Our latest ISV Spotlight features a pioneer in fintech Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Dizzion Inc. CEO and co-founder Rob Green sat down with us to share more about their journey to become FS Validated. Green is an accomplished technology executive with extensive experience in leading software and Technology Services organizations. Prior to joining Dizzion, he held several executive leadership positions at various technology companies, including Vice President of Cloud Services at MDSV, Director of Product at Viawest and Director of Technology Services at Rackspace.
In this interview, Rob and I discussed Dizzion's regulated industries experience, how FS Validation benefits their clients, and his advice for ISVs considering becoming validated.
Rob Green, CEO and Co-Founder, Dizzion Inc.
The “easy button” for securing the perimeter
Initially, Dizzion (pron. DIZ’-yon) managed customer Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) alongside the launch of its private cloud platform. They used their platform to deliver the industry’s first managed DaaS offering. The advent of cloud computing provided their customers with operational and financial efficiency, scalability, and agility. And, with VMware as a common hypervisor, they were able to migrate customer desktops to the cloud with ease.
Today, Dizzion’s key use case is securing the perimeter by third-party remote access to the desktop. Doing this “takes the desktop out of scope and secures it. It’s like an ‘easy button’ for regulated industries.” Rob said.
75% increase in time to revenue
Initially, Dizzion’s time to revenue was about 8 weeks. In 2019, they signed an Enterprise Service Agreement with IBM which allowed the company to scale while not having to carry overhead. More importantly, their time to revenue decreased to 2 weeks, a 75% improvement. As IBM began to double down on the financial services industry, they reached back out to Dizzion and “challenged” them to become FS Validated. “We felt we had a competitive advantage since we had already created solutions for other regulated industries for several years, and we’d been through other rigorous validation processes such as HIPAA, PCI, FEDRAMP, and SOC.”
“The juice is worth the squeeze.”
When asked how they found the IBM FS Validation process, Green laughed and said emphatically, “It was arduous! And this is from a company who had been through the FEDRAMP validation process. That said, the juice is worth the squeeze.” The process took them 7 months to complete, and they found it even harder than FEDRAMP. Despite the rigor, he said, “The juice was worth the squeeze for us. Having that seal of approval makes customer onboarding faster and speeds up time to revenue. It eliminates a lot of rudimentary security questions at the beginning of the evaluation process.” Having been FS Validated for about 60 days now, the company is focused on driving their message to the market through their sellers and partners.
Rob’s advice to ISVs interested in the FS Validated Program
When asked what advice he would give to an ISV who is considering becoming FS Validated, Rob was refreshingly candid and encouraging. “Don’t underestimate the time and effort it will take to get it done. Align good resources to walk through the project - such as project managers, technical resources, security resources. It will make the validation process stronger.”
To connect with or learn more about Dizzion, please visit https://www.dizzion.com/
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