Government-focused Skyscape Cloud Services gets funds to build on 20 per cent monthly growth

The Business Growth Fund has bolstered the technology element of its investment portfolio by backing Skyscape Cloud Services.

Cloud infrastructure company Skyscape Cloud Services has been charged with £4 million of new growth capital.

The three year-old business is looking to build on growth of 20 per cent per month, achieved through its public sector IT offering.

The £2.5 billion bank-backed Business Growth Fund (BGF) has led the funding transaction and has now committed £36 million to companies located in the South West and South Wales since it began investing in 2011.

Hampshire-based Skyscape, set up by Jeff Thomas, Phil Dawson and Simon Hansford, reports that it is set to deliver annualised monthly recurring revenue of around £10 million through engagement with customers including the Home Office and HMRC.

Dawson, CEO of Skyscape, comments, ‘BGF is the ideal investment partner to support the growth of our assured cloud infrastructure business which is dedicated to helping UK government to achieve its digital agenda of delivering better, user-centric public services through more affordable and agile IT.

‘BGF’s investment will enhance the capacity, scale and robustness of our platform and will enable us to develop our customer service propositions. The investment will also help to accelerate our offering into healthcare, local government and research/higher education.’

More on previous BGF deals:

Of the 53 companies the BGF has now invested in, 18 are in the IT and technology sector. Skyscape joins the likes of Unruly Media, M Squared Lasers and Inoapps.

BGF investment director James Austin, who led the deal out of the firm’s Bristol base, says that Skyscape represents a ‘young, dynamic business’ which is growing rapidly.

‘Skyscape is a business of significant scale, strengthened by an impressive management team with the ambition to grow the business in line with the government’s desire for wider adoption of cloud-based services,’ he adds.

Since setting up in 2011, Skyscape has focused on creating a cloud service ‘specifically tailored’ to the government and public sector. It now supports 70 projects from 38 customer organisations.

Hunter Ruthven

Bernard Williamson

Hunter was the Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2012 to 2014, before moving on to Caspian Media Ltd to be Editor of Real Business.

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Venture capital funding