The holy trinity of Norfolk employers – according to Justin Day, CEO and co-founder of Cloud Gateway - consists of Norfolk County Council, Aviva (the rebranded Norwich Union) and Bernard Matthews (undoubtedly Britain’s best-known turkey producer). Justin’s career encompasses all three.

Under Justin’s leadership, Cloud Gateway has developed an innovative way for organisations to buy cloud networking and security services. Their approach rejects the current fashion that everything should just be shifted into the cloud as quickly as possible, and instead offers bespoke solutions based on listening to customer needs. Scalability – meaning that customers don’t have to commit to a larger infrastructure than they need – is a core part of their offering.

Justin’s Norfolk roots are a part of the Cloud Gateway story, and help to define the company’s culture. He still lives in Norfolk, and clearly has no intention of leaving; but he commutes regularly to London, where Cloud Gateway has its new offices within a large new development that also encompasses the iconic Ministry of Sound nightclub. “I love the balance,” he says, “people versus countryside. I’m very proud to come from Norfolk – I’m not a city boy.”

Although Justin’s career started out in marketing, he quickly discovered tech when he was placed on his employer’s IT helpdesk during training. “I fell in love with it – especially comms. I enjoyed working with modems, the in-house telephony system, and doing desktop support.”

His love of hardware caused him to take the decision that led to him becoming a networking expert. “We were offered a choice of training courses: Microsoft MCSE and Cisco CCNA. Of course, almost everyone wanted the MCSE certification, which was probably the more sensible career choice at that time. But I opted for the networking path.”

Working at Cable & Wireless, Justin found himself in the e-commerce team – apparently a niche area, but in fact it offered a wealth of learning opportunities in networking and security: “Everything that was non-standard was given to our team.”

After working in the financial services industry, Justin decided to move into the Public Sector, going to work at the Ministry of Justice. There, he became involved in the Digital Prisons Programme, an initiative to use technology to reduce recidivism.

“My entire world got turned around by that project. My view of prisoners and prisons changed. I started to think about the problem: how do we stop prisoners returning? One thing we did was to pull the systems together so that prisoners could access benefits as soon as they left. This was important, as so many prisoners reoffend within two weeks because they don’t have access to money. The Public Sector can be a frustrating place at times, but I’m fulfilled from knowing I’m making a difference. It’s the same across Cloud Gateway.”

How did Cloud Gateway come into being?

“We incorporated Cloud Gateway in 2017. The big cloud providers were trying to dismiss networking… just use the internet, it solves everything! We thought this was nonsense. We put together a scalable architecture for network and cloud solutions, using the best of internet and private connectivity, and took it to the MoJ. It came in at a cost of £2 million a year, versus a solution from Vodafone that was more expensive by orders of magnitude!”

The Cloud Gateway approach builds solutions from three sets of components: physical hardware, private cloud and public cloud. Cloud Gateway’s SASE architecture (Secure Access Service Edge, pronounced sassy) hides the differences between these environments, masking complexity from customers, and maintaining seamless security across them all.

Justin explains that the Cloud Gateway approach has two simple benefits: it’s much quicker and it’s much more flexible.

“We build in minutes rather than months. And we don’t insist on long term commitments – if a customer wants a 12-month contract, they can have it”

Justin believes that the big networking companies in the UK have no interest in switching to scalable solutions like the ones offered by Cloud Gateway. “Scalability will hurt BT and Vodafone – they can’t afford to do it. And the customer appetite for risk has increased. Customers don’t say ‘Nobody ever got fired…’ any more. Instead people are asking “How far behind am I going to be if I don’t do this?”