Appirio Press Releases

DocuSign and Appirio Team Up to Offer Solutions to Finish Business Faster

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:05:00 +0000

Unique Cloudsourcing Delivery Model Helps Speed Customer Time-to-Value for the Leading eSignature Cloud Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 15, 2013 – (DocuSign MOMENTUM)- DocuSign, the Global Standard for eSignature®, and Appirio, a global cloud services provider, today announced a partnership in which Appirio will provide implementation, integration and development services for DocuSign customers through a cloudsourcing delivery model that speeds customer time-to-value and lowers delivery costs. This unique delivery model uses a combination of technology and traditional and remote resources, along with crowdsourced assets from the CloudSpokes development community, to increase business speed and agility.

“Employees at ninety percent of the Fortune 500 use DocuSign because it can have a simple but dramatic impact on business operations and the customer experience,” said Mike Epner, SVP of Global Services, at Appirio. “This business impact, combined with the company’s close connection with our existing partners Salesforce.com, Workday and Google, makes DocuSign a natural area for us to expand our capabilities.”

With more than 310 million documents signed on the DocuSign Global Network, DocuSign’s focus on innovation and value beyond the signature has driven the company’s growth to more than 37 million users in 188 countries. The company attracts more than 60,000 unique new DocuSigners every day, who use the electronic signature solution to upload and sign documents more efficiently and optimize paper workflows. Just as DocuSign’s solution helps customers cut transaction time from weeks to minutes, this partnership will allow customers to start seeing return on their DocuSign investment in weeks not months.

“The service provider model of the past is broken - customers moving to a cloud solution want to see long-term results without a long-term project,” said Neil Hudspith, Chief Revenue Officer, DocuSign. “As a trusted partner to more than 500 customers, Appirio has figured out how to blend speed with business impact to help our customers harness the power of cloud transactions on the DocuSign Global Network.”

Starting in June, DocuSign will be able to tap into Appirio’s in-house cloud experts and the combined talents of 75,000 specialist developers in the CloudSpokes community. DocuSign, which has used CloudSpokes effectively in the past to expand R&D resources, will become the newest “Spoke” on CloudSpokes - a private community that acts as a hub for information and challenges using the DocuSign API. Appirio will be expanding its own use of DocuSign internally and will be investing in more DocuSign resources throughout the year to accommodate customer demand.

“As an existing customer of both DocuSign and Appirio, it’s great to see these two cloud leaders tightening their existing relationship to create a positive customer experience,” said Jason Seeba, Lead Marketing Technologist at BloomReach, who uses DocuSign for partner management, marketing operations and talent acquisition. “The ability to easily access technical expertise and existing integration and implementation assets is a huge benefit for a high-growth company that doesn’t want to distract our own resources from our core business.”

For more information about DocuSign and Appirio, please visit Appirio at DocuSign MOMENTUM at San Francisco's Westin St. Francis, May 14-16, 2013. Appirio is a silver-level sponsor of the annual MOMENTUM conference and can be found online at www.appirio.com.

DocuSign MOMENTUM is the premier annual eSignature transaction management user conference. DocuSign MOMENTUM features industry thought leaders sharing insights, experiences, and best practices on adopting cloud, digital, and mobile technologies to dramatically enhance business results.

About Appirio
Appirio is a global services provider who uses crowdsourcing and cloud, social and mobile technology to help enterprises reimagine their business and become more agile. Appirio brings together technology expertise with a deep understanding of the way people work, and the nearly limitless skills of a crowdsourcing community of 70,000+ developers, to help enterprises transform relationships with their customers, partners and workforce. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprises, including organizations like Facebook, Intuit, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, McGraw-Hill, NetApp, The Four Seasons, and Virgin America. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

About DocuSign Inc.
DocuSign®, The Global Standard for eSignature®, is the leader in eSignature transaction management. Global enterprises, business departments, individual professionals and consumers are standardising on DocuSign, with more than 50,000 new users joining the DocuSign Global Network every day. Today, that network includes more than 35 million users in 188 countries. DocuSign is used to accelerate transaction times to increase speed to results, reduce costs, and delight customers across nearly every industry – from financial services, insurance, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, communications, property management and consumer goods, to higher education and others. For more information, visit www.docusign.com or call 877.720.2040. Visit the DocuSign blog at www.docusign.com/blog and follow DocuSign on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Appirio Adds Jeff Epstein to Board of Directors

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Former CFO of Oracle and Technology Industry Veteran to Chair Appirio’s Audit Committee, Guide the Cloud Service Provider to its Next Phase of Growth

San Francisco - May 9, 2013 - Appirio, a global cloud services provider, today announced the appointment of Jeff Epstein to its Board of Directors. Jeff will chair Appirio’s Audit Committee and is the company’s second independent board director. Jeff brings more than 25 years of financial expertise to Appirio, and is currently an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. He serves on multiple boards, including priceline.com, Kaiser Permanente and Shutterstock.

“Jeff’s financial leadership, industry insight and deep expertise in technology and M&A will be a tremendous asset to Appirio as we look to our next phase of growth,” said Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio. “As we continue to deliver on our long standing mission - to help companies reimagine their business with disruptive technologies - Jeff will play a critical role in ensuring that we ourselves are a high performing company.”

Jeff has experience working with both high growth and publicly-held companies, and most recently served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Oracle. Earlier, Jeff Epstein was executive vice president and chief financial officer of DoubleClick, as it grew from 180 to more than 2,000 employees.

“Companies like Appirio, that are on leading edge of trends such as the cloud and crowdsourcing, are disrupting the traditional systems integration market,” said Jeff Epstein. “It’s an exciting time to be part of a company like Appirio that doesn’t accept the status quo. The company’s rapid growth, customer portfolio and leadership in the market is a testament to its leadership team and innovative model.”

Jeff holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a BA from Yale College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

About Appirio
Appirio is a global services provider who uses crowdsourcing and cloud, social and mobile technology to help enterprises reimagine their business and become more agile. Appirio brings together technology expertise with a deep understanding of the way people work, and the nearly limitless skills of a crowdsourcing community of 70,000+ developers, to help enterprises transform relationships with their customers, partners and workforce. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprises, including organizations like Facebook, Intuit, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, McGraw-Hill, NetApp, The Four Seasons, and Virgin America. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio Continues European Growth as Cloud Adoption Picks Up in the Region

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:52:00 +0000

Global Professional Services Provider Grows European Business, Sees Customers Using Multiple Cloud Solutions to Transform Their Business

London, UK - May 2, 2013 - Appirio, a global cloud services provider, today announced multiple customer wins in the European market including Kaplan, Sportingbet and Wood Mackenzie. Appirio is helping these organisations, and global brands including McGraw-Hill, transition to a more agile technology infrastructure, improving core business processes using cloud platforms.

Appirio established its European presence in 2011 and has spent the last two years building a strong customer base in the region. It has seen demand for its services increase rapidly in both its existing Salesforce business, as well as within the HCM and talent management space with Workday and Cornerstone OnDemand. In particular, growth is being fuelled by customer acquisitions in the retail, finance and media sectors.

“We are starting to see increased adoption of cloud, mobile and social technologies in Europe, as organisations look for new ways to engage customers and improve businesses processes. Speed is of the essence when implementing these new platforms. Organisations want to see business impact in months rather than years so they can respond to challenges in a timely manner,” said Lori Williams, general manager, Europe at Appirio. “We are focused on helping businesses become more agile, developing cloud strategies that can be rolled out quickly to help our clients out-maneuver the competition. Agility really is becoming the currency of the new economy.”

Appirio is committed to expanding its European presence with a focus on growing its core capabilities in human capital management, customer relationship management and collaboration. To better serve its local market, Appirio recently opened a new office in London located at Stratford Place.

The company is also increasing investment in its Cloud Enablement Suite, Cloud Management and CloudSpokes crowdsourcing community.

About Appirio

Appirio is a global services provider who uses crowdsourcing and cloud, social and mobile technology to help enterprises reimagine their business and become more agile. Appirio brings together technology expertise with a deep understanding of the way people work, and the nearly limitless skills of a crowdsourcing community of 70,000+ developers, to help enterprises transform relationships with their customers, partners and workforce. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprises, including organizations like Facebook, Intuit, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, McGraw-Hill, NetApp, The Four Seasons, and Virgin America. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio Closes Out 2012 Strong, Increases Investment in HCM and Crowdsourcing in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:01:00 +0000

Significant Customer Momentum, Acquisition of Knowledge Infusion and Series D Funding in 2012 Creates Strong Foundation for Diversification, Growth and Differentiation in the Cloud Service Provider’s Business

San Francisco – February 8, 2013 - Appirio, a global cloud services provider, today announced business highlights from 2012 and key investment areas for this year. In 2013 Appirio will continue growing its core capabilities in human capital management, customer relationship management and collaboration, and will also increase investment in its Cloud Enablement Suite, Cloud Management and CloudSpokes crowdsourcing community.

“In 2012, Appirio grew more than 50 percent year over year, serving some of the world’s biggest brands, while substantially growing our team and offerings,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “We made some significant investments in 2012 to expand our global reach, capabilities and unique delivery model, and we expect that to continue in 2013. Enterprises need a partner that understands and exemplifies the transformational impact cloud, social and mobile can have on a business - we aim to be that partner now and for many years to come.”

