Google Apps, Salesforce partners Cloud Sherpas, GlobalOne merge

The consolidation in the cloud industry has filtered down to partners and integrators. Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne, two large cloud computing integrators, have merged.

Cloud Sherpas was named Google Enterprise's partner of the year and GlobalOne is a platinum status partner for Salesforce.com. The two companies combined will continue to count Google Apps and Salesforce as their largest customers. Smaller integrators are looking to poach customers from large integrators, who are venturing into cloud deployments but primarily are focused on on-premise applications.

The combination creates a global operation headquartered in Atlanta with offices in the U.S. and Asia. In addition, the bulked up Cloud Sherpas has raised $20 million in venture funding from Columbia Capital. Columbia Capital had invested $15 million in GlobalOne.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

GlobalOne CEO David Northington will become CEO of Cloud Sherpas. Meanwhile, Cloud Sherpas CEO Douglas Shepard will become president of the combined company's Google business unit.

The combination---GlobalOne was founded in 2007 and Cloud Sherpas in 2008---taps into two hot markets. GlobalOne's focus has been custom apps on Force.com, CRM implementations and Chatter deployments. Cloud Sherpas was primarily a Google shop.

A bulked up Cloud Sherpas should give the partner momentum as cloud computing proliferates in the enterprise.

Among the key facts about Cloud Sherpas:

• Offices in Atlanta, Brisbane, Chicago, Manila, New York, San Francisco, Sydney and Wellington.
• 1,500 clients.
• $40 million in venture funding.
• 300 employees.