10th Magnitude Hires Cloud Guru Ira Bell As CTO

Ira Bell is joining 10th Magnitude as chief technology officer

Ira Bell, the former co-founder of cloud solution provider Nimbo, has been hired by Microsoft Azure cloud superstar 10th Magnitude as its new chief technology officer and the leader of its technical sales force.

Bell -- who three years ago co-founded Recruit Media, which is the parent of Recruit.com, a disruptive job board website with robust multimedia capabilities -- has been chartered with helping 10th Magnitude customers adopt breakthrough technologies including artificial intelligence, applications modernization and rapid adoption of DevOps services and tools.

"The reason I am so excited about joining 10th Magnitude is because nobody else is doing what they are doing in terms of pushing the technology envelope," said Bell in an interview with CRN. "They are working with the Fortune 50 – the biggest companies in the world – to implement artificial intelligence, DevOps and managed services in Azure."

Bell co-founded with entrepreneur John Shaw cloud services pioneer Nimbo, a one-time Microsoft Azure Partner of the Year, and a winner of CRN's Excellence in Cloud Application Practice that was acquired in 2015 by data center powerhouse Equinix.

Bell said 10th Magnitude is driving next generation digital transformation that has forever changed the channel landscape. "The future of the channel is well beyond cloud migration," he said. "It is about digital transformation. It is about helping companies drive business innovation. If you can't help companies truly innovate then you can't be relevant as a channel partner."

That strikes at the heart of the 10th Magnitude mission to empower employees to innovate and even fail faster so they can succeed in the digital transformation era, said Bell.

"You need to empower companies to be digital innovators," he said. "It's about getting customers to a place where they can come up with the next new thing that will change their business using all the gray matter in their organization. This is about helping customers create their own startups. We empower them through cloud and DevOps to go try new ideas."

Bell said it was the opportunity to work with the world class team at 10th Magnitude on breakthrough business innovation that sparked him to come out of what was effectively a retirement from the solution provider business. "Only (10th Magnitude CEO) Alex (Brown) could have pulled this off – getting me out of retirement," he said. "It's a big deal. 10th Magnitude is working on the coolest projects with the biggest companies in the world.”

Bell's appointment comes on the heels of 10th Magnitude's 2018 Microsoft Open Source Applications and Infrastructure on Azure Partner of the Year — the second year Microsoft has bestowed that accolade on a partner.

"Eight years ago 10th Magnitude and Nimbo were the top Microsoft Azure cloud providers," said Jason Rook, 10th Magnitude vice president of market development who at that time was the director of the US Azure channel at Microsoft. "It is awesome to bring all this talent together under one brand. This is a huge competitive advantage for 10th Magnitude. We have growing innovation in our engineering ranks with an exploding managed services business and now we have brought unmatched technology sales leadership with Ira that is going to allow us to scale even broader and more aggressively."

Bell said that although he will remain a board member and co-founder of Recruit Media, he is fully committed to 10th Magnitude. "This opportunity doesn't exist with anyone else," he said. "10th Magnitude is doing things that no one else is doing."

Bell said his first day was like drinking from a fire hose. "Everybody has been warm and friendly," he said. "I have got a lot to learn and a lot of work to do."