Introducing Cloud Pioneer Suntech: Learning about cloud adoption from a solar company

By Sara Campbell

The oxymoron was obvious, a solar company embracing the cloud? As the Suntech team sarcastically joked, "Being a company whose business is based on the sun, we just weren't sure about this whole cloud thing." Fortunately, Suntech's business and IT leaders had the foresight to see beyond short term puns and jokes to transform their business with the cloud.

Founded in 2001, Suntech is a multinational organization employing more than 20,000 worldwide and is credited as being the world's largest global producer of cost-effective solar energy solutions. Recently, Suntech's Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Zhengrong Shi and Andrew Beebe, Chief Commercial Officer, were named Appirio Cloud Pioneers.

Dr. Shi and Andrew Beebe are being recognized for their leadership during the company's recent deployment of Salesforce Sales Cloud for global CRM; taking Suntech from separate, homegrown systems to a customized, highly scalable, and global sales infrastructure. We recently sat down with Andrew Beebe to hear first-hand why Suntech decided to move its CRM system to the cloud, what the benefits have been and his experience working with Appirio and Salesforce.