Of the 20 businesses chosen by judges as the UK’s top cloud companies, 14 are in London and the South East, three are in the North West, two are in South East and one is the West Midlands. The panel chose the businesses based on criteria including innovation, the amount of income derived from the cloud, customer base and turnover and profit growth.
The final 20 businesses are:
· Aquarium Software (based in Hale, Cheshire)
· Acturis (London)
· Cobweb Solutions (Fareham)
· Concirrus (London)
· Conversocial (London)
· Covalent Software (Taunton)
· Dynmark (Cheltenham)
· Exceedra (London)
· FairFX (London)
· Fourth (London)
· Livebookings (London)
· MPP Global Solutions (Warrington)
· NetDespatch (Marlow)
· Rivo Software (Warwick)
· SecureData (Maidstone)
· Skyscape Cloud Services (Farnborough)
· Sparesfinder (Teddington)
· Staffcare (Leatherhead)
· Valueworks (Wigan)
· VOSS Solutions (Reading)
An overall winner from the shortlist of 20 will be announced by Clearwater at an awards event in the autumn.
The Cloudex 20:20 panel comprised serial technology entrepreneur and chairman Neville Davis; Steve Garnett, European chairman of Salesforce.com, the world’s leading cloud computing business; Stephen Warshaw, portfolio director at TMT specialist investor HgCapital; Angela Eager of TechMarketView; and Emma Rodgers, director of TMT market intelligence at Clearwater.
Emma Rodgers said: “The UK has been a relatively early adopter of cloud technology and there is now an impressive clutch of cloud businesses enjoying the benefit of the organic growth in the sector.
“Looking at the entrants to Cloudex 20:20, we were really encouraged by the quality out there. Given that software as a service is still a relatively young market, many of these businesses were under the radar, so we are pleased to highlight them and showcase the strength of the sector in the UK.”
Fellow Cloudex judge Angela Eager added: “The UK has a host of good Cloud companies and a lot coming through too. We have the innovation and the talent and the UK has been one of the most willing countries to adopt the cloud, too.”
Clearwater launched Cloudex 20:20 earlier this year in a bid to find the UK’s leading independently-owned cloud businesses. The advisory firm, which has a specialist TMT sector team, set up the Cloudex Index in 2010, which tracks the fortunes of about 100 international listed and private software, services, hardware and infrastructure businesses.
