Multi-cloud services from the land of crisis

Cloud services provider Cibersys is looking to break the resistance of small and medium enterprises to relinquish direct systems ownership. It does so via a mixture of affordable, tailored solutions and a focus on customer service across its Latin American and Caribbean footprint, CEO Víctor Márquez told BNamericas.

The company also takes cues from its 2010 origins as an ISP provider in crisis-hit Venezuela to think outside the box in financial and customer support matters, the executive, added, as it looks to offer its flexible "Global Datacenter" solutions to the sector.

"We have become a virtual telecommunications operator," Márquez said. "Thanks to our commercial interconnection agreements with other operators, we can offer competitive internet services without having to build infrastructure." But as prices in the internet access market are approaching zero, the company has diversified into new markets, keeping close to the concept of virtual services.

As opposed to large datacenter operations such as Kio Networks, he said, his company can sort through several datacenter options both in-country and abroad, and different levels of service and security, to arrive at the package most suited to individual clients. With this approach Cibersys is taking after disruptive business models such as Uber or AirBnB, for which infrastructure ownership takes a backseat.

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Another advantage of hailing from a crisis-ravaged country is that the company has learned how to cope with financial crisis, exchange rate fluctuations wreaking havoc on cost structures and even the fact that after spending much money on training and certifying key personnel, many companies see those employees snatched by better-paying players in more developed countries.

The company also takes pride in offering its virtual customer support solutions in Spanish, bypassing the need for clients to have bilingual staff to deal with IT problems.

"Our natural market, and where we are offering our services is in the small and medium (SME) sector. A SME is a bit on limbo between doing nothing and having to invest a ton of money to reach the level it needs for its operations," Márquez said.

Adoption of cloud architectures is sometimes a matter of survival, he explained, as proved by Mexico's devastating 2017 earthquake, which in the case of one client led to bankruptcy as the company had invested heavily in a datacenter that ended up buried under a building's rubble.

Cibersys, he added, is also partnering in Mexico with telecoms operator AT&T, one of the leading developers of IoT solutions, "that will allow us to offer services connectivity with a SIM card on a very small piece of equipment not just in Mexico but across Latin America."