2012 Highlights:

Increased bookings by 50 percent year-over-year.
Signed 100+ new customers, including companies such as 1-800-FLOWERS.com, Intuit, Kelly Services, Manpower, The McGraw Hill Company, The Men’s Warehouse, Sprouts Farmers Markets and Virgin America, while growing existing relationships.
Closed $60 million in Series D funding led by global growth investor General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.
Acquired Knowledge Infusion a well regarded expert in HR and change management processes, effectively making Appirio the world’s largest cloud-powered Human Capital Management (HCM) consultancy.
Opened a new office and cloud development center in Indianapolis that has drawn support from the State, partners and made a commitment to bring at least 300 jobs to the City of Indianapolis during the next three years. Appirio now has nearly 600 cloud experts in five countries spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific.
Grew CloudSpokes, the world’s first and only crowdsourcing community focused exclusively on cross-cloud development, to more than 72,000 members from across 100 countries who have completed nearly 600 development challenges.
Increased the customer base of Appirio’s CloudFactor and CloudSync applications by 750 percent, helping thousands of new users get more from their Salesforce CRM and Google Apps investments.
Contributed more than 3,000 hours and $170,000.00 to 100 non-profit organizations around the globe through its Silver Lining philanthropic initiative. Appirio’s annual “Future of the Cloud Day” assisted more than 82 charities, including Architecture for Humanity, Playworks, Project Linus and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
Received a number of awards and accolades, including being named by The Wall Street Journal as the “Next Big Thing”.

2013 Focus Areas:

This year Appirio will evolve and scale innovations that continue to differentiate the company, disrupt the way cloud services are delivered, and most importantly, help customers see business value fast.

The CloudSpokes community and platform will not only be used as an extensible resource to Appirio’s internal team, it will increasingly be used to help independent software vendors (ISVs) and large enterprises incorporate crowdsourcing into their own IT process.
Appirio will extend its Cloud Enablement Suite (CES) of applications, assets and analytical capabilities to help customers implement, manage and measure cloud initiatives across even more cloud applications and platforms. CES components, such as Appirio Cloud Metrics, will evolve to bring more data and science to cloud deployments.

Appirio will also use 2013 to grow its team, services and offerings to help clients with a broader lifecycle of cloud, social and mobile initiatives across every function.

Appirio’s HCM practice will expand to help businesses make people-based processes less tactical and more transformational - across every functional area. For example, Appirio recently announced a strategic relationship with Cornerstone OnDemand, becoming a preferred service provider for Cornerstone’s cloud-based talent management solutions.
Appirio On-demand Services will be broadened to ensure customers can access key expertise throughout their lifecycle from strategy (Advisory Services) to post-production processes (Cloud Management).
Appirio will continue to expand its global development centers to support these initiatives and a growing number of CRM, HCM, collaboration and mobile-focused customer engagements.

“In an enterprise landscape dominated by all things ‘cloud’, Appirio has continued to stand out and show companies how they can do things differently,” said Brett Rochkind, Appirio board member and managing director of General Atlantic. “Their ability to show customers a better way with new delivery methods and technologies, including crowdsourcing development work with their CloudSpokes community, gives Appirio a leg up over both traditional Global Systems Integrators and cloud-focused service providers.”

About Appirio
Appirio is a global services provider who uses crowdsourcing and cloud, social and mobile technology to help enterprises reimagine their business and become more agile. Appirio brings together technology expertise with a deep understanding of the way people work, and the nearly limitless skills of a crowdsourcing community of 70,000+ developers, to help enterprises transform relationships with their customers, partners and workforce. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprises, including organizations like Facebook, Intuit, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, McGraw-Hill, NetApp, The Four Seasons, and Virgin America. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Cornerstone OnDemand and Appirio Join Forces to Deliver Innovative Talent Management Solutions in the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:04:00 +0000

Companies team to help organizations transform their human capital management initiatives and empower the new workforce

SAN FRANCISCO and SANTA MONICA, Calif., February 7, 2013 – Cornerstone OnDemand (NASDAQ: CSOD), a leading cloud solutions provider, and Appirio, a global services provider and one of the largest human capital management (HCM) technology consultancies, today announced they have formed a strategic global relationship. Appirio will become a preferred service provider for Cornerstone’s cloud-based talent management solutions. The teaming of the two companies also allows Appirio to broaden its existing talent management solution.

“Cloud, mobile and social technologies have changed everything, especially the way employees find jobs, engage in the workplace and grow in their careers,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “Few get this as well as Cornerstone, which has created and continues to evolve its solutions with these shifts in mind. Cornerstone is a perfect complement to our existing HCM capabilities and will be a great addition to partnerships we currently have in place with leading cloud companies.”

As a preferred service provider, Appirio will work with Cornerstone’s clients and prospects to design and deliver a comprehensive and highly impactful talent and learning management solution. These capabilities will become part of Appirio’s broader HCM portfolio, which help organizations move people-based processes such as recruiting, onboarding, core HR, performance management, learning management and employee engagement from tactical to transformational.

Cornerstone can now tap into Appirio’s team of global experts, along with the company’s integrated Cloud Enablement Suite and its fast-growing CloudSpokes developer community, to extend Cornerstone’s solutions and services. Appirio will provide full service offerings including strategy consulting, governance and process design, project management, deployment and integration, and content creation.

“Appirio’s experience in helping more than 500 enterprises apply cloud technology in innovative ways, through their work with companies like salesforce.com, Workday and Google, makes teaming with them great for both Cornerstone and our clients,” said Adam Miller, founder and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand. “Talent management has become an increasingly essential component of empowering the new workforce. By managing people strategies in the cloud, organizations are better positioned to effectively meet the ever-changing needs of the global workforce.”

According to research from IDC, the worldwide HCM market is forecasted to reach $11 billion in 2016.1 According to Lisa Rowan, program director, HR, learning and talent strategies for IDC, “Despite economic uncertainty in various parts of the world, human capital management investments have remained strong, driven in large part by SaaS and next-generation talent management software solutions. More organizations are migrating to integrated, cloud-based solutions that allow them to gain a global view into their workforces, evenly apply talent management efforts, streamline operations and achieve more with their current resources.”

Useful Links:

Listen to “The Changing Face of HR Technology” webinar from Jason Averbook, Chief Business Innovation Officer at Appirio
Read commentary on the new relationship from Appirio and Cornerstone

About Appirio
Appirio is a global services provider who uses crowdsourcing and cloud, social and mobile technology to help enterprises reimagine their business and become more agile. Appirio brings together technology expertise with a deep understanding of the way people work, and the nearly limitless skills of a crowdsourcing community of 70,000+ developers, to help enterprises transform relationships with their customers, partners and workforce. Appirio has worked with more than 500 enterprises, including organizations like Facebook, Intuit, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, McGraw-Hill, NetApp, The Four Seasons, and Virgin America. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

About Cornerstone OnDemand
Cornerstone OnDemand is a leading global provider of comprehensive learning and talent management solutions. We enable organizations to meet the challenges they face in empowering their people and maximizing the productivity of their human capital. Our integrated software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution consists of the Cornerstone Recruiting Cloud, the Cornerstone Performance Cloud, the Cornerstone Learning Cloud and the Cornerstone Extended Enterprise Cloud. Our clients use our solution to source and recruit top talent, develop employees throughout their careers, engage employees effectively, improve business execution, cultivate future leaders, and integrate with their external networks of customers, vendors and distributors. We currently empower over 10.3 million users across 186 countries and in 38 languages. www.csod.com

Cornerstone® and Cornerstone OnDemand® are registered trademarks of Cornerstone OnDemand Inc.

1. IDC, “Worldwide Human Capital Management Applications 2012-2016 Forecast: Market Continues Strong,” May 2012

Appirio Helps Customers Use Workday to Transform Their Business

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:01:00 +0000

Appirio to Speak at Workday Rising on How Cloud HCM Can Create Business Impact

Las Vegas -- Nov. 6, 2012 (Workday Rising) - Appirio, a global cloud solutions provider and the world's leading cloud-powered HCM consultancy, today announced that it is working with a growing number of customers to use cloud-based HCM solutions like Workday to transform HR's broader impact on the business. Companies like AAA, Ariens Company and Rackspace are just some of the customers using next-generation HCM technology to drive new models of service delivery and transform the HR function.

Today at Workday Rising in Las Vegas, Jennifer Taylor and Jason Averbook from Appirio will be presenting, "How the Cloud Can Transform HR into a Strategic Advisor," along with Christopher Ford of Silicon Valley Bank and Regina Kramer of Ariens Company. The session, which begins Tuesday, Nov 6 at 3 p.m. PST, will discuss best practices to align Workday with an organization's strategic initiatives for today and the future.

"In today's environment of rapid change, our customers understand that their business strategy cannot be separated from their workforce or technology," said Jennifer Taylor, vice president of Workday cloud services, Appirio. "We are fortunate to work with HR and IT leaders who apply this mantra daily, working closely with us to use the Workday platform to become a more strategic business advisor."

