A how-to guide for Web APIs

SD Times

...Narinder Singh, cofounder of Appirio and CloudSpokes, said there are more hard-and-fast rules regarding APIs than just not changing them. CloudSpokes is a site where developers collect bounties on application requirements. Companies put up requests, typically along the lines of “use Google Maps' API and our Salesforce application to make maps of deliveries.” Due to the nature of modern Web development, almost every CloudSpokes solution uses at least a few Web APIs.

With all those developers building with Web APIs, Singh has seen what it takes to make a successful API. “[Cloud VOIP service] Twilio has done a good job with their API,” he said. “How do I know? Because every time we run a contest on CloudSpokes that has requirements like 'Pick two things and mash them up,' Twilio shows up a disproportionate number of times, even when the use case doesn't quite fit.”

For its Valentine’s Day contest, CloudSpokes asked developers to build applications that could get them a date. Three of the five final entries used Twilio. One of those applications, said Singh, automatically found potential suitors via dating sites, then connected the possible couple via VOIP using Twilio...

Appirio masters the automation of professional services

ZDNet

By now, we’re used to enterprise cloud application vendors paving their IPO roadmap with mega funding announcements, but last week saw the first such news for an enterprise cloud integrator. Appirio’s $60 million Series D round mostly from General Atlantic is a different order of funding from its previous total of $20 million. It’s especially notable in the context of my suggestion a week earlier that we might see “the virtual extinction of the traditional systems integrator” as the new breed of cloud integrators “scale up their own more customizable automation to address the high-end enterprise market.” Or as the Forbes headline more bluntly expressed it, Appirio Raises $60M to Take on Accenture...

Appirio Rises As Businesses Gaze Into The Cloud

The Wall Street Journal

...Appirio will face competition from big systems integrators like Accenture and Deloitte Development LLC that are several times its size, but Barbin believes that his company’s experience and its intellectual property give it a head start.

His team has done deployments of Salesforce.com, Google, Amazon.com and Workday software, among others, and will continue to add other specialties, possibly including Service-now.com, which offers software for IT management. Barbin said he gets eight to 10 requests a week from potential partners wanting Appirio to set up a practice around their software.

Appirio has offices in Japan, India, Singapore and the U.K., which it entered in September through the acquisition of Saaspoint, a Salesforce and Google partner, and expects to make more acquisitions...

Appirio Raises $60M to Take on Accenture

Forbes

...this is the opportunity for Appirio, whose mission includes helping customers get the maximum value from cloud implementations.

But Appirio is not just a group of high-paid consultants. The company actually has some innovative systems, such as CloudSpokes — a community of more than 35,000 developers who submit their solutions, then are awarded prizes by a panel of judges.

“One of our clients ran a contest to implement complex timezone calculations in their Salesforce application that would have cost several thousand dollars for a traditional systems integrator to do,” Appirio CEO Chris Barbin said. “But with CloudSpokes, we got multiple working solutions for just $750 in prize money.”..

Appirio founder on cloud-services firm's latest funding round -- and Chicago as a startup hub

Crain's Chicago Business

Appirio Inc., which offers technology and professional services to companies' cloud applications, today announced a $60 million investment led by General Atlantic, with participation from Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

Appirio is based in San Mateo, Calif., but the company's chief executive, Chris Barbin, spends at least a third of his time in Chicago, where he calls Glenview home.

Mr. Barbin, 41, who early in his career worked for Lake Forest-based W.W. Grainger Inc., says the latest round of funding is the largest of its kind in a cloud services provider and will allow Appirio not only to continue developing its crowdsourcing development platform, CloudSpokes, but also will enable the company to snap up other consulting firms...

Appirio raises $60M to be your one-stop cloud service shop

VentureBeat

...“We are seeing more companies going cloud first, saying they’re not ever going to buy another server,” said Chris Barbin, Appirio chief executive, “We’re also seeing companies making the migration to 100% cloud to reduce costs and help them scale faster.”

The five-year-old company started out helping big companies adopt cloud services such as Google Apps, Salesforce, and Workday. It then turned its attention to cloud app development, creating apps that tie together multiple cloud services and social networks. For example, it developed an app that integrates Google Calendar and contacts with Salesforce calendar and contact lists.

