Appirio Press Releases

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!

Useful Links:

Appirio to Accelerate Global Expansion Through New Strategic Investment

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Crenshaw) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Appirio Celebrates Five Years of Growth, Moving More Than 1 Million People to the Public Cloud

San Mateo, Calif. - August, 2011 - Appirio, a cloud solution provider, today announced it will be expanding internationally to serve a growing base of customers in the European and Asia Pacific markets. The expansion is being funded by a strategic investment from two existing investors - GGV Capital, an expansion stage venture capital firm focused on the U.S. and Asia, and Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company. Expansion will be through a combination of organic and inorganic growth.

“Cloud computing is already almost a $70 billion market, but it’s still early days in the overall shift happening in IT - especially outside the U.S.,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “When companies see the impact of powering their business with the cloud, that shift will only accelerate and they’ll need a cloud-focused partner to help them.”

This month Appirio celebrates its five-year anniversary, coinciding with the ninth anniversary of Dreamforce at which Appirio is a speaker and sponsor. Since the company’s founding, Appirio has moved more than 1 million people to the cloud and consistently grown revenue more than 70 percent year over year - often in tough economic conditions. In late 2008, Appirio opened its first international office in Tokyo, successfully growing its Japanese operations by more than 100 percent annually and signing on high profile customers such as Japan Post Network, Ltd.

“Appirio is one of our most innovative partners and has contributed to the success of some of our largest customers in both the U.S. and Japan,” said Maria Martinez, Executive Vice President, Customers for Life, salesforce.com. “Partners like Appirio understand what it takes to make the social enterprise a reality, and our global enterprise customers need a global social enterprise partner. We’re happy to now help Appirio expand their brand and team globally.”

To serve its growing base of global customers in a way that’s as innovative and elastic as cloud computing itself, Appirio founded the world’s first crowdsourcing community for cloud development. The community has added nearly 20,000 members across more than 60 countries since it was launched in February. CloudSpokes is the only community focused solely on multitenant public cloud platforms and applications, and matches companies who need cloud development work with a worldwide community of cloud experts.

Appirio, which works with enterprises to adopt, connect and extend cloud platforms like Salesforce.com, Google and Workday, already serves a number of global customers, including Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.

Jane Moran, CIO of Thomson Reuters, said, “Thomson Reuters leverages the power of cloud computing to drive our business. Salesforce.com is one of our core platforms, and we have relied on partners like Appirio to implement successfully. We’re happy to see cloud innovators like salesforce.com actively supporting their ecosystem and we’re excited about Appirio’s move into Europe.”

About Appirio
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 20,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company’s expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Appirio Helps Universities Learn the Collaboration and Cost Benefits of Google Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Universities Look to Google and Appirio for Cloud-based Messaging and Collaboration Capabilities

San Mateo, Calif. - June 27, 2011 - Appirio, a cloud solution provider, today announced it is working with several universities to bring Google Apps to students, faculty and alumni for better messaging and collaboration. Some of the latest universities to deploy Google solutions with Appirio’s guidance include Brown University, New York University and Tyler Junior College.

Many of these organizations moved to Google Apps because of the significant cost savings that Google Apps could provide compared to in-house or on-premise systems from Microsoft, Novell and Sun/Oracle. Moreover, these universities are now moving beyond cost savings and enjoying the other benefits of Google’s cloud-based service, including:

Better access and usability on mobile devices
99.9 percent uptime with no planned downtime for maintenance or service windows
Quicker servicing and provisioning of accounts to increase service levels
Google Docs and Sites for student/faculty collaboration

As a Google partner and reseller of Google Apps, Appirio is on its way to moving more than a million students, alumni and staff to the cloud at educational institutions in the U.S. and Europe. Through these experiences, Appirio has created dozens of technical assets, templates and unique intellectual property that help organizations achieve top performance with their Google Apps implementations at a lower cost with better user adoption.

