A recent KPMG International survey of 900 companies found that four out of five companies have adopted or plan to adopt cloud computing. Companies cited economic factors, improved agility across the enterprise and increased technical benefits as factors in moving to the cloud. Brian Donaghy, CEO of Appcore, is focused on helping companies of all sizes and with a variety of needs implement cloud solutions.
Donaghy (below, photo courtesy of Appcore) was the forefront of the cloud computing trend – a service that’s offered and followed by a number of Silicon Prairie companies – while serving as CTO of Computility (formerly Harvest Services), a company he founded in 1997.
At Computility, he developed a model called “subscription networking.” For a monthly flat rate, servers that were located on the customer’s premises were managed across the internet from a central office.
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“At the time, networks were serviced in person and on premise by a technician or a truck rolling to the site. Using the internet to deliver networking support and service was revolutionary,” Donaghy said in an October email interview. “We always dreamed about being able to centrally deliver infrastructure and computing, and that’s what we’ve done with Appcore.”
Donaghy and Donny Williams, Appcore’s CTO and formerly the vice president of emerging technologies at Wells Fargo Business Banking, formed Appcore in 2008.
Today, Appcore is a provider of cloud computing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) for business, telecommunications and software vendors. Donaghy said Appcore is unique because it’s one of the few cloud computing companies that focuses on offering cloud solutions to the telecommunications market. It’s also the only cloud computing company that offers a turn-key cloud solution to allow businesses to have their own private cloud network on location. In an email interview on Tuesday, Donaghy said the company has hundreds of customers in the Appcore Cloud and multiple Appcore Onsite (private cloud) deployments.
“We always dreamed about being able to centrally deliver infrastructure and computing, and that’s what we’ve done with Appcore.”
– Brian Donaghy, Appcore CEO
In addition to its Des Moines corporate headquarters situated on the twelfth floor of the Financial Center building in downtown, Appcore has offices in New York City, London and Harare, Zimbabwe (left, photo courtesy of Appcore). Donaghy said that all of Appcore’s locations are customer-driven, but the company is often asked about its Zimbabwe location. In 2008, Appcore made an investment in Zimbabwe and got to know the people and culture.
“We ended up with several large customers in Harare and opened an office for support and development,” Donaghy said. “It has not been without challenges, but the infrastructure continues to improve.”
In January the company will open an office in Palo Alto, California.
Appcore’s products include:
- Appcore Onsite, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) system delivering cloud services on location for enterprise or service provider businesses
- Appcore Cloud Private Label, a simple cloud solution for businesses interested in offering cloud services to their customers through a branded cloud environment
- Appcore Cloud, a cloud IaaS for business, telecommunications and software vendors that is designed to power all of a company’s servers and applications in their own private cloud network. Within Appcore Cloud is a feature called Launch to Cloud, which aims to allow non-technical users to launch a cloud server quickly.
- Disaster recovery, which promises a cost effective disaster recovery solutions to businesses and their clients
Donaghy considers computing to be the newest utility. “We’ve had historic utility services like water, gas, electric and modern ones like phone and cable,” he said. “Computing services, like app hosting and storage, are being bought like electricity now at over a billion dollars a year in the US today … Appcore provides the technology infrastructure for that industry.”
Appcore, which has set out of raising a Series B round this quarter, received earlier investment from Interstate Enterprises of Emerson, Iowa and Broadhorn Capital of Des Moines, Donaghy’s own venture capital firm.
Appcore works with several independent software vendors to build relationships and to continue to offer new products to its customers. A full list of Appcore’s applications is available at its appstore.
