Appirio Offers Customers a $1 Million Cloud Computing Guarantee

Appirio has launched an intriguing promotion to get customers to think seriously about adopting cloud computing as part of their enterprise strategy. The company is promising a $1 million cloud computing guarantee to customers who qualify (i.e. minimum IT spend of $5 million and at least 500 employees) and agree to cloudsource their entire IT to Appirio and the public cloud. By cloudsource they mean "sourcing complete solutions to run your business on the cloud, through a combination of cloud applications, cloud platforms and cloud infrastracuture. Appirio provides professional services to help organizations quickly adopt and integrate on-demand, or SaaS, applications from Google and Salesforce.com.

It's interesting on a couple of levels. First, it clearly shows Appirio believes in what it's doing with customers, as well as, the bottom line impact cloud computing can have on a company. For example, Appirio has worked with and implemented cloud-based solutions at 180 companies since 2006 giving it a lot of experience in this space. Moreover, the company, as the saying goes, eats its own dog food: "We've grown our business 400% over the past 2 years, we spend about 3% of our revenue on a world class 'virtual cloud suite' and supporting IT services, and have no capital tied up in IT infrastructure."

However, a bit of caution is warranted. As noted in InfoWorld, "Customers who consider Appirio's offer have to be sure there is enough parity between on-premises and SaaS (software as a service) applications, said Ray Wang, partner with Altimeter Group. "If you're functionally close, say within 80 percent, the short answer is probably yes, it's cheaper to run."

For complete details on the program, which runs for the next six months, check out the Appirio $1 Million Guarantee landing page.