Quotes:
“With 145,000 active email accounts, our previous on-premise solution was allowing only 100MB of storage per student mailbox. With the exorbitant cost of additional storage, we jumped at the opportunity to move to a lower-cost option. Appirio helped us roll out Google Apps to our entire student community in just a few weeks. Since then, students continue to discover the full potential that Google Apps provide for sharing and collaborating, and we’ve estimated that our hard cost savings with Google Apps will be more than $30,000 per year.” - Larry Mendez, CIO, Tyler Junior College

"Working with undergraduate research assistants and international faculty collaborators, I used Google Sites to organize a research project. All of us could see the materials that the student researchers collected about two plays that traveled the world. Research materials included reviews, YouTube interviews with producers and actors, and fan websites." - Susan Smulyan, professor, Department of American Studies, Brown University

“Appirio continues to solidify its position as a top vendor for universities migrating to Google Apps. Just like our enterprise customers, the universities we work with demand optimal uptime, premium security, a wide range of collaboration capabilities and easy mobile access for users. Google Apps provide a platform to meet all of these needs at a lower cost and with less time required for IT management than other solutions. Students are also happy because it’s something they’re already well accustomed to using outside of school.” - Brad Stark, head of the Google Center of Excellence at Appirio

Useful Links:

About Google Apps for Education
Google Apps for Education is a communication and productivity suite that includes Gmail, Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Docs and Spreadsheets (online document hosting and collaboration), Google Sites (team site creation and publishing), and more. For more information, visit: www.google.com/apps/edu

About Appirio
Appirio is a cloud solution provider that offers technology-enabled professional services supported by a team of 300+ cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a 10,000 person-strong global (cloud developer community). Appirio's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as AlwaysOn, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner and IDC. Since the company was founded in 2006, Appirio has helped more than 200 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon, including companies like Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware. Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Media Contact:
Daniella Klopocki
SHIFT Communications
Phone: 415-591-8459
Email: dklopocki@shiftcomm.com

Appirio’s Mobile Practice Introduces New Mobile Application Framework

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:01:00 +0000

New Framework Makes It Easier, Cheaper to Build and Manage Native iOS Apps for Salesforce CRM

San Mateo, Calif. - June 13, 2011 - Appirio, a cloud solution provider, offers a set of mobile-focused services that help enterprises more easily and cost effectively architect, develop and manage mobile apps using the power of public cloud platforms. Today Appirio announced a new mobile application framework underpinning these services, which enables consultants and customers to build custom, native mobile apps without writing native iOS device code. The framework leverages the Force.com cloud platform to help manage mobile apps in real-time without requiring any redeployment.

“Companies that can harness the power of the cloud and mobile in a smart way will get the best of both worlds,” said Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer at Appirio. “Unlike web apps that happen to run on mobile devices, mobile cloud apps give companies a better way to centralize the control and the maintenance of apps while taking advantage of the cool features, performance and offline capabilities that only native apps offer.”

Appirio’s mobile-specific technology-enabled service offerings were created based on engagements with companies like RehabCare, Brown-Forman and VMware where Appirio helped to create and deploy mobile apps to make employees more productive, sales professionals more effective, and customers more engaged.

A Better Way to Build and Manage Mobile Cloud Apps
Appirio’s new mobile application framework allows developers with little or no iOS experience to create solutions that combine the speed and usability of a native mobile app with the flexibility and manageability of the cloud. It also enables iOS apps to be updated in real-time, in the field without needing to redeploy. There's no need to re-compile, re-test, and re-deploy code, so there is significant time savings when maintaining and enhancing these apps.

The framework, which is part of Appirio’s growing cloud asset library of tools and technologies, also offers a foundation for Force.com developers to create any type of app template that consultants or admins can use to extend the functionality of their Salesforce.com sales, service and collaboration cloud investments.

Using this framework, Appirio has already built pre-existing templates for field surveys, location-based apps, time and activity tracking apps, as well as search and display apps. These templates will be used by Appirio’s own internal cloud experts who are certified in Salesforce.com and Apple solutions.

