It’s been nearly 3 years since my last operational role, when the phenomenal Cloud Sherpas’ 7.5-years-run culminated in an acquisition by Accenture. Now I’m back at it, only this time as the CEO of one of the fastest growing global Cloud Solutions Providers – AllCloud.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been asked many times why I’m doing this and how come I’m so excited about this opportunity, even more than I was back in the Cloud Sherpas days. To answer these questions, we have to go back to the early days of the Cloud, when Cloud Sherpas was a pioneer in the Cloud Solutions Providers space.
When Cloud was in its infancy
When we just started thinking about Cloud Sherpas back in 2007, Cloud was in its infancy. Although Salesforce was already growing fast and NetSuite was there as well, Cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google were just starting to build their Cloud business. There were very few Solution Providers such as Cloud Sherpas, most of them dedicated to one vendor or another, and nearly none of them looked at the market and thought (like we did) that being a multi-vendor Cloud Solutions Provider was where the opportunity lies.
The big research firms like Gartner, IDC, and others were already predicting then that the Public Cloud Services market would grow very fast, but the forecast was still at $13B for 2008, though expected to reach $87B by 2015 (the year Cloud Sherpas was sold). In 2018 the top 8 Public Cloud vendors’ revenue is expected to amount to nearly $80B, with companies like AWS and Salesforce, for example, estimated to show phenomenal growth rates at over $20B and $10B in revenue, respectively.
Now, consider this: at these growth rates the market is changing by the minute, and I mean that quite literally. Not to mention the Public Cloud market is finally entering the mainstream with enterprise Public Cloud being adopted by a high double-digit percentage of the market. Therefore the need for high-skilled and certified professionals to help these mainstream adopters is growing exponentially.
Then came AllCloud
Our ‘romance’ had begun a few years back when I received an unsolicited LinkedIn invite from one of its founders, Yosi Frenkel. Yosi wanted to start a Cloud Sherpas-like business and had already identified some of the leading partners in the region to form this new organization, while also picking a phenomenal all-encompassing name for it – AllCloud. Once I got to know Yosi, I’d decided to help in whichever way I could, and soon enough found myself as an advisor to AllCloud and eventually joining as an investor and board member in 2015.
It was very easy for me to relate to the relentlessness of AllCloud’s founders, Yosi and Lahav Savir (who had also founded the AWS partner, Emind, that AllCloud had acquired in 2015); moving fast, taking risks, and braving unchartered territories without hesitation are just a few of their infectious characteristics. I suppose I found AllCloud to have a very similar DNA to the one we had created and maintained at Cloud Sherpas, and the rest was history.
A future of innovation & growth
There is a unique window of opportunities for AllCloud. On the macro level, there are the obvious trends we all see: the Public Cloud market is growing in leaps and bounds with IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS segments eclipsing $160B by 2020, not to mention our specific partners, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle-Netsuite breaking record growth rates with over $30B combined in revenues during FY17. On the micro level, the Cloud Solutions Provider market has seen a slew of consolidation, starting with the likes of Cloud Sherpas, Appirio, and Bluewolf and continuing with dozens of smaller organizations. The confluence of these trends has left a void for global boutique Cloud Solutions Providers to not only ‘land grab,’ but further innovate in our space.
AllCloud’s vision has always been to become a global leader. For us, leading meant being the top partner in the regions and vendor ecosystems that we’ve decided to operate in. We have done so successfully to date in the Israeli, and more recently in the German market, but always had our sights set on the North American market. Furthermore, we bring a unique breath of fresh air to the market by servicing our clients with best-of-breed products and services up and down the Cloud stack – in Infrastructure, Platform, and Software-as-a-Service. Therefore, today we’re announcing the acquisition of Figur8.
Welcome, Figur8!
We met Figur8 during the latter part of 2017 and immediately connected with their two co-founders and leaders, Ojay Malonzo and Richard Lockson. These guys came out of the Salesforce professional services organization, and each in their own right was an absolute rock star. The impressive group of 40 certified consultants they’ve been able to recruit and retain along with an unbelievable roster of clients, not to mention the aligned set of company culture and values we found, all made the decision to move forward with this process that much easier for AllCloud.
Looking ahead
I am thrilled and proud to have the opportunity to lead this company in its next growth phase, and excited to be doing so with AllCloud’s incredible leadership and employee base. I simply love how I am told by so many that this is their second home or family. This is the type of organization that we set out to create, and it will continue to develop in the coming years.
I’d also like to mention our incredible partners – AWS, Google, Salesforce, and Oracle-Netsuite, among others, and our phenomenal customers (which we view as our partners as well) that have been on this journey with us and allowed us to continue to grow along with them. We are proud to have you all as part of the AllCloud family and look forward to many more years of continuous growth. I’ve gotten to know many of you over the years, but look forward to meeting the rest in the years to come.
Thank you!