Cloudreach, a leading cloud solutions provider, has been named Microsoft’s UK Partner of the Year.
The company, founded in London in 2009, has grown Azure revenues 400% over the past 12 months by supporting major organisations like Dentsu and a London borough as they moved workloads and data to Azure.
Ramona Fuchs, Cloudreach’s Azure Partner Sales Manager for EMEA, said: “It’s the first time we have won a Microsoft award, so we had to triple-check it was true. I was overwhelmed. It’s a huge achievement for the team, which is so excited for the financial year ahead. It will enable us to scale, bring a lot more exciting things to clients and ensure they see the benefits of working with us. We know the burden of responsibility that this award puts on us and we will keep delivering.”
Cloudreach, which employs 750 staff in seven countries across the world, has invested in technical skills and capability to ensure it has the right solutions in place to address customers’ needs. The dedicated Azure team grew 63% in the past year, ensuring Cloudreach always has the capacity to respond to new business and requests from existing clients.
In the UK, Cloudreach has helped a London borough council create a secure and scalable online resource for citizens to find out important information about public services.
Dentsu, a multinational media agency, planned to go to full digital delivery by the end of 2020, but Cloudreach helped them achieve their goal by the end of 2019.
Fuchs added: “When we work with large organisations, it’s key for us to understand where they want to go on their digital journey, so we can build a business case to help them reach their long-term objectives. We pair the right people together to maximise engagement and collaboration.”
To ensure that the right people can work together, Cloudreach has focused on recruiting a diverse range of staff, enabling broad training opportunities and fostering an inclusive working environment.
This diversity includes the 12-week Fast Track course, a Cloudreach recruitment program designed to enable new staff to quickly upskill in the Azure cloud, while they spend time with our delivery teams working with clients. The success of the Fast Track program lies in its diversity. In 2019 alone, 73% of the people in this program were female.
The Fast Track course covers a variety of topics, including gathering requirements, design, software development and deployment on Azure. After completing the course, staff then get to work on large Azure projects, ranging from assessing and migrating hundreds of applications to the cloud, to implementing a fully automated and secure Azure cloud environment for large companies.
“We try to help people progress their career and offer a platform where everyone can express themselves,” Fuchs said. “We make sure everyone has a voice, because our staff and customers tell us that diversity and inclusion is one of the things they feel most passionately about.
“There are a lot of women in Cloudreach, for example and we run meetup groups and invite speakers to talk about women in technology. We recently ran a virtual ‘bring your kids to work’ day, which featured storytime for young children, coding sessions for those aged eight to 12 and TikTok classes for over-12s. It’s all part of the investment we have made in our business and our people.
“We see Microsoft Azure as the fastest growing cloud platform. That resonates with us as it’s the fastest growing part of our business.
“This award from Microsoft isn’t just the cherry on the top of the cake for us, it’s the whole cake and the cherry.”
James Chadwick, Cloud Services Partner Lead at Microsoft, added: “I’m delighted that Cloudreach has won the Partner of the Year award. The company has invested in its staff, building skills and increasing diversity, and this people-first approach has helped drive incredible results. Microsoft is looking forward to continuing to work closely with Cloudreach in the future.”