These frameworks will also be used by a growing network of third-party developers from the CloudSpokes developer community. CloudSpokes is a crowdsourcing community for cloud development founded by Appirio in February, which has since grown to nearly 10,000 members. The CloudSpokes community has already produced a native iPad app that allows users to “find” and “check-in” to nearby salesforce.com accounts, and there are more iOS challenges currently underway.

Useful Links:

View a demo video
View a video on how an Appirio customer uses iPads in the enterprise
Read our blog
Explore the cloud asset library
Follow us on Twitter
Join CloudSpokes

About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider that offers technology-enabled professional services supported by a team of 300+ cloud experts and a 10,000 person-strong global cloud developer community (www.cloudspokes.com). Appirio's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as AlwaysOn, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner and IDC. Since the company was founded in 2006, Appirio has helped more than 200 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon, including companies like Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware. Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Media Contact:
Daniella Klopocki
SHIFT Communications
Phone: 415-591-8459
Email: dklopocki@shiftcomm.com

Appirio Sponsors Benefit Concert for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital at Dreamforce 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:16:00 +0000

Cloud Provider’s Silver Lining Program Continues Philanthropic Efforts for the “Future of the Cloud”

San Mateo, Calif. - June 2, 2011 – Appirio, a cloud solution provider, today announced it would be among one of the top sponsors of The Concert for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital being held in conjunction with Dreamforce 2011. Last year the UCSF benefit raised more than $3M to build a new home for what will be one of the country’s best children’s medical facilities when completed in 2014. The donation from Appirio’s Silver Lining Program is part of Appirio’s ongoing focus to use the company’s time, talent and technology for social good. The benefit concert will be held on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

Appirio’s Silver Lining Program was created in 2010 as a way to mobilize and support employees to make a measurable impact on the communities where they work and live. This year’s program focuses on the “Future of the Cloud,” supporting the youth who will be the next to guide and disrupt a new generation of business and IT. Aligning with Marc Benioff and the Salesforce.com Foundation by investing in the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital was a natural fit for the program.

Highlights from Appirio’s Silver Lining Program

Since the program’s inception, Appirio employees have contributed almost 4,000 hours through individual and group community service events across the U.S. and Japan.
Appirio and its employees have donated more than $200,000 in cash, product and technical services through the Silver Lining Program.
Appirio’s Future of the Cloud community service day on April 8 brought together almost 170 employees across 30+ states helping more than 38 organizations.
Appirio has become the trusted cloud advisor and partner for international nonprofits, including Architecture for Humanity and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Comments on the UCSF Sponsorship and Silver Lining Program

“Salesforce has been an inspiration on how to weave philanthropy into the fabric of a company’s culture, matched only by the passion of our own employees to give back to their communities. As we planned for our presence at Dreamforce this year, making an investment in the UCSF benefit was an easy choice and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.” - Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio
“Appirio has been a partner of the Salesforce,com Foundation for years, supporting not only our organization but working directly with many of the nonprofits we serve.” - Suzanne DiBianca, Executive Director of Salesforce.com Foundation
“The Appirio team has had a tremendous impact on our work to bring design, construction and development services to communities in need. Appirio’s technical guidance, the technology they’ve donated, and the hackathons they’ve staged on our behalf have helped us be more efficient with donations and have supported our field teams around the world.” - Molly Stack, Development Director, Architecture for Humanity

Useful Links

About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider that offers technology and professional services to help enterprises accelerate their adoption of public cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as 2010 On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 200 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Media Contact:
Daniella Klopocki
SHIFT Communications
Phone: 415-591-8459
Email: dklopocki@shiftcomm.com

Appirio Recognized for Standout Technology, Executive Leadership and Company Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Recent Industry Accolades from Notable Organizations Showcase Company’s Market Leadership

San Mateo, Calif. - May 3, 2011 – Appirio, a cloud solution provider, continues to be recognized for its market leadership in cloud computing and its strong rapport with customers, partners and employees. In 2011 thus far, Appirio has earned recognition from organizations such as Computerworld, Gartner and SIIA on a variety of fronts. These include Appirio’s impact on customer engagements, its executive leadership and strong company culture, as well as the company’s integration technology and new cloud developer community.

