As the excitement and hype around cloud solutions builds, some company execs see getting their business cloud-connected as the final destination. But that’s far from the finish line, according to Paul Mattes (pictured), vice president of the global cloud group at Veeam Software Inc.

“There’s a whole lot more that you have to do once you’re [in the cloud]. … You need to think of the cloud as a way to deliver business results,” Mattes said.

Mattes joined Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s VeeamOn event in New Orleans, Louisiana. They talked about redefining the cloud connection, customer paradigms, continued improvements and tapping into business value. (* Disclosure below.)

The cloud must not be seen as a destination, but as an operational model, according to Mattes. And while he sees customers as being much smarter about how they think about application architecture and deployment, he also felt that “the market in general” was still in its early days.

As the competition heats up between businesses providing cloud solutions and connectivity, Mattes was confident about Veeam’s place in the market. “It’s certainly a competitive landscape, no doubt about that, but I think we have some advantages given our lineage and where we’ve evolved from,” he said.

Mindsets and simplicity

Mattes was also optimistic about the role of customers in cloud integration, encouraging them to think through their applications and delivery processes end-to-end when moving to the cloud, instead of simply dropping the same process in and being done.

While cloud does offer increased agility and delivery, opening up new opportunities, Mattes cautioned that it wasn’t a simple upgrade to instant savings, as some CEOs have seen it. “One of the things that customers need to think about… is ingress/egress costs,” he said. “It’s not an easy task, by any means.”

Mattes urges businesses to consider the questions around their business risks, business values, why they really needed an availability strategy and, ultimately, why Veeam would fit their needs. “At the end of the day, the right workload, in the right cloud infrastructure, absolutely [offers] economic advantages, and more importantly business advantages,” he said.

With Veeam’s own goal of continuing to refine cloud connectivity until “it just works,” the future seems to hold huge improvements for both consumer and provider sides of cloud services.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VeeamOn 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VeeamOn 2017. Neither Veeam Software Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE