Spark launches digital transformation consultancy, Leaven

Wellington, 13 August 2019 – Today Spark lifted the curtain on Leaven, a new digital transformation consultancy built to assist organisations as they shift to new and more digital ways of working.

Spark Chief Executive Jolie Hodson said organisations sought smarter ways to turn their aspirations for digital transformation into action as they adapted to the digital era.

“Leaven is an important element of our strategy in helping all New Zealand win big in a digital world. Specifically, Leaven has been introduced to help organisations realise the benefits of digital transformation and put plans in place to get there faster,” said Hodson.

Led by former Revera CEO Robin Cockayne, Leaven will focus on three key areas – cloud adoption, operations and digital innovation, effectively establishing 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 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 digital transformation projects around the globe.

“We can offer organisations the best of both worlds: years of local experience combined with CTP’s world class, proven IP. We believe this combination puts us in an ideal position to help New Zealand organisations transform how they work and the services they offer,” he said.

Cockayne said there was considerable executive and boardroom interest in Leaven’s digital transformation 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,” he said.

Working with the three leading public cloud platforms – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud – Leaven offers a cloud agnostic approach to transformation.

“Digital transformation isn’t easy and requires buy-in across any organisation,” said Cockayne. “We will be guided by our customers’ needs, working with our cloud partners to identify a proposition that meets their requirements.”

The partnership 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,” says Colin Henderson, Managing Director of HPE New Zealand.

“We’ve seen the considerable global success CTP has had, and we are delighted to be able to work with Leaven to offer this capability to clients in New Zealand.”

For more information, visit www.leaven.co.nz.