“The benefits of cloud technology are becoming widely documented and we’ve been fortunate enough to work with the best customers, partners and employees in the industry,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “We’re encouraged by the continued recognition of not just Appirio’s technology, but also for our commitment to being a different type of service provider in the cloud world.”

Appirio’s recent recognitions include:

The San Francisco Business Times’ Best Places to Work: Appirio was named a “Best Place to Work” in the Bay Area for the second year in a row.
Computerworld Honors Program: Appirio’s customer, RehabCare, was named a Laureate for the innovative ways they’re using cloud and mobile technologies to transform a business and the healthcare industry.
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards Program: Appirio’s CEO, Chris Barbin, was named a semifinalist in Northern California for demonstrating excellence and extraordinary success in areas such as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to businesses and communities.
CODiE Awards: Appirio’s new cloud service broker technology, CloudWorks, was recognized as a finalist in the Best Integration Solutions category.
Gartner Cool Vendor: Appirio was again named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner, this time in the Application Development space for its work with CloudSpokes, a new crowdsourcing community for cloud development founded by Appirio.
OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies: Appirio was named by AlwaysOn to their OnDemand 100 List for the second year in a row.

About Appirio

Appirio Connects Jive and Salesforce for Integrated Social CRM

noreply@blogger.com (Appirio) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:07:00 +0000

Introduces New Collaborative Selling App, the First in a Series of CloudWorks-Powered Jive Apps

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - March 31, 2011 (Gartner Customer 360 Summit) – Appirio, a cloud solution provider, today announced a series of CloudWorks-powered Jive apps that will integrate critical business information from Salesforce CRM with the collaboration capabilities of Jive Social Business Software for collaborative sales and customer service. The first of these apps improves sales productivity by enabling collaborative selling, where sales teams can work together with employees from across the entire company to more easily close sales opportunities. Appirio’s collaborative sales app is currently available to Jive 5 beta customers and will be available to the broader Jive community in the Jive Apps Market once Jive 5 is generally available.

“Jive 5 and the Jive Apps Market are designed to bring unprecedented innovation and value to the Social Business Software user through the introduction of consumer and business applications for the enterprise,” said Chris Morace, SVP of business development at Jive Software. “Our customers want to use Jive to collaborate using information from all of their business applications. That is why we’re excited that Appirio’s series of Jive Apps will bring Salesforce and Jive’s Social Business Software together for the first time.”

“Appirio’s CloudWorks provides underlying broker technology that brings cloud platforms together, giving customers a way to decrease information silos and multiply the value of their existing investments,” said Glenn Weinstein, CTO of Appirio. “CloudWorks already brings together Google Apps and Salesforce CRM, and we’re excited to now have an offering for Jive customers as well.”

Built on the Jive 5 Apps Framework and using the capabilities of both the Salesforce and Jive platforms, the collaborative sales app will deliver relevant CRM data directly inside a salesperson’s Jive homepage. This offers sales teams an easy way to share details about opportunities they’re pursuing with others in a company, such as engineers, project managers, marketing and operations. By tapping into the wisdom of crowds, sales people can better engage with customers and prospects, tailor deals and close business faster. Click here to see a demo of the app.

The collaborative selling app is the first in a series of CloudWorks-powered Jive Apps. As part of Appirio’s partnership with Jive Software, additional applications that will be offered include apps for customer service, marketing, account management and partner management. Appirio will also provide consulting services to integrate Jive and Salesforce to meet enterprise customers’ unique business requirements.

