Columbus Business Solutions: Official Barbados Launch - Cloud Services
Channel: bajanreporter
Date: 11/06/2014

I am proud to have joined Columbus Communications over 5 months ago. Leading the Business Solutions team, our mission is to become the premier provider of cloud and managed solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise and to governments in our Caribbean and Latin American markets.

A number of important technology and business trends are impacting the way that our clients view and acquire voice, data, and information technology capability:

With the intensity of global and local competition, companies need to focus their resources--human and financial--on their core business, on innovation, and developing competitive advantage.

The implementation cycle of IT must enable competitive advantage not hinder or slow it. It simply cannot take years to implement critical systems/tools. In a hyper competitive world, time to market is critical. And if IT doesn't move quickly to deliver capability, I can assure you that there is a generation of employees and users, who were born into the digital age with mobile and internet, proficient in IT, and who won't wait!

Technology windows or refresh cycles are shortening. Chief Financial Officers are struggling with large CAPEX investments that can be made obsolete in as little as 5 years. Modern, growing businesses benefit from an OPEX model to deliver IT services.

Businesses are now 24 x 7 operations and customers have a low tolerance for service interruptions. For many applications and for critical content, the concept of a server room or a server closet is becoming unacceptable and obsolete.

Attend an event in the financial and banking sector, and I'll challenge you to tally a word that is mentioned more often than "security" ... not even interest rates or money. The threats are everywhere - some man-made. Others are beyond man's control. In turn, as business and government leaders, we must have, in place, well developed plans to protect sensitive data and applications.

Trends such as "Bring Your Own Device", mobile commerce, and mobile computing create incredible potential for workforce productivity and a new channel, but stress organizations in terms of securing data, and applications.

At Columbus, we are exceptionally well positioned to deliver the solutions that your business and government need:

Without the large capital investment and the risk of obsolescence.
Scalable, as your business grows.

Where the time from implementation to business benefits and impact is weeks not years!

Reliable and secure with single end-to-end Service Level Agreement from desktop or mobility device to a secure core to the Internet enabled world.

Our capability includes voice and unified communication, and data connectivity. But we've gone so far beyond telecom to integrate capability that spans the entire IT value chain from desktop as a service, to managed WiFi, managed local area networks, to data centre infrastructure and software as a service. And we look to take the friction out of starting a new business, or for businesses that are expanding with our Managed Workspace Solutions.

We believe that three elements will allow Columbus to distinguish itself in business solutions:

First, our network and fabric of data centres across the region is the foundation for cloud and managed solutions; High capacity, scalable, reliable, resilient. Frankly unmatchable!

Second, we see talent as a key differentiator. To be the leader in our space, we must and will be relentless in our efforts to attract, develop, and retain top industry talent in IT engineering, sales, service delivery, and customer support.

Over 40% of my time to date has been on recruitment and strategic human resources.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we view our culture as a differentiator--one of customer centricity with Columbus team members who are passionate about solving our customers' business challenges and "pain points".

As Brendan Paddick, our ceo, states: "We don't predict the future, we enable it, not by serving thousands of customers every day, but by serving one customer thousands of times every day" (JOHN MADURI)