Long Road From Cuba: Manny Medina, CEO of Terremark (Part 6)

SM: What part of cloud computing do you think will be transformed by virtualization?

MM: Could computing is just providing raw computing capacity through the Internet. Instead of buying servers, space and storage you can buy gigahertz of computing capacity along with storage and memory through a friendly Web interface. You will not ever have to set foot in the facility. This is what we do. We provide the infrastructure and all the services wrapped around it.

There are certain customers who want raw computing capacity. They can just come, swipe their credit cards, and get it. We have become the leaders in the cloud in the federal space. We run USA.gov and data.gov, which are major customers. We not only provide the raw computing capacity but the security wrapping around it.

SM: You said that 30% of your business was the federal government. How does the other 70% split up in terms of large, midsize, and SOHO?

MM: The other 70% includes our original carrier base. They account for 15%. The rest is around Web 2.0 such as CBS Interactive, YouTube, Google and others whose business is entirely reliant on the web.

SM: You don’t host Google, do you?

MM: We do not host them. They are only a peering customer for us. They use our exchange point. Enterprise customers are our largest growth area right now. H&R Block, BMW and companies like that. We cater to the $1 billion to $10 billion company.

SM: Given where you are, and where the industry is, who do you see as your top competitor?

MM: Our top competitor remains the inside IT guy and the internal data centers that CIOs do not want to let go. The economic meltdown has helped that. CIOs have to do more with less, which has enticed them to make the leap.

Depending on the sector, we will compete against Savvis. They are the company with the closest profile to ours, although they are not neutral because they are a carrier. We will also compete with IBM and various carriers. We are in a magic quadrant in which you will see us, RackSpace, IBM, and Savvis. When a large company does a request for proposal (RFP) for their IT infrastructure, they will often send it to that magic quadrant.

SM: What is your growth strategy?

MM: Exactly what we have today: maintain our full suite of services. We can give as much or as little as you need. You can always augment with disaster recovery and security. We still have a lot of geographic locations in which we can grow. We believe that Europe is a very attractive market. Europe continues to be popular and is growing fast.

SM: What about Latin America? That market seems to be natural to your company’s roots.

MM: I was just going there. Brazil is a great opportunity. We have the largest peering point in South America there. São Paulo is growing very fast, and we have great prospects down there. International business is 15% right now, so there is plenty of room for growth.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Long Road From Cuba: Manny Medina, CEO of Terremark
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