About Appirio

Appirio Acquires Infowelders, a Salesforce.com Consultancy

noreply@blogger.com (Huy Nguyen) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Acquisition Expands Appirio’s Presence in the Midwest, Brings Additional Customers, Capacity and IP to Appirio’s Cloud Asset Library

SAN MATEO, Calif., March 21, 2011—Appirio today announced the acquisition of Infowelders, a full-service salesforce.com implementation consultancy specializing in sales cloud, service cloud and custom cloud development. The acquisition, expected to close by the end of this month, supplements Appirio’s core Salesforce CRM and Force.com consulting business. It provides Appirio with a stronger presence in the Midwest region, brings additional experience in mobile cloud development, and positions Appirio as the most certified cloud-focused partner of salesforce.com. The acquisition also brings to Appirio six packaged solutions that will become a part of Appirio’s Cloud Asset Library, a growing library of reusable assets used to accelerate Salesforce implementations.

“Demand for Salesforce and Force.com services has dramatically increased in the last year, as evidenced by our own triple-digit growth and the 92,000 companies that now count themselves Salesforce customers,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “The acquisition of Infowelders brings us a talented and experienced group of professionals who have proven themselves time and again in the cloud and Salesforce ecosystems.”

Infowelders was founded in June 2004 to focus on Salesforce CRM implementation projects at a time when salesforce.com had less than 14,000 customers and the Force.com platform was still in its infancy. Since then, Infowelders has completed more than 700 successful cloud projects with more than 250 customers, including companies like Brown-Forman, DirectBuy and Kindred Healthcare. As the Salesforce platform has become more sophisticated, Infowelders expanded their own services from simple data migration to complex global implementations with significant customization and mobile development.

Brown-Forman, one of the top 10 largest spirit companies known for brands such as Jack Daniel’s, has been an Infowelders customer for over a year and recently signed on with Appirio for a company-wide Google Apps and Salesforce Chatter strategy and roll-out.

“The Infowelders team did an incredible job getting us started with the cloud, but when you stop asking ‘why cloud?’ and start asking ‘how do I get wall-to-wall cloud?’ you need capabilities for longer-term adoption,” said Jennifer McClinton, Manager of Information Delivery at Brown-Forman. “Appirio’s experience in cloud strategy, governance, and its deep expertise across different cloud platforms can bring us to that next level.”

“We’ve built a strong business by hiring the best talent, focusing on the right partners and delivering tangible bottom line results for our customers - Appirio has that same reputation,” said Adam Wiebe, President and CEO of Infowelders. “We’re excited to be part of Appirio’s large and growing team of trusted cloud advisers, and look forward to serving a broader range of customers across the globe.”

The Infowelders acquisition comes on the heels of last month’s TRE3 Group acquisition which brought Appirio deep expertise and an active community that can help customers create high performance sales operations, sell more collaboratively and implement successful social CRM strategies. The TRE3 Group is now integrated into Appirio and is already taking an active role with customers.

About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider that offers technology and professional services to help enterprises accelerate their adoption of public cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as 2010 On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 200 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

New Community for Crowdsourcing Enterprise Cloud Development Now Open For Business

noreply@blogger.com (Sal Partovi) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:08:00 +0000

Appirio Introduces CloudSpokes, an Open Cross-Cloud Community and Marketplace That Helps Companies Find and Reward Top Talent for Participating in Development Challenges

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., February 14, 2011—Appirio today introduced CloudSpokes, a new crowdsourcing development community and marketplace that matches companies who need cloud development work with a worldwide community of cloud experts. It is the only community focused solely on multi-tenant public cloud platforms and applications, and the projects, topics and skills related to these different platforms. CloudSpokes offers a competitive and collaborative environment for contests, networking, discussions and jobs involving today’s hottest cloud technologies. It’s a place for companies to cost-effectively find and reward top talent, and for developers to get recognized for their expertise as well as learn new skills from like-minded peers.

CloudSpokes is an open community created by Appirio, a U.S.-based cloud services brokerage that has helped more than 200 enterprises move their IT systems to the public cloud and is disrupting the traditional global systems integrator model. Appirio will play a foundational role in managing CloudSpokes and is pledging at least $1M in contest prize money. Contests are already available related to platforms and technologies such as Force.com, Heroku, Twilio, Google Apps and AppEngine, Amazon Web Services and HTML5 with more coming soon.

