GET TO KNOW
“
the right cloud or data centre depending on
commercial, governance or security criteria.
What do you currently identify as
the major areas of investment in
your industry?
The biggest areas of investment I see are in
IT security and public/private cloud solutions.
Recent high-profile data breaches and
ransomware attacks, along with impending
changes to data privacy regulations, are
forcing many organisations to invest
heavily in strengthening their data security
infrastructure and practices. In the past, IT
security has often been recognised as an
insurance policy and not a business enabler.
During the downturn, security budgets were
among the first to be cut and therefore
many organisations now find themselves
with less than adequate protection in the
face of an onslaught of modern attacks.
What are the region-specific
challenges when implementing new
technologies in Europe?
From my experience in the UK and Ireland,
I see the biggest challenge is in convincing
channel partners to sell and support
newer technologies. When disruptive and
compelling new vendors are introduced into
the market, many resellers find it difficult to
engage with them as their existing legacy
vendors do not look kindly upon it. These
vendors have a vested interest in selling older
technology as this is where they have made
huge investments.
THE MAJORITY
OF ANALYSTS
AND INDUSTRY
EXPERTS NOW
BELIEVE THAT
BUSINESSES WILL
END UP USING A
COMBINATION OF
DIFFERENT CLOUD
PROVIDERS
FOR DIFFERENT
APPLICATIONS OR
WORKLOADS.
What changes to your job role have
you seen in the last year and how do
you see these developing in the next
12 months?
In the past year, DataSolutions has set up a
presence in the UK market so a lot more of
my time has been taken up by supporting
the business expansion there. I would like
to see this increase over the next year as we
build up relationships with new vendors and
channel partners across the UK. n
Various forms of cloud adoption are also
driving investment. While most organisations
are spending money on public cloud projects,
many are also adopting technology such as
Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) within
their own data centres to help them achieve
many of the benefits of cloud but without
the ongoing rental costs and compliance
concerns. These benefits include much lower
infrastructure complexity and a pay-as-you-
grow economic model.
102
INTELLIGENTCIO
www.intelligentcio.com