About Spica

Spica is an independent software vendor (ISV) that specializes in delivering digital workplace solutions. Its approach involves leveraging connected digital technologies to assist corporate real estate occupiers, owners, and managers in adapting to evolving workplace demands. Ultimately, Spica's solutions aim to enhance the health, wellbeing, and productivity of building users while also reducing operational costs.

The Challenge

Spica's GemEx™ products are designed to promote employee satisfaction by enhancing the experience of working in a building. Through Spica's software, building occupants can enjoy a seamless and pleasant experience. Data collected from sensors managed by Spica and other building management information systems enables tasks such as desk reservations and real-time parking updates to be accomplished with ease.

Given that hiring, salaries, and benefits for employees typically account for 90% of a company's expenses, it is clear why Spica prioritizes technology that impacts human capital. Increasingly, businesses are recognizing the connection between the work environment they offer and their ability to attract and retain top talent.

Spica aimed to transition from working directly with AWS to collaborating with a value-added distributor that could provide a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution for provisioning its GemEx™ platform, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), to customers. This would allow Spica to focus on its core expertise, workplace solutions for clients, while the distributor handled AWS provisioning.

The Solution

ArrowSphere, Arrow’s cloud delivery and management platform, proved to be the ideal solution for Spica. The platform offered a fast route to market as it already had the necessary processes in place. ArrowSphere takes care of billing, security, provisioning, training, and maintenance, while Arrow's established partnerships with major software vendors like AWS give Spica effortless access to important vendors. 

With enterprise-grade software that has demonstrated scalability and security supporting its technology, Spica can rest assured that its platform is reliable.

The Benefits

By transitioning to ArrowSphere, Spica gained the chance to collaborate with Arrow's channel clients and explore new IoT hardware vendors. ArrowSphere offered an all-encompassing cloud provider catalog, enabling Spica to manage its customers' AWS cloud services from start to finish, as well as assisting in the creation of an IoT-related ecosystem that it could leverage for additional opportunities.

“The less vendors we require to deliver our solutions to customers, the better,” explains Tim Streather, Spica CEO.

“We can power the hosting of our GemEx™ solutions end-to-end with ArrowSphere; and, over time, we will look to provision not just AWS, but other public cloud environments and third-party solutions to drive consumption of our workplace well-being solutions. ArrowSphere brings simplicity to the delivery process by providing the AWS Platform as a Service, which gives us the ability to offer preferable cost models in terms of multi-year contracts. But it also makes it easier to monitor spend thresholds in a secure environment.

“There is also the added benefit that we can work with other Arrow channel customers… those who may have existing IoT hardware to complement our GemEx™ product offerings, which can open new doors to driving sales and increased opportunities. We’re very much part of a wider ecosystem working closely in collaboration with Arrow.”

The Outcome

“Ultimately, ArrowSphere allows us to focus on responding to the changing needs of the workplace and delivering a personalised experience for employees. The overall solution benefits the health, wellbeing and productivity of building users, as well as driving operational efficiencies. Digital transformation in the world of property and buildings should be clearly focused on the people using them and that’s what working with an organisation like Arrow allows us to do.

“As well as being a valued customer in its use of services, such as ArrowSphere, Spica brings invaluable domain expertise to our Arrow IoT ecosystem,” said Richard Holmes business development director IoT, Arrow Electronics. “The team at Spica is a great example of this new breed of IoT organisation that Arrow finds itself working with today that crosses both the operational and information technology sectors and delivers innovative and repeatable solutions to the line of business teams who have an increasing say in how digital technologies are adopted in their organisations.”