“History has proven that crowdsourcing is one of the most effective ways to spur innovation,” said Dave Messinger, chief architect and evangelist for CloudSpokes at Appirio. “There are already some great communities like 99Designs, TopCoder, oDesk and uTest for certain parts of the application lifecycle, but none focus solely on using public cloud platforms to build and deliver enterprise-class work product. The cloud’s rapid growth and innovation has created a need for a community like CloudSpokes to complement these other sites.” Messinger was chief architect and an early driver of TopCoder, who helped pioneer the contest model and grow that community to more than 280,000 members.

Here’s how it works:

Companies who need cloud development work can sponsor a challenge on CloudSpokes, giving developers a way to earn cash rewards, test and prove their skills for badges and other recognition.
Challenges appear on a list visible to all developer members, along with the award amount and pre-defined success criteria so all participants are aware of how they’ll be judged.
Submissions are scored by a peer review board and awarded to the best submission. Those participating in the challenge can then see other submissions and learn from their peers.
The developer members’ public profile is updated to include challenge history, recommendations, and badges to build their profile inside the community and among potential employers.

"There are many crowdsourcing sites but only CloudSpokes had the foresight to target the rapidly expanding cloud arena across so many different providers," said Wes Nolte, a London-based award-winning cloud developer and author. "With CloudSpokes, you have an army of experts distributed across the world working to solve the same problems, with the same tool set, without the hassle of trying to set up shop and coordinate them. For us technology junkies, it’s a chance to learn, to help others learn, and to compete."

"Developer communities will play an increasingly important role in helping cloud vendors provide a higher level of service to their enterprise customers,” said Stephen Hendrick, group vice president of Application Development and Deployment research at IDC. “The ability to tap into cross-cloud communities can help companies access a broader array of talent that they may not have within their own ecosystems."

To sign up as a member of CloudSpokes or inquire about sponsoring a contest, visit www.cloudspokes.com. The first 500 new members that sign up will receive a $10 gift certificate to the CloudSpokes store on www.zazzle.com/cloudspokes. To hear more about CloudSpokes and upcoming contests, follow the community on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cloudspokes.

Useful Links:

About Appirio

Appirio Selects RehabCare As Cloud Pioneer of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Sal Partovi) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:20:00 +0000

Healthcare Company, its CIO and Vice President of Information Services Honored for Using Cloud and Mobile Technologies to Improve Patient Care and Transform an Industry

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Dreamforce 2010, December 8, 2010—Appirio has selected RehabCare as Cloud Pioneer of the Year, an annual award given by Appirio to companies and individuals that demonstrate leadership in cloud computing initiatives and a commitment to moving their business forward using public cloud platforms.

RehabCare is a leading provider of physical rehabilitation program management services in more than 1,260 hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and other long-term care facilities in the U.S. They own and operate 35 hospitals, employ more than 18,000 people and report $1.6B in revenue. RehabCare’s commitment to using cloud-based and mobile platforms to improve patient care while growing their business and staying ahead of complex healthcare regulations stood out among more than a dozen nominated organizations.

“We view our technology investments as core to our company’s future and critical for patient care, and we think it can be a model for others in this industry,” said Dick Escue, CIO of RehabCare. “Using cloud computing, we can do things now that we wouldn’t have even thought possible two years ago. We see it as a huge differentiator for our company and the care we can provide.”

Over the past year, RehabCare has invested in building out an integrated technology platform that has dramatically improved their patient intake and referral process, the way they track, benchmark and improve rehabilitation procedures, and the way they report and communicate progress to Medicare, patients and their families. RehabCare has standardized on platforms, such as Salesforce, Force.com, Google Apps, and Google Health, and are in the process of developing a comprehensive cloud-based Electronic Medical Record platform that will begin rolling out next year. They’ve armed thousands of therapists with iPhones and iTouches and have been highlighted by Apple for their use of the iPad in healthcare.

Appirio’s Cloud Pioneer awards program was introduced earlier this year to recognize the champions and change agents among Appirio’s customers - those who recognize the unparalleled 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. Other 2010 Cloud Pioneer award winners include individuals at AIG Edison, Dolby Laboratories, DeVry University, Dunkin Brands, Japan Post Network and Perceptive Software.

