5 Worst Cloud Washers Of 2011

InformationWeek

...That means that "cloud computing" is a new way of doing things that hasn't shaken down into a strict definition--it's still a moving target. At the same time, it's only fair to say that some vendors are exploiting that opening and cloud washing their products.

On Wednesday, Dec. 14, cloud consulting company Appirio will host the Cloudwashies—an "awards" event similar to the Razzies awards for bad movies. I've got my own list of nominees for top cloud washers--those parties who have done the most to try to make a previous generation product look and sound like cloud...

Appirio Storms European Cloud Market With Saaspoint Buy

CRN

Cloud provider Appirio extended its reach into Europe on Friday with the acquisition of Saaspoint, a cloud consulting services provider that gives Appirio a stronger arsenal of cloud consultants and a new physical presence in the U.K. and Ireland.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not divulged. The Saaspoint buy marks San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio's fourth acquisition this year and beefs up its global presence with a foundation in Europe in addition to the U.S., Japan and India....

Red Robot Labs acquires Supermono, Appirio buys Saaspoint to expand to the UK

TechCrunch

...Cloud solutions company Appirio, which just raised funding from Salesforce.com and other strategic backers, has acquired Saaspoint, a provider of cloud consulting services.

Saaspoint brings Appirio experienced cloud consultants, as well as a physical presence in the UK and Ireland, in an effort to aggressively expand across Europe.

Founded in 2005 by early Salesforce.com employees, Saaspoint boasts offices in the UK and Ireland, and has served more than 100 global customers including companies such as British Gas, Dell, eBay, Paypal, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and UBM...

San Mateo's Appirio to buy Saaspoint

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

...San Mateo-based Appirio says it is a "technology-enabled services provider that helps enterprises power their businesses with the cloud." London-based Saaspoint provides cloud consulting services and gives Appirio a physical presence in the UK and Ireland.

The deal marks Appirio's fourth acquisition in 2011 and adds to the company's plans to expand further into Europe. It has an existing footprint in the United States and Japan...

Appirio enters UK market with Saaspoint buy

CloudPro

Appirio today revealed it has bought Irish firm Saaspoint for an undisclosed sum.

The US cloud services company announced back in September it wanted to grow its base across Europe and now hopes picking up the cloud consultancy will make the transition an easy one.

“With the acquisition of Saaspoint today, [we] are one step further in our quest to be THE pure-play global cloud integrator,” wrote Chris Barbin, chief executive (CEO) of Appirio, on the company’s blog...

Appirio acquires Saaspoint for push into Europe

ZDNet

In its fourth acquisition of the past 12 months, cloud integrator Appirio has announced it is buying long-established European pureplay Salesforce.com integrator Saaspoint. The acquisition is Appirio’s first significant foray into the European theater, delivering on the international expansion promised after GGV Capital and Salesforce.com invested in the company in August.

Saaspoint was founded in 2005 by the founders of salesforce.com’s European operations and has its corporate administration in rural offices near Dublin, Ireland, with headquarters in London. It is regarded as one of Europe’s leading Salesforce.com integrators (see previous coverage), although its activities are mainly limited to Ireland and the UK, where customers include well-known names such as British Gas, CitiLink and Rentokil...

Shining the harsh light on Cloudwashing

Forrester blog
...Appirio, a cloud integration and customization solution provider has created the cloud computing equivalent of the Razzie Awards to recognize and call out those vendors it and its clients see as the most aggregious cloudwashing offenders. The first annual Washies will be announced next Wednesday night at The Cigar Bar in San Francisco and in true Razzie tradition, the nominees are invited to attend and pick up their dubious honors in person. I'm betting that Larry Ellison will be otherwise engaged.