Appirio recently acquired Knowledge Infusion which marries Appirio's cloud expertise, technology innovation and global scale with Knowledge Infusion's deep domain knowledge of HR, talent management and changement management practices.

"As HR becomes more involved at earlier stages in corporate decisions, these organizations must be more agile than ever," said Jason Averbook, Chief Business Innovation Officer at Appirio and co-founder of Knowledge Infusion, an Appirio company. "The only way this happens is to align your business, workforce and technology strategies with an understanding of how the world has changed, and we are helping people do that every day."

Appirio offers a comprehensive set of HCM strategy and technology-enabled implementation services that enable HR organizations to transform processes such as recruiting, onboarding, core HR, performance management and employee engagement, from tactical to strategic. Appirio's suite of services include complete HR and Talent Management strategy services, as well as cloud-HCM focused migration, development and change management services.

Useful Links:

Read: Press release announcing Appirio's acquisition of Knowledge Infusion
Read: Data sheet about Appirio Workday offerings
Watch: A video on how Appirio and KI want to change the future of work
Comment: Jason Averbook's blog covering CHRO related issues

About Appirio
Appirio is a global technology-enabled services provider, helping companies power their business with cloud, social and mobile technologies from leaders like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 400 enterprise customers including organizations like the City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of 500+ cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a more than 50,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovation have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner and IDC. Appirio has offices that span the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio to Acquire HCM Consultancy Knowledge Infusion, Combined Companies Will Transform the Way People Work

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Appirio’s Cloud Leadership Combined with Knowledge Infusion’s Deep Domain Knowledge of People-Based Processes Creates a New Type of Partner Designed for Today’s More Social and Mobile Workforce

Chicago – October 8, 2012 (HR Technology Conference) - Appirio today announced its intent to acquire Knowledge Infusion, which will create the world’s largest cloud-powered Human Capital Management (HCM) consultancy. By marrying Appirio’s unmatched cloud expertise, technology innovation and global scale with Knowledge Infusion’s deep domain knowledge of HR, talent management and change management practices, enterprises finally have a partner that can help them prepare for and capitalize on the new way people work across all business domains.

“We have always considered cloud, social and mobile not just technology, but engines for business transformation,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “By combining forces with Knowledge Infusion, a recognized expert in people-focused processes, we can help business, HR and IT leaders develop the right strategy to ensure they engage employees as effectively as they would customers. That strategy, supported by the right technological innovation, can optimize how work gets done at a time when people’s expectations and motivations have drastically changed because of the consumerization of technology.”

Started in 2005, Knowledge Infusion has provided core HR, talent acquisition, talent management and social collaboration consulting services to more than 350 clients. This includes organizations like Amgen, Best Buy, Campbell’s, Dell, Hertz, Merck, Nationwide, Novo Nordisk, Starbucks and Target. The company’s end-to-end services model, on-demand subscription advisory services, and focus on customer success has made it one of the fastest growing HR technology consultancies in the world. In addition to its advisory work, Knowledge Infusion has become a trusted deployment partner of Workday, SuccessFactors, and Salesforce.com’s Work.com.

“McGraw-Hill is partnering with both Knowledge Infusion and Appirio to help us become a more nimble organization,” said John Berisford, Chief HR Officer at McGraw-Hill. “It is terrific to see their deep domain expertise, strategic thinking and creativity come together."

“All organizations must take an outcomes-based approach when applying technology to transform and optimize their business,” said Naomi Bloom, Managing Partner of Bloom & Wallace. “When using a consulting partner to support these efforts, organizations need one that combines deep domain expertise and state-of-the-art technical knowledge, with a commitment to delivering rapid, cost-effective results. That's why I couldn't be more delighted that Knowledge Infusion and Appirio have decided to join forces. Together they will create a new and much-needed consultancy, sitting between the ‘big T’ process transformation shops and the product-based implementation mechanics. Their focus on business strategy, organizational design, and enterprise technology, all focused on business outcomes, will benefit their customers, partners and our entire industry.”

Appirio was started in 2006 with the mission to help enterprises power their business with the cloud, and has since helped more than 400 enterprises use cloud providers like Workday, Salesforce.com and Google to improve core business processes from HR and financials to sales, service and marketing.

Once the acquisition is final, expected in November 2012, the combined company will bring to bear nearly 600 strategy and technology experts on three continents, a global crowdsourcing developer community, and an integrated suite of applications, assets and analytics that ensure the best outcome for transformation initiatives.

“Like Appirio, we saw a fundamental shift happening in how companies did business, how the workforce was changing, and the inability for traditional service providers to help business leaders adapt to that shift,” said Jason Averbook, CEO and co-founder of Knowledge Infusion, who will become Appirio’s Chief Business Innovation Officer. “Appirio’s track record of innovation, their disruptive services model and culture make it a perfect home for Knowledge Infusion. We’re excited to work together to help organizations move beyond traditional HR and deliver on the full potential of people at work.”

Useful Links:

Appirio Named to Wall Street Journal’s Next Big Thing List

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

The Wall Street Journal Recognizes Appirio for Growth and Unique Approach to Technology

San Francisco - Oct. 3, 2012 - Appirio, a global cloud solution provider, has been named to The Wall Street Journal’s The Next Big Thing list which seeks to identify and rank venture-backed companies across all industries that have the capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed. Appirio was selected from a pool of nearly 6,000 companies and ranked based on proprietary data from Dow Jones VentureSource and input from Dow Jones VentureWire’s reporters and editors. Appirio is included in The Next Big Thing list, which recognizes 50 companies.

“Appirio was formed to help companies free themselves from the technology constraints of the past, and create more innovative and high performing businesses using cloud, social and mobile technologies,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “We are fortunate to have industry-leading partners, customers and investors that believe in our mission, and we’re honored to have been recognized for our proven track record and future potential.”

"Venture capital investors aren't just looking for successful companies; they are looking for explosive growth," said Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “The Next Big Thing list highlights companies that have a chance of providing that kind of growth. They aren't sure bets; they are high-risk but potentially high-reward enterprises."

The Next Big Thing is an annual ranking published by The Wall Street Journal. To be eligible for the ranking, a company must be based in the U.S., have raised an equity round of financing in the three years ended June 30, 2012 and have a valuation of $1 billion or less. The ranking was calculated by applying a set of four financial criteria: the track records of success for both a company's founders and management; track records for the investors on its board; the amount of capital raised in the last three years; and the percentage change in a company's valuation in the last year. Dow Jones VentureWire reporters and editors also provided their perspective and expertise beyond the numbers.

To view The Next Big Thing ranking, visit http://on.wsj.com/QyJWBx

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve significant results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a more than 50,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, and IDC. Appirio has offices that span the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio Introduces Cloud Metrics for Salesforce.com Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:01:00 +0000

New Metrics Offering Combines Automated Discovery Tools, Benchmarks and Expert Analysis To Improve the Architecture of Salesforce.com Deployments

Offers Free Automated Report for Salesforce Customers

San Francisco, Calif. - September 18, 2012 - Appirio, a cloud solution provider, today announced a new Cloud Metrics offering to help CIOs and CRM directors measure and benchmark the performance, configuration and complexity of their Salesforce environments. Designed to complement Salesforce’s personalized account review reports, this new offering helps companies better understand a wider variety of system metrics - from code and test coverage, to security and visibility models, to overall user adoption - and compare those to other Salesforce environments.

The announcement was made today at salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2012 in San Francisco, the world’s largest cloud computing and enterprise technology event. To introduce customers to the service, Appirio is offering a free Cloud Metrics report to qualified customers attending Dreamforce 2012. To sign up, visit Appirio booth #701 or our website.

Appirio’s Cloud Metrics for Salesforce.com gives those overseeing and directly managing Salesforce applications an objective measure of their technical health. By having insight into issues around security, configuration complexity, custom code sprawl and inadequate test coverage, IT managers can quickly and easily identify any technical issues and maximize the business’ return on investment.

Cloud Metrics provides IT executives and administrators alike with concrete data they need to assist in making trade-off decisions on feature requests, or to help determine where to fund necessary platform investments to ensure the environment is cost-effective and agile enough to keep pace with the speed of business change.

Appirio’s Cloud Metrics offering pulls data from across more than a thousand Salesforce-related projects, captured in the Appirio Cloud Enablement Suite by the company’s 500 cloud experts. Appirio’s Cloud Enablement Suite is an integrated suite of applications, assets, analytics and intelligence that helps Appirio’s cloud experts and our customers implement, manage and measure enterprise cloud initiatives.

