For those unfamiliar – who is Steve Roles, and what is your role at ShapeBlue?

I am the Chief Operations Officer (COO). As COO there isn’t an area of the business that I’m not involved with – sales, finance, the service desk and project management to name but a few. I guess most of my time is spent working directly with customers and supporting my colleagues.

 

How do you ensure that ShapeBlue’s services consistently meet or exceed customer expectations?

Firstly, by being hands-on with any part of the business that is directly customer-facing, including support, account management and project delivery. I make sure I’m always engaged with those teams and that customers know they have an escalation point if needed. I also try to ensure we are constantly providing the best service we can, by being accountable, and being honest. I suppose the biggest factor of all is that we have great people doing great work. They are very knowledgeable, motivated highly skilled, and professional, which makes a huge difference in the service we deliver.

 

What is your approach to identifying and addressing operational risks that could impact service quality or delivery?

I’d say it’s about constant review of our service, our products, and our customer feedback – keeping ears and eyes open. That means analysing every interaction, watching what customers are doing, what other service providers are doing, and staying engaged in the Apache CloudStack community. This really helps us get a good sense of what customers’ needs might be, sometimes even before they know themselves.

 

How do you foster effective communication and collaboration between departments at ShapeBlue?

Openness, honesty and transparency at all levels and the ‘classic’ open-door policy – being available to support the team whenever and however needed. This fosters excellent, team-wide communication, which is central and absolutely key at ShapeBlue. For everything we do, we need clear, concise instructions and direction. That means listening, clear briefings, well-defined scoping, and making sure everyone understands what we’re trying to achieve. Once that’s established, it’s important to ensure those instructions and briefings have been properly understood and carried forward.

 

In your view, how important are soft skills for ensuring smooth client interactions and internal team alignment?

They are essential! I think soft skills can be more important than hard skills as they shape the quality of relationships and interactions. Without soft skills, you might as well be an AI chatbot. I don’t believe I could effectively manage people, projects, or customers without them, and I don’t believe our team could deliver effective support and service without them. Empathy and sympathy are fundamental to what we do – they help foster understanding with colleagues, customers, and even with the software we’re working with.

 

How does the open-source model influence the way ShapeBlue delivers services to its customers?

ShapeBlue is an open-source company. We see our values and core principles as being 100% aligned with those of the open-source community. Values such as openness, honesty, responsibility, and ownership are part of who we are, and embedded in the way we operate and reflect my own personal approach to life. These qualities directly influence how we interact with everyone – customers, colleagues, and partners.

 

What is the future of Apache CloudStack according to you?

Better and brighter! Continued community growth, product evolution, development of exciting new features, support for new operating systems, and support for new hypervisors. Reacting to changes in the market – look at the new XaaS Extensions Framework (Orchestrate Anything) feature – CloudStack now has the framework to orchestrate any external orchestration and provisioning system (eg. Proxmox, Hyper-V, Nutanix). Also, native support for managing GPUs, enabling GPU-accelerated workloads – such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
CloudStack will continue to established itself as an enterprise-grade and leading cloud management platform.

 

What are the key factors that build lasting trust with enterprise clients?

Enterprises want a stable product, a reliable release cycle, and a clear roadmap for the technology. For an open-source solution, they want to see that the community behind the technology is vibrant and engaged, with many contributors working on the project. At the same time, they expect to see new features being developed and delivered. They want CloudStack to remain 100% open-source (freeing them from vendor lock-in) and not dominated by a single large vendor that could take it in another direction. That’s exactly why ShapeBlue works with CloudStack, and I don’t see that changing. As long as those core principles remain intact, I believe enterprise trust will remain strong and continue to grow.

 

How do you balance operational efficiency with the flexibility often needed to deliver highly tailored customer solutions?

At the heart of the services we provide are the people – my colleagues. First and foremost, we continue to seek out and attract great talent, often from within the open-source community, where people already want to work on projects like this. As we grow as a company, maintaining flexibility could become more challenging – larger companies often struggle because management becomes more detached from the front line. However, at ShapeBlue that doesn’t happen. By ‘living’ on the front line we can ensure operational efficiency and flexibility, and can react quickly to challenges.

As we expand, our commitment to excellence and our open-source values will ensure we hire the right people for the right roles. I don’t believe we will ever lose the strong connection we currently have with both our people and our customers, but it’s something we will need to actively safeguard as we grow.

 

What do you enjoy doing outside of work that helps you maintain balance and bring fresh perspectives to your role?

Away from work, I am a musician – a guitarist and singer. I’ve always been passionate about music, both listening and performing.

My wife and I really enjoy entertaining at home – we love cooking and hosting friends. Family is very important to us as well – we have two small children, and we spend a lot of time with family and friends.
Every year we go skiing and snowboarding, which is a wonderful break from everything, and the children are now just starting to learn as well.

And, although it may sound simple, one thing I really value during the working week is going to bed early!