While some will be offended to be nominated, the recognition here is meant to be a bit of a roast to those marketing ahead of their capabilities as well as a fun way to help spread market education about what truly is (and is not) cloud computing. It's understandable why the vendors who cloudwash their solutions do it, as the word can get you a meeting with a key customer and that customer at the end of the day may turn out not to need cloud at all and thus end up buying that vendor's traditional IT solution. Same with I&O pros. If calling your virtualized server environment cloud gets executive pressure off so you can better plan a real cloud strategy, mission accomplished. But this practice creates market confusion and can ultimately hurt the offender as their credibility takes a hit in comparison to true cloud efforts. I&O teams that claim private cloud for their VMware environment and aren't delivering self-service, cloud economics or automation, risk losing the trust with their developers who may just turn up their noses at IT and go straight to the public cloud. Try selling them on your true private cloud after that...

Google Wraps Internet Explorer in Chrome Clothing

WIRED

...Google declined to provide statistics on the adoption of Chrome and Chrome Frame inside businesses, but Russell says he had seen companies officially make the move to Chrome Frame, and others outside of Google are saying much the same. Appirio — an outfit that helps companies adopt new-age cloud computing services from the likes of Google and Salesforce.com — tells Wired that it too is working to move businesses, including Morgan Stanley, onto Google’s IE plug-in.

“We’re not surprised anymore when when see [IE7],” says Appirio chief technology officer Glenn Weinstein. “It’s dismaying to see how many large enterprises are still clinging to IE-only browser policies. You’d think that companies would have come around by now. But they haven’t.”...

Cloud integrators offer assessment, integration and ongoing support

SearchNetworkingChannel

...Cloud integrators that get into a client's business early enough have the ability to plan both current integration and further expansion into the cloud.

Appirio, for example, works at all stages of cloud development – strategy, rollout of SaaS apps, migration of customer business processes to the cloud, and cloud management. The company focuses on selling salesforce.com, Google and Workday.

While Appirio's services aim to assess the current integration landscape, the company also looks to identify future integration of architecture, as well as integration for cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-on-premise. The company sells this cloud integration management as part of a monthly contract...

Cloud Providers Locked And Loaded For Social Revolution

CRN

...By many accounts, the social revolution is already happening. But for solution providers, it's appears to be just the beginning.

"This has hit a nerve for companies that they were seeing but couldn't articulate," said Narinder Singh, co-founder and chief strategy officer for San Mateo, Calif.-based cloud provider Appirio, which just recently launched a social toolkit of apps to help bridge the divide between social platforms and add more functionality to customer social infrastructures.

Singh said the idea of a social enterprise has sparked customers' interest -- more so than with cloud computing. Singh said with cloud computing, there was always an "if," with social it's "when and how." And that has opened doors for Appirio to come in and ask, "How do we make you a social enterprise?"...

Appirio Launches Cloud Social Networking Connector Toolkit

Talkin' Cloud

Cloud integrator Appirio has announced a new Social Enterprise Toolkit designed to help customers connect new applications with existing social networks. In plainer terms, Appirio has released a set of 20-plus tools to help bring its customers closer with Salesforce Chatter, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the social web while still meeting their specific regulatory or feature needs.

Here are some examples of social media features and integrations the toolkit brings, as per Appirio’s press release...

Appirio ‘Honoring’ the Best of the Worst in the Cloud

Talkin' Cloud

Following in the footsteps of the infamous Razzie awards given to the people responsible for the worst movies of the year, cloud integrator Appirio has invited me to the inaugural Washies: an awards ceremony designed to publicly shame those vendors who claim a solution is “cloud” when it’s really just a fresh coat of paint on an aging legacy solution.

The idea, according to Appirio’s blog entry, is to have a little fun at the expense of those companies who are dead-set on capitalizing on cloud hype without taking the time or effort to really understand what that means. And thus far response from the cloud services channel and other IT pros has already been outstanding, the company noted, with early votes and nominees flooding in...

Appirio Digs Deeper Into Social Enterprise With Toolkit

CRN

Cloud provider Appirio has taken Salesforce.com's social enterprise vision to heart and at Cloudforce New York this week launched a social enterprise toolkit the company says breaks down social silos, boosts collaboration and spurs greater adoption of social enterprise tools.

