Top U.S. Salesforce.com Partner Echo Lane
Acquired by hiSoft, China’s Leading IT Outsourcing Company
hiSoft leads China’s further expansion into global ITO services market; creates ‘best-of-all-worlds’ cloud services consulting practice through Echo Lane purchase
San Francisco, CA – April 15, 2010 — Echo Lane, one of the top U.S. solution providers for Salesforce.com and other cloud applications, announced it has been acquired by hiSoft, the leading global information technology outsourcing company headquartered in China. This is the most aggressive push yet into the U.S. cloud computing market for a major China-based IT Outsourcing company.
Under the terms of the agreement, Echo Lane will remain a wholly owned subsidiary of hiSoft, and the firms will join forces to expand their dominance in the cloud computing market, serving Global 2000 customers in the United States, Asia and Europe.
“Over the past eight years of working together, hiSoft has become AIG Edison Life’s essential business partner in the areas of application system development and business process outsourcing,” said Tohru Futami, Managing Director and CIO, AIG Edison Life Insurance Company. “We welcome hiSoft’s acquisition of Echo Lane, as we expect that it will bring great value and benefits to both hiSoft and AIG Edison Life. The combined companies will contribute greatly to our strategic cloud computing initiatives.”
Echo Lane was founded by Salesforce.com alumni in 2004 with an exclusive focus on cloud computing solutions. The firm has since earned a solid reputation executing strategic cloud-based initiatives for customers in the manufacturing, high-tech and financial services industries. In addition, Echo Lane provides a full set of business process and information technology consulting services around the software-as-a-service model. Two deep specialties are: the migration of custom, legacy, and traditional on-premise applications to cloud computing solutions, and the implementation of fully integrated, end-to-end CRM solutions using leading cloud computing applications including Salesforce.com, BigMachines, and Eloqua.
“The acquisition of Echo Lane is an important step in hiSoft’s strategy to strengthen our global cloud service capabilities, as well as our CRM consulting practice,” said Tiak Koon Loh, CEO of hiSoft. “As one of Salesforce.com’s elite partners, with more than 1,000 completed projects in the past six years, Echo Lane brings an impressive portfolio of cloud computing knowledge and experience. This, combined with hiSoft’s deep engineering expertise, extensive delivery capabilities in China, and broad CRM expertise within enterprise customers in the financial services, technology, and manufacturing sectors, we will allow us to provide our global customer base a whole new level of innovative and cost-effective cloud deployment services.”
With more than 4,500 employees across 16 global business offices and eight Asia delivery centers, hiSoft is a trusted outsourcing partner to its clients, leveraging a ‘flexshoring’ service delivery model via mostly China-based development centers. With an even mix of research and development services for those clients that build and sell technology products, and information technology services for those clients that leverage technology to run their companies, hiSoft is well known for both its engineering depth and industry breadth. hiSoft is a private company backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ePlanet Ventures, GE Capital, Granite Global Ventures, Intel Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (HK) Capital Limited and Sumitomo Corporation.
“We are very excited to join forces with hiSoft, because together, we now have the flexibility to offer clients an extensive array of end-to-end cloud and other technology solutions delivered by either onshore or offshore teams, depending on the client needs and requirements.” said Alana Kaselitz, Principal of Echo Lane. “The power of our cultures working together will allow Echo Lane to leverage hiSoft’s reach, technology prowess and resources, and offer our hands-on-expertise to a wider global market.”
For more information, please visit Echo Lane at www.Echo-Lane.com and hiSoft at www.hisoft.com.
