In this episode of Futurum Live! From the Show Floor, I am joined by Model9’s Chief Strategy Officer, Eddy Ciliendo, during the SHARE Conference in Atlanta. Our conversation covered Model9’s success in 2022 and how they reached 100% customer retention. It’s a great conversation, and one you don’t want to miss.
Learn more at model9.io.
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Transcript:
Steven Dickens: Hello and welcome to Futurum, From the Show Floor here at SHARE in Atlanta. I’m joined by Eddie Ciliendo from Model9. Eddie, welcome to the show.
Eddy Ciliendo: Hey, Steven, thank you for having me.
Steven Dickens: It’s great to be back. I love these in-person shows.
Eddy Ciliendo: Agree.
Steven Dickens: We managed to grab a quiet spot.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah.
Steven Dickens: Eddie, position it for the audience here, little bit what you do from Model9, and then we’ll jump straight in from there.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, sure. So I’m the Chief Strategy Officer at Model9, responsible for all things that have a long term nature, whether it’s kind of our technology strategy, go to market strategy, marketing partnership strategy. So that’s what I do at Model9.
Steven Dickens: So tell us a little bit about Model9, still a relatively new name in the mainframe space. I obviously track you guys pretty closely and I’ve been briefed, but for some of the watchers and listeners, tell them a little bit about what you do and what the company’s sort of impact has been on the mainframe space thus far?
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the funny thing is that we’re relatively new in the mainframe space, where most companies have been around for decades. So from that perspective, yes, we’re relatively new. But I think we’re now becoming, I think, a brand name that is recognized in the mainframe world at least, which I think is awesome, and I think 2022 has just been a fantastic year for us. So
Steven Dickens: Well, SHARE always gives us an opportunity to reconnect with the community. We saw each other last year at SHARE. Give us a bit of a State of the Union, what’s been happening, I know there’s some fantastic high points, but just give us a flavor of what the last year’s looked like.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, and that’s obviously one of the cool things at the startup, things are moving very quickly, you can have a impact very, very quickly. So 2022 was just fantastic. We had one metric that I’m super proud of, we had 100% customer retention. So especially in the mainframe market, I think it’s important that you have the quality …
Steven Dickens: Gives you a solid base to build on. I know you’re winning a lot of new clients, but keeping the ones you’ve won is kind of crucial. So that’s a great data point.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no, so I’m very proud of that. And again, big kudos to our development team, to our customer success team that made this happen, and obviously big thank you to our existing customers. But at the same token, I’m also super proud that we were able to double our revenue in 2022. So we added a couple of really big logos to our customer base, which I’m also very grateful for.
Steven Dickens: And those bigger customers, you and I have been in the mainframe space a long time and they’re often the hardest to win. Very demanding, very sort of keen to understand not only just the company, but the solution, a lot of evaluation. Maybe just expand on some of those wins.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no, you’re spot on. I think that has been one of the biggest challenges. Big corporate entities have a lot of processes, how they bring a new vendor into the fold. So I mean, that is taking time. And then the other thing is obviously just how stringent the processes are around the mainframe to get a new product, a new software evaluated and into the fold. But we’ve seen some really interesting use cases with some of those big shops. One trend that I see now happening in a lot of larger organizations is that they want to standardize their storage infrastructure. And we are now hearing from a lot of the Fortune 100s that they want to standardize to S3 compatible object storage and sometimes NSF, but I think the big topic is really S3 compatible object storage.
Steven Dickens: And that’s standardizing to the public cloud, regardless of what platform. Is that what you are hearing?
Eddy Ciliendo: I think it’s standardizing to the hybrid cloud. So we hear customers going to S3 compatible object storages on-prem. We just completed a project with a large financial services entity here in the US. They’re going to the public cloud and use the public cloud as a means to recover their mainframe from ransomware attack. And then we see customers that do kind of both, they have on-prem infrastructure for fast recovery and then for more archival type of data, they use the public cloud.
Steven Dickens: And that’s been one thing as I’ve been tracking the growth of your business, ’22, I saw a lot of partnerships come through, a lot of different storage vendors sort of announced partnerships and collaborations with Model9. Maybe just expand on that a little.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no, you’re spot on. I think that’s another high point of 2022. I think we added 20 new partners and you’ve seen some of the names, I’m very proud that we have some really big powerful brands that are now saying that they want to partner with us. So very grateful for them, very happy for those partnerships.
Steven Dickens: I think for me, the key takeaway there was that’s not only a go to market motion, that’s not just good that gives you more access to more customers, that’s also a validation of the technology. Is that how you are viewing it?
Eddy Ciliendo: No, absolutely. And perhaps you remember the announcement that happened with AWS [inaudible 00:04:58], that they will now integrate part of our technology into their software stack. I mean, the biggest thing obviously is a household name like AWS standing behind you, but yes, it is absolutely a validation for our technology.
Steven Dickens: Well that’s going to supercharge the Model9’s growth, give you access to that huge customer base that they’ve got. Also gives you a fantastic access from a technology collaboration point of view.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah.
Steven Dickens: So Eddie, we’re at SHARE, we’re sort of first up on the Monday morning, what should people be expecting? What does your week look like while you’re here?
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, I think it’s a pretty busy week, right?
Steven Dickens: It’s good to be back and it be back absolutely busy. It looks like we’re back pre COVID levels.
Eddy Ciliendo: Totally, totally. I mean, I think we said the same thing when we met last time, but I think the buzz now is even more and more people around.
Steven Dickens: It feels bigger this time around than last time, I think.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. So I’m looking forward to meeting with more customers, more potential customers. Many of our partners are here, which is also awesome. And again, for people, I would ask them to stop by at our booth, booth 245. And if you are attending SHARE virtually this year-
Steven Dickens: It looks great.
Eddy Ciliendo: Thank you. Thank you. And if you attend SHARE virtually this year, then just visit our website, go to model9.io.
Steven Dickens: Fantastic. Well, Eddie, always great to have you on the show. You’ve been here with us on Futurum from the show floor. My name’s Steven Dickens. We’ll see you next time. Thanks very much for watching.
Author Information
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
