After a long year of changes, Harry had the privilege of meeting with Serguei Beloussov (formerly the CEO) currently the Chief Research Office at Acronis during the recent Acronis Cyberfit Conference. Listen to the interview below to learn about what Acronis has been up to, and what they have in store for the future.
Interview Transcription
Harry Brelsford
A nation nation, Harry, here I am at the Acronis Cyberfit summit 2021. After one year absence, we're back at the Fountain Blue in Miami, and I'm with SB, how're you doing? Fine, good, good. So what's what's going on? What's your story? Talk to us?
Serguei Beloussov
Well, I'm no longer CEO. So I mean, my story. I'm a Chief Research Officer, and I'm focused on longer term insurance. But if you think talking about our current service is going well. Finally, we can meet people in person. Finally, our strategy with service providers is way more than half of our business. Yeah, way more than half of our annualized recurring revenue, it's growing very rapidly. It's, in a way for me as an entrepreneur, it's a bit of a strange situation, because I talk to partners here, and I ask them, what's wrong? And they say, pretty much nothing. They say like, it's good. Yeah. What can I do for you? And they say, Well, you know, we're growing fast and say, like, what else to say, Whoa, and then there is a pause, and then they come up with some things, but they all look quite benign. And so it's a bit boring. There, but but in addition to that, we have a lot of roadmap plans. Yes, marketing and product program plans, which are to be executed.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, absolutely. And what was interesting about this, this conference, and again, my my compliments after one year away as many conferences did, you have a robust show, and it's, it's great to be back in person. But you're also going to Dubai and Singapore to talk to me about that, that you're dispersing the event model a little bit
Serguei Beloussov
Actually, it's much more than Dubai, Singapore. It's also Schaffhausen. Okay. And Schaffhausen is our headquarter in Switzerland, where a Swiss company and when we started, actually, I insisted on Schaffhausen. And it's probably going to be equally popular venue. And the reason we initially wanted to do it, and was a bit controversial then but it's clear it was a good idea is that people can't travel. So like we have a lot on button. So they want to come here, they could not come here. Correct. And they want the European partners, they wanted to come here, they cannot come here. So we have to offer them Dubai and Schaffhausen. And for Asian flatness, hopefully Singapore plans to open up and so they can travel to Singapore. Yeah. And so it's just related to code it next year, we hope to go back to the model where we have 123 rounds. But there is one big event Yes. Here. Where was 1.5 1000? I mean, Daniel could be small. So for us 1.5 1000 people, and then we have smaller dance in probably Dubai and Singapore to equity than the past. Yeah, yeah. But this year become almost equally large against here. Physical Schaffhausen Dubai, Singapore. Yeah,
Harry Brelsford
yeah, no, I think it's a I think it's a good business model. The other thing that I noticed that I'm actually going to do a piece on was the COVID protocol that you have here. So for the listeners, you had to display a test a negative test within 72 hours or get the rapid testing on site. And so I did that on Sunday, and it only took 10 minutes, I went off to my hotel room, I got a text on my phone, then I could go get my badge. So you had a protocol that you couldn't be bashed for the conference without proof of the negative test. And then every day do the temperature test at the base of the stairs. And so my compliments any thoughts on that? Because that that that was
Serguei Beloussov
cool, right? I mean, I'm Singaporean citizen. And in Singapore, we genuinely responded to COVID in a more pragmatic way, if you look at number of people who are sick. And you you will sort of look at the three countries Taiwan, Singapore, and China. Yeah. Now the thing about China, it's a very large job market. So they closed up from the world. And so but that's not the big deal for them because they have 1.5 billion people here, between the countries inside this wall. And so it's easy for them to close up. And then if you think about Taiwan, they have closed up and it has left partially to the to the semiconductor crisis, which is happening right now. And, and the fact not so many sick people and not so many, not so many people who died. And in Singapore, we also have a few people dying, and very few people sick. And we've had very robust protocols from the very beginning. I was in Singapore, and started in March on how you handle quarantine, how you handle tests, and how you handle cases. And we sort of learned a little bit from that, and we tried to implement it. Yeah. There is a lot of controversy in the United States, unfortunately, between different states on what is allowed what is not allowed, whether you're allowed to test not allowed to test but you have to oxygenate not have to vaccinate, whereas you have to we have to force quarantine. Okay, no forced quarantine means you have to always navigate through this, you know, complicated landscape. For us, we are protection company. So for us, the most important thing is to keep people protective. Yeah. And productive. No, I
Harry Brelsford
think I think that aligns really well, any, any final thoughts on your new role or Acronis, moving forward and fill?
Serguei Beloussov
My role is to do to create Acronis shirt, which is, to some extent, similar to things like IBM Research, Microsoft research, but to a smaller company. So it has to be more applied. Yeah. And there's many areas where we can focus research, particularly areas related to machine intelligence, and application to motion injury or motion injections to managing and protecting workloads, enterprise products, global localization. And, you know, I've outlined some ideas, but you know, there's, there's multiple other areas. But a lot of what you can do with research, because it's focused more on the three years to them, yes, horizon, is to find the best talent in the world. And to basically see how you can apply what this talent wants to do to what a Cronus wants to do. Because quite often, if you find the most talented people, they don't necessarily want to change the direction. Yeah. And so we're looking for people now for our companies, we will continue to enhance our cyber protection products. That's our focus. It's a huge market. And there is so many, since we can still do much better. Our main focus is service providers and making service providers to be able to protect and manage, you know, workloads, infrastructure, application systems data for customers, historically SMB, and now more than one enterprise
Harry Brelsford
enterprise. Yeah, well wrap up on this, because you're brought up research. And, you know, I go way back to the early parallel stays and what I liked about parallels and I know you did a tour duty over there was they did primary research parallels did some really good primary research, which is pretty rare in the SMB space, and less less common than you think now and tech in general. Right, that funding is kind of dried up. I don't think
Serguei Beloussov
it's so dried up. I think it's just for smaller companies. It's not as common, but you know, Microsoft, Google, and IBM, IBM. Yeah. And Oracle and Amazon. It's pretty common and apple. So they do research. I mean, some of them talk about it, like Microsoft and IBM and Google, some of them. Keep it more than join Amazon, Apple. But research is pretty common. We just want them step to stay a little bit step ahead of the future. Yeah. So the best way to to be a step ahead of the future is to bring the future now. So let's say through a company, of a size of appointees have a crisis search. It's a question mark, but should the company have a size of appointments in 2025? Policy Research? Yes. And so we start with now? Yeah, of course, we're pretty confident we're going to be the company we're planning to be in 2025. That that way by 25, we already have an established research organization. Yeah. Which produce, you know, basic, but also very applied research, which we can use in cyber protection, cyber security, cyber infrastructure, cyber management, server automation, whatever we need.
Harry Brelsford
All right, well, thank you for your time. I'll let you get back to a bustling conference out there.
Serguei Beloussov
Thank you.