Command & Control Your IT Infrastructure

LEONID MAMCHENKOV Director of AlleoTech Ltd

Q Hey Leonid. It’s been a while since we spoke last. What’s that I hear about you starting a new company?

Hey Paul. Yeah, it’s only been just over a year, but it feels like forever - one of the side effects of being a startup founder. Indeed, I’ve left my previous company back in February, and was working on a new one. We’ve incorporated AlleoTech Ltd in July and have recently celebrated the first mini-birthday - 3 month old.

Q So what’s AlleoTech is all about?

We are an IT infrastructure company.

Q Do you mean servers and such?

Yes, servers too, but we are a bit more than that. We help businesses with their IT infrastructure, be that an on-premise collection of servers, networks, and so on, or third-party hosting, or their cloud setup.

Q And why would any company need you guys?

There are several reasons.

Firstly, system administrators and DevOps engineers - those people who usually deal with IT infrastructure - are few and far apart. It is extremely difficult to find them, hire them, and keep them. They are also quite expensive. And on top of that, most companies don’t really have enough workload to utilize a full-time engineer. We already have a team of SysAdmins and DevOps engineers that we can share.

Secondly, IT infrastructure, although vital for any business, is rarely a priority. IT managers and departments are usually trying to deal with e mergencies and don’t have the time or people to focus on their longer-term infrastructure needs. That’s where we come in and lend a helping hand.

Thirdly, technology is moving fast and it’s difficult to keep up with, especially for people within an

Leonid Mamchenkov Director of AlleoTech Ltd

organization that is not primarily dealing with technology. We can help save time and money with our expertise.

Q Can you give me an example or two of how this works?

Of course.

We already have several clients in a variety of industries - from retail and maritime to marketing and financial services. Without naming any names (for now), here are a couple of things that we’ve done so far.

First, a very technically capable company providing payment services, needed some help with their Amazon AWS cloud setup. Somebody else has done the initial work for them, but then they’ve decided to take over and do things in house. It turned out that Amazon AWS, as amazing as it is, is not very easy to navigate and figure out from the start. They were having a variety of issues - overwhelming costs, administrative complexity, performance and flexibility issues. We’ve come in just a few weeks ago and

Command & Control Your IT Infrastructure

IT Consulting

Cloud Hosting

System Adminstration

IT Infrastructure Audit

worked with their technical team. We’ve done the audit of their setup and discussed the issues with their business stakeholders. We then managed to significantly decrease their monthly bill, simplified the infrastructure and provided some training for their technical guys. As a result, they have a lot more confidence going forward, they don’t overpay, and they know that we are just a phone call away in case they need help.

Second, a company with a lot of its own hardware, software, and services, was looking at moving all or parts of their setup to the cloud. We’ve helped them audit and document their current situation, suggested the shorter and easier roadmap, and helped them with some of the Amazon AWS services that they weren’t very familiar with. The project is still in progress, but they were quite happy with the smaller proof of concept that we did, and are now actively moving their infrastructure to the cloud.

Q It looks like more and more companies are moving to the cloud. Is this true? And if so, what are the primary reasons for that?

It is indeed true.

Even though cloud computing has been around for more than a decade, it’s one of those things that took a while to adopt. Cloud services these days are much more mature than they were even five years ago. They provide solutions to a much wider range of problems. And the prices have decreased significantly.

On top of that, it’s not just cloud computing that is changing. It’s the world in general. It is getting faster and broader. Businesses have to adopt and react to a larger range of challenges than ever before, while at the same time, with lesser budgets and shorter deadlines.

Cloud computing helps a lot with technological issues. It’s global, fast, scalable, and affordable. Gone are the times when you need to buy or book servers in advance just because you are planning a marketing campaign that will bring more traffic to your website. With proper cloud hosting setup, your site can automatically scale to as many or as few servers as is necessary right now. And you’ll pay the hourly rate of only those servers that you use. The same goes for email servers, databases, storage, bandwidth, and pretty much any other resource or service.

Q If cloud computing is so great, why doesn’t everyone use it? What are some of the challenges with moving to the cloud?

It’s a great question! Every major shift in technology raised similar questions. And the answers often seem to be the same.

Firstly, irrelevant of how great a new technology is, the biggest problem with it is that it’s new. It takes time to learn and understand it, play around with it, and find ways to apply it to a particular project or organization. Cloud computing is not an exception here. There are several vendors, each with its own offerings, pricing, limitations, documentation, etc. Amazon AWS alone offers more than 180 cloud services, many of which consist of several components. It’ll take more than a day just to read through the names and brief descriptions of each, let alone figure out how they work, how they connect, and how to apply them.

Secondly, both individuals and organizations are naturally resisting change. It often seems easier to just work with what you have and know already. Many businesses invested large amounts of money and time into hardware, software, and expertise. Moving to the cloud often sounds like abandoning all that and starting anew.

Thirdly, as I’ve already mentioned before, time. Even those people and companies that do want to move to the cloud, never have the time to do so. More urgent things get in the way, priorities shift, people come and go, and so on.

These are all familiar and, more importantly, solvable problems. But it takes will, time, and effort.

Q Well, thanks for that, Leonid. I think I understand the benefits and challenges of moving to the cloud a lot better now. What are the best ways for our readers to get in touch with you, learn more, and possibly work together?

No problem at all. I’m glad I could clarify some of it for you. As an IT infrastructure startup, we are very enthusiastic (and opinionated) about all things technology, and cloud in particular. I’d love to chat more with you or any of your readers.

You can find us online in all the usual places - the website (https://alleo.tech) where we run a frequently updated blog and on social media (@alleotech). We are also attending all, or almost all technology events in Cyprus, from large conferences and forums to small meetups and gatherings. Catch up with us at any of those events and we’ll find a time and place to talk.

Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure, as always.