Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Everbridge CEO Jaime Ellertson (Part 1)

If the Brussels attacks have made you wonder about alert systems and such, this discussion will shed some light.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Everbridge.

Jaime Ellertson: I’m the Chairman and CEO of Everbridge. Everbridge is a provider of enterprise SaaS applications that automate information exchange to keep people safe and business running. It is a fast-growing provider of enterprise SaaS applications that automate information exchange to keep people safe and businesses running.

The markets that we participate in are everything from emergency notification, which would be sending out communications like recently in Brussels, to communications and information exchange around IT outages. It could also be a connected hospitals – code alerts and telemedicine – or large community >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ali Din, SVP & CMO of dinCloud (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Managed services is an area that you see that is going to develop further?

Ali Din: Yes, not just in the traditional sense of managing and monitoring the network and the data centre, but going into these specific use cases as well. We need managed security services. We need managed services around on-boarding employees. I don’t know if you’ve read this book The Experience Economy, but I see that definitely coming in where the service industry and all the work that people put in to provide value-add and differentiation around services.

Now it’s really differentiating around the experience. It’s getting even harder for companies to hire employees that are more and more picky about where they’re working. A company must provide an absolutely memorable experience not just for their customers, but even on the recruiting side so that employees want to stay. Doing all these things is not easy so managed services is going to have an open opportunity to get into that space and be able to provide these services to companies as they’re trying to deal with all this change with, if you will, the modern workspace. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Montage Talent (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What does your competition look like? Who else is providing this kind of solution? Is this a space that is developing from a vendor point of view?

Kurt Heikkinen: It is. One of the first questions that we receive is, “How are you different from something like Skype or some general video chat tool?” You may recall earlier that I specifically used the term purpose-built. Our primary competition is general chat. We compete very favourably especially when you think of a larger organization and not an SMB client who has a couple of hundred employees that might hire a couple of dozen.

We’re talking about clients who are a few thousand to tens of thousands of employees and they’re hiring hundreds to thousands of employees a year. They value their employer and consumer brand. They value an experience that’s proven and global. What we’ve built is something that is purpose-built to meet the requirements of talent acquisition – the importance of data security, scalability, candidate experience, and integration. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ali Din, SVP & CMO of dinCloud (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can you put all this in perspective for us in terms of the trends that you’re seeing in the space?

Ali Din: Specifically in our space, what we’re seeing is this evolution of mobility. People need to access multiple devices. The average person is carrying more devices or has access to multiple devices whether they’re in the office or home. Now what we’re seeing is that companies understand the virtual desktop models. Now they’re getting more mature and specific about their needs. We call this the evolution of the workspace.

It’s getting even more finite in terms of their requirements. Some people say, “I don’t need the entire Windows desktop because I use OneDrive. I just need specific applications.” As a result of that, we’re seeing this evolution of people now moving from a desktop virtualization to just purely worrying about the application and how to connect those applications. That’s probably one of the trends that we’re seeing. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Montage Talent (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What levels are we talking? Are we seeing this more in technical recruitment or are we seeing this more on junior recruitment? Where is your product and is your process being applied more readily?

Kurt Heikkinen: It has evolved nicely over the last several years to be able to support the enterprise of hiring. The way we’re able to achieve that is through the configurability of our applications. Apart from on-demand video, we also offer up on-demand voice, live video, and live voice.

What we know is that the recruiting challenges are very different on a position-by-position basis. How you might want to recruit an executive or an engineer are very different from recruiting for a high-volume hourly position where maybe you’re staffing a call centre or a retail store. That’s where our solutions allow the client to apply the specific application and workflow to the specific use case. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Norm Wu, CEO of i-Human Patients (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The topic is of huge interest to me. I’ve actually written about this quite a lot. I’m thrilled that our paths crossed and we are able to discuss this topic at length. Let me start by peeling the onion a little bit for our audience to understand what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. Where do you position your company’s offering?

If you’re talking about medical training, the assumption is that doctors are going to go to medical school and get trained. It’s a very lengthy process. It’s an expensive process. Obviously, it’s hard to train millions of doctors in full-fledged medical schools. Are you, somehow, addressing that issue?

Norm Wu: We’re doing a number of things. What we do at medical schools may be slightly different from what we do with nurse practitioner schools. Let me first talk about medical schools. In the US, the capacity in medical schools is not growing very quickly. That’s because there are limited residency slots. Schools that try to increase their capacity will have trouble matching their graduates into residency programs. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ali Din, SVP & CMO of dinCloud (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What category of customers are going after? Large enterprises, mid-sized, small businesses? Where is the business focused?

Ali Din: To be candid, we have tried a lot of different sizes and target markets. In the early years, we pivoted quite a bit. At this point, our sweet spot is what I would call the lower mid-market. That’s companies that typically have 200 to 500 employees. We continue to do business with organisations that are smaller and then we also do quite a bit of business with very large organisations that have tens of thousands of users or have a global footprint as well.

Our go-to market approach is, we actually go through the channel. We built partnerships with Ingram Micro. We also have been working with Tech Data. We also work with the world’s largest reseller CDW, which is based out of Illinois. Those are just a couple of examples of channel partners but we go through a channel ecosystem where they have that close relationship with the end customer and we help enable that by providing the cloud service. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Kurt Heikkinen, CEO of Montage Talent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I have a question just based on what you described so far. There is a thought that is coming to my mind that I’d like to get clarified. Does that mean that, in using this kind of remote interviewing technology that you have empowered Disney to use, it opened up a much broader segment of remote candidates whom they finished interviewing in this mode and could move them to Los Angeles or wherever they want them to be located. Is that one of the ways that the process is impacted?

Kurt Heikkinen: That’s exactly right. If you think about the traditional recruiting process, you have recruiters who try to find candidates. They, traditionally, might post a job on a job board or post it on LinkedIn to try and find that talent, but the process is not very candidate-friendly today because the traditional job descriptions are in the written form and there is very little insight in terms of the job opportunity. >>>