September 01, 2011 : Global award recognizes Appirio's innovation, leadership and potential impact on the future of business
San Mateo, Calif. – September 1, 2011 – Appirio a cloud solution provider that helps enterprises adopt, connect and extend cloud platforms such as salesforce.com, Google and Workday, today announced it has been named a 2012 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Appirio joins a list of the 25 most innovative technology start-ups from around the world. According to the World Economic Forum selection committee, these companies represent the latest generation of innovation and are poised to have a critical impact on how businesses and society will function. "Advances in cloud technology have provided an opportunity for companies to free themselves from constraints of the past and eliminate massive amounts of waste that has been rampant in IT," said Chris Barbin, CEO, Appirio. "Appirio is honored to be recognized by an organization as important as the World Economic Forum and to have this level of validation for our vision and the incredible team that makes the vision a reality every day for our customers and partners globally."
Previous Technology Pioneers include Monitise (2006), Mozilla Corporation (2007), Nanosolar (2007), Gridpoint (2008), Mint.com (2009), BloomEnergy (2010), Takadu (2011) and NetQin (2011). Technology Pioneer companies were handpicked from hundreds of nominations from around the world, and were evaluated by more than 50 global technology experts. The selection committee who led this rigorous process includes leading academics, journalists, technologists and venture capitalists.
"One particular aspect to highlight this year is the large number of companies that are focused on having a social impact, such as providing health or financial services to under-served populations, while revolutionizing the business paradigms in their industries," said Olivier Schwab, director, Head of Technology Pioneers, World Economic Forum. "This year's companies showcase the diversity in which innovative technology can be deployed to benefit business and society."
Since 2000, the World Economic Forum has recognized the work of young companies which hold the promise of significantly transforming the way business and society operate. The Technology Pioneers 2012 are drawn from various fields of information technology and new media, energy and environment, and life sciences and health where they are active in a variety of areas, illustrating the broad range of impact they have on the world.
"Having two companies we're in business with be recognized this year by the World Economic Forum is remarkable," said Jim Goetz, partner, Sequoia Capital. "The milestones that Appirio and Dropbox have achieved make for perfect examples of how today's start-ups are changing, and improving, the state of age old industries."
The Technology Pioneers 2012 will be recognized for their work at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, People's Republic of China, September 14-16, 2011. Appirio's Chief Strategy Officer, Narinder Singh, will be a discussion leader for the session, "Technology Pioneers: Taking Innovation to Market," happening Friday, September 16, 2011.
Appirio's CEO, Chris Barbin, talks more about the award in a video that can be found here. For further information on the Technology Pioneers 2012, please visit www.weforum.org/techpioneers
About AppirioAppirio accelerates the cloud-powered business, helping enterprises achieve real results from cloud applications and platforms like salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Appirio has worked with more than 250 enterprise customers including organizations like City of Los Angeles, Facebook, Flextronics, Home Depot, International Hotels Group, Japan Post Network, Ltd., L'Oreal, NetApp, NYU, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters and VMware. Appirio's technology-enabled professional services are supported by a team of 400 cloud experts and CloudSpokes, a nearly 20,000 person-strong global cloud developer community. The company's expertise and innovative brokerage technology have been recognized by organizations such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, Gartner, and IDC. Appirio has offices in the U.S. and Japan, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.