Mission Cloud Services expands software application development credentials of cloud MSP and tier-one service partner AWS with acquisition of software specialist Dozen Software.
The acquisition gives Los Angeles-based Mission Cloud Services, which already does application development work for its Amazon Web Services customers, the opportunity to expand its reach, said Mark Medina, vice president of marketing. of mission.
“We are seeing increased demand not only from existing customers, but also from AWS itself, for application development,” Medina told CRN. “We meet regularly with AWS. We have account execs mapped to AWS account execs. And they tell us that they are seeing an increase in application development demand from their customers. »
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Mission Cloud Services offers a suite of cloud services to help businesses migrate to AWS and help them operate, modernize and manage their AWS environments, Medina said.
“With Dozen Software, we will be able to enhance our existing application process to help customers modify their applications or create new ones,” he said.
Chris Downs, CEO of Dozen Software, based in Nashville, Tenn., and now head of application development practices at Mission, said his company builds software applications for customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. .
“We haven’t been industry specific,” Downs told CRN. “But with Mission, we’ll focus more on cloud-native development, cloud scalability, and global availability.”
Dozen Software prior to the acquisition did not have an AWS-centric business model, Downs said.
“We were driven by customer demand,” he said. “We will continue to honor all of our existing relationships. But in the future, we will focus on developing AWS software applications. We are not talking about an application targeting mobile phones. We create enterprise and desktop applications.
For Mission Cloud Services, its exclusive focus on Amazon Web Services gives customers confidence in the kind of expertise the solution provider brings, Medina said.
“We are a consulting firm,” he said. “We want to understand why a customer wants to move to the cloud and what AWS can do for them.”
Prior to the acquisition, Mission Cloud Services had a team of 286 people in 40 states, all of whom work remotely across the United States, Medina said. “That means we’re not limited to where we’re looking for talent,” he said.
Dozen Software, on the other hand, has 12 employees in the Nashville area, Downs said. These employees are all working remotely, but like to meet every other week just to make sure everyone is okay, he said.
Regarding the company name “Dozen Software”, Downs said the company was created with the current 12 employees. “Literally we had 12 engineers,” he said. “We weren’t creative with the name.”
While Dozen Software was profitable, he saw an acquisition by Mission Cloud Services as an opportunity to work within a larger company whose culture aligned with his own, Downs said.
“It’s like Mission using a bigger version of Dozen,” he said. “They’ve built a company that’s employee-centric and customer-centric, like we have. And we saw a lot of excitement in what the mission is doing to make app development part of something bigger than what we were doing.
Medina and Downs declined to discuss the value of the acquisition.
The two met through a mutual friend who worked at Mission and was familiar with Dozen Software’s work, Downs said.
“When Mission decided to add an app development skill, this friend stood up and said he knew someone who could help, and gave the presentation,” he said. “We met, then we skipped the preliminary partnership phase and went straight to acquisition.”
Mission Cloud Services was founded about five years ago when a private equity firm acquired three small consulting partners who then merged their businesses, Medina said.
Dozen Software is Mission’s first acquisition since then, but likely not the last, he said.
“There’s always ongoing research into what other acquisitions we could make,” he said.
