Built for the channel, because that's where compliance actually gets delivered.
COPA.cloud started with a simple observation: most organizations don't want to buy compliance software — they want compliance delivered, by the service providers, auditors, and consultants they already trust. Those partners needed a way to deliver it at scale.
CMMC Phase 1 is live, and compliance pressure is moving down-market fast. Small and mid-size organizations — many of them defense-adjacent — now need to meet three, four, sometimes five frameworks at once. Most don't have an internal compliance team, and they never will. They rely on the people who already manage their IT and security.
Generic GRC tools were built for one company at a time. We built COPA.cloud the other way: channel-first, from day one, so that a single configuration can serve an entire client base — and every client still gets their own complete, auditable record.
Compliance
Orchestration™
The market talks about automation. Automation is a mechanism, not an outcome — and it doesn't describe what actually has to happen when five frameworks land on one organization.
Conformity in fulfilling official requirements.
Harmonious organization.
Harmonious organization of every policy, control, activity, training, and attestation your frameworks require — configured once, and current everywhere it applies. We shortened all of that to Compliance Orchestration™.
Leadership
Jay Patterson
Nearly three decades in Managed Services, taking client environments through HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and more.
Jay Patterson is Chief Executive Officer of COPA.cloud, where he provides the overall vision and direction for the company while leading its go-to-market strategy and partnerships. He brings nearly three decades in the Managed Services industry to the problem of making compliance something a provider can actually deliver at scale.
He joined a small computer services firm as its fifth employee in 1997, at the front edge of the Managed Services model, and helped build the company around a relationship-first approach that broke from the prevailing break/fix model — where IT support firms often profited more when their clients had problems. It rebranded as Asys Networks and grew to a successful acquisition by Integrated IT (IIT).
Patterson joined IIT's executive team after the acquisition and stayed for the full arc of its growth — organic expansion, a series of competitor acquisitions, and the company's first private equity sale in 2018. He remained through that transition, helped grow the business to a second acquisition three years later by a substantially larger private equity firm, and continued on the executive leadership team.
Compliance ran through all of it. Patterson took client environments through HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and a range of other framework requirements, and later expanded the practice to include Managed Security and Compliance solutions. That work gave him the practitioner's view of how much of compliance is spent re-collecting the same evidence for a different auditor.
He was asked to take the lead at Concord Compliance, the company behind COPA.cloud — a platform he and his team built from the ground up to move Service Providers and their clients beyond fragmented compliance checklists toward true Compliance Orchestration™.
Jay and his wife, Katie, live in New Hampshire and are proud parents of nine children. He enjoys the occasional round of golf when he can sneak away.
Peter Palmisano
Former CIO of a $1B+ global engineering enterprise; author of the operating model behind COPA.cloud.
Peter Palmisano is Chief Operating Officer of COPA.cloud, where he directs the company's operational strategy, product execution, and enterprise scaling initiatives. His leadership is grounded in deep expertise across information security, regulatory compliance, and multinational technology operations.
Before joining Concord Compliance, the company behind COPA.cloud, Palmisano was Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM), where he played a pivotal role in the firm's evolution from a regional civil engineering practice into a diversified, global consulting, engineering, and construction enterprise generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue. As CDM's first CIO, he oversaw worldwide technology operations—including budget, infrastructure, applications, and staff—across the United States, Europe, the Far East, India, and Australia. In addition to his CIO responsibilities, Palmisano served as President of CDM's external IT consulting subsidiary, Chairman of its India-based IT services company, and a member of the firm's Management Committee.
Palmisano's leadership at CDM also included responsibility for enterprise compliance. He oversaw federal procurement and information security requirements for CDM's U.S. federal operating unit and guided the company's European operations through emerging privacy and data protection obligations as GDPR was introduced across the EU. This combination of global IT leadership and hands-on compliance oversight shaped everything that followed.
His transition into the compliance automation sector began during a consulting engagement preparing a healthcare SaaS provider for a SOC 2 audit. Recognizing a broader industry need for scalable, repeatable, and technology-driven compliance operations, he proposed the operating model and SaaS application concept that ultimately became the basis for Concord Compliance and the COPA.cloud platform. He has worked directly with every client since the company's inception, shaping its approach to modern compliance management and ensuring the platform reflects real-world operational requirements.
In addition to his industry leadership, Palmisano has contributed to the academic community through teaching upper-level courses in IT strategy, information security management, project management, and senior capstone programs, along with undergraduate and graduate business courses at Northeastern University.
He holds a degree in Mathematics and Physics and an MBA with a specialization in managing high-technology companies.