Among the tools his team has embraced so far: Tenrox, a cloud-hosted application for professional services automation; and Cornerstone OnDemand, a cloud solution for talent management.

Picking Partners

By investing in software as a service to run its own business, Sparkhound will glean valuable insights that it can help impart to clients pondering their own transition to the cloud. "Our lead is to be educational, to help make them feel more secure with this choice," Boudreaux said.

For that reason, the integrator has been very careful about forging strategic vendor relationships. Microsoft has been the go-to partner since the company's inception, and it has joined the software giant in embracing cloud infrastructure and software as a service. Alliances with Amazon Web Services, Citrix and Rackspace Hosting also factor heavily in Sparkhound's services.

There's no specific framework that defines "strategic," rather they are chosen based on a vendor's alignment with Sparkhound's business priorities and the potential for driving future revenue, Boudreaux said.

Culture Of Self-motivation

When it comes to hiring and employee development, Sparkhound offers training that focuses on both technical skills and on helping its 200-plus employees become better consultative advisors to its clients, especially as the company moves upstream into larger midsize accounts.

"We feel it's important that our team get both professional and consultative development," Boudreaux said.

Recruits are picked for their commitment to putting the customer first, a hallmark of the Sparkhound culture. Along the same lines, Sparkhound's non-profit charitable foundation may originally have been created by its top executive, but employees are responsible for choosing selected causes and organizing the response to them. Self-motivation is a big mantra.

Tying into its corporate branding, the company seeks to create "ferocious talent, bred for service." Its rising-star employees are known as "Sparkies," and the company communicates to both its internal and external pack (if you will) of partners, customers and employees through a forum called "Doghouse."

Silly, perhaps, but also memorable and intended to help all of those communities feel a closer connection with the Sparkhound vision. To illustrate his point, Boudreaux quotes one of CEO Usher's favorite sayings: "If the work isn't fun, we're doing something wrong."