Comments on the News:
“We use the Appirio Cloud Metrics tool internally, and get amazing, real-time insight into the health and complexity of all of our Salesforce orgs, including our development and QA sandboxes. It’s become an invaluable tool for IT to manage our increasingly complex, 100% cloud-based software architecture. It’d be hard to imagine giving it up now - it’d be like flying blind in a plane with no instruments.”
- Glenn Weinstein, CIO, Appirio

“Salesforce.com has led the charge in helping companies measure the health of their CRM processes for years. It’s great to see an experienced partner like Appirio provide services that can measure the health of a given deployment.”
- Ross Piper, senior vice president, Enterprise Strategy & Alliances, salesforce.com

"Appirio’s cloud metrics data, combined with their expert consultation, gave us the actionable insight we needed to see what we were managing effectively and where we could improve. We don’t have access to as many orgs as Appirio does, so their data-based analysis was very helpful to validate some assumptions, to correct others, and to better engage with our business stakeholders.”
- Dianne Conley, VP of Marketing Systems, K12

Dreamforce 2012 is the industry’s largest cloud computing and enterprise technology event, welcoming more than 70,000 registered attendees to experience the power of the social revolution. With more than 750 sessions and 350 cloud companies in the expo, attendees can participate in interactive sessions, hands-on training with cutting-edge technology, thousands of live demos and unparalleled networking. In addition, Dreamforce welcomes special guests Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group; Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Eletric; Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State; Tony Robbins, Entrepreneur, Author & Peak Performance Strategist; and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Dreamforce 2012 offers attendees everything they need to connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways, under one roof.

Useful Links:
Read: Datasheet on Appirio’s Cloud Metrics for Salesforce.com
Visit: Appirio’s website for more information about Cloud Metrics
Watch: ChalkTalk about Appirio Cloud Metrics
View: Video on Appirio’s Cloud Enablement Suite

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve significant results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a more than 50,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, and IDC. Appirio has offices that span the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

New Research Shows Social Tools and Processes Making Progress in Business, But Still Early Days

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Appirio Survey Showcases High User Demand for Social Investment, But That Company Culture and Ownership Remain Barriers to Adoption

San Francisco, Calif. - September 11, 2012 - Appirio today announced the results of its first international survey on "The State of Social @ Work," highlighting users' demand for increased investment in social tools and processes but also how far companies still have to go before social makes a broader and more significant impact on the business.

The survey of more than 300 managers and employees from across the U.S. and U.K. was conducted by independent research firm, iTracks, on behalf of Appirio, a technology-enabled services firm that helps companies power their business with the cloud. Respondents covered a wide range of roles, industries and company size, and were not limited to social or executive decision makers, to better understand how social people are on the job. Click here for full demographics.

"As business and technical advisors, we know social tools and processes can have a significant impact on a company's brand, relationships and bottom line," said Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer at Appirio. "But to be truly successful with social, companies must listen to the actual users of those tools and processes rather than force something from the top down. Whether it's politics or technology, we all too often forget to consider the people's perspective and fail because our strategies are based on false assumptions."

Users Say Companies Are Still in the Early Stage of Social Adoption
There's no question that people are becoming increasingly social in their personal lives. A 2011 study from Pew Internet Research indicates that 65 percent of online adults are active users of social networking sites - a statistic reinforced in Appirio's own survey results. In Appirio's survey, that number jumps to nearly 90 percent when you add in other social tools like video, photo sharing and microblogging sites. However, people are not as experienced when it comes to social use at work - only 57 percent of respondents use social tools to do their job.

Companies today are even less far along when it comes to social adoption. Thirteen percent of respondents would go as far as to label their company "anti-social," saying there is no investment in social at all. Forty-four percent say their company is still just researching or testing social tools or strategies, and 43 percent are using one or more social tools.

While social adoption in the enterprise might be in the early stages, users say investment is happening. More than 35 percent of respondents said their companies had set aside budgets or resources to make business processes more social. The top three areas of investment were "establishing social media policies" (47 percent), "building out a presence on social sites" (37 percent) and "adding social features to existing internal applications (31 percent)."

Demand For Social Investment Is High, Based on Real and Perceived Benefits
According to users, their companies' current investments in social tools and processes isn't enough. More than 40 percent of respondents say their company should invest more time and resources in becoming a social enterprise compared to other business priorities.

This demand isn't surprising when you look at the positive impact that social investments can have on a business. Various studies have highlighted a wide range of internal and external benefits, including McKinsey's comprehensive study of 3,249 executives that shows companies that are more advanced in using social and collaborative Web 2.0 technologies reported improved market share and higher profit margins.

Users have their own perceptions. When asked where in the company improved social tools and processes would have the biggest impact, more than half of all respondents cited customer-related benefits. Specifically they called out:

Attracting new customers (26 percent)
Engaging and servicing existing customers (25 percent)
Improving collaboration and information sharing (15 percent)
Engaging employees and increasing job satisfaction (12 percent)
Attracting new employees (9 percent)
Improving business operations (7 percent)

Beyond acquiring new customers and servicing existing customers, the benefits to which users pointed varied based on company size and where users were located. For example:
U.K. respondents were twice as likely to select employee engagement as those in the U.S., while U.S. respondents were 1.5x more likely to select attract new customers,
Compared to small companies, large companies put half as much importance on attracting new customers and were at least 1.5x more likely to value employee engagement.

Company Culture and Strategy Ownership Are More Important Than Budget
Even if a company invests more in social tools and processes, according to users, some changes need to happen to have a bigger impact. When respondents were asked the biggest change their company could make to become a more social business, nearly 30 percent said shifting the company culture. That was the top choice across regions, industries and company size. Designating a person or group responsible was second on the list with 20 percent of respondents. Setting aside budget for social technologies was only selected by 15 percent of respondents.

To see full survey results and implications of this data, check out Appirio's "State of Social @ Work" eBook.

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve significant results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a almost 50,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, and IDC. Appirio has offices that span the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio Expands Into Midwest with New Office and Cloud Development Center

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0000

Appirio Opens Fifth Office, Plans to Grow Indianapolis Location to Nearly 300 Cloud Experts Within Three Years

San Francisco, Calif - Aug. 22, 2012 - Appirio, a global technology-enabled cloud service provider, announced today it is expanding again with a new office in Indianapolis focused in part on growing and developing Appirio’s industry leading team of cloud architects. This is the second U.S. office for the San Francisco-based company, which has offices spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific.

Appirio, started in 2006 with the goal of helping medium to large enterprises power their business with cloud-based solutions, has grown to more than 500 cloud experts in five countries. The company has moved more than 2 million users from more than 350 enterprises to cloud platforms like Salesforce, Workday, Google Apps and Amazon Web Services.

Appirio is backed by General Atlantic, GGV Capital and Sequoia Capital, and recently raised $60 million in capital to support global expansion of its consulting practices as well as to accelerate development of its enabling cloud technology and crowdsourcing development platform - CloudSpokes. Appirio’s expansion into Indianapolis and the company’s new Cloud Development Center will give Appirio and its growing base of customers and partners access to highly skilled cloud experts at a time when demand is skyrocketing.

According to Gartner, public cloud services are expected to grow at nearly 18 percent through 2016(1), compared to less than 4 percent growth for overall IT spending(2). This shift to the cloud presents a great market opportunity for companies like Appirio, and a leading edge career opportunity for Appirio’s cloud experts across the world.

“Enterprise cloud adoption is still in its early days, but today customer demand for cloud expertise is exceeding supply,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “Opening an office and Cloud Development Center in Indianapolis gives us access to a large, highly educated talent base with close proximity to customers and partners, and provides a great career opportunity for those looking to join a company that’s changing an industry.”

Appirio already has a team of 20 employees on the ground in Indianapolis, with plans to grow that office to nearly 300 people within the next three years. The company is actively recruiting for a number of positions. Please refer to careers.appirio.com for current job listings.

Other Resources

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a more than 40,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, and IDC. Appirio has offices that span the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

(1) Gartner, Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2010-2016, 2Q12 Update, June 2012
(2) Gartner, Forecast Overview: IT Spending, Worldwide, 2009-2016, 1Q12 Update, May 2012

Appirio Introduces New Mobile Cloud Apps for Salesforce CRM Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:01:00 +0000

New Apps Provide Sales and Marketing Teams an Enhanced Mobile Experience for Delivering, Managing, Tracking Customer-Facing Content and Feedback

San Francisco, Calif. - Aug. 10, 2012 - Appirio, a technology-enabled cloud service provider, today introduced three applications that make it easier to get the right content into customers’ hands, to measure the impact of that content, and to collect real-time customer feedback on mobile devices. These new mobile cloud applications extend Salesforce CRM’s existing functionality, combining the flexibility of a back-end cloud app with the usability of a native mobile app.

Appirio’s mobile cloud apps, part of Appirio’s extensive Cloud Asset Library, help with:

Content Delivery - instantly delivers the most up-to-date marketing or sales content regardless of whether the mobile device is online or offline to improve one-to-one interactions.
Closed Loop Marketing - enables companies to measure where marketing content is being used in the field and the impact of that spend.
Mobile Survey - allows sales, marketing and executive teams to gather real-time feedback from customers.

“Appirio partnered with us to build a very successful mobile cloud CRM application for 224 of our nursing facilities on a tight timeframe and with limited budget,” said Barry Somervell, senior vice president of sales and business development at Kindred. “Early results show it is already having a positive impact on patient conversion rates and providing a better, more personalized experience for our sales team and customers."
Read: IDC’s profile about Kindred’s mobile cloud app

Each of Appirio’s applications leverage the back-end capabilities of Salesforce CRM, tying information back into the system so teams don’t need to re-enter data or hire specialized mobile developers to enhance the applications. Each app is built from a combination of mobile cloud components, and is completely customizable to a company’s unique process. They are currently optimized for iPads and iPhones, but can be configured for Android devices.

