Bahamas in a good position to become Caribbean region’s ‘Silicon Valley’

Cloud Carib partners with Palo Alto to strengthen partnership and increased need for reliable experts in Cyber Security

The Bahamas is still in a good position to become the Silicon Valley of the region, Cloud Carib’s Vice President of Solutions Mark Arruda told Guardian Business Thursday, adding that his company is preparing to open an innovation centre that can house about 80 people.

Arruda said Cloud Carib envisions training Bahamian businesses in areas like security and how to protect their networks and systems.

“We really want to spread that knowledge through the region and we want this to be the hub where we do it from,” said Arruda. “So we envision people coming here from Barbados or Jamaica, or wherever, and having the same quality experience as a Miami-based location in this facility. So we really want to make this a destination for technology training.”

He said Cloud Carib’s continued presence in The Bahamas and the company’s expansion is a testament to this country’s potential in the information technology space.

“We are growing and investing in Nassau and in the region,” according to Arruda. He said another indicator The Bahamas is in a good position to become an IT mecca is the fact that Cloud Carib has been able to find so many IT professionals to hire within The Bahamas. “We found a huge amount of talent here, we don’t have to import a ton of people,” Arruda said. “The vast majority are Bahamian. We are trying to get as many Bahamians as possible in leadership roles because it’s important. They know the market, they know the people, they know how the market thinks.”

Arruda said Cloud Carib has been so successful because the local market knows where their data is at all times. Cloud Carib has even provided the Bahamian government with state-of-the-art cloud services, and with its partnership with U.S. based-Palo Alto Networks, Cloud Carib is able to provide some of the most reliable, secure services to its customers. Palo Alto demonstrated some of its newest technology to protect business servers Thursday evening.