OnApp Expands U.S. Cloud Service Provider Platform, Presence

London-based cloud platform provider OnApp used this week’s Cloud Connect 2012 conference in Santa Clara to announce that it’s growing significantly in the United States, adding a new office in Utah and executives across the country, and growing its U.S. support staff by another 50 percent.

OnApp builds its business on helping the more traditional channel organizations become infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud service providers — a company spokesperson told me at Cloud Connect it was OnApp’s consulting services and OnApp Cloud platform that turned PEER 1 Hosting into a cloud player, with many similar stories across the globe. OnApp also offers its service provider customers the ability to “productize” its content delivery network (CDN) platform from the cloud.

The new Utah office will further OnApp’s mission with its first Level 1 support staff in America, providing 24/7/365 telephone and e-mail support to customers when it opens officially later in February 2012, according to the press release. Additionally, OnApp signed on a North American director of sales in the form of Behshad Behnam and Chris Younger, specializing in pre-sales.

“Our software enables hosting companies and other service providers to create their own cloud and CDN services, so they can respond to the threat to their traditional business from large cloud providers. The North American cloud market has played a significant role in our growth to date, and our new office and sales team will help us build on that growth,” said Ditlev Bredahl, CEO of OnApp, in a prepared statement.

If a company like OnApp is ramping up its efforts to help service providers in the United States leap into the cloud (with OnApp boasting that one in three public clouds already use its platform), it doesn’t seem as though it will be very long before TalkinCloud hears from the company again. Of course, not using OpenStack may make it unfashionable in this market. Keep watching for more.