“Research indicates that the majority of business decision-makers will increase their mobile applications budget in 2012 and beyond as they look for better ways to engage with customers and partners,” said Kevin Dodson, senior consultant for Appirio’s mobile team. “Appirio’s mobile cloud applications, which are developed on standard platforms, offer enterprises a cost-effective way to improve their mobile capabilities while maximizing their existing investments.”

Appirio offers a range of mobile cloud solutions, from strategy and prototyping workshops that help companies identify where mobile applications will have the greatest business impact, to configurable mobile applications such as the ones mentioned above. For customers that want a completely custom mobile solution, Appirio’s Cloud Asset Library which contains more than 30+ pre-built mobile components, means Appirio consultants and customers don’t need to start each project from scratch.

Other Resources:

Appirio Introduces New Features to CloudFactor

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Popular tool that brings together salesforce.com and Google Apps now available on AppExchange and Google Marketplace

San Mateo, Calif. - May 8, 2012 - Appirio, a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, today announced the addition of new user experience and customization capabilities to CloudFactor. An application that brings relevant salesforce.com information into Google Apps, CloudFactor has doubled its customer base during the first four months of 2012. CloudFactor allows users to access Salesforce CRM information in Gmail without switching back and forth between applications, boosting user productivity and improving customer intelligence.

Initially launched in 2010 as CloudWorks, CloudFactor is now being used by thousands and has expanded to include deeper integration with social media, improved search, customization and easier administration. CloudFactor has made it easier for users to access and manage relevant customer information, improving data quality and decision making. The application supports Group and Professional Edition Salesforce tenants and is now available to install via the Salesforce AppExchange and Google Apps Marketplace.

What’s New

Improved user experience and social media capabilities

Deep Chatter integration supports mentioning people, stream filtering, and support for Chatter streams embedded in Google Sites
Type-ahead filtering reduces effort required to search for relevant data
Embedded Twitter search widget simplifies the search for relevant tweets

New customization options and administration

Add Salesforce objects to CloudFactor without code
Clone and reconfigure CloudFactor standard apps
Make CloudFactor fields read-only or required at the page-level

“We see businesses of all sizes recognizing the importance of putting business data in front of employees while they work in Gmail and Google Calendar, without having to switch back and forth between different applications,” said Wes Barkwill, director of product management, Appirio. “Appirio CloudFactor drives value for these businesses with a cloud-based service that is easy to install and configure, adapting to the specific requirements of each business.”

CloudFactor is part of Appirio’s Cloud Enablement Suite, an integrated suite of applications, assets, analytics and a crowdsourcing community, that is used to increase the value of Appirio’s services engagements. CloudFactor is a part of Appirio’s library of productized cloud connections including Cloud Storage, Cloud Sync and Social Selling for Jive.

Cloud Enablement Suite
Appirio’s Cloud Enablement Suite is an integrated suite of applications, assets, analytics and a crowdsourcing community to implement, manage and measure enterprise cloud initiatives. With the Cloud Enablement Suite, Appirio’s cloud experts and customers can get started quickly with assets from 1,000s of past projects, tap into the talent of a global developer community and measure themselves against the best in the industry. This means we can deliver high quality, innovative solutions, quickly and consistently.

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a more than 40,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner, and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

Appirio CEO Named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 Semifinalist in Northern California

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:03:00 +0000

Chris Barbin Recognized by Program for Second Consecutive Year

San Mateo, Calif. – April 18, 2012 – Ernst & Young LLP today announced that Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio, a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, was named a semifinalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 program in the Northern California region. The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Finalists will be named in May, with awards being presented at a special gala on June 2 at the Fairmont San Francisco.

Chris Barbin has been named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® semifinalist in both 2011 and 2012 for his role in founding Appirio and leading it as CEO since the company’s inception. Since the company was established in 2006, Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprises, including some of salesforce.com, Google and Workday’s largest, most complex, global customers. In five years, Appirio has increased revenue 80 percent year over year, grown to nearly 500 employees, expanded into Japan, the U.K. and Singapore, and helped more than 1.5 million people move to the cloud.

"As a global growth investor, General Atlantic partners with exceptional management teams and we are proud that Chris Barbin is being recognized as an outstanding entrepreneur," said Brett Rochkind, managing director, General Atlantic. "This distinction is testament to his leadership and Appirio's position as an innovative leader in helping enterprises power their businesses with cloud technologies."

Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.

Sponsors
Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored in the United States by SAP America and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

In Northern California sponsors include ManpowerGroup, The Big Picture, Smart Business Network, Inc., ADP, RoseRyan, Scherzer International, Orrick and Barney & Barney.

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a nearly 40,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner, and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

About Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year®
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential, and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 140 cities in more than 50 countries.

About Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Worldwide, our 152,000 people are united by our shared values and an unwavering commitment to quality. We make a difference by helping our people, our clients and our wider communities achieve their potential.

Ernst & Young refers to the global organization of member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit www.ey.com.
This news release has been issued by Ernst & Young LLP, a US client-serving member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited.

Appirio Raises $60 Million In Series D Funding Led By General Atlantic

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:01:00 +0000

New Funding Will Fuel Appirio’s International Expansion, Investments in Technology and Crowdsourcing Platform For Cloud Development

San Mateo, Calif. - March 15, 2012 - Appirio, a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, today announced that it has closed $60 million in Series D funding led by global growth investor General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital. Appirio plans to use the funds for investment and M&A to support global expansion of its consulting practice areas, as well as to build out the company’s enabling cloud technology and acceleration of its successful crowdsourcing development platform - CloudSpokes.

The financing follows a banner year of growth for Appirio. In 2011 alone, Appirio increased year-over-year revenue by over 80 percent, expanded into Europe with the acquisition of Saaspoint and developed the Cloud Enablement Suite (CES) - an integrated set of applications, assets and development capacity that supports enterprise cloud development. Additionally, the company introduced CloudSpokes - a crowdsourcing community for cloud development that has already attracted 35,000+ developers.

“Appirio is defining what a next-generation technology services provider will be in the era dominated by cloud solutions,” said Gary M. Reiner, operating partner, General Atlantic and former CIO, General Electric. “The company’s unique combination of technology and crowdsourcing - along with their cloud focus and experienced team - have the potential to completely disrupt the $793 billion worldwide Global Systems Integrator market.”

Brett B. Rochkind, managing director, General Atlantic, commented, “Our experience in helping cloud companies become global leaders led us to observe and admire what Appirio has done during the last several years. We look forward to partnering with the management team to scale their success and make Appirio the pre-eminent cloud solutions provider to the world’s largest and fastest growing companies.”

Since the company was established in 2006, Appirio has worked on some of salesforce.com, Google and Workday’s largest, most complex, global customers, including those at BMC Software, Japan Post, Medtronic, Flextronics, Twitter, Merkle and NetApp. The Appirio team has moved more than 1.5 million users to the public cloud to date and has offices in the U.S., Japan, Singapore and the U.K. with crowdsourced developers in 65+ countries.

"Enterprises are demanding to work with a trusted, agile cloud advisor and we fill that role,” said Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio. “Just as legacy software providers have struggled to add cloud to their legacy businesses, the global system integrators, including Accenture and Deloitte, will be challenged to overcome their on-premise dependency and adapt to the rapidly changing market and customer demands related to the cloud.”

“Twitter is redefining an industry and wants to work with service providers that are agile enough to evolve and define our business processes,” said Adam Bain, president of global revenue, Twitter. “Appirio has become a trusted adviser and partner, helping us scale our operations and execute solutions as quickly as we can think of them.”

Brett Rochkind and Gary Reiner led GA’s investment in Appirio and will be actively involved with Appirio. Mr. Rochkind heads General Atlantic’s Palo Alto office and is co-head of its Internet & Technology sector with global experience in the U.S., Latin America and Asia. Gary Reiner will join Appirio’s board of directors immediately. Mr. Reiner is an operating partner at General Atlantic and currently serves on the boards of HP and Genpact. Mr. Reiner previously served as senior vice president and CIO of GE, where he led M&A, sourcing, IT, operations and quality for the company. General Atlantic is a global investor in more than 60 growth companies including Alibaba Group, Bazaarvoice, ServiceSource, Facebook, Dice, Peixe Urbano, Privalia, Renren and Gilt.

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 300 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of nearly 500 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a 35,000+ person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner, and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and General Atlantic.

About General Atlantic
General Atlantic is a leading global growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for growth companies. GA combines a collaborative global approach, sector specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon and a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great management and build exceptional businesses worldwide. Established in 1980, GA manages approximately $17 billion in capital and has more than 75 investment professionals based in Greenwich, New York, Palo Alto, London, Düsseldorf, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, Mumbai and São Paulo. For further information and a listing of GA's public and private portfolio companies see www.generalatlantic.com.

Mark O’Connor to Join Appirio as Chief Financial Officer

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Executive Drawn by Company’s Market Leadership and Growth in Cloud Brokerage Market

San Mateo, Calif. - March 15, 2011- Appirio, a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, today announced the appointment of Mark O’Connor as Chief Financial Officer. The announcement comes on the heels of Appirio closing a $60 million funding round led by global growth investor General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital. O’Connor, who brings more than 20 years of finance experience in various high growth companies, will join Appirio on March 19. His appointment will support Appirio’s projected growth and global expansion of company initiatives.

