Steve Pruden

Steve PrudenVP, Strategy & Partnerships

Appirio recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary and I’d like to look back at how far we’ve come and how much we’ve accomplished since those early days in 2006.

Appirio launched as a corporation when four friends and colleagues decided to bet everything on an idea that a fundamental shift in enterprise computing was beginning — the shift from on-premise hardware and software to multi-tenant software delivered as a service. Something now universally known as cloud computing.

Appirio was very different back then. While working from an incubator in San Mateo, CA we worked fast to launch a product, become an early Salesforce.com consulting partner, and send our first invoice — all in our first four months of existence.

Over the years, as technology innovation sped up even more and more and more competitors started to pop up, Appirio is stronger than ever.

We’ve had many notable milestones — from launching Appirio Japan in 2008, to being named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2010, and today standing firm as one of the only truly independent, global cloud service providers.

Other big bets include our expansion into Europe in 2011 and acquiring TopCoder, a community of more than one million data scientists, developers, and designers in 2013.

Most recently, we bet on the city of Indianapolis. On April 30, 2012, we officially announced our intention to open a second U.S. location in central Indiana. At the time, I had no idea that in less than four years, our success in recruiting, retaining, and growing talent in Indiana would force a shift in our global headquarters from the Bay Area to Indianapolis.

We believe that much of our success is a result of our ability to change quickly and to keep up with the pace of technology and business innovations. In the current business landscape, employee engagement is one of the most important priorities for executive leadership teams. Our unique approach to helping customers increase employee engagement is to show companies the direct link between employee productivity and customer satisfaction, to carefully map out each group’s journey as it interacts with a company, and to develop a carefully thought out strategy that includes technology, processes, and management. Our customer are happy because they achieve increased employee productivity by implementing the right tools and management strategies.

Looking back at our history our pioneer technology services company, now headquartered in Indianapolis, employs over 1,300 people globally and serves almost 4,000 unique enterprise customers. We’ve moved millions of users to the cloud and worked with some of the largest and most well respected businesses in the world.

Our Appirians have raised over $665,700 and donated well over 30,000 volunteer hours through our philanthropic initiative, Silver Lining.

We continue to hire recent college graduates and experienced executives in Indianapolis. Our employees are excited to be a part of a growing technology scene in Indy; our partners are thrilled with our progress, and our customers are benefit from a highly skilled, loyal and hungry workforce.

Our bet on Indianapolis is paying off big time, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the city, our industry, our customers, and our company over the next ten years.