With the rapid growth of Cloud start-ups through incubators and accelerators, together with enhanced Cloud services from many smaller providers and consultancies, CIF recognised the need for an affordable representation within the Cloud community. These businesses can now have access to a knowledge resource and networking community to share and validate their Cloud thinking.
CIF has launched a number of new membership level programs that suit the differing business needs of Cloud providers no matter what their size, scale or product and service offering. The new Industry Membership Program is now segmented into:
Level 1: Cloud start-ups – with a 12-month subscription subsidised by CIF
Level 2: Smaller Cloud Service Providers and consultancies
Level 3: Vendors and Cloud Aggregators (the existing highly successful membership)
Alex Hilton (pictured), CEO, CIF stated: “The Cloud market place has changed dramatically since we launched the Membership Programme back in 2010. In that time we have seen a significant rise in the number of companies offering Cloud services from small born-in-the-Cloud start-ups, through to aggregators, Managed Service Providers and specialist Cloud consultancies. As a result, our Membership Programme now addresses this changing eco-system.”
Searchlight Consulting, which specialises in IT-enabled business transformation, helping businesses to work smarter in a way that accelerates change, reduces risk, and increases value, is the first organisation to join as a Consultancy Member. Its experience covers a wide range of sectors, providing board level advice through to entire business transformation and improvement projects.
Founding Director, Steve Sharp said: “The continued success of the Cloud depends upon the entire industry’s ability to address end user concerns and successfully meet the needs of businesses as they undergo transformative projects of their own. We look forward to working closely with CIF to address these issues and establish greater end user confidence in Cloud solutions and providers.”
Alex Hilton concluded: “We are tremendously excited about being able to offer membership of the Cloud Industry Forum to a far broader constituency than we have done historically. We make a strong claim that we represent the interests of the UK Cloud sector and that is a claim that has to be backed by fact. In extending membership to a far greater number of organisations in the Cloud market, we are building on that claim, bringing to the table the small, the medium and the large, from specialist vendors, through to channel specialists and on to the growing consultancy sector.”