Robin Cockayne (Leaven)
Telco Spark is launching a new business to deliver digital transformation consultancy services and take on the global consultancy giants in the local market.
Spark lifted the curtain on the new business, called Leaven, today saying the service aims to help New Zealand organisations to adopt, operate and innovate on public cloud platforms.
Chief executive Jolie Hodson said it was part of Spark's strategy to help New Zealand organisations "win big in a digital world".
“Leaven has been introduced to help organisations realise the benefits of digital transformation and put plans in place to get there faster,” Hodson said.
Led by former Revera CEO Robin Cockayne, Leaven will focus on three key areas – cloud adoption, operations and digital innovation, and effectively establishing the processes and technology enablers that underpin business transformation.
A team of 20 has been working under the radar for the past few months to validate Leaven’s approach, combining local experience with intellectual property exclusively licensed from Cloud Technology Partners (CTP), a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company.
Cockayne said CTP was a recognised leader in cloud transformation, with its methodologies and consultancy services steering hundreds of large and complex transformation projects globally.
“We can offer organisations the best of both worlds: years of local experience combined with CTP’s world class, proven IP," Cockayne said.
"We believe this combination puts us in an ideal position to help New Zealand organisations transform how they work and the services they offer.”
Cockayne said there was considerable executive and boardroom interest in Leaven’s offering.
“The volume of noise around cloud and transformation makes it tougher for some clients to get started,” he said. “But that’s one of the strengths of Leaven’s approach – clarity.”
“From the outset, we’re geared up to deliver end-to-end cloud adoption services for enterprise, from assessment to cloud-native application development, to ongoing managed services.”
Leaven will work with the three leading public cloud platforms – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud – with what it calls a "cloud agnostic" approach to transformation.
The partnership also paves the way for HPE New Zealand to broaden the scope of its digital services in the local market, said Colin Henderson, managing director of HPE New Zealand.
“We’ve invested significantly in these capabilities aligned to our multi-cloud strategy with on premise and public cloud consumption models and are excited about Leaven’s potential,” Henderson said.
