Let’s start with a quick intro, tell us about yourself…
My name is Ivo Költze, and I am an Acquisition Manager (which combines business development & partner management) for Leaseweb Deutschland. I’ve been working for Leaseweb since August 2016 and I love it – it’s a lot of fun to work for this international and friendly company.
I started assisting companies in choosing the right infrastructure back in 2007, and I’ve had a keen focus on Cloud and Security solutions in recent years.
What do you like most about working in this industry?
We have a nice variety of customers including ISVs, MSPs, Digital Agencies, Big Data, Logistics and Healthcare and much more, but all of them need hosting solutions to solve their various business requirements. There are many different people, personalities and finally different technical solutions. This is a challenge, but I like this and get enjoyment from pleasing my customers. To succeed, you need to keep learning and developing and keep an eye on the market changes and new technologies every day.
What would you say is unique about the German market?
The German market shows huge potential for all kind of digital services, but not that many companies know really how to use them or to adopt the technology effectively. You see a lot of regional based industry / digitalization clusters supported by the government. This is not just to empower the SMB companies, but also traditional companies such as those in manufacturing, to encourage adoption of new technologies. We’re also seeing the emergence of a new kind of full-service digital agency to focus on digitalization and digital process implementation in such companies. These agencies handle digitalization and all the services around it including E-Commerce, Social Media, and overall PR Strategy.
What is MadTech?
MadTech’s as they call themselves, represents the combination of AdTech (Advertising Technology Services) and MarTech (Marketing Technology Services), which gives companies the most complete view of the customer journey and interaction points across all digital channels. Based on an optimal, unique combination of these services for your business, you will be able to reach the customers better and finally raise your conversion rate by increasing the quality of the customer’s journey and experience.
What excites you about this sector?
The Digital Marketing industry is growing really fast – we can expect a global revenue to reach $336B by 2020, and last year growth was up to 32% against 2017. One of the main reasons for this is the increase in popularity of e-Commerce and the MarTech services around it. These kinds of new digital businesses need powerful, scalable infrastructure to analyze and deliver the huge amount of user data in real-time. Currently, the MarTech industry alone is using more 1,000 cloud services.
It’s also really fascinating to discover the new services which are coming to market and the benefits these bring to our online experiences.
How do you compete with the tech giants in this industry?
It is relatively easy – by going one step beyond what they are willing to do. We always listen to our partners and customers and focus on their real needs, as well as giving a personal touch to everything. For us it is necessary to develop and deliver solutions and services that really fit – this is how we differentiate.
What infrastructure challenges do companies within this sector deal with?
Think about the amount of data which you have to handle and store when you analyze only one customer’s journey via which takes them through various touch points and platforms. Now multiply this by several million, and you can imagine how challenging this is to manage without any outtakes or data corruption.
For example, Real Time Bidding (RTB) occurs in digital advertising, whereby data must be collected, delivered and analyzed instantly. These businesses need stable, flexible infrastructure with the lowest network latency possible.
Sometimes basic services like DDoS Mitigation, Fraud Prevention, Disaster Recovery, and Backup are not prioritized by agencies, and they are hit with considerable recovery costs after an attack or disaster. Furthermore, in Europe, we have new data protection and privacy regulations accommodate, so this is also a challenge.
What is hosting tips can you give for MarTech and AdTech companies?
First, ask yourself – do you have a solution that fits your business locally and globally? Define where do you want to be in 6, 12 or 24 months – will your infrastructure support this growth in a sustainable way?
MarTech and AdTech companies need reliable a infrastructure that is flexible enough to handle peaks, but also has enough performance to process quickly process, analyze and store data. Beside the raw compute power and flexibility on the infrastructure, you have to check your network for flexibility on bandwidth consumption latency – nothing can impact your business more than low capacity on the network.
I would recommend taking a Hybrid Cloud approach and combining standard services like Private Cloud, Dedicated Servers and Security Services – this will deliver the requirements for flexibility on storage, performance on the compute side, security, and enable your business to scale as it grows. As we can see with our partners and customers, this hybrid cloud approach will reduce your monthly costs when compared to hyperscale cloud providers or full dedicated server environments.
Now let’s switch the pace a little! What’s the top thing on your bucket list?
The most important thing for me is to show the beautiful and exciting places on earth to my kids, like the Provence, Spain, Ireland, UK, Cuba, the US, and even more local places as much as possible. I hope that they will also be open-minded, tolerant, and eager for knowledge. In my opinion, it’s necessary to be open for new points of view, other cultures and their nature in our small, modern and fast-changing world.
If you could choose one artist to soundtrack your life who would it be?
Man, there are so many artists who come to mind like Frank Sinatra, Buena Vista Social Club, Paolo Conte, Kölsch. If I have to choose only one, then I would choose Linkin Park, because their sound is so powerful and keeps me motivated and full of energy!