Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jeetu Patel, GM of EMC Syncplicity (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It’s not viable for startups to come into a market with major incumbents purely on the strength of usability. I just don’t think it’s going to be viable.

Jeetu Patel: Let’s take Syncplicity. We took the DNA that they had around user experience and SaaS. They would have not been able to make a dent by themselves as a standalone company, but because we took this small company of creative people and fueled the growth and innovation, it made us, within one year, the fastest growing file sync and share vendor in the market.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Austin McChord, CEO of Datto (Part 1)

This interview focuses on some of the bottlenecks facing the cloud services industry in penetrating the SME customer base.

Sramana Mitra: Austin, give us a bit of context about you as well as Datto.

Austin McChord: I started Datto right out of college about seven years ago. Our goal was to provide backup and SaaS recovery in a better way and at a lower cost. With that, we pivoted towards the SMB market space. Now, we provide innovative solutions for businesses on the backup and SaaS recovery front. We go beyond simply recovering data and even go as far as avoiding downtime all together. Our company has grown really fast around that premise. We have  270 employees now and appliances on every continent except Antarctica. We have been experiencing doubling growth every year and I’m excited to continue that.

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Fat Startup Delphix Growing Rapidly

According to a recent report by IDC, the global big data market is projected to grow 6 times faster than the IT market to be worth $16.1 billion this year. Within big data, the infrastructure market is expected to be the highest growing segment and will account for 45% of the market this year. Services account for 29% and software contribute 24% of the big data market.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jeetu Patel, GM of EMC Syncplicity (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How big is the business? What scale are we talking about?

Jeetu Patel: It’s in hundreds of millions of dollars. IDC has predicted growth rates that are actually conservative compared to the ones we had in 2013. We are the fastest growing file sync and share vendor in the industry. The other players in the market are Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft. These are the four players that I think will constitute a lion’s share of the market. Then, you have the tier-2 vendors that might go out and take some of the bread crumbs.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jeetu Patel, GM of EMC Syncplicity (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Fair enough. We have talked about security, privacy, and hybrid cloud. Where do you see things going from here in terms of the open problems? Given those other trends and that there are multiple devices in the enterprise floating around, what are the open problems currently on your radar?

Jeetu Patel: The first open problem on the radar is the fact that software is going to get more predictive with a fair number of insights. Software will know what you want to do before you actually want to do it. I’ll give you a couple of examples. There’s a fair amount of productivity enhancements that happen by solving some of the small frustrating problems that we actually spend a lot of time on a daily basis. I sit down in a meeting with 15 people. We white board some concepts. At the end of the meeting, I take a picture through my phone. Then people ask, “Can you send me that picture as well?” Now, I have to remember all the people and their email addresses to send them that picture. It is something very basic but happens on a regular basis.

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Satya Nadella’s Microsoft: A Look Ahead

Last year, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) CEO, Steve Ballmer announced his plans to retire from his position at the head of Microsoft. Since then, the market has been speculating as to who would step next into the shoes to become the third CEO of the tech giant. The question was answered recently, when Microsoft announced the ascension of Satya Nadella to the post of CEO.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jeetu Patel, GM of EMC Syncplicity (Part 3)

Jeetu Patel: This kind of flexible hybrid cloud deployment model where security, privacy, compliance, and user experience are not sacrificed is going to be the major trend as applications get built. The cloud has made this third platform B where there are millions of applications available to billions of users. We want to make sure that these billions of users can get the same level of delight in using a consumer-grade application with utmost security and compliance. We also do not sacrifice IT manageability while they’re doing that.

Sramana Mitra: I think what you’re alluding to is cloud being a big driver in the consumerization of IT. Layered on top of that are the current accentuating privacy and security concerns that’s driving us back towards a more centralized model of private cloud from a more distributed model.