Comprising nearly 20 social assets, some of which were built through Appirio's CloudSpokes crowdsourcing development community, the toolkit targets a trio of challenges inherent in any social-focused enterprise rollout: integration between new and existing applications and social networks, making new social applications engaging for users and ensuring compliance with company policies, said Appirio co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Narinder Singh...

Appirio Makes Salesforce Chatter + Twitter Integration into a Contest

ReadWriteWeb

To a rapidly increasing degree, Salesforce Chatter is becoming the communications platform for essentially all classes of business, in both the public and private sectors. There was a time when Salesforce tools were considered to be leveraged against Twitter and Facebook as social platforms, but for certain segments of the user base, that leverage is reversing itself.

Now the mobile application framework provider Appirio, which ReadWriteWeb introduced to you last June, is opening up a kind of persistent contest for the open source community, with a channel for distributing a new class of tools that would effectively leverage these consumer social tools on Salesforce's business social tool...

Appirio Social Enterprise Toolkit Links To Chatter

InformationWeek

Cloud integration specialist Appirio has introduced a Social Enterprise Toolkit, which is essentially a greatest hits collection of apps for Salesforce.com's Chatter.

The toolkit is a collection of software assets accumulated through many integration projects, as well as a developer crowdsourcing collaboration with CloudSpokes, said Narinder Singh, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Appirio. "A lot of them are new, added over the last few weeks or months, because we've been adding to the asset library so quickly," he said...

5 things entrepreneurs should know about the cloud

OC Register

...Bergeron presented at “The Power of The Cloud” event Monday evening along with Narinder Singh, chief strategy officer at Appirio and others before an audience of more than 100 local businesspeople and I.T. professionals . Both Ingram Micro, Orange County’s largest revenue earning company, and Appirio, a startup based in San Mateo, are looking to help companies move to cloud services.

Below I culled five key things entrepreneurs should know about the cloud from presentations and interviews with the speakers...

Consultants in the Cloud

The New York Times

...While Google has worked without a large consulting partner, it should be said that several smaller consultancies are working to encourage companies to adopt Google’s cloud-based office productivity software.

Among these are Dito, SADA Systems, Appirio and Cloud Sherpas. Each offers a somewhat different approach. SADA is reselling both Microsoft and Google products. Appirio offers Google along with a broad range of other cloud services for business, like Salesforce.com. Dito is making much of moving companies to Google’s Chromebooks, which are lightweight laptops built for cloud interactions. Cloud Sherpas is among the largest consultants stressing Apps, and it claims to have moved over 1 million people to Google Apps...

Cloud Provider Appirio To Recognize 'Cloudwashers'

CRN

Cloud solution provider Appirio is calling out the false cloud and is planning a tongue-in-cheek awards ceremony recognizing the year's biggest "cloudwashers," or vendors and organizations that have used the term "cloud" to describe products and services that actually aren't cloud at all.

Dubbed "the Washies," the awards will be "given to the worst offenders of painting over traditional IT technology with the word 'cloud,' even though it offers little-to-none of the benefits that cloud computing brings," Appirio wrote on its Web site for the Washies, through which it is also accepting nominations...

Salesforce.com and Model Metrics

Enterprise Irregulars

...I wondered if its announced acquisition of Model Metrics was a change in strategy. I asked Narinder Singh, co-founder at Appirio, and as he has blogged “Since early this year, Salesforce has aligned their entire company and all of their considerable marketing might around the social enterprise…..By adding Model’s mobile development and UI capabilities to their team, Salesforce will be able to make the social enterprise vision tangible for customers.”

In other words it extends Salesforce’s push on Chatter and acquisitions like Radian6.

Narinder adds “We are somewhat relieved to know they will be focused on driving the social enterprise and mobility for Salesforce (and therefore with us), instead of being our most worthy competitor.”...

The Invisible Social Enterprise: What Every Exec Needs to Know Today

ReadWriteWeb

In an article last year for the Sales Ops Council, I introduced the idea of the "invisible social enterprise," how employees are already using social networks to create real business value often without the knowledge of the executive team.