“The recipients of Appirio’s Cloud Pioneer award illustrate the potential of cloud computing to shape business strategy, accelerate innovation and drive competitive advantage,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “The executives and IT team at RehabCare who are applying cloud and mobile technologies throughout their business exemplify every one of these benefits. We are privileged to work with them and all of our Cloud Pioneers.”

Appirio’s 2010 Cloud Pioneers

Dick Escue and Jayson Chitwood (RehabCare), Tohru Futami (AIG Edison Life), Mary Ann Lusk and John Cunningham (DeVry University), Curtis Hodge and Scott Sullivan (Dolby Laboratories), Michael Wordell, Erik Astin, Greg O’Connor and Jon Cohen (Dunkin Brands), Neale Wooten (Perceptive Software), Yoshihiko Ohta (Japan Post Network)

About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider offering products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by Businessweek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 180 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware, as well as the 5,000 companies that use Appirio's products to connect and extend cloud platforms. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

FinancialForce.com Announces Agreement to Purchase Appirio Professional Services Enterprise Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Sal Partovi) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:20:00 +0000

[Partner Press Release]

San Mateo, CA, December 07, 2010: FinancialForce.com, the global leader in online cloud accounting solutions built natively on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, today announced an agreement to purchase the PS Enterprise cloud solution from Appirio. The acquisition will extend FinancialForce.com's strategy of providing complementary solutions built on the Force.com platform. Together, the solution sets create the first end-to-end solution for services for project-based companies on the same cloud platform.

Appirio SalesWorks Gets Social, Brings Salesforce Chatter Into Google Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Sal Partovi) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:17:00 +0000

Now with Salesforce Chatter, SalesWorks Helps Sales Professionals to Collaborate and Close More Business

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Dreamforce 2010, December 7, 2010—Appirio SalesWorks now provides access to Salesforce Chatter feeds on contacts, accounts, and opportunities directly within Google Apps for the Enterprise. By presenting Chatter feeds to sales professionals within their email and calendar at the exact time they need it, SalesWorks can help a sales team build better relationships, have more informed conversations, and most importantly, close more business.

SalesWorks enables users to view Chatter and other Salesforce information they have access to by using the trusted security and sharing models built into the Force.com platform. This granular sharing and security model allows customers to specify who has access to what information, and is what makes Chatter a great choice for enterprise collaboration.

With SalesWorks, customers can dramatically increase collaboration across the organization. In addition to providing access to Chatter feeds inside an email message and calendar appointment, Chatter feeds can also to be viewed as a sidebar in Gmail or Google Start Page, giving sales professionals even more ways to comment and participate in Chatter conversations.

SalesWorks is currently optimized for Salesforce users who are using Google Apps, but can be extended to other enterprise cloud applications. Appirio SalesWorks, announced in September, is now available with Chatter and exemplifies the rapid innovation possible with cloud technologies like Force.com and Google Apps.

Quotes:

“Salesforce Chatter is an incredibly powerful sales tool, and now that it can be presented and used alongside Google Apps, users can access all the information they need at the moment they need it. We ourselves saw a huge jump in Chatter participation when we deployed SalesWorks internally. The number and frequency of people chattering inside our company increased dramatically leading to more and better sales activity.”
- Jim McLoughlin, SVP of Sales, Appirio

“The next generation of enterprise cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. Technologies such as SalesWorks exemplify how these trends are taking root throughout the enterprise.”
- Kendall Collins, Chief Marketing Officer, salesforce.com

Useful Links:

About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider offering products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by Businessweek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 180 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware, as well as the 5,000 companies that use Appirio's products to connect and extend cloud platforms. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Majority of Cloud Adopters Report Cloud Solutions Are Better Than Their On-Premise Counterparts, According to Appirio’s State of the Public Cloud Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Sal Partovi) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:15:00 +0000