Jeetu Patel: Consumerization of IT is being interpreted in different ways. Let’s talk about that for a second. Typically, users want to make sure that they can use the most effective capabilities so they can be as productive as they can be. In fact, cloud has allowed people to fundamentally change work patterns through accessing tools and technologies rapidly. The consumerization of IT doesn’t mean that IT won’t get involved at all. It means that IT gets involved in a completely transparent way. That’s where the nuance and details come in. If you can provide manageability and security in a way that’s not intrusive to the user but in fact enhances the user experience and provides more analytics and predictive insights, then users will be more delighted with enterprise-sanctioned software. They don’t have to go through all the friction that the enterprises create if they don’t have enterprise-sanctioned software.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about Syncplicity. How does that relate to the trends that we are discussing?

Jeetu Patel: The way people work is fundamentally changing. Syncplicity is at a convergence of many of these trends. What problem do people really want to solve today? People have multiple devices. They want to make sure that they can have their files and contents on any of the devices that they might have. They want to be able to seamlessly share that content with people both inside and outside their organizations.

They want to be able to get updates to software as easily as they get with consumer-grade applications in the cloud. What we needed to have was ability for people to get productive with their files and redefine the way people work with their files in the mobile, social, cloud area. Syncplicity has provided users a capability like Dropbox but much better on the user experience, enterprise IT-grade security, and compliance. People can go out and collaborate more effectively with each other.

Sramana Mitra: You cater to enterprises and help their employee base operate in a multi-device mode.

Jeetu Patel: To get more productive and to get their work done.

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jeetu Patel, GM of EMC Syncplicity (Part 2)

Jeetu Patel: The second major trend we’re seeing is that as cloud proliferates, security and the role of security within the cloud is getting accentuated at a very different level to what it used to be in the past. This is getting more exacerbated with some of the things that are happening – with the NSA. At a macro level, how do software vendors build cloud applications that large enterprises and companies that are highly regulated can feel comfortable deploying their sensitive data? That tends to be a major area where there’s going to be a huge amount of investment in the next 10 years.

The third major trend that we’re starting to see is the infrastructure availability. Cloud has been a big trend for a while, but we are seeing a major movement in 2014. This is the year of the hybrid cloud where we feel 100% of our customers will be in a hybrid cloud scenario. According to Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), 97% of customers who were early adopters within the public cloud are now looking at hybrid cloud where they want to have sensitive data in the public cloud moved over to the private cloud. That entails deployment flexibility in the cloud. The cloud makes it easier but how does that deployment truly take scale in highly regulated, compliant, security conscious, privacy-driven organizations make the most out of the cloud? That’s where we’re starting to see the model of hybrid cloud really starting to take effect.

Sramana Mitra: Based on what you have said so far, what comes across is that privacy and security concern has come back as a major concern on the cloud. There’s a switch to hybrid cloud even from people who are very comfortable with public cloud. There’s a shift to hybrid cloud at this point in response to that security and privacy concern. Is that accurate?

Jeetu Patel: That’s right. What do people like about the cloud and SaaS? The rapid pace of innovation. What people love is the fact that I can have three-week product release cycles compared to 18 months for on-premise software where people would just wait for the release once every couple of years. That just didn’t create a level of agility in organizations’ consumption of technology. There is a big gap though between the consumption rate of technology and the desire to use the greatest and latest. That’s what they love about the SaaS model. The moment I have a new technology capability that’s made available by the vendor, the users immediately get provisioned. They don’t have that massive delay that most large enterprises have for deploying enterprise software.

What large enterprises don’t like about the cloud is that sometimes highly sensitive and regulated data goes into the public cloud. Major Fortune 100 companies are thinking, “I have thousands of users within my organization and I want to make this an enterprise standard. I want to make sure that everyone has the benefit of having all of these amazing and beautiful applications that they can use on their mobile devices and SaaS platforms.” What we found is an effective operating model that works really well.

What we have done is devise the model so that you can have the application running in the cloud. You can make sure that you, as a customer, have the flexibility of your data either residing in the cloud or on-premise. You decide where your data should be stored depending on the nature of the data because not all contents are created equal. If you have marketing content that you want to share with other people in the public cloud, go ahead and keep it that way. But if you have legal or mergers and acquisitions content that you want to keep on-premise managed by you with your standards and controls, you should be able to do that with any application you deploy.