A pair of former Ambassadors Group Inc. executives has started a new software and cloud-computing consulting company called 2nd Watch Inc. that they envision ramping up quickly in the next few years.

Co-founder Kris Bliesner, who previously worked as vice president of technology at Ambassadors before leaving to start 2nd Watch, says the company is developing three business software products—all designed to work in a cloud-computing environment—and expects to roll out the first two products this fall.

While those products are in development, 2nd Watch is offering consulting services to companies that are considering the migration from a physical server to cloud computing. Cloud computing is industry lingo for using remote servers hosted on the Internet to provide email and data storage and processing as an alternative to on-site servers.

"We think there's a lot of opportunity to get in the cloud," Bliesner says.

Bliesner and fellow 2nd Watch co-founder Jeff Aden, who had been senior director of student programs at Ambassadors, are the company's only employees currently, but they expect to add a handful yet this year. Beyond 2011, the company's business plan calls for ramping up to between 15 and 20 employees by the end of next year and to between 40 and 50 employees by the end of 2013.

That envisioned work force would be needed to support the trajectory of growth the company's founders are projecting, which would take them to $35 million in sales in 2014, Bliesner says. He declines to disclose revenue projections for the years leading up to 2014, other than to say the company expects to be cash-flow positive next year.

The company currently is located in a small office in the TierPoint building, at 23403 E. Mission, in Liberty Lake, but Aden says it likely will move late this year to larger quarters.

While Aden and Bliesner are involved in the day-to-day operations, a third business partner, Demand Energy Networks Inc. CFO Brett Turner, has invested in the company but doesn't work there. The company also is currently soliciting investment from "friend and family" and has presented its business plan to the Spokane Angel Alliance, Aden says.

Presently, the company's revenue comes from its consulting services, which largely involve assessing what functions can be moved to cloud computing and how that should be handled.

Once the company launches its software products, however, Bliesner says he expects the vast majority of its revenue to come from software sales and service, with consulting as a secondary revenue stream.

The first software product that 2nd Watch expects to release is a small business suite that would handle cloud-based file storage, email hosting, website hosting, and other services. The software will be customizable, Bliesner says, in that a business can buy only the features it needs.

Next, 2nd Watch plans to roll out this fall a DR Suite. In this context, DR is an acronym for disaster recovery, and the software will be designed to provide a remote data backup. Bliesner says the company hopes to have a prototype of that software finished in October and to have it available later in the fall.

The final software product will involve demand management. While still in development, the software essentially would monitor how much capacity a company requires for web hosting, email, and other services and scale back on capacity when it could. A prototype of that product is expected to be completed by the end of this year and released during the first quarter of 2012.

Aden says he expects the software products to appeal to small to mid-sized businesses.

"This is going to help them compete against the big boys," he asserts.

Bliesner contends cloud computing can be less expensive than investing in an on-site physical server, primarily because with many cloud computing vendors, a company pays for the capacity it uses on an hourly basis. When buying a server, most companies are trying to project what their needs will be years into the future and buy based on a "theoretical maximum" they expect to need in the future.

"Businesses overbuy all the time," he says. "You don't need to overbuy when you're in the cloud."