Expanding its cloud reach far and wide, Salesforce Ventures has announced a $50m fund to invest in cloud consulting startups.
The CRM giant’s corporate investment arm has set up a new SI (system integrator) Trailblazer Fund, which will be dedicated to next-gen cloud consulting firms and focused on enabling growth and customer success.
The investment into cloud consulting comes at a time when, according to Salesforce, consulting partners are seeing their Salesforce practices grow more than 50% annually. This increased demand is also creating a need for new partners that can provide additional skilled capacity to deploy the full family of Salesforce offerings to customers. The $50m fund will provide cloud consulting companies with the capital required to build and scale their Salesforce services capabilities for the future.
“Consulting firms play a pivotal role in the Salesforce ecosystem, implementing Salesforce solutions that meet the needs of customers of all sizes, industries and geographies,” said John Somorjai, EVP of Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce.
“This new fund will foster the next-generation of SIs and supercharge the growth of the Salesforce ecosystem.”
One such company who will look to benefit from the new fund is ATG, a firm that provides quote-to-cash (CPQ) advisory and implementation services. The company will leverage the investment to continue providing CPQ and billing expertise, services, training and tools to leading Salesforce partners as they build their practices across North America, EMEA and APAC.
In conjunction with the fund, Salesforce is also launching a new SI Trailblazer Alliance Initiative to provide portfolio companies with resources and training to build out their service capabilities for the future.
READ MORE: Salesforce: Become a trailblazer in the age of the customer
“Growing customer demand for Salesforce has created a critical need for more Salesforce-trained consulting partners as part of the thriving ‘Salesforce Economy,’” said Tyler Prince, EVP of Worldwide Alliances and Go-to-Market Innovation, Salesforce.
“The new SI Trailblazer Fund and SI Trailblazer Alliance Initiative will help fuel our consulting partner ecosystem and empower the next generation of high-growth cloud consultancies.”
