Former Postini CEO Joins CloudShare Board of Directors

Shinya Akamine, the angel investor and former Postini CEO, has landed on CloudShare’s board of directors. Akamine’s reputation plus CloudShare’s innovative platform-on-demand approach to the cloud makes the company worth watching.

CloudShare caught our attention on The VAR Guy (TalkinCloud’s sister site) in mid-2010. Their platform apparently has the ability to take any existing infrastructure and throw it into the cloud — a potential boon for resellers and service providers looking for a quicker, more cost-effective way to do training and customer demonstrations. And when they launched their paid CloudShare ProPlus service, their value proposition potentially increased.

Still, we realize there are dozens of potential players helping VARs to move on-premise solutions to the cloud. A prime example includes Doyenz, which spent portions of 2009 talking about Small Business Server in the cloud, before shifting most of its attention to business continuity via the cloud.

Back the the story at hand. Why did Akamine join CloudShare’s board? In a prepared statement, Akamine says CloudShare’s approach drew him to serve on their board of directors:

“CloudShare attracted my attention because they have built a unique solution to bring the benefits of cloud computing to more traditional business applications like SharePoint and SAP. I look forward to helping CloudShare continue to define and shape a new approach to using the cloud to realize strategic and economic benefits.”

Still, that very statement suggests CloudShare is heading into a highly competitive market. Microsoft’s Office 365 (the forthcoming successor to BPOS, Business Productivity Online Suite), includes SharePoint Online. And SAP’s own Business ByDesign, a SaaS platform, is catching on with some channel partners, asserts Doug Merritt, executive VP of on demand solutions at SAP.

Despite those competitive realities, Akamine has a strong track record in the SaaS and cloud markets. He laid the groundwork for Postini’s eventual takeover by Google, and he’s currently on the board of other high-tech companies like BlueSpark and AppRats.

Can his guidance and experience help bring CloudShare to the same heights? Talkin’ Cloud’s got a watchful eye out for answers, so stay tuned.

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri. Follow Talkin’ Cloud via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for Talkin’ Cloud’s Weekly Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Read our editorial disclosures here.