Things have changed a lot over the past year: Salesforce.com chose "Social Enterprise" as the theme for their Dreamforce 2011 conference, Google recently released their Google+ social network to enterprise customers, and more companies are using public social networks like Twitter as formal marketing and support channels to their customers...

5 Reasons Google+ Could Win the Social Enterprise Battle

Mashable

Last Thursday, Google announced that Google+ will be available for Google Apps users. This means that the millions of people using Google Apps for their businesses will now have access to the Google+ social collaboration platform.

With Google+’s unique features for search, selective sharing and rich communication, it offers consumers a very different user experience than the established social networks. For individuals, Google+ has quickly become a great place to build your interest graph — that is, find the latest content and people related to topics you’re interested in.

With its seamless integration with Google Apps, Google+ promises a very different type of social enterprise experience. In fact, Google+ has five unique advantages over other social business platforms...

Enterprise IT and megavendors: Cloud players angle in on bad marriages

ZDNet

...Nelson wasn’t the only one introducing himself to CIOs. Appirio Narinder Singh, chief strategy officer, was also making the rounds. I caught up with Singh, who was introducing Appirio, a cloud integration services outfit, to CIOs. Appirio, which doesn’t have any servers in its internal operations, may seem a bit extreme to CIOs who still think that buying hardware somehow relates to cloud computing (the private variety). But Singh noted it’s a marathon not a sprint. These CIOs may come around—they may have no choice.

These introductions to CIOs at large enterprises are seeding ventures today. At Gartner’s 2010 confab, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff finished his keynote and roamed the halls talking to CIOs for 8 hours. Gartner obviously noted since many of its themes could have doubled as a Benioff keynote...

Transformational change revolves around information: Lessons from Dreamforce 2011

SearchHealthIT

...The social enterprise, according to Benioff, is the weaving of social context into business. Social media is changing how we connect and share things in our personal lives and-increasingly-in business. Work is more productive when colleagues and customers can collaborate with each other online. This is one reason why Salesforce has made a push for private, internal collaboration with its Chatter initiative - a real-time collaborative tool that applies some of the same concepts from Facebook and Twitter.

As a Dreamforce attendee, I spent my time onsite thinking about how the social enterprise should be translated into the health care industry. Having worked for a large health care organization, it was easy to apply the takeaways to today’s medical world. For health care, the social enterprise translates into delivering information to patients more efficiently. By doing this, both health care organizations and patients will save time and be better equipped with data for better decision making. Here are a few things to consider...

Integrator Appirio creating waves

CloudPro

...From what I have seen, they appear to have a good appreciation of local needs. That's a good start and is supported by a pre-existing presence by both Salesforce.com and Workday, both of which are key partners for Appirio.

Oh and did I mention? The POC I saw of the merchandising app took ideas from Salesforce.com, Google maps, heat mapping, location aware photos all wrapped up in a simple process that works on a tablet device. It looks beautiful and its value is self evident. How often do we get to say that about enterprise grade apps? With that kind of 'stuff' in the works I can see Appirio scoring heavily in the UK. They will open up opportunities that cannot be matched by those working in the on-premise world.

Their progress will be a disrupting force in the enterprise consulting arena which I encourage others to watch closely. I wish them well because I see Appirio as closely aligned to customer success. Not in some fluffy PR way but by showing examples, asking questions and being good partners to their communities of interest...

Appirio hires Manish Sharma, promotes Lori Williams

Silicon Valley/ San Jose Business Journal

...Appirio Inc. said Tuesday it has added Manish Sharma and promoted Lori Williams to head its operations in Asia Pacific and Europe, respectively. They will both be general managers.

The San Mateo-based company is a cloud solution provider that helps enterprises build cloud-powered sales, service and IT organizations. It is looking to first build a significant presence in the UK this year...

Want a job? These 10 tech firms are hiring

Computerworld

...Cloud services firm Appirio has 20 job openings, and another 20 in the pipeline to add to its workforce of nearly 400, said Narinder Singh, Appirio's chief strategy officer.

Filling the new slots isn't easy, he added.

