Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Brad Cheedle, CEO of Otava (Part 4)

Brad Cheedle: In security, we have seen all kinds of things from website security to overall security and all the way to desktop security as a service. We have had customers where they run into ransomware. Somebody opens up the wrong email, and we are right there to recover it for them. They don’t have to worry about the ransom, because we can keep them up and running. There are companies like us that help to do that.

The technologies in there in an entrepreneurial perspective are companies that are legacy like Veeam and Zerto, but it is taking those technologies that were traditionally enterprise-centric and turning them into a multi-tenant environment. That is where we take those applications. Many software don’t have it, so we help to figure out ways to use that. If you think about it, our partners have thousands of customers underneath them. How do we present technology stacks that don’t exist off the shelf for companies like that who need to think about multiple tenants and how we can separate those resources and knowledge.

The hybridity piece is something that we are studying. There are these cloud management platforms that are interesting. There are a lot of folks that are working on that at a higher level. We are exploring technology and are about to launch some things where Azure on their technology stack allows you to manage hybridity. It will be folks like us on the entrepreneurial side that are learning how to use that technology.

Sramana Mitra: You are a serial entrepreneur, so I’m sure that your brain works like mine where we see opportunities for building companies. When I look at a sector, I always see the opportunities for building companies. Could you identify a few for our entrepreneurs who are looking for new ideas to work on? 

Brad Cheedle: There is a sea of opportunities in the security business. It gets beyond the sim. This is more than a log review and more than a sim that is overviewing those things. Those types of technologies only break down the data to a certain point.

Beyond that, you still have a human opportunity to go into a much smaller database to identify challenges. In my mind, there is a great opportunity there for AI and machine learning to get granular at that next level. That is an interesting space. I think security is a hot topic but it is not as widely adopted.

Some people have been saying, “We know we need to get to that but we are not going to do it this year.” I do think that there will be more of that adoption and more of those concerns that are happening because it is just accelerating. The world is crazy out there. We have a lot of opportunities to address in that regard. That is where I would put my time.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not looking for where you are putting your time; I’m looking for where new entrepreneurs should put in their time to start a new company. If you were not doing what you were doing right now, what company would you start?

Brad Cheedle: I would definitely start something in the security practice. I would also start something around artificial intelligence, machine learning, and those capabilities where you can take these very robust data sets and break those down in a surgical way.

I have been reading more about quantum technologies and some of the new research that shows different ways to do that. I think that is an interesting space that will add efficiencies and performance to a lot of different features that are out there. It is still very young.

It could be an interesting place that could be just as disruptive going from copper to fiber, fiber to multiple conduit systems, multiple conduit systems to dense wave division multiplexing, or wavelength type services as we went from virtualizing machines to independent machines. I do think that there is an evolution there that is needed.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Brad Cheedle, CEO of Otava
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