Israeli Channel Powerhouse AllCloud Moving Into The U.S. Cloud Market Its New CEO Helped Pioneer

After Eran Gil helped pioneer the born-in-the-cloud solution provider model with Cloud Sherpas, he turned the experience gained as a co-founder of one of the first cloud resellers to building a new channel powerhouse in his native Israel.

Now AllCloud, based in Tel Aviv, is ready to storm Gil's old stomping grounds, using the acquisition of Figur8, a Platinum Salesforce partner, as a vehicle into the North American market, Gil told CRN.

As part of that expansion strategy, Gil has been tapped as AllCloud's new CEO on the heels of a recently closed $7 million funding round, which brings total funding to $15 million, the company said Tuesday.

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AllCloud's founders took inspiration from the model Gil and his partners were rapidly scaling earlier in the decade from their headquarters in Atlanta.

But unlike Cloud Sherpas, which Accenture acquired in 2015, the Israeli startup pursued a full-stack approach to the cloud. Through early acquisitions, it rapidly developed partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Salesforce, and began to deliver a broad range of services.

"The North American market was the obvious next step for us," Gil said. "We are finding the North American market actually has a pretty big void."

A trend of consolidation -- including Accenture's purchase of Cloud Sherpas, IBM's of BlueWolf and Wipro's of Appirio -- has created opportunities for solution providers focused on serving the SMB market, he said.

"The larger companies that acquired some of the boutique firms like Sherpas don’t really focus on that segment, and with that comes also vertical focus. There are quite a bit of verticals and segments that are now quite open with no real dominant global player to serve them," Gil said.

Whereas Cloud Sherpas was founded as a Google Apps reseller, later adding Salesforce and ServiceNow practices, AllCloud looked to partner with AWS as its primary Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider, and Google Cloud Platform as a secondary IaaS provider, as well as Salesforce and Oracle NetSuite for delivering business apps.

Gil initially advised the company's founders. But after Cloud Sherpas was sold to Accenture, he invested in AllCloud and took a seat on the board.

A few months ago, AllCloud, which already had established a successful practice in Germany, turned its attention to the U.S., Gil told CRN, and the board wanted him to fill a more operational role.

Having closed its deal for Figur8, that company's offices in San Francisco and Toronto will become AllCloud's North American headquarters.

Because of Figur8's current practice, AllCloud initially will focus on Salesforce in those markets, he said, but the company plans to replicate all its businesses in the Americas.

AllCloud will remain based in Tel Aviv, where it has cultivated a roster of highly skilled and certified personnel that provide a knowledge base it can leverage to drive its global expansion, Gil told CRN.

The company is serious about growing fast and wants to complete another funding round over the next 12 months as well as do more acquisitions in North America, he said.