IndependenceIT’s CWS Workspace software allows CloudJumper to offer a more integrated portfolio, with both a full turnkey solution as well as separate software sales for customers who prefer that.

Workspace-as-a-Service [WaaS] platform provider CloudJumper has announced that it has acquired privately-held IndependenceIT, which makes WaaS enablement software for automating deployment of applications, data, and complete workspaces in the cloud. IndependenceIT’s CEO Seth Bostock joins CloudJumper as VP of Software Sales, and their other human capital will also be coming over to CloudJumper. Financial terms of the deal were not announced.

“This is a very strategic acquisition for CloudJumper,” said Max Pruger, CloudJumper’s Chief Sales Officer. “CloudJumper and IndependenceIT have been working closely together over the last three years, and the IndependenceIT software has been used on the turnkey side of our business. As the market continues to mature, coming together made more sense. We had had discussions about merging over the last couple of years, and now the timing and money came together.”

IndependenceIT’s Cloud Workspace Suite [CWS] software is both cloud and hypervisor agnostic, allowing CloudJumper to emphasize the utility of their platform across all private and public clouds, to provide IT service providers with maximum flexibility.

“This continues our vision of a channel-only WaaS platform,” Pruger said. He noted that CloudJumper had been spun out of nGenx in 2016 precisely to have this kind of focus, as well as a more vendor-agnostic approach, since nGenX was heavier on the Citrix space.

“One of the challenges of the old company is it had been around for years, and it made sense to have a new company for the focus on WaaS,” Pruger said. “This acquisition continues the vision that led to CloudJumper becoming a separate company.”

“As a channel-only software company, we had done a lot of business with CloudJumper over the last several years,” Bostock said. “CloudJumper has added on in areas that we weren’t attacking, so combining with them creates a really comprehensive platform for the channel. We now have huge flexibility in offerings, to be able to offer from software-only to full platform, and everything in between. We enable the channel to now drive huge efficiency in their business, and drive new revenue with a great set of tools.” At the same time, not all customers, especially the larger MSPs, will want a complete turnkey solution, and for them, continuing to purchase the software separately is a sounder option.

Bostock said that the synergies between the companies  –  demonstrated by their past joint work – will make them a much better organization together.

“We are now backed by a much, much larger company, which has considerable benefit for the team and our partners,” he said. “This will allow us to go down our roadmap much faster.”

For legacy CloudJumper partners, CWS will now be integrated into the my.CloudJumper partner portal, which provides JumpStart ground-to-cloud onboarding and a Customer Management Module with centralized customer account oversight.

For the CWS software go-to-market itself, Bostock said that their view of the world is that nothing changes.

“Our team that has sold the software will continue to do so, and we will continue to add partners to sell it,” he stated. “Just this morning we had a new partner inquiry. Our focus remains the same. The difference is that we have more benefits we can offer the partners who we work with.”

CloudJumper thinks that while they jumped into the market at its very inception, this acquisition equips them well to provide a fuller solution set when that market is about to take off.

“If we look at landscape of the market, we were probably a year and a half ahead of the market,” Pruger said. “We now definitely see the beginning of the hockey stick, and we are now the only company out there with both a full-featured solution, the software piece and everywhere in between.”

“CloudJumper is acquiring share as well as technology, because we have lots of partners with 10,000 plus seats,” Bostock said. “It’s very accretive from a revenue perspective as well as an IT perspective. It unifies best of breed workspace applications, and creates a very nice business focused on application and workspace delivery.”