Securing the Cloud for SMBs – Aaqib Gadit, DigitalOcean

This is techstrong tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back here to techstrong tv.

Our next guest on Techstrong TV today is IV Gait, and if I mispronounced his name, I'm gonna ask him to correct me here. But IV is a Chief Revenue Officer at Digital Ocean Ake. Is that the, did we get it right?

Oh, absolutely. Uh, nice to meet you, Alan. Thank you.

I appreciate your time. And this is ake Yes, Very good. Ake, thanks for joining us.

Um, as I mentioned you, chief Revenue Officer at Digital Ocean, but why don't you give us a little bit more of your own personal background? So I, I'm Chief Revenue Officer at, uh, digital Ocean. And, uh, I'm responsible for really like thinking of all the levers of revenue in the complete ecosystem of revenue for including partners in the context of end-to-end customer and partner journey to maximize the impact and revenue, uh, for the organization and impact for our customers.

Sort of. So it's, uh, as we are, as we are transforming into a more of a holistic go-to-market organization, I'm responsible for the, all the g m efforts under an integrated organization. So, super excited about that.

Um, I don't know if you know about Cloud Ways, Alan. So I was the co-founder and c e o of Cloud Ways, uh, that was basically acquired by resolution. And after that acquisition, I've been, uh, appointed as a C R O.

So I, I was, I was, uh, I was doing a digital agency back in the day. And from there on, I understand the needs of these small and medium businesses and the fact that they spend incredible amount of time on application and infrastructure management, yet they have to go to go through all the horror stories and painful episodes of, uh, poor performance security issues, uptime, bad support, et cetera. Also, cloud was pretty new at that time.

And, uh, those were the, those were basically the moments when every SMB was thinking about adopting cloud, but they don't have any capability or knowledge or resources to do that. And the, and the tools and platforms that were available at that time, but either quite expensive or the customer experience wasn't that great. So we thought to sort of like bundle application infrastructure and cloud management with great customer experience at a great price for SMBs.

And that's how we started. So over the period of time, we, we of course had to, to pivot and, uh, uh, sort of like, uh, continue to evolve. But I think our partnership with Digital Lotion started back in the day in 2014 when we were, we were a multi-cloud platform for smb.

Mm-hmm. So they can focus on their core business with peace of mind and improve productivity without worrying about infrastructure application management hassles. So we were initially integrated with aws.

We were basically on top of aws, and we realized that SMBs want a, a rather more simpler and affordable solution. And Digital Ocean basically came into being around bedtime as well in, in 2014. And, uh, we thought that that's a great opportunity.

It's like a great partnership. So we started adding more cloud to our platform, and Digital Ocean was a second cloud, and that's how we started our sort of like partnership with Digital Ocean. And I think the rest is the history.

So I think recently in August, the company have been acquired and hence I'm, I'm in this role. Uh, so digital option is basically, you could say a cloud platform for SMBs and startups so they can test their ideas, uh, build their dreams and businesses and scale their businesses on top of cloud. Our promise is that we make it simpler for SMDs to garner the full potential of cloud at a great price.

Great price point. Excellent. com?

com. Yes. Absolutely.

Great. So thank thank you for the background and great st you know, personal story as well, so it's good stuff. Let, let's talk a little bit about, you know, some of the challenges that SMBs have regarding the cloud versus r large enterprise.

Right. You know, one of the things about the cloud is, is there's a, in order to do truly, you know, kind of best in class security, there has to be a close partnership between the cloud platform provider and, and the, the, uh, the organization hosting on the cloud because there are certain aspects of security that the cloud provider is responsible for to a point. And then your organization, which is still responsible for security, even though they may not control it.

And then from that on now large enterprises, they have the wherewithal, the resources to navigate that border, if you will, to navigate the communication between the cloud provider and the internal security organization. SMBs don't usually have that kind of infrastructure, they don't have that kind, those kinds of resources, right? And so as a result, I think maybe they, they rely on the cloud provider even more to provide a secure platform and effective security, and that, that puts a bigger burden on the cloud provider, quite honestly.