"If you look at the job situation in the middle of the country it's as bleak as everybody paints it," said Singh, who is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. "But if you look at the two coasts, we're having a hard time finding the right kind of skills and talent."

The company is recruiting across the nation and is seeking a blend of technical and customer service skills.

Technical skills sought for the new posts include Salesforce.com or Workday skills, as well as familiarity with Java, and/or Apex. People who have experience in applying those technologies to solve business problems are also sought.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio advertises its openings, and attends events where the right "people are gathering," such as the Salesforce.com Dreamforce user conference earlier this month...

Responsys, Appirio CEOs on Cloud Computing

Bloomberg

Dan Springer, chief executive officer of Responsys Inc., and Chris Barbin, chief executive officer of Appirio, talk about the outlook for cloud computing. They speak with Cory Johnson at the Dreamforce '11 conference in San Francisco on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West."

Exclusive: Yammer Now Works With Salesforce.com

All Things D

...Today, Yammer will announce that it will work with another application, and it’s a big one: Salesforce.com. The folks at Yammer used Force.com — Salesforce’s development platform — and Yammer’s own API to grab activity stream data from within Salesforce. Sales leads, deals, marketing campaigns and all sorts of other activity that gets entered into Salesforce.com become objects that can appear directly within a Yammer stream, which is essentially as easy to keep track of and interact with as a Facebook stream.

In fact, a Facebook stream is exactly what Yammer CEO David Sacks compares it to. “A few months ago we released an activity stream API that lets any application push activity stories into Yammer, the same way that Zynga can push items like the latest Mafia Wars score into your Facebook stream,” he says.

Yammer did the integration with help from Appirio, a cloud apps developer that gets tapped to do a lot of third-party integration work...

Why Do Clients Choose One Cloud Vendor Over Another?

Datamation

...for businesses looking to make the jump to a cloud deployment, it's not always that easy to get into the game. Even once an organization has made the decision to head to the cloud and selected their environment -- neither a matter of just checking boxes! -- a host of challenges concerning security, data migration and project management await.

So it's no surprise that the niche sector of cloud solution providers -- those companies that can help shepherd IT departments through the transition -- has become a growth industry.

One that comes highly recommended – by Google, in this case – is the San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio, founded in 2006. In the time since, Appirio has helped more than 200 enterprises and other organizations on their path to the cloud, offering a services portfolio that encompasses the implementation and management of deployments on Salesforce, Google, Workday and Amazon...

Workday launches Workday 14, wins Thomson Reuters deal

ZDNet

...Thomson Reuters, which has more than 55,000 employees in 100 countries, will use Workday's human capital management (HCM) and payroll tools. Workday started targeting companies with 1,000 employees and up, but is increasingly talking to larger enterprises with an average of 8,000 workers.

The news comes as Workday increasingly gains momentum. Appirio CEO Chris Barbin recently said that Workday has momentum in many accounts, but primarily for HCM. Barbin, however, expects Workday to get traction in financial tools at some point....

Next-Generation IT: Why We Need A Cloud Middleman

Forbes

The Internet has removed the middleman in many ways. It's a natural tool for disintermediation, allowing passengers to book their own plane tickets, readers to create their own clipping services or candidates to find their own job openings. But just as public cloud computing has brought the power of the Internet to large businesses, it has also created the need for a new type of middleman -- what Gartner has called a cloud services brokerage...

The 2011 CRM Market Leaders

destinationCRM.com

...Cloud centricity is hot right now, and analysts predict the temperature will soon rise for Salesforce.com-partnered firm Appirio. Wang praised the company for its "capability to move in fast and impact results." The low cost of Appirio's services make it a solid choice for companies of any size. "There's a lot of people going after the GEs of the world," Kaplan explains, "but there's not many going after the midmarket." And that's where he sees Appirio making its mark. With cash and quickness looming larger than ever, big companies would be well advised to keep their eyes on this smaller upstart...

