John Furrier sat down with two executives from Micro Strategies, Steve DeLuca, SVP of Sales, and Ray Scardelli, VP of Sales and Marketing, to discuss the changes and challenges they observed in the IT market, particularly around the cloud.

Furrier first asked DeLuca and Scardelli what IBM Edge is all about this year. Scardelli replied that the feature and functions IBM had put together were on display. He also touched on the mix between business analytics, Big Data, power, and storage was also key to the conference, especially in combination and for the betterment of businesses’ customers.

Micro Strategies, IBM business partner

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Next, Furrier asked his interviewees to explain what their business does. DeLuca responded that Micro Strategies is a “business partner solution provider and integrator.” Their focus, he said, is on business solutions and infrastructure solutions. Micro Strategies also has “an analytics practice, a security and mobility practice, […] and a cloud solutions practice.” The mainly use IBM on the infrastructure side of their business, and Microsoft on the business solution side.

When Furrier asked them about their customer base, Scardelli explained that they handle enterprise-size businesses, mid-market, and SMB businesses in Boston-to-DC region.

• The Micro Solutions IBM relationship 

Furrier wondered, “How is IBM to work with and what do they need to do better to take you guys to the next level?” Scardelli replied that IBM has a comprehensive strategy, one that encompasses acquisitions and development, that Micro Solutions embraces. While they embrace IBM’s leadership role in the strategy area, Scardelli pointed out that Micro Solutions is the integrator that designs, develops, implements, and supports the customer’s project. While they “lean on” IBM, Scardelli also mentioned that they acknowledge that there may be better solutions to customer’s business challenges, so it’s important for them to be the “higher level interface.”

• IBM has maintained their business partner charter

Scardelli added that one of the other parts of IBM they consider important is the business partner charter that’s been in place since the 1990s. Other companies have changed or diminished their partner programs, but IBM has enhanced theirs. When Furrier asked about changes Micro Solutions was seeing in IBM from a partner standpoint, Scardelli observed that IBM was implementing ” a lot more push from the direct teams out to the channel.”

Gaining insight on cloud and infrastructure

Furrier asked what types of technologies the Micro Strategies executives were finding for their business at the conference, especially when it comes to infrastructure. “They say infrastructure is back,” Furrier quipped, “did it every go away?”

Scardelli said that they’d been in a number of sessions about cloud virtualization. From an infrastructure standpoint, Scardelli said that Micro Strategies is involved in a lot of cloud enablement and hybrid solutions, for which infrastructure is essential. DeLuca commented that they see cloud is “an extension of the core business [they’ve] been doing for years.”

Cloud is an evolution, not a revolution

Furrier touched on the market testing Micro Strategies has done in reference to the cloud, asking whether cloud is hyped up right now and if the two execs “do you see growth coming sooner, faster?”

“Sooner,” DeLuca responded immediately. He shared he believes cloud to be an evolution, not a revolution, because customers who implement cloud technology take it a step further. DeLuca also mentioned their analytics practice in reference to where growth is headed.

• More customers adopting cloud analytics

Bouncing off the analytics practice DeLuca mentioned, Furrier wondered whether Micro Strategies offered cloud analytics. DeLuca said that they were beginning to get into that space with customers in their data centers, particularly in their marketing and financial departments.

• How cloud changes business practices

Furrier commented on DeLuca’s earlier observation, that cloud is an evolution, saying that while there hadn’t been radical shifts, there were “radical disruptions in terms of process improvement.” He asked the executives to share the changes they observed cloud causing in business processes.

Mentioning first that “it changes every day,” DeLuca cited the example of a particular customer that had been using Amazon, and Micro Strategies imported them to SmartCloud Enterprise and then to SoftLayer before IBM had acquired SoftLayer. When the acquisition did happen, Micro Strategies “had experience […], had a customer, had a reference, and now they’re going into production.” It may have been by chance, but DeLuca commented “timing is everything.”

When asked whether he was surprised by IBM’s move to acquire SoftLayer, Scardelli replied that he was not — they were already fans of SoftLayer and had been working with them due to their flexibility.

• SoftLayer’s draw is flexibility

Curious about the details, Furrier enquired what Micro Solutions saw in SoftLayer. Scardelli said it has a “much more developed approach to be able to provision and move applications in and out — especially in a hybrid scenario.” Furrier wondered about the customer DeLuca had mentioned earlier, asking how they had gotten into Amazon. Scardelli responded that the company had been “born in the cloud, on Amazon” but turned away from Amazon when costs changed, and now use SoftLayer.

Picking up the “born in the cloud” train of thought, Furrier asked what type of “young guns” DeLuca and Scardelli saw at their organizations. DeLuca explained that his organization hires the best people for specific projects, a strategy that he believes is “an important part of [their] flexibility.”

How businesses use the cloud

Continuing the discussion on cloud, Furrier asked, how much they forecast that cloud will shape their business and their customer base. “It changes so quickly,” DeLuca said, stressing how important it is to be ahead of it, but at the rapid pace of change, it’s difficult for businesses to plan and anticipate.

• Enterprises hesitate to migrate mission-critical features to the cloud

Furrier wondered what customers are looking for, “is it more app development drivers or infrastructure that they’re re-tweaking, re-engineering?”

Scardelli answered that they mainly see customers “move the easier things” to the cloud, like email or development, to figure out “what sticks.” Security, Scardelli also noted, is a big issue. DeLuca chimed in, underscoring his fellow executive’s point that companies mainly add “things IT can easily hand off” to the cloud, but don’t migrate many mission-critical features of their business.

Why this year is critical in the IT marketplace

In his last question, Furrier asked Scardelli and DeLuca to share why they believe this point in time, this year, is so critical and exciting. DeLuca cited the rapid change in the IT industry, and how this change has impacted their relationship with customers: they’re trying to figure out what direction they should move in and asking Micro Strategies for guidance. Scardelli responded by mentioning the massive amount of unstructured data that companies are trying to get a handle on, both to interpret and analyze, and to keep secure.