O’Connor joins Appirio from Nuance Communications where he served in the office of the CEO as chief of staff and vice president of operations and previously the vice president of finance and operations of its enterprise division. He also served as CFO for BeVocal and Appshop. O’Connor brings tremendous finance and operations experience from International Networking Services, where he was part of the hybrid products and services business when it grew from a few employees to more than 2,000 in nearly three years.

Quotes:
“We’re still relatively early in terms of overall enterprise cloud adoption, but Appirio has already become a trusted cloud broker and adviser to more than 300 enterprises,” said Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio. “By adding Mark’s leadership to our executive team, we’ll be even better equipped to expand Appirio’s market presence globally.”

“Appirio’s rapid growth, dominant market presence and exceptional customer and partner testimonials attracted me to the company,” said Mark O’Connor. “I'm excited to join the team and help the organization capitalize on General Atlantic’s recent investment.”

Other Resources:

The CloudSpokes Developer Community Celebrates Its One-Year Anniversary With 30,000+ Members In More Than 65 Countries

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

First Crowdsourcing Development Community Focused On Multi-tenant Public Cloud Platforms On Track to Double in Size in 2012

San Mateo, Calif. - Feb. 14, 2012 - CloudSpokes, the crowdsourcing community that matches companies who need cloud development work with a worldwide community of specialist developers, has attracted more than 30,000 developers, fulfilled more than 150 challenges, and created innovative solutions for companies like Suntech, Medtronic and Glocap in its inaugural year. The community, created and managed by Appirio, takes advantage of the unique elements of cloud computing - specifically the ability of developers anywhere to work with cloud platforms instantly - to enable the crowdsourcing of development.

The community provides an alternate approach to development for the enterprise cloud development market. At a time when interest in cloud platforms has never been higher, companies are looking for specialized skills in cloud platforms and APIs like Amazon Web Services, Cloud Foundry, Force.com, Google and Heroku. CloudSpokes enables companies to tap into and foster an international base of cloud developers that can deliver applications and code more quickly, cost effectively and on-demand.

CloudSpokes produces applications and code more creatively and cost effectively than the traditional mix of an onshore and offshore enterprise development process. The community produces innovative solutions and saves, on average, 50-70 percent of the development effort per project.

To celebrate the community, CloudSpokes will be giving away U.S. $1,000 a day to contest winners during a series of March Madness contests. Find out more about the daily quick quizzes here.

Serving the Cloud Development Community

CloudSpokes has attracted more than 32,000 members, in six of the seven continents. Sadly, we haven’t attracted any developers from Antarctica yet.
The community produced a number of social applications that were bundled into a social enterprise toolkit. Applications included a Chatter to Twitter integration and Facebook "Like" button VisualForce component, among others.
The community has open sourced numerous applications and components (available through the CloudSpokes open GitHub repository), including creative applications like:

Account Check-In iPad App: Geolocation app to help sales reps in the field track customer visits.
Commute Calculator: Helps companies determine the best location for new offices.
Automated Home Security System: An alarm system that texts the home owner when the system detects an intruder.

CloudSpokes has helped the cloud and developer communities enhance their partying and gift giving experience by creating apps such as:

The Dreamforce Mobile Party App to keep track of social events during the show
The Valentine’s Day Gift of Love App allows users to send anonymous SMS messages using Twilio to a person of interest, and also allows the person of interest to message their admirer back.

Other CloudSpokes Highlights

To create a faster, more dynamic website, CloudSpokes crowdsourced the re-platforming of its website from Azure to Database.com using its own community.
To streamline the hackathon judging process, CloudSpokes hosted U.S.-based hackathons for Dreamforce, Docusign E-Sign Hackathon, Angelhack and the Box.net mobile challenge.
CloudSpokes has spoken at and sponsored more than seven events in its inaugural year. Visit the events page to see where our community team is headed next.

Supporting quotes
“We’ve seen a swell in demand for enterprise cloud development and, in less than twelve months, CloudSpokes has proven that crowdsourcing can help meet that demand for service providers like Appirio and enterprise customers. From mobile applications to PaaS integrations, the community has proven to cost-effectively deliver innovative cloud solutions.”
- Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Appirio

"Enterprise development is increasingly decentralized by nature, which can make it difficult for businesses to harness the power of their own talent let alone the support and energy of external communities. CloudSpokes is about enabling the crowdsourcing model while incenting and rewarding the individual developer."
- Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst, RedMonk

“Although I was apprehensive about CloudSpokes at first, I am completely infested with the ‘CloudSpokes’ bug and have participated in a handful of challenges. The community provides a great platform to be a better developer and the cash prizes have enabled me to supply materials for and expand my own developer training programs.”
- Romin Irani, CloudSpokes Community Member

Online Resources

Appirio Charts Strong Business Growth in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Signs On Nearly 100 New Customers Across Geographies and Industries

SAN MATEO, Calif. - January 26, 2012 - Appirio, a services provider that helps enterprises power their business with public cloud solutions, today announced it closed 2011 with a strong showing in new customer wins, geographic expansion and overall business growth in the rapidly evolving cloud computing space.

Corporate Milestones

Increased revenue by 80 percent year over year.
Grew the team to more than 400 cloud experts across the U.S., Japan, India and U.K.
Acquired four companies, bringing Appirio additional expertise in social, mobile and user adoption, and adding to the company’s core salesforce.com and Google business in the U.S. Midwest and Europe.
Continued to grow our presence internationally, appointing new GMs for Europe and Asia Pacific.
Moved more than 1.5 million users to public cloud applications like salesforce.com, Google and Workday.

Customer and Innovation Breakthroughs

Added nearly 100 new customers around the world, including brands such as British Gas, City Link, eBay, Genworth, Office Depot, PayPal, Pfizer, Rentokil, Shopzilla, Stanford University, Suntech, Twitter, UBM and University of Michigan.
Saw strong customer growth in the U.S. Midwest with new customers such as Diebold, General Growth Partners, Kindred Healthcare, Medtronic, Mercy Hospitals, Procter & Gamble, and Sauer-Danfoss.
Worked with companies like Facebook and MoMA as a trusted advisor for their cloud-first IT strategy.
Appirio named NetApp its Cloud Pioneer of the Year for 2011 for the use of cloud platforms to transform field operations.
Introduced CloudSpokes, the world’s first crowdsourcing community focused exclusively on cross-cloud development. In 10 months, it has grown to 30,000+ members in 65 countries during 10 months and saw participation from companies such as Box.net, Docusign and VMware.
CloudSpokes ran the developer hackathon at the annual Dreamforce conference, and the community has open sourced more than 40,000 lines of code (available through the CloudSpokes open GitHub repository).
Received a number of prestigious awards including being named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and a laureate for the Computerworld Honors Award. Appirio was also recognized by Gartner in the November 2011 Who’s Who in Cloud Service Brokerage report.

Relevant Industry Statistics
The market for cloud-related IT services is still in its early days but expected to grow significantly in the next few years.

The size of the overall public cloud services market in 2010 was estimated to be about $70 billion, rising to about $180 billion by 2015. Public cloud services spending is expected to grow at an annual average growth rate of almost 20 percent through 2015. (Gartner, Worldwide IT Spending report for 2008-2015, June 2011)
At about $10 billion, applications (Software as a Service) already account for 10 percent of enterprise application software spending, and by 2015 this share is expected to increase to close to 15 percent and exceed $20 billion in annual spending. (Gartner, Worldwide IT Spending report for 2008-2015, June 2011)
SaaS CRM, now accounts for 31% of the CRM software market and is growing at 40% annually, which is three times the rate of on-premise CRM solutions. (Gartner, Competitive Landscape: CRM Service Providers, North America and Western Europe)

Quote
“As one of the leading trusted advisers to the cloud, 2011 was a banner year for Appirio. In 2012, expect us to remain aggressively committed to helping enterprises power their business with the public cloud. We believe the market needs a company like Appirio - someone with a long-term vision who’s not afraid to disrupt the status quo.” - Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio

Other Resources

Appirio Selects NetApp as Cloud Pioneer of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

NetApp Team Honored for Use of Cloud Platforms to Transform Field Operations

San Mateo, Calif. - January 6, 2012 - Appirio announced today it has selected NetApp, Inc. as its Cloud Pioneer of the Year, an annual award given by Appirio to companies and individuals that demonstrate leadership in cloud computing initiatives. The award honors the team for the cloud-first approach they took to dramatically improve the Field Operation team’s ability to move fast and respond to the business’ evolving needs.

The NetApp team, led by its VP of worldwide sales ops, was selected from nearly a dozen other Appirio Cloud Pioneers representing companies such as BP, Brown-Forman, Glocap, Enterasys, Medtronic, Suntech and Yahoo!

“Our IT decisions are focused on investing for both short-term and long-term benefits and cloud applications and platforms can fill both those needs,” said Jane Vaillancourt, VP Worldwide Sales Operations, NetApp. “Cloud solutions provide a number of benefits that just aren’t possible with on-premise technologies and set us up for success in the future. But to reap those benefits you need to rethink existing processes and skills. The end result can be dramatic, though, so I’m extremely proud of our team for its willingness to lead and explore new territory.”

