South Florida technology entrepreneur James Walker has led CloudHesive to rapid expansion since its founding in 2014, but even bigger growth is in the forecast due to two new agreements with tech industry giants, Strattam Capital and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
With Strattam, CloudHesive has closed a round of funding with the venture capital leader to enable CloudHesive to accelerate its pace of cloud technology and consulting innovation while providing best-in-class services to its high-profile and growing customer base. The new investment will provide CloudHesive with additional resources to expand operations and sales teams, supporting customers in both the public sector and commercial space, and to pursue rapid geographical expansion.
The funding also allows CloudHesive to invest in its people and expand product development such as its Centricity platform, which makes it easy for customers to adopt and benefit from AWS and cloud services, without having to understand all the technical underpinnings.
As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, CloudHesive has entered into a new Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA)with AWS. This will help drive CloudHesive’s growth in the State, Local and Education (SLED) and Federal (FED) public sector markets in the United States, as well as in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia where CloudHesive has already strategic public sector partnerships in place.
Walker says CloudHesive’s growth has been powered by customer demands for faster and more flexible computing power, but without the need for teams of in-house engineers. CloudHesive’s customized ‘boutique’ approach to customer needs has also been a large factor in the company’s success, particularly in delivering solutions for contact centers, virtual desktops, streaming media and the managed security service space.
The company currently has about 90 employees and expects to almost double that over the next year. After winning various honors starting with the Huizenga Startup of the Year Award, CloudHesive has earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 “fastest-growing companies” list for the past three years, and was ranked 49th in Florida last year.
“Watching Jim grow his business from an idea scribbled on a napkin to a multinational juggernaut has been very exciting,” said Jason Silver, founder of CTI Consulting and fellow member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization South Florida (EO SOFLO). “Not only has he become a mature, effective leader, he is also a great person. I am proud to be his EO forum mate. We’re lucky to have him in EO.”
EO SOFLO is one of the world’s largest EO chapters. The group has more than 250 members who run businesses with about 10,000 employees and more than $2 billion in annual revenues in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Walker credits EO with pushing him to be a “better leader, entrepreneur, and mentor to others” through its peer-to-peer learning and experience sharing. The group also fosters South Florida’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and overall economy through partnerships with area schools and universities, support of incubators and accelerators, and other initiatives.
“EO has been a great experience and is helping me make the right decisions as Cloudhesive continues to grow.”
For more information on CloudHesive, go to www.cloudhesive.com.
For details on EO SOFLO, visit www.eosoflo.com.
