bmo­bile has part­nered with TTMA in cre­at­ing one of the most re­silient and se­cure Cloud so­lu­tions in the Caribbean. Ac­cord­ing to this press re­lease, this tech­no­log­i­cal leap will be crit­i­cal for busi­ness­es seek­ing to grow. De­tails fol­low in this re­lease...

bmo­bile has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in cre­at­ing one of the most re­silient and se­cure Cloud so­lu­tions in the Caribbean. This tech­no­log­i­cal leap will be crit­i­cal for busi­ness­es seek­ing to grow and will al­so be es­sen­tial as more or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GoRTT), seek greater digi­ti­sa­tion.

While digi­ti­sa­tion al­lows or­gan­i­sa­tions to ben­e­fit in terms of da­ta, speed and ef­fi­cien­cy, it al­so brings in­her­ent risks if not man­aged prop­er­ly, as ev­i­denced by re­cent ran­somware at­tacks in the Caribbean Basin. To help busi­ness­es bet­ter un­der­stand se­cure Cloud so­lu­tions (and the avail­abil­i­ty of world-class fa­cil­i­ties here in Trinidad and To­ba­go), bmo­bile part­nered with the TTMA to host a we­bi­nar as part of the 2022 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­fer­ence (TIC).

The vir­tu­al meet­ing, Cre­at­ing More Re­silient Busi­ness­es through Cloud So­lu­tions, al­lowed sev­er­al lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to de­mys­ti­fy Cloud so­lu­tions and show­case how busi­ness­es of any size, in­clud­ing SMEs, can ben­e­fit from Cloud ser­vices.

Tanya Muller, Se­nior Man­ag­er of IT In­fra­struc­ture, TSTT, wel­comed at­ten­dees with sev­er­al case stud­ies to em­pha­sise the ur­gency of im­ple­ment­ing Cloud so­lu­tions. “One client of ours was the vic­tim of a ran­somware at­tack which froze their crit­i­cal fi­nan­cial da­ta. Thank­ful­ly as they had been backed up to our Cloud, we were able to re­store their da­ta and have them op­er­a­tional soon af­ter. An­oth­er client suf­fered a hard­ware fail­ure on their in­ter­nal servers. Still, as they were backed up via our off­site Cloud fa­cil­i­ties, we were able to have them back in op­er­a­tion in just an hour too,” Muller high­light­ed. For cus­tomers that al­ready have on-site servers, Muller not­ed that TSTT could house those on be­half of cus­tomers in a se­cure, cli­mate-man­aged fa­cil­i­ty that can ex­tend the life of those servers. Do­ing so can al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce in-house ex­pens­es con­sumed through IT staffing, main­te­nance and elec­tric­i­ty us­age. 

Muller al­so high­light­ed the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fits of the bmo­bile Cloud so­lu­tion to at­ten­dees. Ac­cord­ing to Muller, cus­tomers con­sid­er­ing Cloud so­lu­tions would be in­ter­est­ed in three things: avail­abil­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­ti­nu­ity. “We are al­ways avail­able and for­tu­nate­ly for our cus­tomers we had 100% avail­abil­i­ty over the past 11 years. In terms of flex­i­bil­i­ty, we can al­so scale as need­ed start­ing off stor­ing da­ta for ten cus­tomers, but if you now have three hun­dred, we can scale that for you with­in min­utes with­out you need­ing to buy more servers.” Con­ti­nu­ity is al­so vi­tal. “Our Dis­as­ter Re­cov­ery (DRaaS) ser­vice can back up your da­ta eas­i­ly to avoid events as we shared from our cus­tomers’ sto­ries.” 

Muller not­ed that the bmo­bile Cloud ser­vice is not on­ly de­signed for large busi­ness­es, but most SMEs can al­so ben­e­fit. “Da­ta and cus­tomer in­for­ma­tion is im­por­tant to­day, and we can au­to­mate in­for­ma­tion that you nor­mal­ly write down man­u­al­ly. From the hair­dress­er to the hard­ware, we have so­lu­tions and apps that can be de­signed around your needs to make your life eas­i­er by mak­ing man­age­ment of your busi­ness eas­i­er,” Muller added. 

TSTT’s da­ta cen­tre and fa­cil­i­ties are rat­ed and in­spect­ed an­nu­al­ly and hold sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al and in­de­pen­dent cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, some of which are unique in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and the Caribbean. The TIA-942 Rat­ed 3 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion mer­its the an­nu­al phys­i­cal in­spec­tion of the fa­cil­i­ties. The DCOS-3 rat­ing is giv­en on re­view of the op­er­a­tions, main­te­nance and per­son­nel man­age­ment as­pects of the com­pa­ny’s Cloud and da­ta cen­tre op­er­a­tions. Ex­ten­sive back­ground checks are al­so con­duct­ed on staff. 

Mauri­cio Pen­ni­ni, Se­nior Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er, VMware, em­pha­sised that not even TSTT has ac­cess to the da­ta it hosts for its clients. “The da­ta is more se­cure in the Cloud, than it is in your own fa­cil­i­ty,” he added. VMware is a lead­ing provider of mul­ti-cloud ser­vices for all apps, en­abling dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion with en­ter­prise con­trol with head­quar­ters in Pa­lo Al­to, Cal­i­for­nia.

Sean Koon Koon, Man­ag­er of IT Net­works and Cloud, TSTT, al­so not­ed the ex­ten­sive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures that the com­pa­ny puts in place - that go well be­yond what many com­pa­nies can do in-house. “We have de­signed our Cloud with col­lab­o­ra­tion and se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture at their core. Us­ing the Gov­er­nance, Op­er­a­tions and Tech­nol­o­gy frame­work, the bmo­bile Cloud so­lu­tion is built to be used by large clients like the GoRTT, which can share space but have those spaces dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by Min­istry and be ac­ces­si­ble in mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions while re­main­ing se­cure,” he added. “Or be used by small­er clients just as se­cure­ly.”

Jose­ba Cal­vo, Man­ag­ing Part­ner, EPI Latam, al­so shared in­sights with vir­tu­al at­ten­dees. “In terms of cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, TSTT has cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to mit­i­gate what we of­ten call Mur­phy’s Law. And these re­li­able Cloud ser­vices will be­come more crit­i­cal in the com­ing years. The num­ber of in­ter­net users is pro­ject­ed to in­crease from 3.8 bil­lion in 2019 to 5 bil­lion by 2025,” he high­light­ed. As a re­sult, busi­ness­es poised to ben­e­fit are those with se­cure and re­li­able Cloud ser­vices, sup­port­ing their client data­bas­es, apps and op­er­a­tions. EPI is the glob­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion agency that ver­i­fies qual­i­ty and pro­vides in­de­pen­dent au­dit ser­vices with spe­cial­i­sa­tions in the ICT and Da­ta Cen­tre sec­tors.

At­ten­dees al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask di­rect ques­tions of the team of ex­perts as­sem­bled by bmo­bile and ex­plore the Cloud so­lu­tions for their busi­ness­es. The event was host­ed by Khamal Georges, Se­nior Man­ag­er – Cor­po­rate, En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment, TSTT.