“The team at NetApp is a leading example of creative destruction - it saw the need to accelerate change, set a vision for how cloud technology could reinvigorate their processes, and have done an exceptional job executing on that vision,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “We introduced the Cloud Pioneer award to highlight teams who are powering their business with the cloud, and NetApp exemplifies this. We are privileged to work with them and all of our Cloud Pioneers.”

The NetApp Cloud Pioneer Story
NetApp delivers storage and data management solutions that provide cost efficiency and accelerate business breakthroughs. As a company that prides itself on always finding ways to enable its customers to do things they couldn’t do before at a speed they never thought possible, NetApp strives for the same achievements for its own IT and business teams.

After gathering extensive employee feedback, the NetApp sales ops and IT teams combined resources to revamp their existing sales solution using Salesforce Sales Cloud, Eloqua and other cloud productivity apps. Working with Appirio and its Cloud Management team, the NetApp team modified its traditional waterfall approach to an agile methodology and created processes that would help keep pace with ever-changing business requirements, new sales needs, and evolution of cloud platforms. Within a relatively short period of time, NetApp saw an improvement in the number of sales people submitting their own forecast and a 95 percent adoption rate of the system, leading to improved user satisfaction, better lead conversion as well as improved forecasting and visibility.

NetApp continues to explore ways to leverage the cloud and Salesforce.com throughout its business, injecting a cloud-centric strategy into the NetApp IT Roadmap. They are exploring ways to use crowdsourcing and community development (CloudSpokes) for new applications, mobility solutions, Service Cloud, and social (Chatter) opportunities across the enterprise for both internal NetApp and external Partner users.

The Cloud Pioneer Award
Appirio’s Cloud Pioneer awards program was introduced in 2010 to recognize the champions and change agents among Appirio’s customers - those who recognize the benefits of public cloud platforms and drive projects that are not only successful but truly impactful for their organization. Each Cloud Pioneer award winner is chosen by Appirio’s leadership team, based on nominations from the company’s delivery managers and cloud architects.

Appiro’s 2011 Cloud Pioneer Award Recipients
Jane Vaillancourt and the NetApp team of Thomas Mirrione, Christopher Cho, Hiroaki Ajari, Cynthia Stoddard, Jessie McKay, Chandransu Choudhury, Anujit Sarkar, Shihling Liang, Rita Sair, Teresa Lacsina, Leslie Thiel, and Nimish Shah; Lee Anne Hanson (BP), Gary Spears (Medtronic), Vala Afshar and Dan Petlon (Enterasys), Adam Zoia and Christina Guerland (Glocap), Kristen Sanders (Yahoo!), Dr. Zhengrong Shi and Andrew Beebe (Suntech), Toby Lester (Brown-Forman)

Appirio Named a Who’s Who in Cloud Services Brokerage by Leading Analyst Firm

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:05:00 +0000

San Mateo, Calif. - December 22, 2011 - Appirio, a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, has been named by Gartner as one of the leading providers of Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) in their recent Who's Who in Cloud Services Brokerage report, 2011. According to the report, “the CSB role will affect how many providers deliver solutions across much of the $862 billion IT services industry.”

“In a world that’s as fast paced and complex as cloud computing, cloud brokers can help IT hedge risk, clarify strategy and integrate this new paradigm into existing processes and technology,” said Narinder Singh, chief strategy officer, Appirio. “Our pure cloud focus and unique delivery model has allowed us to be a trusted partner to enterprise IT and we’re excited for what the future holds.”

As stated in the report: “CSB is a form of intermediation for cloud-centric IT and business projects. The role has emerged as end users seek help managing the consumption of cloud computing.” The report, authored by Benoit J. Lheureux, Daryl C. Plummer, Tiffani Bova, Michele Cantara, Eric Knipp and Paolo Malinverno, was published November 21, 2011.

Appirio was also named this year as a Cool Vendor in Application Development by Gartner Inc. in its 2011 report authored by Thomas E. Murphy, David Norton, Jim Duggan and Eric Knipp, published April 15, 2011.

About Appirio
Appirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 250 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of 400 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a nearly 30,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendor
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Appirio To Acquire Saaspoint and Accelerate Global Expansion

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:01:00 +0000

San Mateo, Calif. - December 9, 2011 (Cloudforce NY) - Appirio a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their businesses with the cloud, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Saaspoint, the most experienced European-based provider of cloud consulting services. Saaspoint brings Appirio an even deeper bench of experienced cloud consultants, as well as a physical presence in the U.K. and Ireland. The acquisition, Appirio’s fourth this year, supplements Appirio’s existing presence in the U.S., Japan and India, and will form a foundation for aggressively building out more broadly into Europe.

This acquisition is the latest phase of Appirio’s expansion into Europe and Asia Pacific, announced in September. It also reinforces Appirio’s position as a global partner for leading cloud solutions including salesforce.com, Google and Workday.

Founded in 2005 by early salesforce.com employees, Saaspoint has built a strong reputation as the go-to cloud services specialist in the UK and beyond. The company has offices in the UK and Ireland, and has served more than 100 global customers including companies such as British Gas, Citylink, Dell, eBay, Misys, Paypal, Pfizer, Plantronics, Proctor & Gamble, Rentokil, UBM and Unipart.

As one of the premier European partners for salesforce.com and Google, Saaspoint’s cloud focus, experienced team and customer base align well with Appirio. The Saaspoint team will join Appirio’s existing 400 cloud experts and tap into CloudSpokes, Appirio’s crowdsourcing developer community which now has nearly 30,000 developers in over 65 countries. By combining Appirio’s leadership and global scale with Saaspoint’s local expertise, European customers will have a proven cloud-focused partner with the resources necessary for larger, more complex projects.

The transaction is expected to close later this month, subject to customary closing conditions.

Comments on the News

“Cloud computing is poised for significant growth in Europe with companies like salesforce.com, Google and Workday moving aggressively into the market, but the partner ecosystem is still evolving,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “European customers that need a partner with both cloud-focused expertise and a global footprint have had limited options. Our goal is to fill that void.”

“Both Appirio and Saaspoint have built strong, high-growth businesses around a talented team of people that understand the promise and power of cloud solutions,” said John Appleby, CEO of Saaspoint. “That shared culture and vision makes this an ideal match, and the team is excited to join a company that is reshaping how the industry defines cloud integrators.”

“Having two trusted partners like Appirio and Saaspoint join forces makes our thriving partner ecosystem even stronger, and will help salesforce.com serve the needs of our rapidly growing customer base in Europe,” said Miguel Milano, president of EMEA and executive vice president EMEA sales, salesforce.com

Appirio Introduces New Social Enterprise Toolkit

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

New Cloud-Based Assets Help Companies More Easily Integrate and Manage Existing Social Applications, Encourage User Adoption

New York City - November 30, 2011 (Cloudforce NY) - Appirio a technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their business with the cloud, today introduced a new social enterprise toolkit to help companies break down social silos, increase employee collaboration, and encourage greater user adoption of existing social enterprise tools. The toolkit consists of nearly 20 social assets built during Appirio’s work with leading enterprises and crowdsourced through the global CloudSpokes development community.

The contents of Appirio’s social toolkit are viewable on any mobile device by visiting m.socialenterprisetoolkit.com. The toolkit browser, which itself was built using the CloudSpokes community, allows anyone to view descriptions of each tool, vote on the tools they think are most useful, share them on social sites like Facebook, and submit their own ideas for new tools. To encourage new idea proposals for the toolkit, Appirio will sponsor a contest on CloudSpokes to build the most popular new idea. The person with the winning idea will receive $1,000. More information about the contest can be found here.

The assets in this toolkit are part of Appirio’s greater cloud asset library, and are available to customers as part of Appirio’s broader Social Enterprise service offerings.

Assets in Appirio’s Social Enterprise Toolkit

Appirio’s social enterprise toolkit helps roll out new social enterprise applications by integrating new applications with existing social networks, making new social applications engaging for employees, and ensuring compliance with company policies. Below is a selection of tools in each area.

Integration

Google+ to Chatter: Allows users to post from Google+ to Chatter using hashtags
Twitter to Chatter: Allows users to post from Twitter to Chatter using hashtags

User engagement

Chatter influence: Measures a user’s influence within a Chatter organization
Email photo to Chatter results: Allows photos in email to be sent to Chatter organizations

Compliance

Chatter compliance: Enables admins to receive alerts when certain keywords are used in Chatter

Comments On The News:

“Our social enterprise toolkit highlights how committed we are to helping customers create real business value from social technology. Our ever-expanding library of social assets addresses current processes and behaviors, while allowing for the adoption of new social norms.”
- Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Appirio

“At Brown-Forman, we continually look to create opportunities and efficiencies in the collaborative space that help our employees stay better connected with their work, their co-workers, and key business partners. Appirio’s knowledge of the social enterprise landscape has helped us deliver these opportunities as we continue to implement our corporate social strategy.”
- Toby Lester, VP Global Director Technology Architecture and Innovation, Brown-Forman

“Appirio’s social enterprise toolkit shows how easy it is to integrate Salesforce Chatter and the Force.com platform into existing processes and connect to other social platforms. Companies are looking to reinvent themselves as social enterprises, and partners like Appirio can help greatly.”
- Kendall Collins, SVP and GM of Salesforce Chatter, salesforce.com

Useful Links:

Appirio Announces New GMs for European and Asia Pacific Operations

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Capitalizing on Five Years of Strong Growth Helping Customers Build Cloud-Powered Businesses, Appirio Expands Teams in the UK, Japan and Beyond

San Mateo, Calif. - September 27, 2011 - Appirio a cloud solution provider that helps enterprises adopt, connect and extend cloud platforms such as salesforce.com, Google and Workday, today announced that Manish Sharma and Lori Williams will head up Appirio’s operations in Asia Pacific and Europe, respectively. Mr. Sharma, who formerly led VMware’s emerging products for Asia Pacific, will begin duties on October 1, 2011. Ms. Williams, who previously ran Appirio’s U.S. consulting team, will begin immediately. Both will be responsible for building the new regional teams through a combination of organic and inorganic growth, and working closely with Appirio’s strategic partners including salesforce.com, who last month made a second investment in Appirio.

