The expansion and associated transformations in the cloud industry appear to have no end in sight. As organizations embrace the reality of cloud readiness, migration, and multi-cloud management, they are finding that this rapid transformation introduces new complexities. Some issues are occurring as many rush headlong into automation without properly comprehending or accounting for the impact on their customers.
The CEO of Otava, Brad Cheedle believes that automation can be disruptive, but affirms that it can’t take the place of humans in the cloud journey. For example, it is impossible to automate the process of matching workloads to the right cloud. Prior to moving applications to the cloud, businesses must examine what they need from their hybrid environment, what data needs to be stored where, what their existing infrastructure is, and the support requirements for their specific demands. As the saying goes, ‘it takes a village’ to navigate multiple clouds in ways that are fluid and easy.
This is especially crucial now that hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge computing capabilities are at the center of most companies’ IT discussions. The dynamic leader, expects more customization designs will be necessary as businesses and technologies advance, rather than a one-size-fits-all strategy, to handle individual client IT concerns. He also anticipates that companies will continue to seek support from a partner with the right expertise to help them simplify the complexity and put them on a path to success, both now and in the future.
The Mastermind Behind Otava’s Fame And Success
Brad is a veteran technology executive and entrepreneur with 26 years of experience. His professional expertise includes corporate finance, sales, business development, engineering, technical operations, marketing, product development, and mergers and acquisitions. As the CEO, he is responsible for Otava’s day-to-day operations and supports keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive by helping the clients with their hybrid cloud and digital transformation needs.
Brad proudly shares, “Outside my work at Otava, I sit on the Board of Directors and support the entrepreneurial programs at the University of Northern Colorado, Monfort College of Business.”
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We’ve built our business on the premise that everything we do is to help our customers succeed.
A Glance Over The Business Portfolio
Otava began as a web hosting company in 1994 and has since developed into an industry-leading compliant hybrid cloud provider with locations worldwide. Its portfolio is intended to help enterprises, partners, and public sector clients navigate the cloud landscape by providing a clear path to hybridity. Otava Cloud is based on VMware Cloud Director, an industry-leading cloud platform, and is designed to provide simplicity, transparency, and flexibility. Customers can pick from a variety of infrastructure levels, including shared cloud for organizations with diverse resource needs, reserved cloud with allocated resource pools, and private cloud for highly secure, mission-critical environments. These options give customers the power to handle their cloud operations exactly how they want. Clients can also select between usage-based or contract-based billing depending on their needs. Each cloud service is supported by fully integrated services such as backup, security, and disaster recovery that can connect to the public cloud or on-premise environments.
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Our culture of service extends to the service of each other, and within our organization, we strive to enable each other to support the customer as best we can.
Meet The Demand of Security And Compliance Requirements
In today’s world, staying ahead of competitors has become challenging, and on top of that, due to the limited availability of IT resources many companies are struggling to deliver best-in-class services. Otava is one of the few companies committed to helping businesses in highly regulated industries meet their demand of security and compliance requirements. Above all, the company is entirely focused on assisting customers in leveraging the right cloud environment for their specific business applications.
“While some organizations are forced to rely upon separate data privacy and security features offered by partner technologies, Otava natively bakes security and compliance into all of its solutions. And our customers can trust that their mission-critical infrastructure is in compliance with industry regulations because our offerings meet the regulation requirements of HIPAA, HITRUST, PCI, and SOC 1, 2, and ISO 27001. Our layered, defense-in-depth approach results in our ability to help keep our clients’ data safe, secure and available,” says Brad.
What makes Otava Different?
Otava sets itself apart from other market players with its service-oriented culture, technical expertise across a wide range of technologies and commercial applications, and its people. The team at Otava has expertise in matching business challenges to cloud solutions from its extensive portfolio solutions, giving customers the flexibility to choose from the options that best suit their needs.
Otava provides fully managed, partially managed, or self-managed versions of all its solutions. Depending on their situation and capabilities, this flexibility offers their organizations the optimal level of control.
Enterprises typically prefer the fully managed solutions because they benefit from the convenience of a turnkey service that requires less hands-on staff. Whereas service provider clients generally prefer self-managed options since they may have in-house IT capabilities and need greater direct control over delivering the Otava infrastructure under their own branding to their own set of customers. No matter which management option clients choose, Otava’s hybrid cloud solutions are easily and immediately scalable to grow alongside its customers, without delay.
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Our goal is to give companies the power to innovate within a secure and compliant environment
A Trusted Partner
For growing businesses, multi-cloud is the future, and Otava is perfectly positioned to be a trusted partner. The prominent cloud solution provider will keep increasing its portfolio by expanding hybridity options and customized solutions for both service providers and enterprise clients. It is committed to working with key partners at VMware and Veeam to provide more advanced features that keep businesses connected anywhere, at any time.
Otava’s Unique Culture
“I’m proud to say our team is the most hardworking and dedicated in the industry. Our ‘Otavies’ are truly rock stars that love to wow our customers,” Brad asserts. For Otavies, nothing beats empowering a client by assisting them in overcoming a hurdle and achieving results that are far beyond their expectations.
During the pandemic, when the clients required unprecedented help, agility, and creativity to navigate the uncertainties of all things COVID-related, the value of Otava’s culture of service, which is rooted in integrity, honesty, transparency, and creativity, played a crucial role in this. Furthermore, Otava was named a strong performer in 2020 Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Services in North America report thanks to the contributions made by every team member.
Coping With The Pandemic Challenges
“Looking across the cloud industry, the innovation is endless. Today’s challenges lie in the complexity created by the non-stop evolution. We understand that it is not an easy feat to create and manage a robust and fluid environment with multiple clouds. And this is why we are so driven to help organizations navigate through it all. The journey is rewarding for our team and for our customers who reap the undeniable value of the transformation,” says Brad.
The pandemic has presented various challenges to the industry. Some were brought on or accelerated by the new levels of uncertainty, such as securing data in a hybrid work environment. As a result, Brad and his team have seen increased services around enhancing security and enabling VPNs. Otava has also added desktop as a service (DaaS) to its portfolio; given the staying power of working from home, Otava expects that trend to continue.
It’s also no surprise that the demand for cloud migration has exploded. Moving to the cloud is a terrific idea with a lot of potential for future expansion, but it also raises resource issues for many strapped IT departments and organizations who cannot support these solutions in house. This is where Otava comes into the picture to provide enhanced migration and management services to organizations that want to better leverage the cloud but are having trouble retaining and hiring the in-demand talent required to achieve their objectives.
A Message from CEO of Otava
“‘Embrace The Cloud.’ If you don’t know where to start, call us, get a team together, figure out what’s needed for your organization.” — Brad Cheedle.
