Kevin Montalbo

Greetings listeners. My name is Kevin Montalbo Toro Cloud's content editor and your host for Coding over cocktails. In the very first episode of the year 2021 we want to take a retrospective look at the past year, the challenges we face as a company and the wins we had as well as what you can expect from us in the year ahead. 

At 4:30 pm. On the 16th of March, the Toro cloud office in the Philippines was given half an hour's notice by the local authorities to prepare for a 100% remote workforce has issued a proclamation formally declaring a state of public health emergency throughout the Philippines. The area was going to a COVID-19 related lockdown and employees would not be able to return to the workplace. The next day, about a third of our team have company issued laptops, getting those employees set up to work remotely was relatively painless. For the rest, we had to pack up computers, monitors and keyboards, create an inventory of everything and then arrange for employees to take them home. 

Incredibly, the next day, we had a 100% remote workforce being a company that promotes digital transformation. We may have had some advantages when it came to working remotely, our systems processes and workplace management are integrated and most entirely online. Also shout out to our awesome SysAd team and making sure that everything ran smoothly apart from this transfer to cloud CEO and founder David Brown also did some transferring of his own around early September, David came from Hong Kong and arrived back to his home in Australia.

David Brown

I moved to Hong Kong 6.5 years ago and I just in the last few weeks, moved back. it was driven by a number of factors. Hong Kong is a great place to be. It's an exciting city. It's 24 hours and stuff. But over the last couple of years, as everyone knows, it's undergone a lot of changes, a lot of turmoil and we were there during the protest movement and got caught in tear gas on some occasions and it had some pretty horrific experiences. But as I say, overall, the experience was fantastic, really enjoyed my time there. And of course, more recently, the security legislation which has been passed in Hong Kong as well has forced a lot of companies to reconsider having their base based in Hong Kong. And so it was also something we were missing in Australia. Our kids were going to boarding school here in Australia. We're from Sydney ourselves, born and bred here. So we were looking forward to coming home and proud to bring an Australian technology company to promote to Cloud as an Australian, not just an Australian founder, but now a wholly owned Australian company as well.

Kevin Montalbo

That's David during an interview with ticker TV. Now that quarantine restrictions have eased up a bit, the majority of the staff are now back in the office and it has been business as usual safety measures have been implemented and everyone is doing their part in making sure that we comply with local regulations. Despite the transfer in the pandemic, the company was able to hit the ground running by rolling out important updates to its low code API centric IPAAS Martini which now features support for custom logic written in the language of your choice. The company also released Bellini a low code application development platform designed for professional developers to rapidly build scalable and more manageable front end applications. Bellini like Martini is also an API centric application with Bellini. You can drag and drop UI components onto a canvas and then bind those components to a restful API. You could use Bellini to create the dashboard containing a mash up of data from your CRM marketing automation and billing systems or you could build your own line of business applications connected to custom APIs that you create with Martini. Both Martini and Bellini are part of the Toro cloud platform and while they are great individually, they are awesome when used together. Toro also launched its new podcast, Coding over cocktails, the podcast you're listening to right now. 

“Greetings listeners. My name is Kevin Montalbo, the host for coding over cocktails and content editor…”

Coding over cocktails aims to tackle issues faced by enterprises as they manage the process of digital transformation, application integration, low code, application development, data management, and business process automation. Over the past few months, we've had industry heavyweights as guests such as Neil Ford, who talked about how he came up with the term polyglot programming. 

Neil Ford

I've always been fascinated by computer languages and because computer languages, it's an engineering medium, but it's also a creative medium.

Kevin Montalbo

We've also had Mike Amundsen who discussed the advantages of having an API first design. 

Mike Amundsen

I want to get right into the code or whatever, but starting out with a good story, collecting the feedback. What is it you're trying to do? What are the actions you're  taking?

Kevin Montalbo

Then there's David Linthicum who coined the term enterprise application integration on the podcast. He described how cloud computing has evolved throughout the years,

David Linthicum

The cloud across the chasm where they have better technology than we do on premise, whether it's security governance management.

Kevin Montalbo

Just recently, James Shore was on the show and told us what organizations need to focus on in 2021 in terms of becoming more agile.

James Shore

A decision to become agile is a decision is, is not a decision to take lightly. It's a decision that requires people to change their behaviors and their habits.

Kevin Montalbo

The podcast help place Toro cloud on the map and the minds of industry thought leaders as well as our customers as the company consistently racked up some awards and recognitions during the year. This includes being part of the top 10 digital Transformation solution companies of 2020 by APAC CIO Outlook, a print magazine that aims to provide a platform for CIOs, CTOs and other senior level it buyers and decision makers along with CXOs of solution providers to share their experiences with them and advice with the enterprise IT community of Asia Pacific countries. Then there were the happiest users and quality choice badges. Thanks to Martini's high user satisfaction ratings on cross desk, a business software research platform. Martini racked up over 250 reviews on the independent community reviews website G2 and received a number of recognition badges as a result. The most recent ranking Martini as a leader in the category of IPAAS. Other awards included best relationship, high performer badges in Europe and Asia Pacific and the mid market segments and the leadership badge for substantial satisfaction and market presence course across the year. And apparently users love the product too with the users love us badge in fall and winter. So what can we look forward to in 2021? David Brown joins us now

David Brown

2020 was a milestone for Toro cloud. It was the year in which we completed the vision of developing a product portfolio to enable the digital transformation of an enterprise. See, digital transformation is a cultural challenge, but you still need the right tools to execute change. A digital transformation project typically revolves around getting applications and systems, communicating as a cohesive whole. It also involves automating workflows so that people do fewer repetitive laborious tasks and focus on those tasks that contribute more value. We enable remote workforces to access systems and data securely and create digital experiences for customers, business partners and other stakeholders including employees. We can also create new digital products from an organisation's data processes or workflows.

Our products are designed for an enterprise to take control of their digital transformation efforts but almost every enterprise has an it department that is already stretched to capacity. So we made a product suite that will make their life easier, make them more productive and result in applications APIs and integrations and workloads that are easier to manage as the requirements of the business change. 2021 will be all about enhancing the user experience. We already have a world-class development environment for creating applications APIs integrations and workflows. But we will focus on the features that our customers use the most often and make them even easier to use. We will tighten the integration between the products on the platform. So whilst that you can still continue to use them independently. They will be even more powerful when you use together. As always our focus on making digital transformation accessible to the enterprise. Our goal is to enable enterprise to focus more on their core business rather than the technology that facilitates their business.

Kevin Montalbo

And that is it for this round of cocktails. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season over the next year. You can look forward to more of our content here at Toro Cloud. In fact, you can check out our 2020 retrospective video on our youtube channel too. Let us know what topics you'd like us to cover and the guests that you'd want to hear in the podcast as well as usual, please visit our website at www.torocloud.com to check out our blogs and our products. We're also on social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram, talk to us there because we listen, just look for Toro Cloud. Thank you very much for listening to us today on behalf of the entire team at Toro Cloud. This has been Kevin Montalbo at your service for coding over cocktails. Cheers.