Salesforce M&A, Google Cloud Data Center, Pureport Hire Top Cloud News

The final week of February is wrapping up with some important nuggets of cloud news. Of course, there’s more out there, including the impact of cloud on earnings at Dell and VMware. This roundup takes a closer look at some announcements that emerged this week from Pureport, Salesforce and Google Cloud.

Pureport Hires Red Hat Distinguished Engineer as CTO

Pureport, the cloud tech firm that interconnects sites and vendors without physical infrastructure, has lured a top engineer away from Red Hat, which IBM bought in late 2019.

Pureport’s Peter Sprygada

Peter Sprygada, who holds extensive expertise in cloud networking and open-source programming, has joined as the startup’s chief technology officer. He succeeds Doug Mittendorf, who now is a lead software engineer at Salesforce.

“Peter’s ability to transform network operations through automation, orchestration and seamless customer experiences will help us drive new standards in this market, and continue to position our platform,” Rich Lee, Pureport CEO, said.

Sprygada comes to Pureport from Red Hat, where for the past four years he held the role of distinguished engineer and served as the chief architect of the Ansible automation platform. Partners also may know Sprygada from his time at Arista and Cisco, among other companies.

At Pureport, Sprygada is tasked with leading the engineering and product management teams. He will oversee all product strategy and engineering, as well as the technical delivery of Pureport’s multicloud fabric platform. Sprygada’s efforts will directly benefit the managed services providers, VARs and other partners who team with Pureport.

“Channel partners are working daily with organizations faced with the challenge of how to effectively deliver today’s multicloud mandates across a seamless network infrastructure,” Sprygada told Channel Futures. “I’m eager to work closely with our partners to deliver cloud-like automation and orchestration to their hybrid and multicloud networking requirements.”

Pureport’s technology so far works with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud. Last September, Pureport achieved AWS Delivery Partner Status for AWS Direct Connect, supporting connections ranging from 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps.

Pureport helps channel partners with technical integration and provides them with training and education, co-branded marketing materials and more.

Sprygada has earned multiple patents that cover areas including network service discovery and automated network device configuration.

Salesforce Snaps Up Vlocity, Says That’s the Last Buy for Now

Salesforce has made another big acquisition but says its buying spree is nearing an end — at least for a while.

During its earnings call earlier this week, Salesforce said it has purchased Vlocity, a cloud and mobile software provider built on the Salesforce platform, for $1.3 billion. Nonetheless, Mark Hawkins, president and CFO of Salesforce, told investors and analysts the company doesn’t see “huge opportunity” to undergo more deals in the near future, according to multiple reports.

“It’s not what we’re working on,” he said.

Last year, Salesforce snapped up Tableau for $15.7 billion and Clicksoftware for $1.4 billion; in 2018, it also bought MuleSoft for $6.5 billion. Despite all that spending, the finance pros over at Motley Fool see no downsides — insight that partners can use as guidance as they consider their Salesforce strategies.

“Getting so many different disparate pieces to work together is no small task,” Nicholas Rossolillo wrote of the many deals, “but Salesforce is more than just making it work. Its legacy sales and service clouds are still growing by respectable percentages, and the newer marketing platform clouds are doing some serious heavy lifting. It’s clear that this cloud platform has become an integral part of many organizations’ software investment and operational strategy.”

To that point, Vlocity adds vertical market expertise in …

… industries including communications, media and entertainment, energy, utilities, insurance, and health and government.

“It is important for our customers to have products that speak the language of their industries,” Salesforce said. “Vlocity’s feature set will continue to enhance and complement Salesforce’s industry capabilities and product knowledge, open up new industry capabilities built on the Salesforce platform and provide customers with even more tools and expert guidance to digitally transform.

Vlocity’s David Schmaier

Vlocity CEO and founder David Schmaier credited the company’s system integrator and ISV partners as part of the reason it attracted Salesforce’s attention.

“Without the support, investment, shared vision and goals of customer success across our partner ecosystem, we could not have achieved so much so fast,” he wrote in a Feb. 25 blog.

Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research, called the Salesforce-Vlocity pairing “an interesting acquisition.”

“As more and more providers of CRM and CX software have leaned in on industry-specific applications, it doesn’t hurt for Salesforce to control the experience more closely,” he wrote in a Feb. 26 blog.

Indeed, Salesforce has been targeting specific verticals with its strategy and products, extending those capabilities to partners in many, but not all, cases. The corporation is known, though, for supporting the channel. Late last year, for example, it poured another $50 million into its Consultant Trailblazer Fund. It also looks to partners to build apps for enterprise users.

And as everyone knows by now, Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block has relinquished his position. He’s staying as an adviser to co-founder Marc Benioff, who’s fully taking over the role.

GCP Brings Computing Power to Utah

Google Cloud is rounding out the week’s major cloud happenings with the unveiling of its 22^nd data center, this one in Salt Lake City.

It’s the third in the western United States for the world’s third-largest public cloud provider, joining facilities in Los Angeles and The Dalles, Oregon.

“The Salt Lake City region offers immediate access to three zones for high availability workloads, and our standard set of products,” Jennifer Chason, director, and Davis Hart, product manager, wrote in a Feb. 27 blog. “Our private backbone connects Salt Lake City to our global network quickly and securely.”

Enterprises – through their GCP channel partners, too –now may integrate on-premises workloads with Google Cloud’s new region using Cloud Interconnect.

“This means that Salt Lake City-based customers can expand globally from their front door, and those based outside the region can easily reach their users in the mountain West,” Chason and Hart said.