You described the Canadian Cloud Council as “the planet’s most disruptive vendor-neutral cloud revolutionists.” Why?
We started the organization because, at the time, I was CEO for a cloud-computing company that was attempting to go to market with something that was quite revolutionary at the time, at least in Canada. We created an infrastructure-as-a-service platform built on open-source technology that allowed customers to self-provision elastic cloud-computing resources. We were having challenges convincing anyone that this is way the world was going, so I decided to create a vendor-neutral, not-for-profit organization focused on advancing the cloud conversation, and the industry in general, in North America.
What does that conversation look like?
In 2011, we were having a lot of tactical conversations with CIOs about cloud computing, and many people we talked to were missing the point about what cloud computing can accomplish outside of a data center. Cloud computing can function in a way that allows many interesting things to happen within an enterprise. It can create massive societal changes, enormous wealth, and help solve big, big issues. You look at what Elon Musk is doing right now, open sourcing all of his technologies and patents to the open market—this is really cool stuff. You can imagine how this has the potential to completely transform how we live, in a very positive way. This is why I love the concept of cloud computing and how it has very little to do with technology but rather the massive outcomes it supports.