Appirio’s initial focus this year will be on establishing a significant presence in the UK, where Appirio already serves a number of global and local companies, and deepening relationships in Japan. Appirio has had a strong presence in Japan since 2009 and seen consistent triple digit year-over-year growth in that country. Next year, Appirio expects to expand into other locales in Europe and Asia based on customer demand and the priorities of its partners - salesforce.com, Google and Workday.

A Growing, and Global, Opportunity for Cloud Computing

According to IDC (Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2011-2015 Forecast, Doc #228485, June 2011), public IT cloud services are expected to grow at almost four times the rate of the IT market as a whole. Public IT cloud service revenue will reach nearly $73 billion by 2015 - a 27.6 percent CAGR. Spending in Japan is expected to increase by 41 percent and spending in Western Europe is expected to increase by more than 35 percent.

“The incredible growth we’re seeing in public cloud applications and platforms has opened up a huge opportunity for services firms that understand the space and have the resources and reach to help customers be successful,” said Robert Mahowald, Research Vice President of SaaS and Cloud Services at IDC. “Making customers successful requires not just feet on the ground, but an appreciation for the nuances of the cloud model and the specific cultures and regulations of these regions.”

Proven Leaders Guide Global Expansion

Mr. Sharma joins Appirio from VMware, where he was GM and Managing Director for Emerging Products in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ). In this role he was responsible for sales, field operations and communications. Mr. Sharma joined VMware in 2006 prior to the company’s IPO, and held positions ranging from country manager for Korea - where his team achieved 240 percent year-over-year growth - to APJ partner team lead where he managed the company’s regional OEM, distribution, reseller and systems integration partnerships. Prior to VMware, he led teams at BEA Systems, WebMethods and Baan.

“I’ve met with hundreds of customers over the last few years talking about what they need from their IT and business systems,” said Mr. Sharma. “Their requests often start with the agility and efficiencies of cloud platforms, but a close second is the need for a trusted cloud advisor. Appirio has been that trusted advisor in the U.S. and Japan for the last five years, and there is a huge opportunity in this region for that level of expertise.”

Ms. Williams has been at Appirio since October 2009, where she led the company’s customer service team and cloud management offerings. She took over as VP of the U.S. consulting team in July 2010 and has since grown that team more than 150 percent. Ms. Williams has a strong track record of building and managing high growth and international teams. Prior to joining Appirio, she was SVP of U.S. Services for global application development company Hisoft, and VP of customer delivery at data protection company Credant Technologies, and spent more than 10 years in various international services and product leadership positions at IBM and Lotus Development.

“Appirio works with some of the world’s largest global brands, many of whom need a strategic partner that can easily be on the ground with their regional teams,” said Ms. Williams. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to build Appirio’s brand and presence in Europe, and bring the cloud expertise required to best serve these global and regional customers.”

Useful Links

World Economic Forum Names Appirio a 2012 Technology Pioneer

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Global award recognizes Appirio’s innovation, leadership and potential impact on the future of business

San Mateo, Calif. - September 1, 2011 - Appirio a cloud solution provider that helps enterprises adopt, connect and extend cloud platforms such as salesforce.com, Google and Workday, today announced it has been named a 2012 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Appirio joins a list of the 25 most innovative technology start-ups from around the world. According to the World Economic Forum selection committee, these companies represent the latest generation of innovation and are poised to have a critical impact on how businesses and society will function.

“Advances in cloud technology have provided an opportunity for companies to free themselves from constraints of the past and eliminate massive amounts of waste that has been rampant in IT,” said Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio. “Appirio is honored to be recognized by an organization as important as the World Economic Forum and to have this level of validation for our vision and the incredible team that makes the vision a reality every day for our customers and partners globally.”

Previous Technology Pioneers include Monitise (2006), Mozilla Corporation (2007), Nanosolar (2007), Gridpoint (2008), Mint.com (2009), BloomEnergy (2010), Takadu (2011) and NetQin (2011). Technology Pioneer companies were handpicked from hundreds of nominations from around the world, and were evaluated by more than 50 global technology experts. The selection committee who led this rigorous process includes leading academics, journalists, technologists and venture capitalists.

“One particular aspect to highlight this year is the large number of companies that are focused on having a social impact, such as providing health or financial services to under-served populations, while revolutionizing the business paradigms in their industries,” said Olivier Schwab, director, Head of Technology Pioneers, World Economic Forum. “This year’s companies showcase the diversity in which innovative technology can be deployed to benefit business and society.”

Since 2000, the World Economic Forum has recognized the work of young companies which hold the promise of significantly transforming the way business and society operate. The Technology Pioneers 2012 are drawn from various fields of information technology and new media, energy and environment, and life sciences and health where they are active in a variety of areas, illustrating the broad range of impact they have on the world.

“Having two companies we're in business with be recognized this year by the World Economic Forum is remarkable,” said Jim Goetz, partner, Sequoia Capital. “The milestones that Appirio and Dropbox have achieved make for perfect examples of how today's start-ups are changing, and improving, the state of age old industries.”

The Technology Pioneers 2012 will be recognized for their work at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, People’s Republic of China, September 14-16, 2011. Appirio’s Chief Strategy Officer, Narinder Singh, will be a discussion leader for the session, “Technology Pioneers: Taking Innovation to Market,” happening Friday, September 16, 2011.

Appirio’s CEO, Chris Barbin, talks more about the award in a video that can be found here. For further information on the Technology Pioneers 2012, please visit www.weforum.org/techpioneers

Appirio Takes the Social Enterprise from Idea to Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:00:00 +0000

New Technology-Enabled Services from Appirio Help Enterprises Achieve Real Business Value With Cloud-Based Social Solutions

SAN FRANCISCO - Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference - August 31, 2011 - Appirio’s Social Enterprise practice today announced services and technology that will help enterprises more successfully use cloud-based social solutions like Salesforce Chatter, Twitter and Facebook to power their business. The announcement was made today at Dreamforce 2011, the cloud computing event of the year. The Dreamforce conference is being held August 30 - September 2, 2011, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Appirio will be in booth #420 in the Dreamforce Expo.

Appirio’s new social enterprise offerings include:

Social Enterprise Blueprint - Appirio’s social experts work with IT and business leaders to identify the areas of your business where social solutions can have the greatest impact, quantify the benefits and develop a roadmap to achieve social success.
Social Enterprise Implementation - Appirio helps enterprises plan, build, and manage cloud-powered social businesses that include sales, service, marketing, IT and company-wide collaboration. With a core expertise in salesforce.com’s social technologies, including Chatter and Radian6, Appirio has a proven track record for embedding social technologies into the enterprise to drive innovation and customer-engagement. Customers range from consumer brands such as Nikon to media companies including Yahoo! and large financial institutions.
Multi-Channel Social Integration - This proof of concept, demonstrated today at Dreamforce 2011, shows how employees can post updates on one social media channel and selectively replicate it on other media channels without double entry. It showcases the benefit of breaking down social silos and the possibilities of working with open platforms.

Appirio Survey Shows Enterprises Already Taking Steps To Be More Social

A recent survey of 140 Appirio customers revealed that almost 90 percent are currently using at least one social technology in their business, and 57 percent are using more than one. Respondents using Salesforce Chatter report the potential for significant impact on their business, with 59 percent saying Chatter will result in better informed employees, 57 percent saying it will result in less email, and 49 percent saying it will help people find information faster.

This adoption brings the promise of improved customer service, increased employee productivity and valuable engagement, yet many companies continue to struggle with how social technology can provide real business value in a way that is secure and compliant. Appirio’s new social enterprise offerings can help.

Hear first-hand from Appirio customers about how they are using Chatter and other social technologies:

Quotes:

“Enterprises want to take advantage of social and collaboration technologies but to see real business value in the long-run they need to understand their ‘collaborative intent’, the impact social will have on compliance and governance, and how to incorporate social into their existing enterprise application footprint.”
- Eryc Branham, General Manager of Appirio’s Social Enterprise Practice

"With Appirio's help, we were able to eliminate a series of 'digital landfills' and replace them with a single global sales collaboration portal built on Salesforce Chatter and Content…and now half of the company wants access."
- Kristen Sanders, Director of Global Sales Operations and Sales Enablement, Yahoo!

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