Startup Ajubeo Aims to Build CIO-Centric Cloud

ajubeo

A screen shot of the web site for Ajubeo, a new cloud computing company that launched today.

Chuck Price has been a CIO, and has spoken with many other chief information officers about cloud computing. So when he began building his own cloud computing operation, he and his team set out to create an IT infrastructure offering "for CIOs, by CIOs," Price says.

Price is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ajubeo, a Boulder-based cloud provider which is launching today, with a focus that seeks to bring together enterprise hardware, software and networking technology packaged for either direct sales to end users or as a private-label Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud platform for channel partners. Ajubeo is backed by Grey Mountain Partners, a Boulder-based private equity firm with more than $400 million in assets under management.

The name Ajubeo is derived from Latin phrases which translate roughly to "beginning with strong relationships, mastery and order." Price previously worked as Senior Vice President, Technology at CoreSite Realty, and has added several other CoreSite veterans to his leadership team. He believes the team's experience with infrastructure and networking will provide a comfort level to CIOs grappling to chart the best path for their IT infrastructure.

“Ajubeo’s inspiration came from challenges we experienced first-hand while leading enterprise IT departments for some of the most regulated organizations in the world,” said Price, who co-founded Ajubeo with another CoreSite alum, Tom Whitcomb. “Our mission is to provide today’s IT executives and architects with real, enterprise-scale security, performance and agility by starting with an in-depth assessment of their current environment and take into account their businesses vision for the future. We then work with them to configure an ideal cloud platform that is tailored to their needs using Ajubeo’s enterprise-class, secure, elastic and integrated resource pools.”

Starting in Denver Market

Ajubeo is launching with a footprint in Denver, where it has data center space with both FORTRUST and Comfluent (recently acquired by CoreSite), and has customers installed. The company is finalizing plans for a presence in a major New York data center hub, and expects to have a footprint in London by the end of 2012.

The company deploying enterprise technology, rather than commodity hardware, to power its cloud. Ajubeo is working with VMware for virtualization, NetApp for storage, SGI for servers and compute, and Cisco and Brocade for networking infrastructure.

But Price says the company's strength is in its management team. "We've got a senior management team that's very experienced, and understands the space," said Price. "We've been managing these environments for decades. We've been doing our homework, and it's really resonating with the executives we're speaking with."

“We have the technology, security, compliance and reliability that positions Ajubeo among the industry elite, but we take it a step further," said Whitcomb, Ajubeo's chief technology officer. "From the top down, Ajubeo is dedicated to helping our customers demonstrate more IT value than ever before, transforming the way information technology is perceived at their respective organizations. That is the power of Ajubeo’s Global Cloud Mesh."