Case study
Can a challenger voice shape the national conversation on cloud lock-in?
stand-out piece in The Times
opinion pieces in trade outlets
About the client
Cloudera helps organisations manage and analyse their data across on-premises, public and private cloud environments. With vendor lock-in becoming a flashpoint in the cloud market, Cloudera wanted to break through the noise and lead the conversation before its competitors could.
Challenge
Cloudera wanted to create urgency around cloud lock-in; when a customer becomes overly dependent on a single cloud provider, making it difficult and costly to switch to another vendor. Cloud lock-in is an escalating issue for the enterprises Cloudera targets as customers. With dominant hyperscalers shaping the narrative, Cloudera needed to claim a credible voice in the debate by spotlighting the hidden costs and constraints of cloud lock-in as hybrid environments become the norm.
This campaign has perfectly demonstrated how proactive PR can successfully link company messaging to the current news agenda. The Spark team have enabled Cloudera to establish a clear voice on hybrid cloud within the UK market.”
Christoph Weissthaner, Director of Communications (EMEA) at Cloudera
Action
To turn cloud lock-in from a niche technical concern to a mainstream business issue, we anchored the campaign to Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) investigation into the UK cloud market. We made the issue more relatable by drawing comparisons with how switching banks or mobile providers was once complex and is now seamless. At the same time, we created urgency by centring the message around the hidden costs and constraints enterprises increasingly face in the cloud.
Each media opportunity was carefully shaped to give Cloudera’s EMEA Cloud VP space to address not just the problem, but how platforms like Cloudera offer a way forward. Our messaging consistently reinforced Cloudera’s relevance to enterprise IT decision-makers navigating the challenges of hybrid cloud environments.
Impact
The campaign secured standout coverage in top-tier business and trade media, including The Times’ Raconteur supplement, City AM, Cloud Pro, Beta News, Capacity, and Data Centre Review. Two opinion articles deepened Cloudera’s position as a thought leader on vendor lock-in. The media exposure both amplified Cloudera’s hybrid cloud messaging and raised the profile of its EMEA Cloud VP among enterprise IT decision-makers.
