Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alex Osipov, CTO of OS33 (Part 1)

No longer the wave of the future, cloud computing has become an integral part of the way we live and work. Companies like OS33 have capitalized on the growing importance of cloud computing by positioning themselves to help those who help the end users, specifically, managed services providers (MSP). A completely cloud-based IT delivery automation platform, OS33 allows MSPs to more easily deliver and manage the IT solutions they provide for their clients. With the aid of OS33, end users receive a customizable Webtop graphical user interface (GUI) that provides a single unified interface that can access all company applications, data and services via a connected computer regardless of location.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Alex. Let’s start with some context about OS33 and about you.

Alex Osipov: OK. We started as a managed services provider in the early 2000s – 2001 – and we built an automation platform for everything that an MSP would do. That evolved … just orchestrating a lot of back-end services, many Microsoft products and a lot services around that. If a financial company were to come to us, we had a platform that automated creating users, and with self-service, you can access applications from anywhere. We did that until 2007. In 2007, we realized that there’s a much larger market for other service providers who want the same tools that we’ve built. So, we spun off OS33 as a technology company. Now, OS33 basically runs the infrastructure, and we developed software that integrates different cloud services.

SM: OK. Give us some examples of the clients you work with. What sizes? What scopes?

AO: OS33 doesn’t sell direct. We sell through managed services providers. A typical customer would be anywhere from – I’m talking about end-user customers, not managed services providers. An end-user customer would be anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 user company.

SM: What do you provide? You provide technology to managed services providers, right?

AO: Yes. We sell only to Management Authority. They resell it to a reseller or directly to end user customers. A typical provider would be $5 million in revenue yearly. That’s our target range. But we also have a part A for systems that will take smaller clients. That allows you to white label and retail it.

SM: OK. Talk a bit about what kinds of managed services your clients provide.

AO: It all starts with everybody wants Office Productivity Suite and email. So, we’ve automated that, and it depends on the vertical and function of the applications that they’re providing. We have a managed services provider that’s in the top 20 U.S. providers that only focuses on banking. It specializes in security compliance and workspace for something like a union bank. So, they take our software, package it up as a line-of-business solution for banks and then go to market with that. There’s a pretty broad range of different kinds of providers. Some do real estate. Some are small real estate firms, which can do one to two users. There’s a provider that has software and services built around that on top of our platform. And some of those end users are one to two user companies, and they have a lot of them. In the banking industry, usually, the clients are larger. Then there are some corporate clients that are their own IT departments/managed services providers.

SM: Let me get this right. In the two examples you provided, you have managed services providers that sell into the banking industry. And your clients, the managed services providers, provide the application layers on top of your platform?

AO: Yes. They provide services and applications on top of our platform. If you can imagine a bank, our platform definitely automates the creating of users, creating of applications, creating of all those things that are used to keep it running. That is all about operations. What these managed services providers do is they take all of that, but then they offer service on top of it. You can do compliance every six months. It’s all about the services that run on top of it. If you have some line of business with a need for workflows, and so on. That’s what the managed services providers focus on. They take what we give them, which is just technology, and then they have to do something with it. Most of them have a vertical focus.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alex Osipov, CTO of OS33
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