In December 2016, the Board of the Cloud Industry Forum took the unprecedented step of officially ratifying and endorsing the Clover index as THE benchmarking and Due Diligence standard for buyers of Private Cloud in the UK’s regulated markets.
Clover is the first and ONLY benchmarking standard to have achieved such status (is there even another one out there yet?) and we are both honoured by and incredibly proud of this endorsement.
For much of the time since 2010, Ray and Jo at BEC and their independent consulting affiliates (Nick Green, Craig Felton, Martin Christiansen, Ian Bowell, Mark Paton and Daimon Brown) have laboured staunchly toward implementing the Clover vision. The ambition was always to define and measure CSPs against a set of standard quantitative, unbiased, independent, best-practice Private Cloud assessment criteria in consultation with both CSP’s, investor and regulatory input and senior members of the buying community.
Over the course of some 25+ RFP’s we have now identified more than 170 CSP’s and collected and updated data on some 70 providers who are a good fit with the needs of mid-sized UK finance and legal firms.
Our interactive web-based GUI makes the process of shortlisting 5 to 10 suitable best of breed providers exceptionally fast and FREE to end clients and their consulting partners. Our latest 4 leaf clover “at a glance” view makes the paper based analysis of these shortlisted vendors against the clients specific needs and perceptions simple and – best of all – fully quantitative.
Its a proud day for the Clover index – but our work is just beginning.
The CIF and the CSP community has recognised the implicit value of our work, and in Q1 2017 we started the task of getting independent consulting firms and buying clients to understand and exploit the value that the system offers to the Private CSP shortlisting and selection process for regulated clients. Find out more at www.cloverindex.com or follow us @cloverindex
We’re really looking forward to our Official Launch Party with the CIF at 6pm on the 15th of February on the 24th Floor of The Shard. Come and raise a glass, enjoy the journey with us – and admire the spectacle that is London – best City in the world!
