge opportunities or pure-play technology vendors such as Stacare. For instance all UK employers now have to automatically enrol all employees into a compliant workplace pension scheme. Over 100,000 existing and a million new pension schemes need to be managed through complex regulation involving workorce assessment, employee communication, scheme enrolment with opt-in and opt-out processes, payroll and provider reporting, and data management o joiners and leavers with ull audit trails o all activities. Stacare's ocus to date has been primarily UK based, however the company has recently added global unctionality which supports multinational clients international employee beneits operating within multiple tax structures in local markets. Valueworks Location: Wigan / Valueworks helps organisations in the UK construction and social housing markets to control their supply chain activities. It works with registered providers, contractors and suppliers to support local regeneration, maximise social value delivered to communities, and provide better services that result in improved tenant satisaction. Through a combination o sourcing, strategic cost management and supply chain control through Valueworks Cloud-based e-marketplaces, Valueworks establishes and manages detailed and complex supply chains right down to a component/per property basis. Today Valueworks e-marketplaces are used by more than 300 organisations. Since delivering its irst marketplace in 2004, Valueworks has gone on to become a leading provider o b2b marketplaces within the social housing sector. Its products contain eatures such as Purchase2Pay and rebate capabilities, catalogue management, integration with third party systems and the provision o client data insights (through KPI Dashboards and reporting,) run rom a data-warehouse built on the Microsot BI technology stack. This summer saw the launch o 'KPI Dashboards' or e-marketplaces users. The new unctionality enables buyers to make aster, smarter decisions about their supply chains by providing an easy to read highlevel summary o their spend data. VOSS Solutions Location: Reading / One o the biggest issues aced by companies wanting to move their communications platorm to the Cloud is the question o migration. It is simply not possible to rip and replace legacy systems over a weekend. These are complex and business critical platorms, and migrations can take months o eort. VOSS provides a range o tools to automate the data collection with a highly process-driven, repeatable methodology. This enables service providers to accelerate their Cloud customer onboarding and lower their costs. To the end customer, business continuity is maintained during the Cloud transormation process. VOSS ulilment management sotware enables Cloud partners to deliver and manage all o the collaboration services and capabilities - including instant messaging, click to call, click to conerence, single number reach and video conerencing - rom the Cloud. By enabling companies to centrally manage their entire enterprise communication architectures rom the Cloud, VOSS reduces complexity, speeds implementation, and cuts costs. Organisations and their employees can order and activate new communications services online in real-time, both ixed-line and wireless, and across multiple devices (desk phones, sot clients, smart phones or tablets).

8 cloudex Summer 2013 Eque2 ISIS Private Equity Fourth Hospitality ECI Partners Rivo Sotware Kennet Partners & Fidelity Growth Partners Europe start MBO o a provider o ERP solutions to the construction sector rom Sage Group plc Acquisition o a SaaS provider to the hospitality industry Investment in a provider o SaaSmodel governance risk and compliance solutions the management team ECI and assisted with negotiations the shareholders Kirona Solutions Griin Exentra Transport Solutions LDC Private Equity MDNX Descartes Systems Group, Inc Acquisition o a leading B2B mobile application sotware developer Sale o broadband specialist to a UK strategic acquirer Disposal o a SaaS model provider o driver compliance solutions the shareholders the shareholders the vendors Capula J2 Retail Metronet Royal Imtech NV Aures Technologies LDC Private Equity Acquisition o integrated control and real-time IT solutions provider Disposal o a supplier o touchscreen electronic point o sale terminals and systems Investment in wireless and ibre internet service provider the purchaser the vendors the shareholders Regulated by the FSA 9 Colmore Row Birmingham B3 2BJ Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44(0) Chandos Place London WC2N 4HG Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44(0) Brown Street Manchester M2 2JT Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44(0) The Ropewalk Nottingham NG1 5DT Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44(0)