StratosQuo founder, David Cleminson
After a 15-year tenure as chief technology officer at Regal IT, David Cleminson has left the managed services provider with a view to follow personal and more innovative pursuits.
“My background was building new things,” he said. “Before Regal IT, I was working on enterprise systems and building big stuff. Then I moved to Regal IT and since, it has headed in a managed services direction. My passion is innovation. I like thinking outside the square,” he told ARN.
That led to the launch of his new Cloud strategy business, StratosQuo. The company, up and running since March 2016, has hit the entrepreneurial consultancy market as a double-threat, armed with a deep understanding of technology and how it can complement business, according to Cleminson.
“I’ve run a business for 15 years and I also understand the technology, so looking at things from a business perspective gives me a better view of how to help make decisions, how to identify where the risks are, and I can communicate that well with other C-level executives.”
He said his new venture is focused on how businesses doing a turn of between $500 million and $5 billion, can adopt and effectively leverage Cloud services.
“My company will also help businesses to identify the challenges and work out the business risks before adopting Cloud services - so they don’t break things in the process,” he said.
According to Cleminson, moving to the Cloud isn’t necessarily a cost-saving venture, but rather a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ over the past three to five years where businesses expect Cloud migration to solve its problems.
“Businesses need to understand that if you move to the Cloud, there has to be a change in the management process of an IT team. It’s not IT as it was today. It’s a different skill set now, a different way of thinking. There’s no cables, you don’t plug anything in.”
Cleminson said StratosQuo takes a vendor-agnostic, strategic approach by using an enterprise architecture framework to identify the business, the users and interactions between applications, data and infrastructure.
“There are a lot of businesses out there who have IT projects going on with clients and they are stuck because the clients won’t make decisions. Why won’t they make decisions? Because they don’t know. They haven’t got the data to understand what is happening, particularly in relation to applications,” he said.
“From my side, I can go in as an independent organisation to work with the client to understand what the problems are and to help them go through that process so they can make the decisions.”
Inspiration for the new company's ‘philosophical’ name stemmed from a changing market, according to Cleminson.
“StratosQuo comes from the idea that the status quo within the industry has changed. Previously, you used to get a helicopter view from below the Clouds - you used to be able to look at your enterprise, your business, and decide what you want to do.
"That is no longer the case, you want to be looking above the Cloud. You have to look from the stratosphere,” he added.
