Brian Scott Davis is a long term player in the tech scene, with an extensive background with Microsoft, Accenture, Avanade and Hewlett Packard. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer for longscale, a provider of white label application marketplaces.
Brian told me that unlike others, he is quite happy working at home. Brian has a plethora of technology at his fingertips and actually has dedicated space at his home for his work. However Brian does make an effort to come to Fishburners, especially on Fridays, for the social and collegial experience.
longscale is a “distributed” workplace with a mix of employees and contractors in Sydney, San Francisco and Viet Nam. Using Skype he is able to maintain contact this his colleagues in real time, even if the people are in the same city or different contenant .
The major architecture for the OzoneCenteral and OzoneCore is Windows Azure, however Brian is finding that some customers would prefer to have the products run on their own Microsoft servers. This requires some changes, with the main challenge of choosing the best Azure (or other Microsoft) features that do not require cloud components or services but still provides the required functionality.
Being a white label service, longscale can provide a market backend for his customers that can be customised for their needs. This can also include sharing data with legacy platforms. It allows banks and telcocomunication companies (who have their own flavour of the OzoneCenteral) to create an application and cloud services marketplace that “enterprises and service providers can quickly take to market under their own brand to address the growing opportunity for cloud-based business applications” (from the press release that announced OzoneCentral in 2011)
I was interested in his view of the change in Microsoft. As a consultant, Brian felt his was his job to know the products in order to give his clients the best products for their needs, without burdening them with weaker products. While Brian still feels that there is a core of people in North Ryde HQ who are still technology focused, he feels as being further away from the “mothership” in Redmond, much of the focus with Microsoft AU is the sales element to the detriment of providing the best tools to the client. There is an element of reputation in providing a good service that is being wasted by Microsoft.
Like BigCommerce, longscale is proving that you can create white label marketplaces, and given the public’s and technologists mania on cloud services, longscale is well positioned to take advantage of this new market environment.
Recent Comments