Melbourne cloud solutions provider Kumulus expands to US market

Melbourne-based cloud solutions provider Kumulus has expanded its operations to the United States with the launch of its desktop platform for managed service providers (MSPs).

The new platform, dubbed Kumulus ATOM Cloud, is available as a fully managed or self-managed service for MSPs and leverages Microsoft RDS and Azure Virtual Desktop.

Kumulus’ fully managed solution offers features, including automatic software updates, remote device management and 24/7 support.

The self-managed solution provides scalability and customisable options, which enables businesses to tailor their cloud desktop environment to their specific needs.

"The continued growth of remote working and the desire for organisations to transition their capex infrastructure to the Cloud has fueled the need for fast, efficient, secure, and reliable cloud desktop solutions," Kumulus founder Guy Rowson said.  

He said that ATOM allows IT service providers to “enhance remote work capabilities for their customers, while also streamlining IT management and reducing operating costs."

Rowson told CRN Australia that, due to the born-in-the-cloud nature of the company, Kumulus “already had a number of strategic relationships established in the US so we felt well placed to expand our offering into that region.”

“The US is on another level for scale when it comes to commerce in general and particularly with respect to IT and cloud services, so who wouldn’t want to participate in that market if they could?”

Rowson also discussed the considerations when to comes to the challenges of entering the large US market, and how having a clear target market and niche is important for success.

“We know we’re small, especially on a global basis, and we’ve decided to focus very clearly on a narrow and specific channel of mid-tier MSPs and ISVs initially," he told CRN Australia.

“We’re also mindful that nobody can be all things to all people, so we’re really focusing on delivering cloud desktop, data, and infrastructure on Azure in a predictable, scalable, and cost-effective way for our partners.”

Rowson highlighted the opportunities in the US with Kumulus’ vice president of US sales and alliances Scott Bechtold.

“With Scott Bechtold, as former head of sales for NetApp’s SpotPC and having worked with cloud desktop vendors like Cloud Jumper and Nerdio, we see a great opportunity to provide a real voice of the customer/partner model.”

Looking ahead, Rowson told CRN Australia that “one key strategy in our roadmap is to deliver the same level of service and functionality that we have today on Azure, across AWS and Hybrid Cloud.”

Rowson said Kumulus expects to deliver its cloud desktop services across these environments in the next two to three quarters, in collaboration with strategic partners.

“Meanwhile today, as a Cloud Preferred NetApp partner, we are able, through the power of NetApp’s ONTAP framework, to delivery scalable Hybrid & Multi-Cloud solutions but we want our partners to be able to do that on a self-service basis from our white label Cloud PaaS (platform as a service) infrastructure,” he concluded.