Appirio’s current offerings run the gamut of cloud services. The company will help you decide which cloud service is right for your company, build custom apps to work with the cloud, move your data to the cloud, and manage the cloud services it’s set up for your business. Essentially, it hopes to move your business away from in-house IT departments and run it solely in the cloud...

New-look integrator Appirio raises $60M

GigaOM

...The company built its business by diving into the then-relatively new world of software as a service, helping companies deploy and customize services from Salesforce.com and Google and ensuring that they worked with customers’ older legacy software.

Appirio Chief Strategy Officer Narinder Singh said the company’s revenue has grown 80 percent every year since it was founded almost six years ago, but would not comment on profitability...

Appirio: Cloud Makes Global Systems Integrators Obsolete

SiliconANGLE

...Narinder Singh, co-founder of cloud integrator Appirio, reached out directly to CIOs in a blog entry today to explain in no uncertain terms just how critical the global cloud system integrator model is to the future of IT – and just how painfully obsolete the existing global systems integrator business has become.

“After the first World War, the French constructed the Maginot Line - a set of fortifications, tanks obstacles and other fixed positions to defend the country. It was ‘extolled as a work of genius‘ up until the point of World War II, when it became clear that armies were structurally more mobile and agile than ever before. The Maginot Line was essentially driven around and France was successfully invaded in just a few days. The global systems integrator model is the Maginot Line of the cloud world,” writes Singh...

Cloud-consulting company Appirio wins $60 million

Reuters

Cloud-consulting company Appirio said it raised $60 million, in a round of funding led by General Atlantic, that will allow it to buy other companies and build out its development platform, CloudSpokes.

The funding, from General Atlantic and existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital, underscores the venture's continuing belief in the cloud, which allows businesses to buy computing resources such as software applications and data management much as they buy utilities. Previously, companies typically maintained their own computing infrastructure.

Appirio helps companies such as Avon, Motorola and Starbucks move to cloud-based services offered by companies including Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com and Workday...

Appirio Receives $60 Million In VC Funding, Plans More Acquisitions

CRN

Cloud provider Appirio said it has received $60 million in venture funding, much of which it plans to use for mergers and acquisitions to bolster its worldwide cloud consulting practice.

The funding, one the largest of its kind according to Appirio, will also be invested in its technologies and in its CloudSpokes crowdsourcing developer community, which has more than 30,000 developers in more than 65 countries.

The Series D funding is being provided by the investment firm General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital, Appirio said...

Appirio: Cloud Makes Global Systems Integrators Obsolete

SiliconANGLE

Narinder Singh, co-founder of cloud integrator Appirio, reached out directly to CIOs in a blog entry today to explain in no uncertain terms just how critical the global cloud system integrator model is to the future of IT – and just how painfully obsolete the existing global systems integrator business has become.

“After the first World War, the French constructed the Maginot Line - a set of fortifications, tanks obstacles and other fixed positions to defend the country. It was ‘extolled as a work of genius‘ up until the point of World War II, when it became clear that armies were structurally more mobile and agile than ever before. The Maginot Line was essentially driven around and France was successfully invaded in just a few days. The global systems integrator model is the Maginot Line of the cloud world,” writes Singh...

Cloud Software Use Accelerates, Says Citi

Barron's

Citigroup‘s Walter Pritchard today writes that the software-as-a-service, or SaaS, market for enterprise applications has arrived at a “ripping point,” by which he means that the practice of ripping out older software and replacing it with cloud-based, hosted applications, appears to be accelerating.

Based on a conversation with Appirio, a San Mateo, California systems integrator for SaaS, Pritchard observed there is a hefty amount of removal being done of older enterprise resource planning, or “ERP,” applications...

Next-gen integrators automate how you buy IT

ZDNet

...There’s still a demand from larger customers for sophisticated custom capabilities, but the new generation of providers such as Cloud Sherpas, Appirio and others offer that custom service on top of a bedrock of highly automated processes. As CEO of the newly enlarged Cloud Sherpas David Northington confirmed to me this week, “Work can be carried out offsite, in many ways automated. There’s clearly an industrialized approach that works in many segments of the market and people are quite happy with that.”..