What technology should an ambitious startup proffer to the motley mix of modernizing companies? The buzz around cloud-native and serverless computing architectures suggests that’s where the market’s going. But is that where the market actually is, wallet in hand, today? Nope. Most of it is scattered across a broad, nebulous range loosely described as “hybrid.” How can companies sell to businesses at such different points on technological, strategic and cultural bridges?

“We’re really interested in meeting customers where they are in their digital transformation,” said PJ Farmer (pictured, right), director of cloud product management at TierPoint LLC. Founded in 2010, the company is trying to ride the modernization waves by keeping its portfolio as diverse as today’s customers. It offers specialized managed services and data services, as well as good, old-fashioned colocation centers.

Companies are struggling to gracefully shift to the digital age in terms of tech and culture. The adoption of new tech might mean the roles of information-technology pros change. For example, automation is increasingly freeing them from drudgery, and digitization is making IT a board-level issue. This is bringing IT people more and more into business conversations. As technology and human roles change, so does company culture, which may lead to yet more tech upgrades and so on. It amounts to lots of changes for a company such as TierPoint and the businesses it serves to stay abreast.

“Listen to customers” is becoming a very common motto among vendors navigating the shifting terrain. TierPoint is putting its money where its mouth is. It strives to keep the technologies in its 40 U.S.-based data centers in step with its customers’ current needs. Right now, that means cloud services and cloud connectivity. In fact, customers proactively initiated TierPoint’s partnership with Nutanix Inc., a provider of hyperconverged infrastructure and multicloud software services.

“They brought Nutanix to us, honestly,” Farmer said.

Farmer and David Hines (pictured, left), vice president of architecture and engineering at TierPoint, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent .NEXT event in Anaheim, California. They discussed how hybrid companies are shifting — technologically and culturally — into the digital age (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights TierPoint as our Startup of the Week.

Hit or miss in cloud

The “RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report” from Flexera Software LLC shows that 84% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy, while 94% of survey respondents are using cloud computing in some form — public (91%), private (72%) or hybrid (69%). The study predicts that enterprises will spend 24% more on public cloud this year than they did in 2018.

TeirPoint positions itself as a realist in the multicloud market; it knows businesses want to digitize, modernize, move workloads to cloud, etc. But it allows them to do so at their own pace while not prematurely jettisoning traditional technologies or methods. This approach can prevent the dreaded “on-prem repatriation” phenomenon being seen in the industry.

“A lot of customers think the cloud is a logical strategy for them, but over time they see that it increases cost,” Jeff Kroth, manager of data management and analytics at Flexera Software LLC, told theCUBE last November. “It’s really about aligning the rightsizing of your environment, moving the right applications, the right data to the cloud, and using that as part of your overall strategy.”

Having it all in hybrid limbo

Piecing together different technologies to serve transforming, hybrid customers without overwhelming them can be tough, according to Hines. Most have diverse workloads and need versatile technologies with a foot on-prem and a foot in cloud. Nutanix resides somewhere in the middle; its platform enables users to run applications in physical data centers and in public cloud. TeirPoint worked with Nutanix to put together a private enterprise cloud product. It runs inside TierPoint’s data centers, is dedicated to customers, and is local to their systems.

Some other TierPoint partners include carriers that provide an onramp to public hyperscaler clouds. They round out a full loop from the data center to public cloud and back.

“It really helps complete that multicloud story that customers need. They can come to us, collocate that equipment that they really have to hold on to — mainframes, mid-range servers, other legacy systems — while gaining that connectivity to those hyperscale environments,” Hines said.

Modernized tech rubs off on company culture

There are good reasons for companies to modernize IT and move as many workloads to cloud as they feasibly can. One is the transformative impact cloud and modernization can have on IT staff. Automation in particular is giving IT pros a lot more free time for creative thinking, Farmer pointed out. For example, within the IT room, roles are shifting and intermingling. Staffers are picking up skills outside of their original siloed positions.

“We do see a consolidation of siloed technologists. This idea of ‘I’m only a network engineer, I’m only a storage engineer, I’m only a cloud engineer’ — that is definitely going away,” Hines said. 

TierPoint has actually seen this happen within its own company. Roles have been mixed up; the staff has been educated in new skills. For example, an engineer might now do automation and development tasks proficiently. The cross-pollinating of skills can lead to new ideas, improved methods, and greater efficiency. 

Digital business, by its nature, calls for more input from tech brains in the boardroom. TeirPoint wants to enable this shift by taking undifferentiated heavy lifting off of IT’s hands. They ought to be thinking, “How can we drive savings or cost cutting? How can we enable transactions? How can we enable the customer base? And not thinking about ‘do I have my storage system updated? Am I dealing with the old boxes that I have to replace? Do I have power and cooling problems in a data center?’ … They need to be up front with the business, making business decisions,” Hines concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the .NEXT 2019 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the .NEXT conference. Neither Nutanix Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE