Cloud services broker Verecloud has turned up its new Cloudwrangler marketplace, an online storefront specifically designed for small businesses that are looking to migrate much or all of their IT operations to the cloud.
The company is positioning the site as a one-stop shop for small and mid-sized businesses to shop for, purchase, monitor and manage the performance of cloud services—for free. Verecloud is a reseller that currently offers servers from SoftLayer, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and desktop backup services from Mozy.
“Small businesses are evaluating and selecting cloud services very rapidly,” said Russell Wurth, Verecloud’s VP of product management. “This gives them a single marketplace where they can go to discover, purchase and manage their cloud services.”
Verecloud has a partnership with IT network management platform provider Spiceworks and offers a free plugin to the Spiceworks platform (which is also free, and supported by advertising) that lets IT administrators monitor and manage cloud services “just like they would on premises,” Wurth said. According to Verecloud, more than 1.6 million small business IT pros use Spiceworks’ tool to manage their IT infrastructure and services.
As part of the company’s efforts to expand its reach, Verecloud also announced the hiring of John Dardick to bolster its channel development efforts. Dardick has been in the wholesale value-added technology distributor sector for more than two decades and held executive and senior management positions with Avnet, GE Access and Connecting Point of America/Intelligent Electronics.
“Our number one priority is getting the service providers more channel-literate,” Dardick said. “There’s a lot of hoopla around the cloud space, but I’m not sure the service providers are ready to deploy it from a channel standpoint.”
