INTERVIEW Pure Technology Group
“If you think 8-9 years ago you would have a £600 desktop PC and the margins would have declined over the
years on that. Nowadays things are different, you have people willing to invest in a £1,800 Surface or a £1,000
smartphone, that cost equation is quite different now “ Pure Technolopy Group, COO, Cliff Fox
Smart business?
Pure Technology Group have set their sights on leading rather than following in the market. At their recent customer
event in Wakefi eld, pt19, they treated 800 tech professionals, including their customers, to a bevy of cuttingedge
technology. In this piece Cliff Fox, Group COO, spoke to Comms Business about where the MSP is heading
In just 11 short years Pure
Technology Group has gone
from a standing start to £33
million in revenues. eir
cloud service business is the core
of the company (15,000 seats on
Microsoft in 2018) but they aren’t
stopping there. e last two years
has seen them add VR, AI and
now IoT to the portfolio.
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): You appear to be ahead of
many partners when it comes to
VR (Virtual Reality). What made
you decide to jump into this
technology ahead of the crowd?
Cliff Fox (CF): at comes from
a strong intention to lead and
not follow. Being an IT service
partner, it is hard to di erentiate
yourself because most people do
the same ‘stu ’ from the same
global organisations. We do
that too, but its about how you
get a head start on what is next
and what is coming up. at’s
really important to us and it’s
important to our customers. If we
can spot a new piece of technology
which is going to make the
di erence for them and do the leg
work by testing it and seeing if it
really does what it needs to then
it is value for customers.
We launched pureVR 6-8
months ago and that wasn’t
because people were banging
on our door saying they wanted
VR. We just saw certain
applications in mixed-reality
which we thought will make a
big di erence to an organisation.
We actually use it ourselves. We
developed a pureVR app for HR
inductions. Every business on the
planet does inductions in some
shape or form and we are not
taking away the personal touch
on that but we are augmenting it,
we are adding to it. For example,
if you are doing an induction
and the CEO isn’t there, they
can be virtually. It just makes it
more consistent and it saves the
HR people some of the legwork.
We’ve done it, its low cost and
really easy to do and we content
curate everything around it.
I’ve been really proud of what
we have done on VR because we
coded it ourselves. at was our
rst foray into development. For
the guys who worked on that,
it was all new ground for them.
I’m a techie at heart and that sort
of stu gets me going.
CBM: Tell us about pureIoT
CF: We’ve done the same thing
with IoT. We have launched IoT
smart spaces today and that has
been a nine-month journey of
nding out that all the people
that are saying they are doing
IoT in the Channel really aren’t!
ere is so much hype and smoke
and mirrors around IoT it can
be di cult to delve beneath. IoT
itself can be a really complex
supply chain from the sensor right
the way through to the analytics
engine. For us, its about taking it
apart and working out what we
can do and what will work and
then putting that in a box.
Smart spaces is really about
utilisation and making things
save money, be more green,
more e ective etc. Take desk
occupancy for example, what are
your metrics for o ce space being
used? If areas of your building
aren’t being used can you drop the
heating or the lighting? Can you
make it more self-controlling? e
ultimate is can you burn less fuel
and save money.
We run out of three o ces
and people hot desk between the
three. For us it is useful to know
which building is at a certain
occupancy at any one time. If
we can organise that better then
we can cut our bills…. It’s that
simple.
CBM: These technologies aren’t
at your core but clear growth areas,
where else are you seeing
opportunities?
CF:If we just concentrated on the
cloud provision for our customers
our lives would probably be
easier, but then what about things
like endpoints? Most people talk
about hardware being dead, its
declining margins but there is a
di erent way of looking at that.
If you think 8-9 years ago you
would have a £600 desktop PC
and the margins would have
declined over the years on that.
Nowadays things are di erent,
you have people willing to invest
in a £1,800 Surface or a £1,000
smartphone, that cost equation
is quite di erent now. We still
transact in endpoint business, but
we put a managed service wrap
around it. Device-as-a-service is
big now too.
30 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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