Cleo, based in the suburban Chicago town of Rockford, IL, has been quietly but swiftly gaining ground by solving a big issue for companies facing IT modernization. Cleo has been helping businesses get all their internal applications, including those connecting to external partners and customers, to work together seamlessly.

The cloud integration software company is focused on business outcomes, ensuring each customer’s potential is realized by delivering solutions that make it easy to discover and create value through the movement and integration of enterprise data.

The mission at Cleo is to simply help companies build trusted relationships across their partner ecosystem today while providing all the control and visibility they need to advance their business tomorrow. It's a simple approach that seems to be working out very well.

In Feb, Cleo announced a six-year CAGR of 31% and 45% increase in year-over-year new subscription bookings. The drive to cloud integration, SaaS applications and the building of new ecosystems have also fueled Cleo’s more than doubling of its cloud business in 2018.

“Businesses today are actually creating inefficiency by trying to solve B2B integration and application integration separately -- but they are not separate challenges,” said Mahesh Rajasekharan, CEO of Cleo. “We believe traditional approaches to tackling business integration are wrong, a view wholly supported by the burgeoning demand for the robust capabilities delivered by Cleo Integration Cloud.”

Mahesh joins me on my tech podcast to talk about the corporate strategy that is driving Cleo’s consistent, fast growth and much more. As President and Chief Executive Officer of Cleo, I also learn more about how the global software company delivers ecosystem integration software solutions to help companies discover and create value across their multi-enterprise ecosystems.

An experienced business leader, Rajasekharan has expertise in business strategy, operations, sales and marketing, supply chain management, SaaS technologies, enterprise software, consulting services, private equity, acquisition integration and P&L management. Since joining Cleo in 2012, he has built the company into a global integration software leader, overseen tremendous revenue and geographic expansion, and shaped the company’s reputation through thought leadership, product innovation, and customer service excellence.