Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alex Osipov, CTO of OS33 (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of security requirements?

Alex Osipov: In terms of security requirements, certainly.

SM: So, you’re saying the banking and legal sectors, in particular, where they’re running into bottlenecks is in security?

AO: Yes. Mike, you’re the expert on security in the cloud; would you like to chime in here?

Mike: Sure. Would you repeat the question, please?

SM: I’m asking why would one of these law or banking firms not want to use Microsoft cloud offerings, and why do they need something else from a managed services provider aided by you? I’m trying to understand the case for why they need to bring in additional players. Google Apps is a cloud solution.

AO: Mike, maybe you can answer the security part and then I’ll add something to it.

Mike: Sure. The key word is unification. When you look at a small law firm or whatnot, and you’re looking at Office365 or Google Apps, that’s one of many cloud platforms they may iterate. They don’t have to the expertise to be able to handle multiple applications, plus their on-site equipment, plus some of their own servers in the cloud. Our whole offering, from the end user’s perspective when it comes to security or the service in general, is to unify that one place to go to with the managed services provider for your cloud servers, your integration with the cloud-based software-as-a-service providers, as well as your on-site managed services. Small and medium enterprises don’t want to have 15 people to call. They’d much rather have one provider that can handle one site in the cloud as well as the security that goes across all of those areas.

SM: Do you work only in the banking and legal sectors?

Mike: Not at all. When it comes to security, we do healthcare, financial services, legal as well as retail. When it comes to security, we work with many different types of businesses.

SM: So, security is not the reason why you have a value proposition. Every company, every business, has a justification for its existence. It solves a certain problem. There’s a positioning, and what I’m still trying to understand is what is the positioning of your business?

AO: It’s back to the unification that Mike said. We bring everything together. OS33 brings the technology, and we have some master agreements with several providers, so we can actually have the economy of scale in the cloud. We aggregate support and have the expertise to integrate everything. The managed services provider brings that customer relationship and that on-site management and all those extra things that the customers need that the cloud doesn’t provide.

Just to give you an example, you mentioned Google Apps. It’s a full, complete cloud solution. We have clients using Google Apps on top of our platform. The thing is that most businesses that aren’t very small have a lot more things that they run. They’re not only using Gmail. They have line-of-business applications. If it’s retail, they have point-of-sale systems. They have all these systems that they’re running. Very few companies are just using Google Apps. At least, in our experience, you don’t see many of those.

SM: How big is a Google Apps business in your portfolio?

AO: We have an account with 750 users.

SM: How much of a Google Apps penetration are you seeing in your market?

AO: We’re not seeing as much Office365 as Google Apps.

SM: Are your customers moving off Lotus Notes?

AO: We don’t see many of those. Usually, the service provider takes care of that. The service provider does the migration in, so we don’t deal with it. There have been a couple. That’s one of the things that service provider would do. He’d go into a company, review what it has, get the company on the platform, maybe use some base offerings we have, add some legacy, add some cloud, maybe add some private services. There’s then a unified solution where the company has only one place to go for everything.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alex Osipov, CTO of OS33
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