Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 1)

There is much going on in the small niches of the cloud. Here’s a discussion that highlights some examples.

Sramana Mitra: Lou, let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to Scribe Software.

Lou Guercia: Scribe is a software company. We’re a global provider of solutions focused on allowing enterprises to easily bring customer data anywhere it’s needed regardless of the infrastructure – it can be in the cloud or on-premise.

By customer data, we’re talking about applications that enterprises of all sizes – private and public – use to get new customers, to increase their sales, and to provide a superior customer service. We focus on customer data because there’s a fabulous opportunity to leverage so many of the new cloud technologies that have come in to play over the last decade. Some of those are in the area of CRM, marketing automation, social technologies, support, and finance. All of these applications are shaping the customer experience. So Scribe has dedicated itself to this objective of customer data for close to 15 years. It has resulted in us having a substantial customer base and a great deal of expertise in what we do.

Sramana Mitra: Who are the target customers? Are they enterprises – large or mid-size? You already talked about some functional areas. Are they vertical in concentration? Then, it would be really helpful if you can pick some representative customers and walk us through some real use cases of how your customers are using your technology.

Lou Guercia: These applications and the data within these applications are ubiquitous. There are certain segments and industries that we see more strength in than others. I will try to highlight those. When you’re dealing with customers – or in the case of public sector, agencies, citizens, and constituents – they really run small, medium, and large enterprises. That being said, we do have a good deal of our customers base and our partner base focused in the area of financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, media, entertainment and sport, as well as public sector – both federal, state and local.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take a couple of customers and double-click down into them, if you would.

Lou Guercia: In the area of public sector, there is a particular state opportunity that has been implemented through Scribe and our partners Tribridge, which is a large systems integrator, and Microsoft. This is in the state of Illinois in their Department of Corrections. People generally assume Department of Corrections is about the offender population and how these criminals are incarcerated. However, there’s a lifecycle that states are increasingly trying to manage. We are all aware of the explosion of the prisoner population at the state and federal level. It’s really about the lifecycle of the offender from incarceration through to rehabilitation. This particular system that we implemented was designed for initially just under 50,000 inmates. It was supported all the way up to the Governor for the state to help improve public safety. It was really designed to work in conjunction with the offender management technologies that have been brought together through over 40 different applications at the county and state level.

If we all close our eyes and imagine what the IT infrastructure is like across the continuum of local, county, and state government, there was a high level of cost and worse yet, there was really some lack of confidence in the reliability of the data. We implemented, in conjunction with Microsoft and using their Dynamics CRM and SharePoint, a centralized information and intelligence system to help the staff make better decisions about placement, rehabilitation, and release of nearly 50,000 offenders that had been incarcerated. That included managing them through the incarceration process to the point where they were being released. It’s a fairly substantial environment. I mentioned the fact that it had close to 50,000 inmates and over 40 different applications. We’re running over 30 different jobs on a regular basis to make sure that there’s continuity across all of these data sources and systems.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software
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