So, let let you know, how does digital OSHA navigate that and, and as part of their solutions for SMBs, what do they offer there? Yeah, I think that's, that's a great point. Uh, Alan, I think if he, if he step back, we, we look at the sort of like state of SMBs.

I mean, they really are the backbone of the global G D P, right? There are like a hundred million SMBs in the world who, who are building their businesses. And every year we have, uh, almost 10 to 12 million new SMBs coming in.

And with the advent of the technology advancements, uh, recently from cloud to AI and the new offline to online reality after Covid, I don't think it's a choice for SMBs to adopt technology is a must have, right? But, uh, while this is exciting, it exposes them to, uh, huge amount of issues and threats because SMBs are digitizing pretty fast. They want to compete in the hyper-local space as well as the global space.

And while they're digitizing that, I mean, every process that they digitize brings a new problem and a, and a risk, uh, right to to to them. And now, SMDs are a different beast, as you said. I mean, they are generally underserved because, uh, they don't have resources to hire a team who will manage a team to manage a platform for them.

They need something much more simpler, easier, uh, much more hands-on support. It's kind of like a great, uh, price point, right? And we, we, we think that, uh, we, we, we believe that SMBs, while, I mean historically, they, they were not that sort of like concerned or aware about cybersecurity and issues.

I think, uh, increasingly, increasingly, they, they, they, they think like while they're investing in their sales, marketing and growth, likewise, they need to invest in, uh, sort of, uh, their security as well. Now, digital Ocean, if you talk to our best customers or the ideal customers, they would continue to genuinely say that we are their deeper partner. Uh, and it's not just another vendor, right?

And that partnership has a lot to do with mutual trust. And trust is attributed a lot to security and the peace of mind, uh, as we say. And the, the great thing is that security at the forefront of our services and capabilities, and not just that, but most importantly, our culture, it's never an afterthought.

It's, it is quite ingrained in our culture, and we have significantly invested in our network security, in our infrastructure security and platform security. We have offered tools and capabilities for SMDs to be more secure and, and kind of like have peace of mind focus on their core business. Also, we have investors significantly in the different compliance, uh, that is required SOC two, three, GDPR compliance, et cetera, et cetera.

And we have been increasingly improving our security posture over the period of time. So I think both on all the cross like detection, prevention, culture and, uh, disaster recovery devotion has made significant investment. And one of the things that our customers like is that when you are spending $500 per month with Digital Ocean, you are just not a number like, uh, anybody else.

You are a deeper partner and we, we give you a lot more resources. Our solution engineering team, our technical account managers to work with you, and literally our customers are like, we are your extended team, uh, 24 by seven who work hand in hand to make sure that you have the right poster to focus on your business and grow your business with peace of mind. Excellent.

Let's talk about sort of the current state of cloud security a little bit. What do you, what do you, what are the digital ocean? What's the digital ocean team seeing as sort of the biggest threats for SMBs out there right now?

I think, so the state of, uh, SMB security in particular is vulnerable. The state is vulnerable, and it's, uh, it's getting accelerated. And we are seeing that more and more, um, culprits and criminals are channeling their efforts towards SMBs.

I would, which I would say the soft target, and 80% of the SMBs, 80% plus of the SMBs are, are very concerned about, uh, the, the risk and the threat. And 60% of them have gone through at least one threat in the past one year, and almost 40% of them have gone through more than five threats a year. So it's, it's really concerning.

And the other thing is that, the other thing is that the remote work environment is triggering a lot of new needs for SMBs, especially the remote access VPN connectivity. And by virtue of that ex, uh, granular access control, uh, governance efficiency, but again, at the right cost, and we, we are actively seeing that smb, as I said, I mean, just that they were spending money with engine product and growth and sales. They're now channeling that to, uh, to security as well.

So I think that's, that's broadly we, we are also seeing that a lot of SMBs are flocking to MSPs, uh, at this point because, uh, I think it's hard to really find a great security person for even enterprises. It's a huge gap in supply and demand. Forget about SMBs hiring somebody.

