Igloo, which makes a cloud-hosted SaaS based intranet offering, has just launched a channel program, and is looking to attract a select number of channel partners, including VARs looking to enhance their practices with a purpose-built intranet solution.

TORONTO — Kitchener ON-based intranet provider Igloo is at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference this week, looking to bolster its go-to-market mechanisms. The company is looking to expand – significantly – the number of vendor partners with which it has integrations. Igloo also recently introduced a channel program, and is looking to recruit a select number of reseller partners.

Igloo was started in 2008 – thanks largely to a Microsoft connection. The company was born out of the Microsoft BizSpark program for startups.

“Igloo was founded in 2008, in co-ordination with a government effort to enhance collaboration among government entities,” said Chris Myers, Igloo’s VP Partners and Alliances. ‘When that grant expired, the founders bought the commercial rights to the product and focused on intranets. We saw steady growth for years, but the last two years has seen this accelerate, to the point where we are doubling and tripling growth.” A new senior executive team – which includes Myers – came in and added an enterprise mindset to what had earlier been an SMB and mid-market focused company.

Igloo has an entirely cloud-hosted SaaS offering designed to provide a modern corporate hub. It integrates intranet capabilities and cloud applications, including integrated file management, messaging, collaboration, and other business apps.

“We enjoy a significant advantage over other intranet communities in terms of a shorter time to deploy,” Myers said. “Traditional intranets take a long time to get up and running. It can take months or even years, and it was difficult for traditional ones to grow because IT had to do all the work. Igloo was built so communities can be reconfigured by users. The result is that you can get an Igloo community up and running in days or weeks.”

Integrations with other vendors are a key part of Igloo’s go-to-market strategy, and Microsoft is a major partner here.

“We recently got our Microsoft Gold certification,” Myers said. “We have had an in-depth Office 365 integration and have expanded that with Yammer and a variety of other Microsoft applications.”

In addition to Microsoft, Igloo currently has five other vendor integrations, with Google, Box, Dropbox, Salesforce, and Zendesk.

“With these relationships, we get the scalability advantages of integration partners, so we don’t have to bear that full burden on our own,” Myers said.

Igloo would love to grow the number of integration partners, something that Myers is attempting to accomplish at WPC.

“We are trying to greatly expand the number of integration partners – ideally from 6 to 26, 46 or 66,” Myers stated. “These cloud applications extend the value of intranets.”

Igloo’s reseller channel is a newer addition to their go-to-market.

“Our channel is very young,” Myers said. “We have created a program, and are using the WPC event to launch it. We are looking to recruit a small group of channel partners to provide deployment, administrative and support services. So far, we have had a favorable reception from boutique digital agencies, as well as VARs of a certain profile who are looking to augment their collaboration practices with something purpose-built for intranets.”

Igloo is at Booth 229 at WPC.

“When a major event like this is right in our back yard, we had to attend,” Myers said. “It’s a great place when you are trying to find channel partners.”