New Survey of Cloud Adopters Addresses Misconceptions, IT’s Role in Cloud Adoption and Highlights Emerging Opportunities and Challenges

SAN MATEO, Calif., October 27, 2010—Appirio a cloud solution provider, issued results from its first State of the Public Cloud Survey, providing new insight into adoption trends, market misconceptions and the emerging challenges and opportunities for adopters of public cloud applications and platforms. Rather than another general market survey on cloud computing, this survey targeted more than 150 IT decision makers at mid-to-large sized companies that had already implemented at least one of the leading SaaS applications or cloud platforms. Conducted by a third-party firm, the survey uncovered valuable insights from companies that have already begun their move to the cloud.

“Companies leading the charge on cloud computing can teach the broader market a lot about what’s real, what’s hype and what to expect when you move more of your IT to the cloud,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. “Cloud computing is a highly valuable but disruptive technology, and the enterprises that will be most successful with the transition are those who can learn from the experience of others and look beyond the challenges of today.”

Adopters Bullish on the Cloud’s Impact, Address Top Cloud Misconceptions
Appirio’s survey results show that experienced cloud adopters see public cloud solutions as a significant improvement from their traditional on-premise counterparts, and cite the cloud’s positive and strategic impact on their business and IT organization:

More than 60% of cloud adopters say cloud solutions are better than on-premise in terms of availability, total cost of ownership, ease-of-integration, ease-of-deployment and time-to-value.
83% agreed that cloud solutions have helped them respond faster to the needs of their business.
29% strongly agreed that cloud solutions have changed the way they run their business.
Nearly 40% say future cloud adoption will be part of an overall business transformation, 65% say it will be part of an IT transformation.

Given the positive experience of cloud adopters, it may not be surprising to see that adopters label many of the most common fears about cloud solutions as “misconceptions.” Twenty-eight percent of survey respondents say that cloud security is the number one misconception about cloud solutions, with integration challenges (15%) and lock-in (13%) coming in a distant second and third choice. More than 35% of respondents said IT leadership is the primary driver of cloud misconceptions, more than triple the number who called out traditional vendors (10%) or media and analysts (6%) as the driver.

Future for Cloud Adoption Looks Bright, IT Playing a Greater Role
Cloud adopters are more aggressive in their near-term and long-term adoption plans than what general market data indicates. Today, 22% of cloud adopters said they had more than 50% of their IT in the public cloud; and 68% expect to have the majority of their IT in the public cloud within three years. While nearly every analyst group predicts tremendous growth for cloud computing in the next three years, they’re typically much more conservative about how much of IT moves to the public cloud in that timeframe.

IT has often been portrayed as on the sidelines when it comes to cloud adoption, with business leaders using cloud applications as a way to get around IT. However, cloud adopters paint a much different picture:

70% of cloud adopters say IT was a driver in the decision-making process to move to the cloud, and nearly 80% expect IT will be a driver in the future.
70% agree that cloud solutions have “changed the role of IT within the business - IT is now seen as a true business enabler”, and 40% strongly agree with this statement.

New Challenges Emerge for Cloud Adopters
Security, compliance and manageability remain priorities for improving cloud applications, just as they continue to be priorities for existing, on-premise IT solutions. However, a new set of challenges are beginning to emerge with cloud adopters, including cloud-to-cloud integration, bringing information to mobile devices, and reducing SaaS silos. More than 73% of respondents selected each of these three areas as an important or very important priority. Overall, more than 65% of respondents said enhancing their cloud applications was a high or essential priority in the context of their broader objectives. Only 3% rated it a low or non-priority.

A free copy of Appirio’s State of the Public Cloud report, including full data and commentary, can be downloaded at http://thecloud.appirio.com/StateofthePublicCloudWhitepaper1.html. Additionally, an infographic laying out the key highlights is available at http://appirio.com/company/images/survey.gif. Appirio has also created a short video about the survey, which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQXK7COcf6A.

About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider offering products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as 2010 On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 180 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware, as well as the 5,000 companies that use Appirio's products to connect and extend cloud platforms. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.