The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A BAHAMAS-based cloud computing firm is aiming to provide local businesses with a “test run” of its offering in the 2014 first quarter, after aligning itself with a major US multi-national computer technology corporation.

Stelios Xeroudakis, director of Cloud Carib, a Citrix-certified solution advisor in the Bahamas, told Tribune Business that the start-up had recently partnered with Oracle, the California-based company that specialises in developing and marketing computer hardware systems and enterprise software products.

“It’s a very big enterprise. They’re a very big database provider mostly for global banks. This is a big development; we are now Oracle partners. We’re planning to do an event with them, a presentation with them in the first quarter of the new year here in Nassau,” said Mr Xeroudakis.

He added: “We will be offering a free test run for qualifying firms for one month so they can see how it works for them. It’s going to be VMware technology that we will be using, which is the biggest cloud technology company in the world.

“With all the controversy with the National Security Agency and the surveillance of data in the US, a lot of companies don’t want to host in the US any more.

“Since we are in the Bahamas and we have different legislation and data protection, it’s much better to host data in the Bahamas than in the US with the recent developments. This is why we want to boost cloud services in the new year. It’s safer to host it here in the Bahamas because of the data protection framework.”

Mr Xeroudakis said the company has been attracting a lot of interest locally.

“We are still growing. We’re finalising some new management hires. We don’t have many active projects right now, just a few IT projects that we’re working on,” he said.

“We’re a fairly new company, so we’re trying to balance new business and also support the growth of the company at the same time.

“Right now the core team is about four people, but there are also contractors and free lancers we are working with locally, and we’re also trying to bring in two more management level staff from the industry.”