Hiring Like It's 1999

Bloomberg Businessweek

...Recruiting tactics from the late 1990s are starting to make a comeback, too. Last year, Appirio hired a taco truck and parked it at Dreamforce, an industry conference for cloud computing professionals. Attendees couldn’t help but notice the signs on the truck saying that Appirio was hiring as they waited in line for free tacos.

When Dreamforce happens again later this month, Appirio plans to ply attendees with more food, but the company wouldn’t divulge exactly what it plans to serve. Appirio anticipates that about 25,000 people will attend Dreamforce, the cloud computing trade show organized by Salesforce.com (CRM). “We assume that 10 percent are actively looking for a new job,” says Narinder Singh, Appirio’s chief strategy officer. The company hired 110 workers in the first half of this year and is looking for another 140 by year’s end...

Appirio CEO talks Workday, SaaS momentum, IPO

ZDNet

...Appirio is a cloud consulting and services firm on a $100 million annual revenue run rate and a quest to enable the serverless enterprise.

The company is also pondering an initial public offering in the next six to 18 months to continue to fund its rapid growth. We caught up with Appirio CEO Chris Barbin to talk shop and cloud computing...

Appirio bringing Google Apps to more universities nationwide

ZDNet

...Appirio steps in to help the university with initial planning, tuning the platform’s architecture, the actual implementation, and training employees about the new capabilities. Ryan Nichols, vice president of solution marketing at Appirio, said that a lot of the existing platforms at these schools are “older and brittle…so we have to be more careful about the migration plan.”

One of the reasons why universities are moving to the cloud, particularly with Google Apps, isn’t too revolutionary: the promise of cost reduction. That’s fairly standard at this point.

Nichols also pointed out another reason: students are coming into college with different expectations as they are likely already educated in some sort of cloud collaboration. He also noted what impact this will have on the next generation of the virtual workforce...

Appirio Ties Together Apple iOS, Salesforce For Swift Mobile App Dev

CRN
...Cloud solution provider Appirio launched a new Mobile Application Development Framework on Monday that the company said ties together Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) iOS and Salesforce.com to ease the creation and deployment of apps to Apple's iPhone and iPad.

According to San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio, the Mobile Application Development Framework gives cloud providers and customers the ability to build custom, native mobile apps without the need to write native Apple iOS device code. Using Salesforce.com's Force.com cloud app development platform, the Appirio framework lets users build, deploy and manage applications for Apple iOS...

Five reasons why cloud computing is essential for health care

SearchHealthIT
...The core benefits of cloud computing match perfectly with the demands that health care IT departments are being asked to fulfill. By utilizing cloud-based platforms like Force.com, Google, Workday and Amazon, health care IT departments can shake-off the burden of supporting on-premise applications that don’t directly affect patient care. With more time and resources to focus on improving IT, these departments can better support patient-driven initiatives...

Appirio Helps Develop New Salesforce.com Mobile Apps

ReadWriteHack
...Cloud solution provider Appirio announced today a new mobile application framework that enables consultants and customers to build custom, native mobile apps without writing native iOS device code for extending Salesforce.com to mobile apps. The company has created four app templates that include common UI, data queries and gesture movements that can be used to assemble a custom app to do surveys, searches, time tracking and interact with geographic data. No doubt more will be on the way...

The Boss Can Build Apps Now

Fast Company
...Appirio's just released a software package that lets enterprise customers put together an iPad or iPhone app almost on a click-and-drag basis. The apps are hooked together using Salesforce.com's cloud-based systems, and pushed out "live" to business's iPad users....

Google Chromebooks Pit Local Loyalists Vs. Cloud Converts

eWEEK
...One of those places where Chromebooks thrive is at reseller Appirio, where the majority of their computing operations are run in the cloud. The company uses Google Apps for collaboration, Salesforce.com for customer relationship management and WorkDay for human resource management, CTO Glenn Weinstein told eWEEK.

Appirio is a pilot partner for Google's Cr-48 Chromebook, with 250 U.S. employees using the machines since January. With the exception of desktop sharing apps, such as Citrix GotoMeeting, Appirio workers used Chromebooks for just about every work function that involves a computer, including Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat.

