Exclusive Interview with Michael Cantor, Chief Information Officer of Park Place Technologies

In 2020 and 2021, cloud computing exploded as work went virtual and businesses adapted to the global pandemic by focusing on the delivery of digital services. In 2022, we will undoubtedly see a continuation of rapid adoption and growth. At Park Place Technologies, its ParkView™ and Entuity Software™ services are important contributors to cloud computing capabilities.  These products are capable of working with cloud-based assets and can bring the long-standing IT discipline of monitoring systems and networks on-premise or in co-location to the same level in the cloud. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Michael Cantor, Chief Information Officer of Park Place Technology.

Tell us how your company is contributing in the IoT/AI/Big Data Analytics/Robotics/ /Cloud Computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

At Park Place Technologies, our ParkView™ and Entuity Software™ services are important contributors to cloud computing capabilities.  These products are capable of working with cloud-based assets and can bring the long-standing IT discipline of monitoring systems and networks on-premise or in co-location to the same level in the cloud.

How do you plan to revolutionize the Indian market and what are your plans to tap the market?

Our products are already in the Indian market as they're applicable globally. 

The industry is seeing a rising importance of business and technology enablers like virtualization, convergence, and cloud. How do you see these emerging technologies impact your business sector?

We have already taken advantage of these technologies and have applied them to our business sector to gain efficiency and scalability.  We were early adopters of virtualization in an effort to make efficient use of our computing capacity.  We extend this early adoption of virtualization to early adoption of the cloud and have further extended it into cloud-native applications.  Not only can we efficient scale quickly without acquiring hardware, but we also have greater redundancy and disaster recovery capability than if we were buying physical duplicates of our infrastructure.  This helps us deliver highly reliable and cost-effective solutions to our customers.

How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through adoption of the company's technology innovations?

We are the leader in third-party maintenance through the use of our technology to deliver cost-effective maintenance on the SLA desired by our customers.  This allows our customers to spend less on OEM extended maintenance and apply those savings elsewhere in their companies.  It also frees up skilled resources from spending time on hardware upgrades that aren't necessary and frees up capital by allowing the use of hardware for a longer time frame.

In our ParkView™ service suite, we are using our technology to automate the IT infrastructure monitoring process, freeing up valuable IT resources from daily tasks and repetitive alerts that don't really alert.  This allows companies to focus those resources on capital investment rather than support.

How is Machine Learning shaping the data centre industry today? How is it changing the role of CIOs and Leaders?

Machine Learning (ML) has a lot of potential for the data centre industry but continues to need expertise for deployment.  Some basic activities are now automated through ML although this has largely been a quiet shift.  For example, false alerts are automatically suppressed by our ParkView™ monitoring system through the use of AI and ML to identify repeating alerts coming out of systems.

For the CIO, it's another technology that can be applied to solve problems.  CIOs are used to custom development and packages to solve problems, and now they have more tools, particularly Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which can solve automation problems that previously would have taken extensive custom development to solve.

What role has Park Place Technologies played in the innovation of new technologies?

Park Place is always seeking to develop new technologies, technological services and processes which help our customers simplify their IT.  We have invested in automated maintenance services for hardware, OS and hypervisors delivering to the market, services such as Parkview Hardware Monitoring™ and ParkView Server Management™.

We have also innovated with Entuity Software™.  Our Entuity network monitoring tool automates network discovery and uses intuitive workflows that make it easy to see when something has gone wrong. Responsive dashboards allow you to take a high-level view to gauge your network health or drill down to the component level to quickly and efficiently fix network problems.

What have been the most significant challenges that you have faced in the industry

As the globe adapts to the "new normal" of COVID surges and hybrid work environments, businesses are compelled to continue their digital transformations, depending on data that resides on-premises, in public and private clouds, and devices at the edge and within networks and operation centres. That means planning for certainties in quite uncertain times. Park Place has collaborated with business leaders to manage potential threats to business continuity; identified the production, distribution and supply chain networks within areas potentially impacted; and implemented mobilisation, isolation and education strategies for workers. Resilience was put to the test while agility raised the stakes for success.

What is the growth plan for Park Place Technologies in the coming year?

Park Place is looking to grow our customer base, grow adoption of our portfolio of IT services, and grow into to new IT markets and geographic territories.  This can be achieved through a combination of R&D, innovation, delivering services which customers need, delivering services which help remedy customer pain points, organic growth and strategic product and/or organisational acquisitions. If we focus on acquisitions where we have been active in recent years, the acquisitions we have made have enabled us to expand our software offerings, bolster our range of managed and professional services, and deepen our global service capabilities. But we are also growing through organic sales, with a ten-year run of increased customer growth and sales. These dual strategies ensure a stronger global company that provides an optimum client experience.