Ben Walker is CTO of Airwalk
The technology consultancy works with large organisations in the financial services and public sectors
To stand out and succeed in a crowded market like cloud takes equal amounts of hard work, specialisation and creativity. Working with clients in a way that no-one else can, and offering them a service above and beyond your competitors' offerings, is essential - especially in the post-pandemic era.
Airwalk is one such firm: a technology consultancy, specialising in a few sectors and always willing to go the extra mile: its work this year has seen the company shortlisted in the Cloud Excellence Awards, for the AI and Automation sub-section of Cloud Security Product of the Year.
"Airwalk has strong expertise and a track record of delivery in financial services and the public sector," says CTO Ben Walker. "We work with major organisations to help them implement and integrate modern technologies, particularly hyperscale cloud services, ensuring highly secure, robust and high performing digital services."
As mentioned, specialisation is key to distinguish you from your competitors. Airwalk focuses on the sectors it does because that's where its skill-set lies.
"We are particularly strong in highly complex environments - whether this is as a result of regulation, security and compliance considerations, complex stakeholder environments, difficult governance and organisational challenges, alongside the integration of cutting-edge technologies, we have been very successful in navigating these complex environments and delivering great outcomes for our clients.
"We also bring a unique combination of technical expertise and heavyweight delivery capability. We don't just apply technical support, we provide the programmatic capabilities to deliver complex projects, support organisational change and deliver where others struggle."
The expertise in complex environments has been key this year. Ben describes a massive project delivering a global-scale Kubernetes platform for a major banking client:
"The technical requirements, and in particular the performance and security requirements of the platform, are significant, and yet we were able to design and deliver a cloud-native, high-performance platform that is now hosting multiple core banking services across multiple markets.
"We also achieved the AWS Financial Services competency, one of a handful of companies to do so in Europe, and certainly one of the only mid-sized consultancies to achieve this. This really was a testament to the capabilities and knowledge of our people, and the credibility that we have in the sector for cloud delivery."
Of course, Airwalk hasn't stopped: the company is still working on improving its client service.
"We are working on taking our Cloud Security and Continuous Compliance Framework (CCF) to the next level, adding new controls and evolving this for our clients. This will include multi-cloud capabilities, as well as integrations with a host of native Cloud Service Platform (CSP) services, which will create an even more compelling option for our clients to securely manage their growing cloud estates."
The Cloud Excellence Awards take place on the 23rd September this year, and Ben is looking forward to the night:
"These events promote innovation and push us and our clients to realise what is achievable with the right ambition and mind-set. We're very proud to be a part of them."
Register now - we'll see you there.
