Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Shan Sinha, CEO of HighFive (Part 3)

Shan Sinha: Trend number two is the commoditization of all the hardware technology. It used to be that you had to have a lot of custom equipment to power all this stuff. To do real-time audio and video required a whole bunch of custom hardware. Now, with relevantly low cost and with a plug-and-play experience, you can deliver a very compelling solution that brings together the benefits of cloud software with easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage, easy-to-use systems for the times that you need hardware to deliver an important part of the solution.

The analogy I’ve described to you is, it’s a trend that you’d see happening in our personal lives. You see Apple TV combined with iTunes. You see Amazon Echo combined with Alexa. You see Google Home combined with all of Google’s services. This idea of bringing together hardware and software in a plug-and-play experience is something that is reshaping this industry. The last thing that I’ll call out here that is worth articulating is at the end of the day, there’s a big expectation of being able to more richly connect and communicate with each other.

People expect video to be part of every experience. People expect you to have a one-button experience around using, connecting, and communicating with the people that you work with. We see that happening in our personal lives. Why is it that my elementary school kids can use video technologies to do school work but at work, it still requires a lot more to be able to get a meeting going. You realize that there’s this trend towards things that are easy to use and consolidated where you don’t have to worry about all the details. That’s a pretty meaningful trend that you see happening with just about every toolset.

Sramana Mitra: Where are the gaps in the market? If you were to build a startup, what problem would you solve?

Shan Sinha: The big gap that we see is really around this idea of bringing together hardware and software into a single solution. What customers end up having to do today is, they still have to pick independent point solutions for delivering on the technology required to connect today’s workforce.

People are more distributed than they’ve ever been today. Sometimes, they’re working remotely. Sometimes, they’re working from home. Sometimes, they’re working from the car. A lot of that is possible because you have all your data in the cloud. You have broadband everywhere. You have a device wherever you go.

The biggest gap that we’ve seen is, there is not a single solution in the market that brings together all of the different use cases that are required whenever you’re just trying to connect a group of people into a meeting. You have some solutions that will solve the app part of it. You have some solutions that might try to solve the hardware part of it. Nobody has really brought all those pieces together into a comprehensive end-to-end system the way that we have. The gap that we see is in addressing the needs of customers that are looking for a plug-and-play solution.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Shan Sinha, CEO of HighFive
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