Roc Technologies has just snared what it claims is the UK public sector’s first “at-scale” Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) deal.
The Newbury-based MSP on Thursday sealed the wax on a WAN, LAN, cybersecurity and wireless deal with the City of London Corporation encompassing a consortium of vendors including Palo Alto Networks, Juniper Mist and Vorboss.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, CTO Chelsea Chamberlin said Roc will use the win to target more deals in London Zones 1 and 2.
Chamberlin characterised it as “the first UK public sector SASE deployment at enterprise scale”.
“DWP have done a small SSE [Security Service Edge] deployment previously, but certainly at enterprise [level], and certainly in local government and policing, this is an industry first,” she said.
“What the City really wants to achieve is this one corporation, one city, for all.
“No matter what type of role you have within the City, whether you’re in social services or policing, whether you’re a park manager or a groundkeeper or working in the cemetery, you can connect to any corporate resource and receive the same experience as you would if you were in Guildhall.”
Backed since 2018 by BGF, Roc is set to report revenues “north of £60m” for its fiscal 2025, CEO Simon Furber said.
It now employs around 300 staff, plus a further 40-50 typically security-cleared contractors on a normal day, he said.
“We are a core MSP with a heavy security layer,” he said.
“The nature of particularly some of the higher-education work is quite project and hardware transformation [driven] up front, but, where we really come to play is the in-life management in the period thereafter.”
“Largest win ever”
The City of London Corporation is “interesting” as it fuses the local authority and police force in one organisation, Furber noted.
Roc worked with a number of vendors to create the consortium.
This included Palo Alto Networks for SASE, Juniper Mist for the LAN and Vorboss – an ‘altnet’ provider focused on London Zones 1 and 2, for WAN – Chamberlin said.
Despite Roc having won some large campus networking deals in the universities space, Chamberlin characterised the win as strategically Roc’s largest ever because it kicks off a “significant strategy” it is now launching in London Zones 1 and 2.
“We’re targeting that geographic area and are looking to displace some of the legacy telco providers, where customers are effectively just paying vast amounts of money locked into never ending contracts and not receiving a very good service,” Chamberlin said.
