Terremark Cloud Veteran Invests in independenceIT, DaaS

By samdizzy

Former Terremark CFO Jose Segrera has invested in indepdendenceIT, a cloud company that promotes desktop as a service (DaaS) to VARs and MSPs. The move comes as a range of hosted desktop options — including Amazon WorkSpaces, dinCloud, Toshiba hosted Virtual Desktops, VMware Horizon Suite and Desktone — push into the IT market. So what potentially makes indepedendenceIT unique?

For starters, independenceIT focuses purely on the channel while some market alternatives include direct sales components. Also, independenceIT controls its underlying DaaS technology — supporting most of the major hypervisors (Citrix, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere) and cloud platforms (OpenStack, etc.) rather than bowing to a particular third-party hypervisor. Finally, MSPs can run independenceIT’s DaaS software in their own data center, or plug into the company’s hosted service.

Now along comes Segrera’s investment in independenceIT. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Talkin’ Cloud has heard independenceIT has raised about $2.5 million with this round of funding. I don’t know if Segrera’s investment covers that entire figure.

Either way, Segrera is a name to know in the cloud market. From 2000 to 2011, he was CFO of Terremark Worldwide, the cloud services provider (CSP) that Verizon purchased in 2011. Poke around and dig deep — you may discover that indepedenceIT already is the DaaS platform for some of the world’s Top 100 Cloud Services Providers. It’s a safe bet Segrera will help independenceIT to open more doors with major CSPs that serve small and midsize businesses.

Also worth watching: Talkin’ Cloud has heard independenceIT owns a trademark on the Cloud Workspace term. We’re watching to see if Amazon WorkSpaces (capital S, plural) somehow conflicts with independenceIT’s trademark since the names are quite close and both solutions focus on DaaS.