Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 6)

Alastair Mitchell: There’s been lots of news flicking around about how people’s entire personal online lives have been hacked through telephone phishing. Companies like Apple and Amazon who have incredibly strong hardware, software, and security in place have their security negotiated because the processes they had in place allowed a human operator to give out key information. This is exactly the kind of thing that we have been very focused on for a long time. The accreditation of ISO 27001 is absolutely key for not only the security of the information in data centers and in transit but also the security of our offices and processes.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 5)

Andy McLoughlin: The other key trend is the mobile trend. The way that people expect to work has changed. The idea of the office as ‘four walls that you’re in from nine to five and forget about when you leave’ has disappeared. I think we are all 24-hour knowledge workers now. Combine that with the fact that we have a minicomputer which fits in the palm of our hands that is as sophisticated and powerful as the one at your desk five years ago. It’s amazing. You look at the whole industry that has blossomed around the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomenon and the ability for businesses to leverage the fact that their users are spending money on hardware has changed the way that CIOs think about capital outlay.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. That’s very clear. Obviously, SharePoint has been one of the main Intranet and Extranet building tools in the market. What else do you view within your space?
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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Austin McChord, CEO of Datto (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You have probably seen maybe 30% of Internet traffic to homes in the U.S. is due to Netflix?

Austin McChord: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Could that be a lever that pushes the ISPs and the carriers to do something about the level of connectivity or the quality of the connection?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 3)

Alastair Mitchell: Being able to access and share work information in a very social and collaborative way is a huge theme. We are owning that middle space around secure collaboration internally and externally. As a result, we get to work with some amazing customers. 80% of the central U.K. government use Huddle and we also work with a large number of government departments here in the U.S. Off the back of that, people trust us to be the most secure place to put their content if they want to work on it and share with other people. We get to work with some fantastic organizations in the private sector – from Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Disney to BBC in U.K.

Sramana Mitra: You are basically some superset of Box and Dropbox and you’re also providing some of the WebEx functionality. What other toolkit functionality do you have in your system? SharePoint?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Austin McChord, CEO of Datto (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the gating items in providing that connectivity? Is it that the Internet service providers are not moving fast enough? Is there any kind of technology that is unresolved?

Austin McChord: I think there’s just not enough competitive pressure in the market for the quality of Internet service to rise. Lots of these small businesses in the 20 to 200 spot don’t have the availability to bring in direct fiber from a real Internet provider – like Level 3. So instead, when they’re putting together fiber links, they’re limited to what’s being offered by consumer and residential ISPs. There’s not a lot of competition or real pressure to have that quality improved. So that limits businesses’ adoption of the cloud at the lower end.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 2)

Andy McLoughlin: We took some angel money quite early on from a guy that I worked for. Charles McGregor had a business called Fibernet in U.K., which he eventually sold to Global Crossing. Bucking the trend in the U.K. where angel investments wasn’t a big thing, he bet his cash on us and that allowed us to accelerate the business. A year after that, we closed our first round of venture funding, which was led by Eden Ventures, which is an early-stage VC fund based in the U.K.

Sramana Mitra: How much was the first round?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Austin McChord, CEO of Datto (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I guess the volume of data depends on what industry you’re in and how much data you’re generating?

Austin McChord: Yes, absolutely.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about trends. What trends do you track given what you’re doing? What are you tracking? What do you see as threats and opportunities?

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