A business growth fund backed by government has made a £4 million investment in private cloud provider Skyscape Cloud Services, which will use the money to expand its services within local government.

The Business Growth Fund has taken the stake in the firm to help it expand its cloud platform to, more public sector organisations.

The BGF was established in 2011 to help small and medium enterprises grow, and is backed by five banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered.

Phil Dawson, chief executive of Skyscape, said: “Skyscape will use the investment to enhance the capacity, scale and performance of our platform, extend our customer and partner care programmes, improve our service level agreements and develop our platform-as-a-service proposition. 

“Recognising the increasing awareness of the benefits of cloud services, Skyscape will also use the investment to accelerate our offering into healthcare, local government and higher education.”

He said the company’s business is currently growing at 20% per month with annualised monthly recurring revenue approaching £10 million.

The firm was founded in May 2011 and has currently has contracts with a number of central and local government organisations.

James Austin, investment director at BGF, said: “The ambition of its founders is extraordinary.  Skyscape has been built for significant scale, backed by a proven management team with very impressive track-records and a desire to grow Skyscape in tandem with the government’s policy for wider adoption of cloud based services.”

Stephen Allott, the Government’s Crown Representative for Small and Medium Enterprises said the investment was “a great example of government’s procurement reforms in action”.