Burlington ON-based TNG is playing a key role in expanding CloudJumper’s presence in Canada, and thinks that the DaaS and WaaS markets in Canada are ready for strong growth this year.
Stephen Simmons, TNG’s CEO and President
CloudJumper, which provides Workspace as a Service [WaaS] and Desktop as a Service [DaaS] offerings, has had a presence in Canada for years. They have begun to deepen that presence over the last year through their partnership with Toronto-area cloud solution provider TNG. The companies believe that 2019 will be a strong year for WaaS and DaaS in Canada, as their adoption in the Canadian market picks up momentum.
“We have a fairly significant presence in Canada,” said Max Pruger, CloudJumper’s Chief Revenue Officer. “The challenge for us in Canada is the data privacy issues. Canadian customers have increasingly wanted their data centres to be in Canada. It’s a customer preference thing rather than strict legal requirements. TNG helps us out here because they do have a data centre in Canada. They white label us and rebrand the offering.”
TNG was originally a partner with IndependenceIT, which made Workspace-as-a-Service enablement software, and was acquired by CloudJumper in February 2018. While VDI, WaaS and DaaS were central to TNG’s business, they didn’t work that closely with IndependenceIT during the five years they partnered with them. They became much more active in partnering after the acquisition, because they found CloudJumper to be more aggressive and entrepreneurial.
Ben Perry, TNG’s Director of Cloud Consulting
“We made the decision to focus on the CloudJumper relationship more after the acquisition,” said Ben Perry, TNG’s Director of Cloud Consulting. “CloudJumper was more receptive to some of the things we were looking for, like marketing material.”
“IndependenceIT was more of an inventor-type company,” said Stephen Simmons, TNG’s CEO and President. “When CloudJumper came in, they were more business-oriented, and there was more focus on driving the sale then there had been with IndependenceIT. They push MSPs towards us. It’s a different kind of business arrangement.”
The Cloud Workspaces area is the focus of what TNG does.
“It is not the only thing we do, but everything else is wrapped around Microsoft – SharePoint, Office 365, and their cloud licenses,” Perry said. “We also work with other vendors inside the Cloud Workspaces, notably Duo and Axcient [formerly eFolder].”
The deepened relationship led to TNG becoming CloudJumper’s master reseller in Canada.
Max Pruger, CloudJumper’s Chief Revenue Officer
“We sell both our software and our managed platform services, but we don’t offer the managed platform internationally – just the software,” Pruger said. “Our strategy for international expansion is not to offer the platform ourselves but to do it through strategic partnerships like TNG. They offer the CloudJumper solution and they make it available to other partners and manage those relationships, providing the support. Effectively it’s a Master Reseller relationship. MSPs in Canada will work directly with TNG. Leads that we get from Canada for partners will be referred to TNG.”
“We are aggressive in recruiting MSPs for CloudJumper,” Perry said. “We have done seminars and are trying to solidify more partnerships. We are working with overarching entities. We have been working with TAG [Technology Assurance Group]. When TAG partners in Canada would attend a TAG event in the U.S. and speak with CloudJumper, the question of cloud storage in Canada would come up. Cloud Jumper put TAG in contact with us. We have also started to talk with ASCII, and had our first contact with them last fall.”
“On the MSP side, there are 8 to 10 partners that we would consider to be somewhat active,” Simmons said. “We also have ISV partners and they are great partners for us. They have software that they haven’t cloudified yet. They are very interested in getting their customers on board. We have a handful of these partners. Swiftpage, which makes contact and customer management software was our first, four years ago.” They now have four ISV partners, with the others including a maker of bankruptcy trustee software and another that makes software for tow truck companies.
“They are companies who don’t want to spend a million dollars to recode their software for the cloud, who use CloudJumper to get their software in the cloud,” Simmons added.
TNG is optimistic that 2019 will see a surge in demand in Canada for Workspaces as-a-Service and Desktops as-a-Service.
“The experience that I’ve always had is that Americans tend to be more risk takers even if they don’t understand things,” Simmons said. “Canadians are much more cautious. I do think this is probably the year. I think the comparison is with Office 365. We initially had to educate the public what it was and talk them into getting rid of their Exchange server. Cloud workspaces and virtualized desktops are just entering that phase now. Companies want to get out of the IT business.”
“We are looking forward to traction coming in 2019,” Perry said. “Education is a major part of all this.”
“CloudJumper just introduced us to a highly successful ex-MSP of theirs who handles high value customers,” Simmons noted. “He will work with us to kickstart Canada and help roll it out. It’s just a matter of getting the word out.”
