Green Cloud Defense Sells — What’s Next for Partners?
Find out in our exclusive discussion; plus, get the latest from Lemongrass, Centrilogic and Zylo.
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CF: What makes 11:11 the best acquirer for Green Cloud?
Green Cloud’s Charles Houser: We are cut from the same cloth. The 11:11 team speaks the same language as we do. They understand the power of the channel. They know that cloud is a critical piece of the puzzle, along with connectivity and security.
CF: How does the acquisition affect channel partners?
CH: We are 100% committed to the channel; 11:11 has the same commitment. You will see our channel investments increase. Agents, who have always been a part of our strategy, will become an even bigger part of our sales momentum. But all of our existing partners will only see our product portfolio increase over time.
CF: What operational changes, if any, might 11:11 implement that partners need to know?
CH: Nothing has changed. It’s business as usual at Green Cloud. We are still building our partner network one MSP at a time. It takes many years and lots of investment to get 700+ MSPs to use us for their cloud platform. The only thing they will see if a renewed commitment to our operational excellence.
CF: Why is this deal significant within the channel community?
CH: It is significant because it reinforces our value proposition to the managed security providers. You don’t have to build out your own data center to make 50% margins. You don’t have to build your own security stack to make money selling security. You don’t have to partner with the 800-pound gorilla where you can’t get anyone on the phone, make mid-teen margins and don’t get help with server migrations. With them you get tools. With Green Cloud you get people. I have always found people love to do business with people.
Lemongrass, a managed service provider that specializes in running SAP in the cloud, has added Google Cloud to its roster. Lemongrass has teamed with Amazon Web Services for much of the past decade. That’s how long Lemongrass has been migrating SAP users to the cloud.
Now, those customers may operate their SAP workloads in Google Cloud, if they like.
“We’re proud to partner with Lemongrass to accelerate customers’ migrations of their most critical workloads to Google Cloud,” said Rob Enslin, president at Google Cloud. “Lemongrass provides leading migration support and managed services for SAP, and their expertise will help businesses benefit at scale from Google Cloud’s global infrastructure, and capabilities in AI, ML and analytics.”
The Lemongrass announcement comes not long after Google Cloud recently expanded its own partnership with SAP.
Channel Futures took some time with Mike Rosenbloom, CEO of Lemongrass, to learn more about what the Google Cloud pairing means from a broader perspective.
Channel Futures: Is this a brand-new partnership with GCP? If so, why now?
Mike Rosenbloom: This is a new partnership, and it reflects a strategic decision we made to extend our managed services and migration support to Google Cloud. We look forward to applying our demonstrated expertise in SAP to helping enterprises run their SAP systems on Google Cloud’s scalable, flexible and sustainable infrastructure. Our customers will benefit from Google Cloud’s impressive data management, analytics and AI/ML capabilities.
(more of our Q&A on the next slide)
CF: What does this partnership mean for your peers/the broader channel partner community?
MR: The channel partner imperative is to meet customers wherever they are today and wherever they want to be in the future. That’s the motivation behind our decision to expand our hyperscale alliance focus. We’ve been migrating SAP users to the cloud since 2010, and we currently have over 6,000 SAP servers and 300,000+ users under management. But we’re living in a multicloud world, and we want our customers to know that we’re here to help them, regardless which cloud platform they choose.
CF: Other thoughts to add?
MR: We remain committed to AWS – Lemongrass is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and AWS-accredited managed service provider – but now we’ll support customers who want to run on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform too. Helping our customers get to where they want to be has always been our top priority.
Centrilogic has snapped up 3RP for its Oracle Cloud expertise.
Centrilogic is a Toronto-based managed service provider. 3RP, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, also is an MSP. It specializes in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, as well as the vendor’s applications and databases. 3RP is an Oracle Cloud Solutions Provider, MSP and legacy Oracle platinum partner. Centrilogic intends to make the most of those achievements.
“There are only 23 companies that have received Oracle’s CSP certification, and 3RP is one of them, demonstrating the company’s strength in providing strategic managed services and consulting across critical enterprise systems, applications and architectures,” said Robert Offley, president and CEO of Centrilogic. “We are excited to welcome the 3RP team into the Centrilogic fold, and we look forward to accelerating our ability to satisfy the growing demand from new and existing customers that require assistance migrating, managing and optimizing workloads on Oracle’s Cloud.”
Centrilogic delivers a range of technologies and platforms that, all told, help organizations undergo digital transformation. Its cloud provider partners include AWS and Microsoft Azure. Adding 3RP, Centrilogic said, solidifies its Oracle expertise.
Privately held Centrilogic did not say how much it paid for 3RP. 3RP was founded in 2005. All of its employees are joining Centrilogic, giving the Canadian company footprint on the West Coast of the U.S. Scott Salomon, 3RP’s CEO, will become group vice president, Oracle Practice, at Centrilogic.
