Google Apps cloud service
provider Cloud Sherpas announced it acquired WaveAdept, a Google Apps reseller
and cloud service provider in New Zealand, as part of a strategy to expand in
the Asia-Pacific region.
WaveAdept, based in
Wellington, N.Z., is the third company acquired by Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps
partner, in the past six weeks. To help cement its commitment to helping
Asia-Pacific clients go Google, Cloud Sherpas has opened an office in Sydney,
Australia.
Terms were not disclosed,
but the acquisition of WaveAdept provides Cloud Sherpas with local senior
management talent, additional Google Apps certified deployment specialists and
Google Apps customers. The acquisition also extends Cloud Sherpas’ brand in
one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for cloud computing.
Research firm IDC recently
reported cloud computing in the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will grow 40
percent annually through 2014, from $1.3 billion in 2010.
“We’ve heard that businesses
in New Zealand and Australia have been slower to embrace cloud computing,” said
Jon Hallett, CEO for Cloud Sherpas. “But from what we’ve seen, companies in
this market are aggressively looking to replace on-premise email and
collaboration products with cloud-native platforms—particularly Google
Apps.”
According to Google, Google
Apps is used today by 30 million people in 3 million businesses worldwide, and
3,000 new companies are signing up every day.
Hallett said this growth is
consistent with what Cloud Sherpas is seeing in the market: In three
years, the company has migrated over 1 million workers to Google Apps, and
Cloud Sherpas’ IT administration add-on for Google Apps—SherpaTools—has been
installed on more than 20,000 domains in over 110 countries, including over 80
percent of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Google Apps adoption
in Asia is accelerating because businesses in this market are seeing real
benefits from replacing their legacy systems with pure cloud solutions,"
said Richard Suhr, Google enterprise sales director for APAC. “Google Apps
Resellers have played a key role in the growth of Google Apps, and we’re
delighted to see Cloud Sherpas move into this region."
WaveAdept was a logical
acquisition target for Cloud Sherpas—which recently snapped up other Google
Apps cloud service providers on the U.S. West Coast and in the Midwest.
WaveAdept has migrated dozens of companies and thousands of workers to Google
Apps, Hallett noted.
“We plan to staff up quickly
in New Zealand and Australia, but the acquisition of WaveAdept gives us
immediate help from senior managers and Google experts who know the local
market inside and out,” said Hallett. “Asia is a huge opportunity for
Google Apps, and we’re thrilled to be a key catalyst for rapid adoption.”