Who's next on Appirio's cloud ISV list?
Cloud integrator Appirio is closely affiliated with several of the biggest cloud infrastructure and application service providers, particularly Google, Salesforce.com, Workday, Cornerstone, Amazon Web Services and (more recently) DocuSign.
Betting on the cloud
And it continues to get even closer to these companies.
In late September, for example, Appirio became the latest big cloud integrator to become a provider of Customer Success Services for Google Apps. Essentially, this means it can provide a higher level of service and technical support, proactive customer engagement and Google Apps advice and consulting.
But don't expect Appirio's cloud partner list to stay relatively short forever.
As its customers turn to cloud services to handle additional core business functions, such as financials or business intelligence, Appirio is planning to introduce more business practices to support that need, said Appirio CEO Chris Barbin.
"We believe we will introduce one, potentially two, new practice areas per year," he said.
In the past six to nine months, for example, Appirio has concentrated on building its expertise around Cornerstone, which helps companies recruit and manage talent, and DocuSign, the e-signature solution. Up next are business intelligence, analytics and IT service management.
In fact, Appirio has a list of top 10 cloud ISV prospects that it's watching closely Barbin won't share the entire list, but two of the names on it are IT service management company ServiceNow and technology business management platform provider Apptio.
It's easy for Appirio's team to identify prospects: it concentrates on what the company needs to manage its own fast-growing business. "We eat our own dogfood," Barbin said.
You can also be sure that Appirio will continue to watch several legacy software developers closely, particularly Microsoft.
Given Appirio's highly visible profile with cloud software developers through the crowdsourced development communities, CloudSpokes and Top Coder, a relationship that serves Microsoft's vast developer and ISV community make sense, Barbin said.
But don't expect the company to represent Microsoft 365 or Dynamics any time soon. Any relationship is more likely to focus on support for Azure developers. "We want to work with partners that are religious about their focus on the cloud worlds," Barbin said.
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