Appirio acquires Irish tech firm Saaspoint


9 Dec 2011

US cloud services provider Appirio will acquire Irish tech firm Saaspoint in order for Appirio to gain a physical presence in the UK and Ireland.

The acquisition will add to Appirio’s existing presence in the US, Japan and India and will form the foundation for the US firm to build out more broadly into Europe. Appirio helps enterprises power their businesses with cloud applications and platforms, such as Salesforce.com, Google and Workday.

“Cloud computing is poised for significant growth in Europe, with companies like Salesforce.com, Google and Workday moving aggressively into the market, but the partner ecosystem is still evolving,” said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio.

“European customers that want a partner with both cloud-focused expertise and a global footprint have had limited options to date – our goal is to fill that void,” said Barbin.

Founded in 2005, Saaspoint provides cloud consulting services and has offices in the UK and Ireland. It has served more than 100 global customers, such as Dell, eBay, PayPal, Pfizer, UBM and Unipart. It’s one of the premier European partners for Salesforce.com and Google.

The Saaspoint team will join Appirio’s staff of 400 and will be able to access Appirio’s CloudSpokes crowd-sourcing developer community, which now has almost 30,000 developers in more than 65 countries.

The transaction will close in the fourth quarter of this year.

“Both Appirio and Saaspoint have built strong, high-growth businesses around a talented team of people that understand the promise and power of cloud solutions,” said Frank McCracken, founder and chief operations officer of Saaspoint.

“That shared culture and vision makes this an ideal match, and the team is excited to join a company that is reshaping how the industry defines cloud SIs,” said McCracken.