President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, SYNCHRONOSS TECHNOLOGIES
Synchronoss Technologies CEO discusses cloud security, AI, and strategic growth focus
Synchronoss Technologies CEO Jeff Miller joined Steve Darling from Proactive to discuss the company's growth strategy, the ...
About Jeffrey Miller
In a September 2024 interview, Synchronoss Technologies CEO Jeff Miller discussed the company's focus on its white-label personal cloud business, which provides services such as Verizon Cloud and AT&T Personal Cloud. Miller stated that the company has prioritized its cloud business over the past three years, making investments in generative AI and divesting other operations. He described the company's role as protecting digital content like photos and videos, and noted that service providers such as Verizon have introduced unlimited digital storage options that have become popular. Miller acknowledged that Synchronoss faces competition from services like iCloud and Google Photos, and said the company is applying machine learning and AI to enhance photo experiences, including restoring old digitized photos. He also discussed combining content protection with device protection, framing it as a single value proposition for consumers. Miller expressed satisfaction with the direction of the business, citing improved profitability and cash flow for shareholders as a result of the cloud-focused strategy.
Transcript (16 segments)
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Steve0:00
A consumer can look at it as one protection value proposition to protect both the new phone you just invested maybe $1,000 in, as well as the digital content that will far outlive that phone that you'll only have for probably 2 to 3 years.
All right, welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. And joining me now is Jeff Miller, he is the CEO of Synchronoss Technologies Inc. And Jeff, it's good to see you. How are you?
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Jeffrey Miller0:27
I'm doing well. Thank you, Steve. Thank you very much for allowing me to join the program today.
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Steve0:31
Yeah, I'm excited to learn a little bit more of what's going on within the company and all the work that you're doing. What do you tell everyone a little bit about your company?
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Jeffrey Miller0:38
Yeah. So Synchronoss Technologies is a software platform provider that is in the cloud space. But cloud means a lot of things to a lot of people. In our case, we are a personal cloud provider, and we do so on what we refer to as a white label basis. So as a subscriber in the United States, you might know us as Verizon Cloud today or AT&T Personal Cloud because we are the cloud behind their offering to their subscribers. So we protect digital content such as your photos, your videos, your music, your files, and we do so in a secure manner. And it complements the other voice and data services that you receive from those service providers.
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Steve1:19
Jeff, is that the biggest thing that you're hearing from your clients is about security and protection, because as you mentioned, we're talking about some things that people would never want to lose, like pictures and things like that. I would imagine that's probably a pretty top of mind thing for many people and comes to the cloud?
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Jeffrey Miller1:34
It absolutely is. And it's in fact why we think it's appropriate for the service providers who you've had relationships with, in many cases for more than a decade, to be the trusted partner that you would look to to protect your digital content, which over time, as that library grows and grows, of more photos and videos that you never want to lose become much more valuable than the device that you might have purchased in your last smartphone upgrade.
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Steve2:01
Yeah, there's a lot of people who have a lot of things within their computer, a lot of pictures. My wife, for instance, is a great example. We had to buy extra, to get to the cloud because she wants to store just about everything the way we used to have old shoe boxes and things like that. How do you deal with the amount of data and the amount of things that people want to put within the cloud? I would imagine that doesn't keep you up at night, but certainly you're thinking about it.
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Jeffrey Miller2:26
Well, we have to be prepared for large capacity storage, because those digital libraries for individuals are growing and growing. And we also see that reflected in the types of offerings that are provided by our clients to service providers, to their customers. So clients like Verizon are offering unlimited digital storage options for consumers so that they have the ability to say, I'm not going to worry about how much I have, and I know I have an unlimited amount of capacity. And those have become quite popular. And it is just to the point you made a combination of capturing mobile content and content that you might have captured on your computer, and by virtue of the way that our offering works, it is agnostic to an iOS environment, an Android environment, or a Windows environment. You can utilize any end device and capture family of content that could be shared across that family. And it allows you to have the choice as to which devices you use.
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Steve3:26
Yeah, I was talking to an artist recently and they talked about the explosion of cloud as far as the markets are concerned and just how important that is and really what it's driving a lot of the success that we have seen in the market. Your recent financial numbers showed that as well. You had year over year growth. Are you happy with where you were at financially with the company? It sounds like you've made some really positive changes in order to push things forward.
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Jeffrey Miller3:49
Yes. We really have been quite pleased at the direction that business is going, and it's as a result of a strategy that we followed candidly for the last three years, and that was to prioritize our cloud business, make more investments in that arena with new inventions such as applying generative AI, and narrowing our focus from other businesses that we have divested. That focus on our cloud business now is really helping to feed our growth, improved profitability, and for our shareholders, getting them the kind of cash flow that they're looking for. Absolutely.
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Steve4:23
So now, as you look ahead to the rest of this year and beyond, what are the key things that you want to keep an eye on?
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Jeffrey Miller4:30
Well, for us there is a very broad competitive arena. We need to make sure that we stay up with the iClouds and the Google Photos in terms of the types of capabilities that consumers are expecting to be able to have with their photo experience. So more applications of machine learning, more applications of AI to allow you to even restore those old photos that you might want to now digitize, put in your library, and have protected forever. We're providing more tools in that arena to help enable that to happen. And we're also complementing our content protection, in some cases with device protection, such that a consumer can look at it as one protection value proposition to protect both the new phone you just invested maybe $1,000 in, as well as the digital content that will far outlive that phone that you'll only have for probably 2 to 3 years.
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Steve5:26
Absolutely. Jeff, thank you so much. Great to catch up with you and see what's going on. It sounds like things are going well, and we look forward to following your story.
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Jeffrey Miller5:33
Okay. Terrific. Thank you very much for your time, Steve. Have a great rest of your day.
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Steve5:37
Yeah, you as well. There's Jeff Miller, the CEO of Synchronoss Technologies Inc.