Cloud Migration Startup RiverMeadow Inks Distribution Deal With Ingram Micro

RiverMeadow, a San Jose, Calif.-based vendor that sells technology for moving workloads between clouds, unveiled a distribution deal with Ingram Micro earlier this week aimed at raising its profile in the channel.

RiverMeadow's flagship product, a SaaS offering called Secure Direction Migration, automates the process of moving workloads from physical machines to cloud environments, and from one cloud to another. It works with Amazon Web Services, VMware, Oracle, Cisco and HP Helion, as well as other OpenStack-based clouds.

Under the agreement, Ingram Micro will distribute RiverMeadow cloud migration SKUs, in 50-packs and 250-packs, to its partners in the U.S. and Canada, who will resell them to customers.

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Scott Colgan, vice president of marketing at RiverMeadow, said Ingram's partners can now target customers that want to move their legacy systems into a cloud environment.

"To do business with them is quite significant, especially for a company the size of RiverMeadow," which has around 85 employees, Colgan said.

Cloud migrations are notoriously time-consuming and technically challenging, and RiverMeadow's value lies in masking that for customers. By enabling workloads to move between clouds, RiverMeadow also lets customers take advantage of pricing and feature advantages that different cloud vendors offer.

RiverMeadow and Ingram Micro will also "collaborate on various IT channel focused marketing and sales enablement programs intended to accelerate cloud onboarding and revenue generation," according to a press release announcing the deal.

RiverMeadow started out focusing on OEM relationships and is still in the early stages of building its own channel program. Colgan said with Ingram on board, RiverMeadow is hoping to have around 50 partners by the end of the year.

"If each of these partners serves 10 companies -- even if they're just SMBs moving workloads -- the economics will really start to kick off," Colgan said.

RiverMeadow is a close partner of both VMware and Cisco, and the latter is also a primary investor. RiverMeadow has raised $17 million since its founding in 2009.

Michael Novinson contributed to this story.

PUBLISHED MARCH 13, 2015