cloudtamer.io is now Kion. Here’s why the tech company rebranded

When the team at cloudtamer.io looked at the cloud market, it saw what CEO Brian Price called a “sea of sameness.”

There were lots of enterprise SaaS companies with cloud in the name, and lots of blue color branding palettes. At the same time, it was leading to confusion in the marketplace about what each company did.

Price said the straightforward approach worked for his Fulton-based company grow after it launched in 2018. But around the end of 2020, the company recognized that its technology had evolved, and so, too, did its customers’ view of what it did. Rather than only bringing cloud resources in line, as the old name suggested, it was enabling operations teams within government and commercial enterprises to use the distributed infrastructure offered in the cloud to transform how companies worked.

“We said, what if we step out on a bolder ledge? Let’s not look similar because our customers think that we’re not. Let’s build a brand and evolve a brand that helps to recognize that,” Price told Technical.ly.

The result is a new name for the company: Kion.

It brings together two elements. There’s the Greek capital letter Kappa, which signifies an open hand. Ion, meanwhile, is an act or purpose.

“When you combine those together, it is very representative of what we’re trying to do with our software and our team. It’s extending our hand to help an organization achieve what their purpose is,” Price said. “The cloud has such potential to enable that purpose but very rarely do organizations see those full benefits.”

Announced on Wednesday, the new name is the culmination of a 10-month process. Kion was one of 75 names presented throughout the rebranding, as the team worked with Bay Area company Lexicon Branding, which has also worked on names like Intel’s Pentium, Blackberry and Swiffer.

“Beyond a name that has some meaning, it’s a quick memorable name that we think gets across this message of what we’re in business to do, but also to help move that organization forward,” Price said.

It also worked with Focus Lab on the look of the brand itself, which incorporates a shining light and arrows. The idea is that Kion guides a company on its path to enablement.

An in-house team of five people led further efforts, as it created explainers and other marketing. By August, the leaders brought the team together for an all-hands to reveal it. They wanted employees to see it first, and become its earliest fans.

With the public unveiling, it isn’t only changing the look. The company is also releasing the 3.0 version of its software.

“Our vision is to give organizations the automation they need to make sure the cloud enables their path forward. To do that, we have to present the data back and the context to make some of those decisions in a very easy-to-understand manner,” Price said. “We kept our pillars the same, but we built that foundation to be a lot broader to help support those.”

It includes a new user interface, as well as tools that provide visibility into “reserved instances” — showing data on how cloud resources are being used throughout an organization and factoring that into spending — as well as others that make it easier to set up accounts and integrate use of third-party authentication tools.

The rebrand and product launch comes shortly after the company raised $9.5 million in Series A funding, which was announced last month. It will help the nearly-50-member team grow in engineering, sales and market.