CloudSwitch's Rubin: 'Enterprise Cloud is a Reality'

Today, we have a success story to report. Verizon, which previously bought global services provider Terremark for $1.4 billion, acquired CloudSwitch, a venture-backed start-up  that enables companies to securely move applications or workloads between company datacenters and the cloud without changing the application or the infrastructure layer.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, so CloudSwitch co-founder and VP of Products Ellen Rubin wouldn't tell me how much she was making, other to say with an enigmatic smile, "I'm happy."

And deservedly so.  Rubin, who was most previously VP of Marketing at database appliance maker Netezza, was joined together with John Considine, former director of Platform Products at Sun, by David Skok, a brilliant entrepreneur at Matrix Partners. Skok provided the two with brainstorm space at Matrix, where they sat together for several months, incubating their ideas and eventually securing funding through Skok.

CloudSwitch came out of the box in a hurry, debuting version 2 of its CloudSwitch  Enterprise just six months after taking the wraps off v1. Seizing the moment in a dynamic and competitive marketplace, the new company made a name for itself by working successfully with very large pharmas and banks that were happy to provide glowing references--complimentary comments  that no doubt became part of Verizon's due diligence.

Not that Verizon was the only suitor. According to Rubin, "We had multiple offers, but Verizon was good because they believed in staying open, and they wanted us to be the software development hub for Terremark." The deal was extra sweet for CloudSwitch because it had been working with Terremark for nearly two years, during which time the two had developed "great chemistry," as Rubin puts it.  Another plus:  Cloudswitch could remain in Burlington, Mass.

It's still too soon to declare victory, but Rubin is confident enough to declare, "This acquisition validates that enterprise cloud is a reality."

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 08/31/2011 at 12:48 PM