Interview with Valeria Rodríguez, head of data center architecture and operations at Ikusi in Medellín

“What we do at Ikusi is help customers transition from traditional networks to software-defined networks”

Valeria Rodríguez, head of data center architecture and operations at Ikusi in Medellín, is young, but more than capable. Her journey, as she refers to it, started in Medellín in 2011, when she did her first internships. After that came her first contract, with telecommunications equipment company Italtel, in 2011. She combined this with her telecommunications engineering studies.

Today we’re speaking with her about Ikusi’s strategy for developing the market in the Medellín region, principally in her area of specialism: data centers.

As I was saying, you have a long professional career for someone your age, which you have developed especially in the area of data centers.

Yes, that’s right. After Italtel, I began working at IBM. It was there that I started to specialize in data centers. At that time the main data centers were in Bogotá, and there was one in Medellín. However, some customers and companies based in Medellín had their hosting and services in the data centers in Bogotá. The strategy for providing a better service to these customers was that I manage these customers in the Medellín region, despite their services being in the Bogotá data centers.

Ikusi understood this proposition perfectly, which is why we’re working from Medellín for the organizations in the region.

And in November 2022 you received a call from Ikusi

Correct. At that time I was working at GBM, a partner of IBM in Central America, still in the data center area, initially as a specialist engineer in charge of data center operations in the region, and later as regional architect providing data center design solutions for the company’s customers.

Óscar Gómez, Operations Manger at Ikusi in Colombia, who I had worked with at ITS Infocom, got in touch with me. He wanted to form a team of quality professionals in Medellín. It was tempting, but I was happy where I was. I needed a sign to make the next move and, instead of one, I received two. Ikusi had formed a small team of two people who, coincidentally, I also happened to know. Mauricio Martínez, now pre-sales manager at Ikusi, who was my mentor at Italtel, and Erica Triviño, a salesperson I had met at Italtel. The signs had arrived, so I decided to make a move. Mauricio said to me at the time, when I asked him for advice, that I was going to work for the Real Madrid of data centers in Colombia.

This January I celebrated my first year at Ikusi and I’m very happy. And I have Óscar and Mauricio to thank for that. The technical level at Ikusi is impressive and offers enormous potential for professional development.

Do you think teamwork is important, Valeria?

It’s very important. At Ikusi, in Medellín, it’s not just a group of professionals, but an excellent team of professionals. We’re old acquaintances, we complement each other, we have a high level of responsibility, we create synergies between us, and customers notice this.

And two new people have joined the Medellín team − Héctor Pedraza and Edisson Gaviria. Héctor works in the Enterprise Architecture area, and I first met him at ITS. We had a good relationship. Edisson also worked at Italtel and he is head of Security Architecture.

Is the offer to customers in Medellín the same as that in Bogotá?

Ikusi in Colombia is organized into three architectures − Enterprise, Security and Data Center – and we have the full offer here in Medellín. This is very important for customers, and we have proven that Ikusi offers quality and has excellent engineers not only in Bogotá but also in Medellín, where it demonstrates its sincerity and commitment.

How do you approach customer loyalty?

By promoting a way of working that bears the Ikusi DNA and hallmark.

It is essential that the customer perceives quality right from the design stage of the project. To know their business inside out, not only to meet their needs but to provide added value too.

Another key stage is the implementation process. This is when we need to leverage the solution to the maximum. Ikusi’s DNA is also evident in this stage, and if we can give the customer something on top of what they initially signed up to, that’s what we do.

And, finally, we come to the support stage. Solutions fail, new needs arise that require a response, and this is a chain, a cycle.

If we execute these stages well, we can assure an excellent service, making it much easier to achieve customer loyalty and preference.

It’s a completely different approach to that of a large company. It’s like David and Goliath, so the strategy has to be different. We are not that big, but it’s precisely for this reason that we can look after people, create synergies, have a close relationship with the customer and look after them in the same way we look after our team.

If you had to choose two aspects that differentiate Ikusi’s offer from that of other firms, what would they be?

The quality of the people in the team, their ability, excellence, commitment and drive, and the fact that the company has a programming area is an added value. Programming complements the different architectures, in that it leverages the maximum potential of the product and makes daily operations easier for the customer.

Which sectors are more likely to value and benefit from Ikusi’s differentiating aspects?

Any kind of customer can choose us to support them and offer them a quality service which will help them achieve the company’s core objective. One of these is the banking sector, along with retail, commercial, education, among others. But I don’t really like referring to specific sectors. I consider what we’re doing at Ikusi as helping customers to transition from traditional networks to software-defined networks and/or to improve their infrastructure if they have other needs, irrespective of the economic sector in which they operate.

What’s your opinion on the deployment of another architecture demanded by the market, such as the public cloud?

I think there was a pretty big boom in this area at the beginning. But over time, we saw that it was not the only proposal.

Our idea at Ikusi is to combine public and private clouds to achieve a hybrid system. We believe that critical services can be hosted on site and complemented with cloud services for operations and applications.