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With a Microsoft Worldwide Cloud Partner of the Year award under its belt, and plans to expand into Australia, reseller Cloudamour is going from strength to strength. Jade Burke meets CEO Mitchell Feldman to find out more…
Walking up to a grand building with a plush glass exterior and revolving doors, I expected nothing less from Cloudamour, as it shares its office with Warner Brothers in Watford.
Before I met the company’s CEO, I had to enter my details into a tablet mounted onto the wall, which I would later learn to call the ‘digital receptionist’. Soon enough Mitchell Feldman, Cloudamour’s founder and CEO, appears. After our greetings I am guided into a conferencing room, eager to find out more about this unlikely receptionist.
“Having that system there means people are automatically logged into the system, and as soon as you sign in I get an email to let me know that you’re in the reception,” Feldman tells me.
Having previously owned The Internet Group, Feldman decided to sell it back in 2011 after noticing a shift in the market towards the cloud. “For those who were informed, the cloud was quite mainstream and to those who were uninformed, it was quite scary and there was a lot of ambiguity as to what it was,” Feldman explains. “So I saw an opportunity to build a business that focused on just cloud.”
Cloudamour first launched in 2012, and the company has grown massively, with plans to employ 40 people by the end of the year and expand its offices to Australia, with the possibility of New York on the horizon.
A key part of the business is Cloudamour’s HD video conferencing suite, where visitors can take part in a free workshop and engage in a number of workplace scenarios, to help demonstrate how technology such as the cloud can enhance their business. Epson’s EB-1430Wi finger-touch projector enables just that, as Feldman says: “Partnering with Epson is natural for us because it’s got the massive wow factor.”
It even allows employees to move work around, write on it and then send it to Cloudamour’s printer, or directly to businesses.
Emblazoned across the wall is a whiteboard with the look of a Microsoft tablet, displaying content from the short-throw projector, creating a kind of virtual device.
As a journalist, it is difficult for me to part with my trusty pen and paper, but Feldman hopes more and more people will start to deviate away from the old-fashioned style: “We have still got some way to go, people are still using pens and paper, but we’ll get there. We’re on a mission.”
It seems that Microsoft is a huge partner of Cloudamour’s. The firm scooped the Microsoft Worldwide Cloud Partner of the Year 2014 award, and it’s clear Feldman is incredibly grateful for the prestigious accolade: “It was overwhelming, but from a commercial perspective, it has helped us to raise our profile.
“That endorsement is enough to have a much more mature conversation and elevates us to that trusted partner status before the meeting has even started.”
Glancing around the room, I notice how neat and tidy everything is. “I look at businesses, and all the wires are all over the floor with the old phone system. We’re very proud of the fact that I am absolutely OCD when it comes to our cabling,” smiles Feldman.
It is clear the team has a profound fondness of technology, the cloud, and its capabilities for businesses. “We are the luckiest people in the world because our job is our hobby. There’s a lot of expressions for how much we love it but I guess the most defining one is our company name – Cloudamour. We love the cloud,” he concludes.
Fact file:
Year established: 2012
Telephone: 020 3002 4111
Email: hello@cloudamour.com
Website: cloudamour.com
Address: Suite 1 Building 5, Leavesden Park, Hercules Way, Watford, Herts, WD25 7GS
