INNOVATORS VS COVID 19

Cloud Computing and Peace of Mind

Published

3 years ago

01/21/2021

Kokou Adzo

We talked to Marcio Lacs of AMT about the digital environment and this is what he had to say about it.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Marcio Lacs: We’re all fine, thanks. In addition to myself and my family, I am pleased to know that our team has been doing well throughout this period and that we have been able to keep our operation running 24/7 safely for customers and our team.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded AMT.

Marcio Lacs: I founded AMT in 1994, at the beginning of the commercial internet in Brazil. At first, the big transformation was taking companies to the internet. Since then, I have seen and experienced several advances in terms of technology, infrastructure, and services. Today, we provide cloud computing and HPC services, but I like to say that our main product is tranquility. Our goal is always to deliver peace of mind so that the client can dedicate himself to what really matters, to his end activity.

How does AMT innovate?

Marcio Lacs: Our greatest innovation comes from our purpose of understanding what the customer really needs and delivering these resources in the right measure, always thinking about generating the necessary tranquility for him so that he does not have to worry about anything besides his business. Our biggest innovation, in my opinion, was the change in the service concept. If we are truly committed to the client’s peace of mind, we cannot limit ourselves to solving problems directly arising from our service provision. We created the Solution Desk, an evolution of the Service Desk. In it, the team’s focus is always to seek the solution for the client, even if it goes beyond our scope, our services.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business, and how are you coping?

Marcio Lacs: The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of companies. The trend is for cloud computing to continue growing strongly in the coming years. The past few months have been challenging for many sectors and growth for others. We work with our clients on a case-by-case basis to help them – in terms of resources and even business negotiations – face these challenges. We have greatly strengthened our relationship with them.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Marcio Lacs: The difficult decisions were precisely the ones related to financial matters. We needed to preserve our revenue, but we couldn’t help but look at our customers. We managed to get here very well, growing and, above all, with our strengthened relationships.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and AMT in the future?

Marcio Lacs: We developed a planning model called Cloud Assessment. With it, we understand the customer’s demands and plan in detail aspects such as service level and responsibility matrix. The tranquility that we defend for the client is the same that we seek for our processes and our team. In addition, we seek to understand each employee and their context, their needs, their challenges. Monitoring people closely is, in my opinion, the best solution to prevent stress and anxiety.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Marcio Lacs: Our competitors are also our partners. We work with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and we also compete with local cloud providers. To stay in the game, we will continue to do what we have always done for 26 years: putting the customer’s needs at the forefront. It doesn’t matter if it needs a private, public, or hybrid cloud; whether he wants high-performance computing or just a safe place for his environment; as long as we are able to meet and anticipate demands, we will maintain the relationships of trust that we have established over time and that have made us grow year after year.

Your final thoughts?

Marcio Lacs: We are still adapting to a new world, new environments, new realities, new working relationships. This adaptation will still take time to be fully balanced. My view is that this balance will undoubtedly come and put us in a better situation than we had before the pandemic. We will come out of this better as people, as companies, and society in general. More connected, more integrated, more supportive. That’s what I believe. That’s why I’ve been working for all these years.