Cloud Sherpas grows European business

The acquisition expands Cloud Sherpas' presence in the UK, where it already had offices, dozens of enterprise clients and over 70 full-time employees -- a total Cloud Sherpas expects will double in the next 12 months. The deal also enhances Cloud Sherpas' ability to serve regional clients, an important factor given a recent report from IDC that estimates companies in Western Europe will consume nearly $18 billion in public cloud services by 2016.

Cloud Sherpas is one of the world's largest independent cloud services brokers and the two-time Google Enterprise Partner of the Year for Google Apps. In just over six years, the Atlanta-based firm has grown from zero to nearly 700 employees with offices on three continents, several thousand customers, high-profile international partnerships with salesforce.com and ServiceNow, and is projected to exit 2013 on an annualized revenue run-rate above $150 million. While the acquisition of Stoneburn marks Cloud Sherpas' eleventh acquisition in its combined corporate history, much of this growth has been organic. The firm anticipates its Google business unit that helps organizations migrate to and use a wide range of Google Enterprise products to grow over 70% in 2013.

The Stoneburn acquisition is strategic to Cloud Sherpas for a number of reasons:
· First, it establishes Cloud Sherpas as a global deployment partner that is a Google Apps Premier Partner in North America, Asia-Pacific as well as Europe, Middle East & Africa. Cloud Sherpas can now more easily provide clients a large, multinational partner with whom to scale their businesses.
· The acquisition also extends Cloud Sherpas' reach into vertical markets. Stoneburn has numerous enterprise customers in the retail, media, manufacturing and transportation/logistics industries.
· Cloud Sherpas gains additional technical expertise. Stoneburn has consistently demonstrated its ability to develop and implement broad cloud initiatives for its clients. Stoneburn is a Premier Google Apps partner in Europe, Middle East and Africa and a leading Google Search partner in the UK.
· Finally, Stoneburn brings added local knowledge and experience. Its leadership team has over 20 years' experience delivering enterprise IT solutions in Europe.

"The UK and Western European cloud and Google Enterprise markets have very quickly transitioned from early adopter phase to established businesses," said David Northington, CEO at Cloud Sherpas. "The timing is right for Cloud Sherpas to expand its presence in the region. Stoneburn has proven its ability to secure large enterprise clients, and we were very impressed with the team's management and technical capabilities around Google Enterprise and cloud software in general. Approximately 10% of Cloud Sherpas' revenue comes from Western Europe today, and with Stoneburn in the fold I expect that number to increase significantly."

"The increased size and scale of Cloud Sherpas, along with its best practices and implementation expertise, will translate to a stronger cloud strategy and better service for our clients," said Ciaran Cosgrave, co-founder of Stoneburn. "We can now provide more services, especially around Google's cloud platform, as well as 24x7 world-class support and cloud management. This is a terrific day for Stoneburn customers in the UK and elsewhere."
Cosgrave will remain with the organization as vice president of Cloud Sherpas' Google business unit for UK. Cosgrave's partner, Stoneburn co-founder Nazir Ul-Ghani, has joined Cloud Sherpas as vice president of UK sales for Cloud Sherpas' Google division.

"Cloud Sherpas has been a long-standing partner for Google Enterprise in the U.S. and Asia, and I look forward to seeing them bring the same expertise and success to Google Enterprise customers in the UK and throughout Europe," said Mark Hodgson, head of global partner programs at Google.