Roambi Puts Channel Program In Gear, Launches Cloud App

The company already has enlisted more than 20 partners who have been trained and certified to work with Roambi Business, said David Becerra, Roambi strategy and business development vice president.

"With the new cloud product, we think this is the perfect time to launch a partner program in North America," he said in an interview.

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Roambi's software, including Roambi Analytics and Roambi Flow, enables mobile device users to access data in disparate corporate systems such as CRM applications, databases and business analytics software. Until now the software has been available only as an on-premise version that runs on corporate servers.

The new Roambi Business is a cloud version of the company's software hosted on Amazon Web Services. Roambi includes the cloud platform, publishing apps for creating data visualizations, publishing APIs that serve as a data conduit, administrative tools, security features and SAML 2.0 single sign on.

Becerra said the new service ties into the industry's current trends of cloud, mobile computing and big data.

Roambi has run a partner program in Europe, where the company originated, with more than 100 partners. But until now it has not had a similar program in North America.

The new North American program will focus on the cloud service, Becerra said. Roambi will be recruiting solution providers to sell the service and provide implementation and development services around the application. "It's a really rich opportunity for solution providers," Becerra said.

"Almost everybody has moved or is moving to a cloud deployment model," said James Marzola, vice president of strategic alliances, marketing and CRM at Business & Decision, North America, an IT consulting company and systems integrator. The Wayne, Pa.-based company began working with Roambi late last year and is seeing significant interest from corporate iPad users.

"We see [Roambi Business] as a very strong addition to our Customer eXperience Intelligence offering," he said, referring to the company's software that combines aspects of CRM and business intelligence for predictive analytics applications. Business & Decision already has seven sales and technical employees trained on the Roambi software and Marzola sees the service as a strong fit for his company's retail and health-care practices.

Roambi also is enlisting partners who identify customer prospects and refer them to the vendor, Becerra said.

Roambi will manage the service subscriptions, including customer billing, and partners will be paid a percentage of the subscription fees, Becerra said. He did not disclose sales goals for the partner program.

PUBLISHED JUNE 27, 2013