Cloud MSP 2nd Watch Is No More: Consultancy Rollup Leads to Ollion

Cloud managed service provider 2nd Watch is no more.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it has rolled up into a brand-new, cloud-native consultancy called Ollion.

Ollion (a play on “all-in”) consists of four companies: 2nd Watch, Aptitive (which 2nd Watch acquired last year), Cloud Comrade and CloudCover. Together they aim to deliver professional services that clients will end up using to become cloud experts. Ollion says this supports enterprises’ internal digital transformation efforts while pushing the professional services sector to up its own game.

Ollion’s Peter Wright

“The digital transformation coming to the professional services industry is long overdue,” said Peter Wright, CEO of Ollion. (Wright’s Ollion DNA comes from ST Telemedia, CloudCover and Cloud Comrade. ST Telemedia held stakes in each of the companies.) “No one wants a 100-page strategy document dropped on their desk anymore — businesses want a partner who is accountable for outcomes. By combining strategy, tech and people disciplines, we use methods to test, refine and iterate ideas in a way that is pragmatic, visible and scalable.”

As such, each of the four organizations brings its own expertise to the table:

In fact, all of Ollion now gets financial backing from ST Telemedia. The company stands out as one of Singapore’s highest profile investors, focused on communications, media, data centers and IT. Additional Ollion investors include Columbia Capital, Madrona and Delta-V.

And, Ollion hits the market with nearly 600 employees around the world, thanks to the employee rosters at 2nd Watch, Cloud Comrade and CloudCover. It also already boasts global customers, too; those names include La-Z-Boy, Hearst and Condé Nast.

Out to Challenge the Professional Services Market

All of this capability, the company says, will influence the rest of the professional services market — including how its peers do business with end users.

“We’re all in on making digital transformation happen,” Wright said. “And we’re all in on making sure it happens in a way that benefits humanity.”

That means taking a different approach, one that many cloud-centric consultancies may not, according to Ollion.

“Ultimately, this is about people,” Wright said. “We don’t want tech for tech’s sake. We also don’t want a strategy that is lofty and unaccountable. We want to understand the impact of technology on people by starting with a clear needs-based approach to problem and opportunity-solving. Setting our purpose as ‘multiplying humanity’s potential’ takes into account not just an individual perspective, but the interaction of people, and the notion of working for the common good.”

ST Telemedia’s Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller, chairman of Ollion, and president and group CEO of ST Telemedia, agreed.

“We are excited at the emergence of Ollion and their global position in the cloud-native ecosystem,” he said. “With strong and experienced shareholders, Ollion is a credible enterprise change partner capable of working with clients over the long term. We look forward to Ollion developing long lasting relationships with enterprises and government entities, as well as the CSPs.”

The new firm calls Liberty Lake, Washington, and Singapore its collective home.