19 The city of 1001 Nights, the Red City, the “Ochre City,” or “the Daughter of the Desert.” No matter what you call it, the beautiful city of Marrakech hosted Scality’s international team to celebrate its successes from 2019 and lay the groundwork for 2020. The general atmosphere of our “Kickoff” was amazing—escaping winter weather for a week to meet colleagues from all over the world was a wonderful experience. We gathered to celebrate individual and group successes. 2019 was a fantastic year for Scality. The install base expanded with more than 50 new enterprise customers from around the world across a broad range of industries and use-cases. Not only new customers, but, as our CEO Jerome Lecat emphasized during the keynote, “eight of our ten first customer deployments are still in production and continue to invest in the Scality platform.” That’s a testament to the trusting relationship cemented by Scality products. With a four day agenda full of presentations and work sessions, the kickoff also allowed for plenty of social time. We strive to promote camaraderie within a team that spreads across the globe and in-person meetings like this one are extremely valuable. Slack chats and video calls are more effective after people have had dinner together in person. Here are a few comments from Scality team: Jerome’s ethical values are stronger than I thought. It feels good to be reminded that we work with people that care and share common concerns. Naren comes from South India where they don’t traditionally have surnames so he uses his father’s name as his surname. I had no idea that was the case! For me it is always about the people. Of course: playing tennis was great, food was good, it was sunny, we got nice new jackets, but what really made the experience amazing was the time in the company of great people that work at Scality. We always have a great time and create memories… impressing the customers as we impress each other with comradery, everyone at Scality is interesting, has a story, is open-minded and has a big smile so it is always captivating.” I had in-depth, quite personal conversations with some of our colleagues, which was touching and bonding, and even more so considering I never expected that closeness. I didn’t have the chance to say it personally to Jerome, but a serious THANK YOU for inviting our +1 to the event. My wife loved it, and felt really nice with all of us. It’s seriously non-negligeable. During the keynote, Lecat announced two new policies: one-month leave for the second parent and a carbon offset program for travels. We have always been conscious of Scality’s impact on the environment, investing massively in room-to-room conferencing between the offices in Paris, San Francisco, Washington DC and Tokyo to decrease travel. Scality has always been committed to Tech4good and social change. These are added to the financial incentive to encourage employees to exercise regularly and a donation matching program to allow employees to have an even bigger impact in their communities by helping them to support charities that matter to them. As of 2020, Scality is proud to join 105 other entrepreneurial companies, together representing 20,000 employees, to guarantee one month of paid leave for the second parent, regardless of their country of residence, their gender or status. In most countries, this is much more than the law requires. We look forward to 2020; we have a lot of open positions and this is a great time to join a successful company that cares about its customers and employees.
