Shannon Hulbert: Mission-Driven and Helping Customers to Reduce Cost

Starting in 1996, as an IT department for a creative agency Opus Interactive is the leading provider of hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. The organization is currently led by its CEO, Shannon Hulbert. She is passionate about building the information super-highway and digital inclusion, women in tech, STEM, and sustainable IT. She has been in the cloud and data center industry for the past 11 years. Before that, she was in the energy sector- on the demand side management side working with utility energy-efficiency programs throughout the United States. As a Native American Shannon Hulbert was raised on a portion of Yurok Indian Reservation called the End of the Road. Super rural- 20 miles from the nearest store. No power, then solar power, and no phones or connectivity. In the village where she grew up, her Gram’s house just got electricity about 5 years ago, and the internet last year. Her
journey has been from the end of the road to the information superhighway-complete with a climate positive cloud footprint hosted in Northern Virginia, the most connected place on the planet.

Shannon’s background also includes project management and building processes by working for the vinyl shop that delivered all the in-store signage to Hollywood Video when they were opening 1 store every other day. Navigation and incident command skills were learned by, working under pressure as a wildland firefighter. She was an engine crew navigator before GPS was available and often worked in hazardous conditions requiring strenuous exertion in smoke, high temperatures and steep terrain And production at scale by working at McDonald’s and serving as production line lead at a door manufacturer. It’s why, as an organization, Shannon Hulbert and her team strive to be as inclusive as possible.

Helping Clients’ Cost Reduction

Opus Interactive launched its first cloud back in 2005. While cloud adoption has been a long time coming – the pandemic accelerated adoption by about 10 years, because for a moment the only way many people could see a doctor was telehealth, and food and groceries were ordered online and delivered to limit exposure and people worked from home, learned from home and watched a lot of cat videos.

Needless to say, everything is cloud-based now. And, what many IT departments are finding is that it’s not a simple transformation – there are many options, many requirements, and many components. And every enterprise is different – as is every workload used in the enterprise.

Opus always works to help customers reduce costs and optimize resources by building tailored hybrid and multi-cloud solutions that meet performance, compliance, security, and budget needs. The organization’s mission is to build trusted solutions that pave the way for sustainable IT and the next generation of technology builders. It works with customers to tailor and deliver the best mix of on-prem, colocation, private cloud, public cloud, dedicated IaaS, backup, long-term cloud object storage, network connectivity, and ecosystem.

Greatly Satisfied Clients

How the organization ensures unbreakable faith- listen to the customers and give them what they need. This means being vendor agnostic. It’s not uncommon for the company to refer customers to services outside of its own, and also why it has established partnerships, including its most recent launch of VMC on AWS. The organization’s goal is to get the customer workloads where they need, when they need, how they need. So that’s a reliable team, high-performance services, strategic partnerships, compliance and security, and super-fast networks at every level.

Tackling Bad Days

Shannon Hulbert says, “We’ve been around for more than 26 years so have a customer in pretty much every vertical. But 75% fall into technology, telecom, healthcare, and finance. It’s because the workloads for those industries have more compliance or simply can’t go down – that’s where tailored solutions are key to ensuring you get service and performance that are exactly what you need.”

When asked about the primary challenges Shannon Hulbert says, “Oh wow! In the past two years? Let me think…global pandemic, work from home, supply chain, industry growth, workforce shortages, winter storms, summer fires and I think everyone in the world knew someone who was directly impacted by loss of family or joblessness – I’m thankful every day to be surrounded by amazing customers, partners, and a team of geniuses. We all supported each other and came through it, stronger together.”

Fate whispers to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the storm.” The warrior whispers back, “I am the storm.”

A Piece of Advice

When it comes to advising young entrepreneurs Shannon Hulbert says, “as an organization, your team is your greatest strength. They are the face of the company, the ideas that drive innovation, and the perseverance to implement successfully. Inclusivity makes all the difference. The best solutions are built by a representative workforce that understands use cases, opportunities, and obstacles. We’re all part of a global community. The collaborative output that combines differences in backgrounds, perspectives, culture, and experiences make solutions, your organization, and our global community stronger.”

Future Roadmap

Shannon Hulbert believes, the only thing she and her team can depend on is constant change – and change is exciting. As an organization, Opus will continue to listen and allow the needs of its customers lead innovation in its service portfolio. It’s how Opus evolved from IT department to ISP to cloud to today. And how they’ll change to meet customer needs of the future.