Weinstein added that Appirio, one of Google's top reseller partners, would love to not only use Samsung and Acer Chromebooks in house, but to begin selling them to partners...

Google Chromebook pilots ahead: What we can learn from the CR-48?

ZDNet
...With those questions looming, we caught up with Glenn Weinstein, chief technology officer of Appirio. Weinstein handed CR-48s—a precursor to the Chromebooks coming June 15—to all 250 U.S. employees in a pilot to see what would happen. Appirio workers get a choice of a Dell laptop or Apple MacBook Pro. Weinstein wanted to see how the Chromebook would be used in the field.

It should be noted that Appirio isn’t exactly the average enterprise. It operates completely in the cloud, which makes sense because it integrates Amazon Web Services, Google Apps, Salesforce, Workday and other SaaS applications such as NetSuite. “We vowed that we would never have a server,” said Weinstein. “The entire business is operated in the cloud.”...

How Google Apps could boost Chromebook sales

CNET
...Meanwhile, Google Apps resellers, third parties that typically offer services such as training and migration to ease the transition to the technology, are champing at the bit.

"We've already seen interest in multiple Google Apps customers in moving to Chromebooks," said Glenn Weinstein, chief technology officer of reseller Appirio, which used Google's Cr-48 Chromebook prototype internally for its own business for three months. "The timing is good, and the interest is high. If we had Chromebooks today, I think we'd have interest tomorrow."...

15 Cloud Computing Firms to Watch: Security, Storage, Apps

Datamation
...Here, we have highlighted 15 promising cloud computing vendors that are carving out a niche for themselves in this emerging arena...San Mateo, Calif.-based Appirio is tackling the challenges of enterprise adoption of cloud computing from both the technology and consulting perspectives...

Appirio Turns Cloud Development Wheels With CloudSpokes

CRN
...Cloud solution provider Appirio has amassed a crack team of cloud developers through its two-month-old CloudSpokes cloud-focused, "crowdsourcing" initiative, and the community is continuing to thrive creating a new channel for companies looking for cloud development...

Appirio Makes Third Cloud Acquisition In Two Months

CRN
Appirio is on a cloud acquisition hot streak and Monday the cloud computing solution provider scooped up consultancy VMG, marking the third acquisition for Appirio in just two months...

ERP, Services, Telephony and Mobile

ZDNet
...In this situation, Appirio has built a cloud-based set of applications that utilize, seamlessly, information from multiple cloud sources via a single user interface. This point is quite important as the company did not try to mimic portions of ERP, CRM or email screen panels to fit on a reduced form factor. Instead, Appirio looked at the user’s business problem first and designed a custom user interface that pulled the appropriate data from various different cloud subsystems. The client in this case has approximately 3000 remote workers and possibly 80 desktop software users...

Jive and Salesforce.com Get Hitched by Appirio

ReadWriteWeb
...Appirio announced this week a new series apps that will integrate customer relation management information from Salesforce.com with the enterprise collaboration features of Jive. The first of these apps, part of Appirio's CloudWorks line, is based around what Appirio calls "collaborative selling."...

Salesforce To Buy Social Media Co Radian6 For $326M

The Wall Street Journal
... "It's crucial for companies to have technology that can monitor their customers," said Narinder Singh, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Appirio, a San Mateo-based cloud services provider and one of Salesforce's largest independent partners. "It's all about understanding and interacting with customers these days," Singh added...

Appirio Bulks Up Salesforce Presence With Infowelders Buy

CRN
...Cloud solution provider Appirio kept the acquisition train rolling Monday with the buyout of Infowelders, a Salesforce.com consulting and ISV player, a move that further sharpens Appirio's chops as a Salesforce partner...

Crowdsourcing: The New Comparative Advantage?

Crowdsourcing matched with markets offers an important and emerging tool in individual, corporate, and macro-economic collaboration. Participating in and exploring these mechanisms creates emergent experience and the potential for discontinuous innovation. The crowd is coming, its simply a question of if you will be leading or following it.

