Ross Wilkers
Bruce Smith serves on the executive leadership team at Triple Canopy and leads a group of information technology professionals at the Constellis Group-owned company.
The three-decade IT industry veteran held executive roles at companies such as AECOMÂ and ENSR, before he joined Triple Canopy in December 2012.
In this conversation with ExecutiveBiz, Smith discusses his team’s technology services work throughout the Constellis Group enterprise and challenges in technology security as usage of smartphones and tablets increases.
ExecutiveBiz: When did you join Triple Canopy and what have you focused on since?
Bruce Smith:Â My focus has been to build on the information technology base and to evolve the department into an essential business partner. We moved from the shadows of the back office to become an active participant in delivering technologies, services and solutions.
ExecutiveBiz: How is your organization structured particularly within the larger Constellis Group enterprise?
Bruce Smith: We are supporting the enterprise, Constellis Group, for technology services. Constellis Group is a leading provider of support, security, training and advisory services to government agencies and commercial clients. We work with multinational corporations in challenging environments across the globe.
Our portfolio of companies include leading integrated service providers such as Triple Canopy, Edinburgh International, Strategic Social, ACADEMI and National Strategic Protective Services.
ExecutiveBiz: What kind of demand have you seen in the area of cloud computing in the past two years?
Bruce Smith: Every year we migrate more of the computing environment into the cloud. We’ve already established a footprint in a few areas including Applications as a Service. We also moved a key component of our disaster recovery plan into a cloud-based service or DRaaS, Disaster Recovery as a Service.
It is a demand that is definitely growing in a direction we are headed. It gives us tremendous flexibility in being able to access computing resources as we need them.
ExecutiveBiz: Where do you see more opportunity for collaborations or partnership between the public and private sectors in cloud?
Bruce Smith: Infrastructures are being built up, the security models are maturing and some other cloud growth areas are becoming more and more available. The challenge for industry will be to look at what tools to use and what models to build in order to analyze the data. If we can partner up with other researchers, academics or government agencies, there is going to be tremendous opportunity to evolve data into information.
ExecutiveBiz: What is a trend that is becoming more significant or something that we should be watching?
Bruce Smith: The consumerization of computing platforms is really moving the needle on IT departments. As more people buy their own tablets and smartphones, we have less control on the devices people use. It is a challenge to deliver services out to those devices because security becomes an issue. We need to take a look at how we manage a company’s data on platforms that we no longer own or have direct control over.
In reference to the cloud, the tradition of every company owning a data center in their office or building is moving towards the cloud. Cloud services are more cost-effective, give more flexibility and move capital expenditures to operational expenditures. In the future, we are going to become the brokers of technology and managing vendor relationships. This is opposed to buying servers, racks and all associated with that.
In terms of the trends, the emphasis will be on applying the appropriate technologies using computer or cloud services to solve business challenges.
