By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A BAHAMAS-based Cloud computing start-up sees the Bahamas’ finance sector as a “prime target” for its offerings, its director telling Tribune Business that the firm’s virtualized IT solutions could increase productivity by 48 per cent and provide thousands of dollars in cost savings.

Stelios Xeroudakis, director of Cloud Carib, a Citrix certified Solution Advisor in The Bahamas, told Tribune Business that the company had received great response to its offering thus far and was looking to launch some new offerings in September.

“We have some new services that will be launched come September,” he said. “We are trying to build our team and to educate Bahamian IT professionals about the new technologies that we can offer in partnership with Citrix and VMware. The primary focus for us right now is the finance sector; it’s the prime target. In addition to that we believe that the government can definitely benefit from the developments in this sector. We would like to present some solutions to the government and get some feedback from the IT management professionals in the government departments. The next area we would look at would be hospitality,” said Xeroudakis.

Cloud Carib, a Microsoft BizSpark start-up, has a core focus on infrastructure and application virtualisation. The company offers personal service to all clients and customers. The company has been awarded Gold ProPartner status by Veeam Software, an Elite VMware Technology Alliance partner and has been named certified Citrix Silver Solution partner in the Bahamas.

“The main benefits of what we offer is flexibility and cost savings,” said Xeroudakis. “If any company has more than five servers currently they can benefit directly by implementing a virtualization and cloud computing solution. In terms of IT productivity these solutions can provide up to 48 per cent in increased productivity. By reducing the possible downtime this can mean thousands of dollars in savings from the gained productivity. Overall the statistics have shown that virtualization can reduce the time that the IT staff spends in managing the IT department by 48 per cent. By using the virtualization software, the customer’s electricity costs is going to be reduced by half.”