March 21, 2011 : Acquisition Expands Appirio's Presence in the Midwest, Brings Additional Customers, Capacity and IP to Appirio's Cloud Asset Library
SAN MATEO, Calif., March 21, 2011?Appirio today announced the acquisition of Infowelders, a full-service salesforce.com implementation consultancy specializing in sales cloud, service cloud and custom cloud development. The acquisition, expected to close by the end of this month, supplements Appirio's core Salesforce CRM and Force.com consulting business. It provides Appirio with a stronger presence in the Midwest region, brings additional experience in mobile cloud development, and positions Appirio as the most certified cloud-focused partner of salesforce.com. The acquisition also brings to Appirio six packaged solutions that will become a part of Appirio's Cloud Asset Library, a growing library of reusable assets used to accelerate Salesforce implementations."Demand for Salesforce and Force.com services has dramatically increased in the last year, as evidenced by our own triple-digit growth and the 92,000 companies that now count themselves Salesforce customers," said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. "The acquisition of Infowelders brings us a talented and experienced group of professionals who have proven themselves time and again in the cloud and Salesforce ecosystems."
Infowelders was founded in June 2004 to focus on Salesforce CRM implementation projects at a time when salesforce.com had less than 14,000 customers and the Force.com platform was still in its infancy. Since then, Infowelders has completed more than 700 successful cloud projects with more than 250 customers, including companies like Brown-Forman, DirectBuy and Kindred Healthcare. As the Salesforce platform has become more sophisticated, Infowelders expanded their own services from simple data migration to complex global implementations with significant customization and mobile development.
Brown-Forman, one of the top 10 largest spirit companies known for brands such as Jack Daniel's, has been an Infowelders customer for over a year and recently signed on with Appirio for a company-wide Google Apps and Salesforce Chatter strategy and roll-out.
"The Infowelders team did an incredible job getting us started with the cloud, but when you stop asking ‘why cloud?' and start asking ‘how do I get wall-to-wall cloud?' you need capabilities for longer-term adoption," said Jennifer McClinton, Manager of Information Delivery at Brown-Forman. "Appirio's experience in cloud strategy, governance, and its deep expertise across different cloud platforms can bring us to that next level."
"We've built a strong business by hiring the best talent, focusing on the right partners and delivering tangible bottom line results for our customers – Appirio has that same reputation," said Adam Wiebe, President and CEO of Infowelders. "We're excited to be part of Appirio's large and growing team of trusted cloud advisers, and look forward to serving a broader range of customers across the globe."
The Infowelders acquisition comes on the heels of last month's TRE3 Group acquisition which brought Appirio deep expertise and an active community that can help customers create high performance sales operations, sell more collaboratively and implement successful social CRM strategies. The TRE3 Group is now integrated into Appirio and is already taking an active role with customers.
About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) is a cloud solution provider that offers technology and professional services to help enterprises accelerate their adoption of public cloud applications and platforms. Appirio's innovation and expertise has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America's Most Promising Startups and by AlwaysOn as 2010 On-Demand Company of the Year. Appirio has helped more than 200 leading enterprises implement, build and manage mission critical cloud solutions using salesforce.com, Google, Workday and Amazon. We are proud to serve a wide range of customers such as Avago, the City of Los Angeles, Diversey, Dunkin Brands, Flextronics, Japan Post Network, Ltd., IMS Health, Motorola, Qualcomm, RehabCare, Safety Kleen, Starbucks and VMware. Founded in 2006, Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.