So either they are relying on cloud wire, like digital ocean for their best in class security, or, or they are, they're also relying on the MSPs to do that. Excellent. Yeah.

You mentioned a lot of metrics there. Um, how does that compare, did you think to enterprise sort of incidents or SMBs are, because there's two schools of thought, some people say, ah, the SMBs are too small, you know, they're not the targets. The targets are these high profile, high kind of things, you know, high, high impact companies.

Other people say no, the SMBs are the low hanging fruit. They absolutely are the target. Yeah.

I mean, it's no more just mom and pop shops. I mean, modern, uh, modern world SMBs, right? Which are, which are online and the threat poster or the footprint is very different from what it used to be.

And as, as you said, it's, it's a soft target. Like for enterprises. I mean, uh, you, you, you might have seen what, what happened, unfortunately recently, just last week, Microsoft Outlook, uh, went down, uh, terribly through, through the pretty exhaustive, uh, DDoS attack, right?

Mm-hmm. And it's getting more and more and more sophisticated. So it's not that, uh, the, the risk, the risk profile there is different.

It's just that they have made more resources. They can afford a lot more sort of like, uh, um, investment into that. Uh, and, and they're, they're working generally with, uh, hyperscalers on that front, SMBs on the other end.

I mean, they have to have a sort of like a fractional, uh, chief information officer, officer security officer, which could be their MSP or a cloud provider to help them. But, but I, I would say that more and more SMBs are, are, uh, on, on the hook for, for security, and a lot of them are facing issues, which could be like business sweeping, uh, which is very critical. Agreed, agreed.

Looking into a crystal ball. I mean, we'd like to think the situation will get better rather than worse, but when we're talking about security, we're always, you know, that's not necessarily the case. But what, what, what do you, you know, look into your crystal ball?

What do you see? Do you, do you think, I mean, are we making progress on this? Um, I, I, I, I think it's, it's, uh, at least in the near term, it's gonna get more, uh, sort of like, uh, I would say concentrated and there will be many more issues, right?

Um, I, the, the, the good news is that I see that the awareness on the vendor side, SMB side is getting more and more, uh, better as they are, as they're digitized. I think, uh, the, the role of, uh, the security providers like digital Ocean or otherwise would become much more critical. And we need to really deeply understand the SMB landscape, which is very different from enterprise landscape to really partner with them to help them improve their, uh, sort of, uh, poster.

There is, uh, there is to be seen, like what, what's the inflection from the post ai? Uh, this, the, the whole explosion that we are seeing, what's the inflection on, on that? And I think Digital Ocean is, uh, AI is one of our strategic focus.

Digital Ocean is very committed to invest in AI for, we just acquired Paperspace, by the way, which is, uh, which is a GPU based ml AI ops, uh, platform. And I think, I think, uh, uh, it'll be very interesting to see what's the, what's the role of AI both on the opportunity and threat side. Absolutely.

And, and, you know, ml AI ops is just a whole nother area that obviously we cover a lot here on Techstrong. And, uh, it's a whole, it's a, it, it's a big, big thing as well. It's a beast in itself, right?

And, uh, yeah. Right. Yeah.

I, I, I, I completely, I think SMBs, I mean, to your point around state of, uh, the, the security, like, I mean, we have seen huge loss of, uh, revenue customers, uh, reputation, IP and productivity. And, and more and more SMBs are, are taking it seriously, to your point. Agreed.

All right. Hey, uh, Kim, I want to thank you for coming on Techstrong TV today and telling us a little bit about digital lotion and, and talking about, you know, security for SMBs in the cloud. It, it is an ongoing issue and, and one that, you know, we haven't seen a lot of solutions in the market for.

So thanks very much. Come back on and keep us posted and best of luck at Digital Ocean. Thank you, Alan.

Appreciate it. All Righty. We're gonna take a break here on Text Drunk tv.

We'll be back in a moment.