“I look forward to adding our team’s Oracle expertise to Centrilogic’s impressive portfolio of end-to-end solutions,” Salomon said. “Our unique depth and experience in this space complements Centrilogic’s full spectrum of services, better positioning us to help our customers solve their most complex business and technology challenges.”
SaaS management vendor Zylo has named Scott Dorsey as its executive chairman.
Dorsey is widely known for leading ExactTarget through its initial public offering in 2012 and, in 2013, orchestrating the $2.5 billion sale to Salesforce. ExactTarget, where Dorsey served as co-founder, CEO and chairman, now is Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
At Zylo, Dorsey will head the board of directors and work with leaders on initiatives to expand the company. Dorsey has sat on the Zylo board since the vendor’s inception.
“SaaS spend continues to boom and Zylo is well positioned as the early category leader to ride this SaaS management wave,” Dorsey said.
Gartner predicts that, by 2026, one-half of organizations using multiple SaaS applications will centralize management of these assets on a platform such as Zylo’s. Zylo is eyeing that demand and looking for ways to capitalize on it. Recently, it took an investment from Coupa Software and said it would increase employee headcount by 50% this year alone. Zylo is hoping that adding Dorsey, with his two decades of experience growing companies, will prove just as strategically sound.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time for us and [Dorsey’s] expertise growing and scaling B2B SaaS companies will help us to continue accelerating growth and take advantage of this massive market opportunity,” said Eric Christopher, CEO of Zylo.
SaaS management vendor Zylo has named Scott Dorsey as its executive chairman.
Dorsey is widely known for leading ExactTarget through its initial public offering in 2012 and, in 2013, orchestrating the $2.5 billion sale to Salesforce. ExactTarget, where Dorsey served as co-founder, CEO and chairman, now is Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
At Zylo, Dorsey will head the board of directors and work with leaders on initiatives to expand the company. Dorsey has sat on the Zylo board since the vendor’s inception.
“SaaS spend continues to boom and Zylo is well positioned as the early category leader to ride this SaaS management wave,” Dorsey said.
Gartner predicts that, by 2026, one-half of organizations using multiple SaaS applications will centralize management of these assets on a platform such as Zylo’s. Zylo is eyeing that demand and looking for ways to capitalize on it. Recently, it took an investment from Coupa Software and said it would increase employee headcount by 50% this year alone. Zylo is hoping that adding Dorsey, with his two decades of experience growing companies, will prove just as strategically sound.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time for us and [Dorsey’s] expertise growing and scaling B2B SaaS companies will help us to continue accelerating growth and take advantage of this massive market opportunity,” said Eric Christopher, CEO of Zylo.
The cloud channel has been busy. In just the past few days, Green Cloud Defense, Lemongrass, Centrilogic and vendor Zylo all have made some pretty significant announcements.
For partners, the news points to opportunities. Change is nothing if not constant in this industry; the M&A deals, provider partnership and personnel addition in this week’s cloud news roundup all stand to elevate the channel.
Green Cloud Defense Sells to 11:11 Systems
Green Cloud Defense, which only distributes through the channel, is selling to 11:11 Systems.
Partners may recall that Green Cloud Defense renamed itself from Green Cloud Technologies in early 2021 after buying Cascade Defense.
The privately held companies are not announcing the deal’s terms. But, they are talking about how Green Cloud, an IaaS provider, and 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider, fit together.
Thanks to Green Cloud, New Jersey-based 11:11 Systems now gets cloud and security expertise that will encompass infrastructure, disaster recovery, managed threat detection and more. In turn, Green Cloud’s channel partners – managed service providers, value-added resellers and IT consultants – may offer 11:11’s managed network connectivity.
“We are at an inflection point in digital transformation,” said Brett Diamond, CEO of 11:11 Systems. “Customers can achieve the greatest gains by leveraging the most powerful platform to deliver managed infrastructure and automation. Green Cloud provides the cloud and security solutions that will propel this advantage for our customers and partners.”
Emil W. Henry Jr. serves as CEO of Tiger Infrastructure Partners, the private equity firm that owns 11:11 Systems. He said that adding Green Cloud gives 11:11 Systems the ability to provide “the first integrated, synchronized and automated platform delivering managed infrastructure solutions across connectivity, cloud and security services.”
The companies expect the transaction to close by the end of this year. Channel Futures caught up with Charles Houser, co-founder and executive vice president of marketing at Green Cloud, to learn more about the agreement and its impact on partners.
Green Cloud’s Charles Houser
Channel Futures: What prompted Green Cloud to sell?
Charles Houser: Simply put: timing. We have been in business for 10 years, which means we had some investors that invested almost 10 years ago. We wanted to give them a liquidity event.
Check out our slideshow above for more of our Q&A with Houser; plus, another exclusive with Lemongrass and more cloud news.
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