Quake and IT: Shaking in Tokyo, waiting in San Diego

When the earthquake struck in Japan mid-afternoon, Jason Park was in his office in Tokyo on the 39th floor. It started with a mild tremor, something that happens every few months. "We didn't think anything of it until the tremor didn't stop," said Park, who is general manager of Japan operations for Appirio, a San Francisco-based cloud services firm.

The SaaS list: A look at current on-demand favorites

Ask a bunch of enterprise experts what their favorite software as a service providers and you’re bound to get a lively debate—and a nice survey of the field. What follows is an list of the SaaS landscape and notable companies to track.

Cross-ocean clouds gain despite millisecond delays

"The company undertook the project with the help of Appirio Inc., a San Francisco-based firm that helps businesses set up cloud platforms. Appirio helped architect and tune the system to provide "almost the same level of response time" as the conventional system, said Futami."

Appirio Ups Social CRM Game With TRE3 Buy

"Cloud solution provider Appirio on Monday made its first acquisition, scooping up the TRE3 Group, which adds new collaborative selling and social CRM weapons to Appirio's cloud computing arsenal."

Loosely coupled crowd development

Enterprise Irregulars
"Last week saw the launch of an initiative that perhaps models the shape of this impending disruptive change. Cloud integrator Appirio [disclosure: a recent client] announced CloudSpokes, which aims to bring a crowdsourced, community approach to enterprise cloud development tasks"

Purolator dispatches call centre system to the cloud

IT World Canada
"Besides Salesforce.com’s own team, Innovapost also worked with a software-as-a-service company called Appirio Inc. based in San Mateo, Calif. to assist with the integration work."

Verizon, Time Warner Acquisitions: Harbingers for Change, Cloud Consolidation

CRN
..."It validates the inevitability of this shift [toward the cloud] and the desires of all players in this ecosystem...to figure out what their role is going to be in this world," said Ryan Nichols, vice president of solutions marketing and strategy for San Mateo, Calif.-based solution provider Appirio. Nichols added that Verizon acquiring Terremark and Time Warner Cable buying NaviSite show that it's important to every type of player -- telcos, systems integrators, solution providers, and more – to investigate the cloud market and that they're "waking up and realizing how different it is"...

How Many SaaS Apps – and Trading Partners – Are YOU Integrating?

Gartner
...B2B integration specialists (e.g., IBM, GXS, Hubspan, Liaison) and cloud-focused system integrators (e.g., Appirio, Bluewolf, Celigo) offer cloud services brokerage...

11 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2011

CRN
Mobile devices become the primary means of accessing enterprise cloud applications -- just as they've become the primary means of accessing the internet. Mobile internet usage is undergoing the fastest technology adoption curve in history...

Peninsula Jobless Rate Remains State’s Second-Lowest

Palo Alto Daily News
...Things are getting so hot in the cloud computing job market that a San Mateo company parked a taco truck in front of a software developer conference in San Francisco recently and handed out free tacos. The gimmick was just a way to get the company’s name, Appirio, in front of potential job candidates, said co-founder and chief marketing director Narinder Singh...

Tablets Will Rock the Enterprise This Year

ReadWriteWeb
...At Dreamforce late last year, we had breakfast one morning with the team from Appirio, a services company that helps companies integrate Salesforce.com into their enterprise environment. At the table sat an IT executive from a healthcare organization. He talked about the transition to an enterprise running on Apple hardware...

Government IT to the Cloud: Private Sector Lessons

GCN
...However, in the four years that Appirio has provided products and consulting services to large organizations moving to the public cloud, we have witnessed a significant shift in priorities. We encounter far less resistance from the CIOs and IT rank-and-file to the notion of migrating to cloud-based systems...

Cloud Computing: A Shift From IT Luxury to Business Necessity

Huffington Post
...Silicon Valley-based Appirio, a cloud solution provider that has helped hundreds of large enterprises adopt cloud computing, has had its fingers on the pulse of "the cloud" for the last four years. The change, over even the last two years, has been dramatic...