Workspace-as-a-service platform provider CloudJumper has acquired IndependenceIT (IIT), a maker of automated deployment software for applications, data, and complete workspaces in the cloud.
Terms of the all-cash transaction have not been disclosed.
The purchase brings together two WaaS vendors with different business models and a history of close partnership. Garner, N.C.-based CloudJumper’s nWorkSpace solution, which delivers turnkey cloud workspaces, is based heavily on Allentown, Pa.-based IndependenceIT’s Cloud Workspace Suite (CWS), which provides software-defined infrastructure automation and management.
Combining the two companies will enable CloudJumper to offer its MSP customers a more flexible range of deployment options, according to Max Pruger, the company’s chief sales officer.
“Where it makes sense, we’ll sell software only. Where it makes sense, we’ll sell the full turnkey [solution],” he says.
In a third hybrid scenario likely to appeal to mature MSPs with sophisticated in-house management capabilities, Pruger continues, CloudJumper will manage the underlying infrastructure for partners and let them handle day-to-day workspace administration.
IIT technology also enables CloudJumper help partners provision and migrate end users to self-managed environments in either Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure with a single click. Support for the Amazon Web Services public cloud will arrive shortly as well.
From a longer-term perspective, buying IndependenceIT gives CloudJumper complete control over the CWS product roadmap, enabling the company to respond more easily to change requests from partners.
“We get a lot of feedback on things that they would like to see, and enhancements and improvements, and so to be able to drive that type of feedback directly back into the roadmap with our combined teams is a really exciting opportunity for us and for our partners,” says John Helms, CloudJumper’s president.
Helms expects enhanced migration capabilities to CloudJumper from both on-premises environments and third-party WaaS, virtual desktop infrastructure, and desktop-as-a-service solutions to be among the earliest post-acquisition additions to the CWS roadmap.
“Those are actually some things that as separate entities we were both working on in parallel,” he says. “Now as a combined entity, we’ll merge those items together and see which one has the fastest and most stable path to completion.”
Users of CloudJumper’s my.CloudJumper partner portal can also expect to see new and deeper reporting on financial and support-related metrics, like which applications are generating the most profit or the most service tickets.
“There’s more data that we will be able to pull and bring into the my.CloudJumper interface to give our partners much more visibility,” Helms says. For IndependenceIT customers, he adds, the acquisition announced today will result in more new features more often.
“This is going to make the resources available for the development of the CWS interface and the CWS product larger,” Helms says. “There’s going to be a lot more coming out.”
CloudJumper has no immediate plans to modify its own price sheet or that of IIT.
“We don’t see any near-term changes,” Helms says.
IndependenceIT’s development team will come over to CloudJumper along with the company’s software assets. Members of the IndependenceIT leadership team, including CEO Seth Bostock and COO Mike Walsh, will remain with the company as well. Bostock will serve CloudJumper going forward as vice president of software sales.
According to Helms, acquiring IndependenceIT was the logical next step for a long-running relationship.
“We’ve been working with IndependenceIT in the cloud management workspace for roughly three years,” he says. The two companies collaboratively developed APIs that play a crucial role in CloudJumper’s turnkey WaaS capabilities.
“We were by far IndependenceIT’s largest partner,” adds Pruger, revealing that IIT was also the “undisclosed seller” involved in CloudJumper’s January 2017 purchase of an IT services business unit with 52 MSP and ISV partnerships.
According to Pruger, CloudJumper wasn’t IndependenceIT’s only suitor.
“IIT had a lot of opportunities out there,” he says. “We had been talking to them about this for a while and it just seemed like a natural fit to bring the companies together.”
Global WaaS revenues will grow from $7.12 billion last year to just under $13.9 billion in 2024, according to researcher Envision Inteligence.
CloudJumper introduced nWorkSpace in May 2016 on the same day that its spin-off from cloud application delivery specialist nGenx officially went into effect. The company recorded 200 percent revenue growth in 2017, and doubled the size of its sales channel.
