109 Come as you are. Stealing a line from Kurt Cobain, that’s what I tell my employees at Scality. No matter your life circumstances, your current situation, your gender, your race, etc. – just come as you are. At Scality, we have people from all walks of life from around the world, and this is one of my greatest pleasures to watch as the company grows. I remember the start of 2021. We were so proud to have put together a completely virtual all-company all-timezone kick-off. I could see all the familiar faces on a big screen I had set up at home for the occasion. And I laughed when I saw that one of the small vignettes was showing a full-on party with five of our team members who got together to enjoy the kick-off. Camaraderie is a strong value at Scality. From vaccine hope to the omicron variant, 2021 has been a rollercoaster. Financially, we were just off a banner year, and we succeeded with another banner year. But it has had a toll on many Scality team members. Maintaining the dedication and our commitment to each customer while having children or a sick family member at home was harsh. Scality has done its part to help, sharing the cost of home office improvement, paying for games and creativity during lockdown, making psychological support available for every employee. But at the end of the day, it is down to each person. This year, more than any, I am especially proud of our Scality teams for their achievements. We created Scality 11 years ago with the belief that the world would be changing as technical progress accelerates, and that software-defined distributed architecture would be at the heart of this change, both contributing to the change, and being more necessary as the change is happening. That belief is now a reality, and the change is faster than ever. It’s been, by all accounts, a very busy year. We launched ARTESCA this spring to redefine object storage for the new cloud-native era – a fully containerized and scalable solution designed to fit into the deployment and consumption patterns of new and emerging applications. We continued to evolve our flagship RING offering. We expanded our work with strategic partners like HPE. As ransomware attacks proliferated, we made numerous strides to further protect our customers’ data from cybersecurity threats. We earned a new patent for our snapshot technology, which empowers customers to recover from any disaster or ransomware attack with increased precision. We strengthened our partnerships with companies like Veeam to bolster the security posture of our joint customers. We’ve been humbled to have our efforts recognized by the likes of the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and the Trophées des Futures Licornes, among other accolades. But the biggest of all of those achievements is the constantly renewed trust from our customers. We now have several customers that have spent over ten million dollars with Scality through the years, and each of them tells me that they’ve saved many more millions and a lot of headache by switching to Scality. We love our customers and they love us back. I am grateful for the long list of customers who have been willing to become a reference on our website, and more will be coming in January. I believe in going forward, for the world and for the community. Technology is a force of progress if it is at the service of humanity. As a successful tech company, we should never lose touch with those who need help. This is why Scality has been particularly active this year in giving back to the community: a Scality team ran the La Course du Coeur to raise awareness for organ donation, we sponsored the Gala du Coeur to pay for cardiac surgery for children who would not have access to such care, we participated in Save the Bay in San Francisco, we planted trees with Reforest Action, we fostered passionate and courteous debates with Les Entretiens de Royaumont – and because one should always look home first, we started measuring our carbon footprint so that we can diminish it. As we move into 2022, we want to wish all of our employees, customers and our greater community a happy and safe season. We look forward to continuing this journey and to what the new year holds in store.
