Liquit has become Microsoft WVD-certified, and will focus on working with the WVD channel to build up its North American business.
Dutch-based application aggregation and delivery provider Liquit B.V. is making its first move into the North American market, through the acquisition of Portsmouth, N.H-based Appnostix. Appnostix will serve as Liquit’s beachhead in North America, and will take Liquit to market here.
Dutch-based Liquit is a five-year old company which is privately held, but which has indicated that they have been growing 200 to 300% per year for each of the last several years.
“They have been mainly a developer company, so are not well known, but like Appnostix they sell all through the channel,” said Linda LaPorta, Appnostix’s founder, who is now Liquit’s President, Americas.
Multiple companies deliver applications for the modern workspace, but LaPorta said that Liquit is more complementary to them than they are competitors.
“We are a disruptive software company that takes an agnostic approach to taking the desktop to the cloud,” she said. “Using APIs, we plug into all sorts of different platforms, and have the ability to combine more than one, such as combining Citrix with Microsoft WVD or RDS. We aggregate these applications and give the user one simple admin tool, and use Smart Icons to contextualize and determine how to best deliver an application to the user.
“Citrix thinks that we compete with them, and they do do some aggregation, but we look on it more as aligning with them than competing,” LaPorta said. “Our front end complements their environment and can help where they need multiple platforms, as well as helping make things simpler for the end user. We are agnostic, working with everything and every one to aggregate and manage things.”
Midmarket and enterprise customers are Liquit’s sweet spot.
“It’s customers who are large enough go have the pain,” LaPorta stated. “We take complicated chaos and clean it up. Companies with legacy application situations or who are dealing with M&A environments can plug in, aggregate and change the back end without the end user ever being affected.”
Liquit and Appnostix have had a similar approach to the market, so there are some technical synergies, but the major reason for the acquisition was speeding up Liquit’s time-to-market in North America.
“We were doing substantially the same thing as them,” LaPorta said. Because we went further in reducing the back-end hardware and licensing on the hosting, we hope that they can use some of our code for their road map. But we know the industry in North America, so can provide them with an instant entrée to the Americas. They grew first in the Netherlands, and spread to EMEA. They are now ready to go into North America, so there is perfect synergy.”
In North America, the Go-to-Market strategy involves a deep focus on Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop [WVD]
“My Go-To-Market is to align with the WVD movement, and become a certified WVD partner, which we have accomplished,” LaPorta indicated.
The pool of WVD partners is still fairly limited.
“The WVD partner page is about 30 at this stage,” LaPorta said. “We have a handful of partners in North America and are actively recruiting. We need the people who really understand the application delivery piece. That’s the time consuming thing. We are working with some today, and we are really looking for the creme de la crème who understand the large enterprise.”
Liquit’s other channel in North America is Intranet companies who have their own portals.
“We can help them to deliver applications with a portal,” LaPorta noted. “It’s a very easy integration. They can do it in a day and it gives them a whole new market.”
