Cloud security firm CipherGraph shifts HQ to US; ties up with Amazon, Microsoft

Bangalore-based CipherGraph Networks Pvt Ltd , which provides enterprise cloud security solutions to small and medium enterprises, has announced strategic partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Windows Azure. The company has also moved its headquarters from Bangalore to California to aggressively focus on the US market, its founder told TechCircle.in.

"We are official technology partner of Amazon Partner Network and got access to its business development teams as well as opportunities for joint marketing," said CEO Jitender Sharan, who founded CipherGraph in August 2011. "We have also partnered with Microsoft Windows Azure to facilitate collaboration on technology and business aspects."

Sharan noted that Amazon and Microsoft partnerships are to assist in market reach and enable their sales teams to open up more lucrative customer segments. "A recent Gartner report says that security concerns are still a top hurdle for cloud adoption. We are overcoming this hurdle for Azure and Amazon and it greatly benefits their adoption rates. They have partnered with us to address security concerns of their customers and this expands their TAM (total addressable market) manifold. The idea is to co-sell along with Azure and Amazon to create a full cloud solution that is compliant with the customer's security policies."

CipherGraph, which raised an undisclosed funding from Silicon Valley-based VC firm The Social+Capital Partnership a month ago, mainly targets the US market with secondary focus on India and Singapore.

The company has won a few customers in the US.  "We have acquired a few customers in the US and are in talks with a few more. We also have hired a full time employee to manage our business in the US market," said Sharan, an IIT Kanpur alumnus, without divulging the details.

A SaaS startup, CipherGraph has also added a few Indian customers to its kitty. It charges them on a pay-per-use basis. "Our customers only pay for the capacity they use, which is more flexible and viable. With our SaaS model in place, companies need not to spend on hardware and they see the reduced total cost of ownership coming with our cloud security gateway."

According to Sharan, 2013 will be the year of cloud security. "The cloud offerings are now mature enough to attract large scale enterprise adoption and security is the only missing piece in this puzzle that completes the whole cloud picture."

The general absence of India data centres from major cloud hosts makes the market here a little smaller than the rest of the world, he said.

"There are a few players in this market who try to solve the security problem in different ways. Our extensive experience in enterprise class security and our patent-pending intellectual property keeps us ahead of the curve," he said, referring to competition.

CipherGraph launched a cloud virtual private network (VPN) service to allow secure and regulated access to users' cloud and physical data centres from all devices, including smartphones and tablets.  Its encryption technology allows only authorised devices to connect to the cloud or data centre.

The company has four employees as of now and is planning to double the teams both in the US and India in the next few months.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)