Intermedia seeking cloud newbie partners

Cloud business applications vendor aiming for double-digit growth next year on its current $200m revenues

Cloud business applications vendor Intermedia is looking for partners that have not worked in the cloud before as it strives for double-digit annual growth.

Intermedia sells an integrated suite of cloud business applications, with 30 apps on the system, including email, phone systems, file syncing and sharing, security, and backup.

Its CEO, Michael Gold, was tight-lipped about the growth figures he hopes to achieve, but did say that the vendor currently has $200m (£163.7m) revenues and is aiming for double-figure growth every year.

"We are a company that is growing at a very rapid rate and we grow by adding more partners and helping the partners we have to add more accounts and offer more services," he said.

The vendor has more than 6,400 global partners, but is looking to add to that number by "hundreds" every month. It is hunting mainly for VARs and MSPs that are not "pure cloud providers", especially those that have not worked in the cloud before.

"We are adding hundreds of new partners every month," he added. "Most MSPs are using tools such as remote access and monitoring equipment. For the VARs they are typically reselling hardware and software and doing business services around it.

"In both cases, these businesses need an answer for the cloud and need to support the movement from where their customers are today, onto the cloud."

"We are adding hundreds of new partners every month"

The Silicon Valley-based vendor also has offices in Washington state, New York, St Petersburg, Reading and Bristol. Its Bristol office came with its acquisition of SaaSID in September 2013, which specialises in providing a single point of control over employees' access to cloud services and applications. It now supports Intermedia's security offerings.

The vendor was purchased from its previous investor Oak Hill Capital Partners by private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.

Gold said Madison Dearborn was tracking the company and saw the "many tens of millions of market opportunity".

"The plan with the new financial sponsor is to continue to pursue the strategy that we have been doing," he explained. "We will continue to pursue selling in partnership with the channel and expanding the business by going deeper into certain product categories either through additional new development or acquisitions."

John Scrivener, managing director at MSP Abbeycomp, said it has been working with Intermedia for over five years, and has noticed the vendor's push to get more partners on the cloud.

"We like working with them. Of all the companies we work with, I think they are one of the best," he said. "They offer good support and service and they are nice people, very helpful. They have given us help and support to get on the cloud. They are actively trying to get more clients migrated onto their system."