Overseas Channel Powerhouse AllCloud Accepts $18M To Scale American Business
The Israel-based consultancy is a fast-rising superstar in the Salesforce and AWS channels. With its latest infusion of venture capital, it looks to new acquisitions to boost both practices, and to bring its AWS operations to North America.
It's been less than two years since AllCloud landed its Salesforce practice on American shores, and now the Israel-based channel powerhouse is ready to scale those operations with a new infusion of venture funding.
AllCloud, which has leveraged acquisitions to establish thriving Amazon Web Services and Salesforce practices overseas, last week accepted what's officially a Series A Round of $18 million led by Eastside Partners, and with participation by Salesforce Ventures.
The funding is predominantly intended to buy more consultancies, as well as to organically expand AllCloud's AWS practice for the first time into North America, AllCloud CEO Eran Gil told CRN.
“Next year you'll see us growing faster and making some acquisitions in the marketplace, and we'll definitely be operating in North America with our AWS practice,” Gil said.
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The channel startup headquartered in Tel Aviv began scaling a few years ago when it bought two consultancies in its home country: Blat-Lapidot, a Salesforce partner; and Emind, an AWS partner.
After growing its business in Europe, AllCloud last year bought Figur8, a Platinum Salesforce partner, as a vehicle into the North American market.
The company now staffs 250 employees across Israel, Germany, Romania, Canada and the U.S. at offices in New York City and San Francisco.
The business has been growing beyond 40 percent organically, and last year notched a 60 percent revenue expansion due to the Figur8 deal.
AllCloud could maintain 40 percent growth, but its founders saw an $18 million investment as a means to accelerate that expansion, particularly in North America, Gil told CRN.
The AWS Premier Consulting partner is a dominant player in Amazon's channel in Germany and Romania as a certified MSP that holds six AWS competencies. While AllCloud doesn't yet offer AWS services in North America, it is definitely prominent on Amazon's radar.
At the recent AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, AWS CEO Andy Jassy gave AllCloud a shout out twice—first in his own keynote, then in a discussion with AWS Channel Chief Doug Yeum during the APN Global Partner Summit keynote.
Those mentions were a distinct honor, Gil told CRN.
"There are tens of thousands of partners out there, hundreds or even thousands in the advanced level," Gil said. "To be among the three or four that [Jassy] chooses to highlight at an event like that in front of 65,000 people is no small affair."
Gil knows a thing or two about rapidly growing a cloud-native channel consultancy as one of the founders of groundbreaking Google Cloud and Salesforce partner Cloud Sherpas, which was acquired by Accenture in 2015.
During his time at Cloud Sherpas, Gil was an informal advisor to AllCloud's founders. After he sold his company, he invested in AllCloud and took a seat on the board.
Once AllCloud found success in Germany and turned attention the U.S., the board asked him to fill a more operational role, and he stepped in to the top leadership position.