Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Momchil Michailov, CEO of Sanbolic (Part 1)

The cloud infrastructure space is going through a huge upheaval, as it moves from a largely hardware architecture to a primarily software-based model. This discussion digs into the issues and unearths some areas where there are clear opportunities for new entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Momchil, let us introduce you to our audience. Tell us about who you are. What are you doing?

Momchil Michailov: Thanks for having us. This is Momchil Michailov and I’m one of the co-founders of Sanbolic Inc. I happen to be in Boston today, but we’re both a North American and a European company. A lot of our development is done in Bulgaria in former Eastern Europe. The rest of the company is here in Boston.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, Co-Founders of Huddle (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s say I had my first Huddle account set up because I’m a client of WPP. My employer is also going to use Huddle, what happens? Do you create duplicate accounts? How does that resolve?

Andy McLoughlin: You have your own account. You’re paid for by whoever is managing your account. If you’re a WPP employee, you’ll be paid for by WPP.

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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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Jive Software Yet to Turn In a Profitable Year

According to an IDC report on the enterprise social software segment published last year, the industry is projected to grow 22% annually over the period 2012 to 2017 to $2.7 billion. The market was pegged to be worth $1 billion in 2012. The report estimates IBM to be the leader in the segment with 14.2% market, followed by Jive’s market share of 10.2%. But despite being a strong player in the market, Jive Software (Nasdaq: JIVE) is finding it difficult to turn profitable.

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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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