CRN Exclusive: ParkMyCloud Adds Azure To Its Cloud Parking Service

ParkMyCloud, a startup that enables public cloud users to schedule when their cloud services turn off and the meters stop running, expanded its service to Microsoft's Azure cloud on Tuesday.

The company out of Dulles, Va., had previously offered a cost-saving solution only for Amazon Web Services. But following a recent round of funding and several new distributor agreements, it was time to grow beyond the industry's leading provider, said Jay Chapel, the company's founder and CEO.

"We've been holding off on getting Azure out," Chapel told CRN. "We wanted to make sure we refined what we were doing with AWS."

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About half a year ago, ParkMyCloud started working with Microsoft. The Azure component went live this past weekend, though it's officially still in a beta phase.

All the features and functionality, delivered through a software-as-a-service offering, will be the same as they are for AWS, Chapel said.

The company should launch its service for Google Compute Engine in the next three months and is also considering an IBM SoftLayer integration. ParkMyCloud's capabilities will be expanded beyond compute, to cloud services like databases and storage, later in the year, Chapel said.

Jazz Padda, founder of Too Many Clouds, a distribution partner of AWS and Microsoft Azure that primarily serves the U.K. and Australian markets, told CRN that ParkMyCloud's technology offers partners a valuable differentiator.

"If one of these partners has the cloud provider, plus ParkMyCloud as part of their proposal to the customer, that partner is going to win the deal hands down, because he's reducing the expenditure of that customer, and while he's doing that he's adding value," Padda said.

Adding Azure scheduling capabilities is a major advance, Padda said. His company tabulated the lack of support for Azure, the world's second-largest cloud, was zapping about 35 to 45 percent of their addressable market for ParkMyCloud's product.

"We're now able to talk to partners we weren't able to talk to before. Some of the biggest resellers now want to talk to us that didn't before," Padda said.

While customers are always looking to reduce capital costs, many businesses are starting to focus more on their ongoing costs, he said.

"It's creating a new market for our partners, enabling them to be more competitive," Padda said. "To offer something as simple as AWS but to add ParkMyCloud differentiates them as a solution provider, not just a reseller. That’s the main reason we partnered with them."