UST is a global leader in digital transformation solutions, founded in 1999, which entered Spain in 2014 with the aim of becoming a strategic partner for companies undergoing technological evolution. Today, with over 35,000 employees in 35 countries and a strong track record in developing disruptive technological solutions, UST has established itself as a benchmark in the digital transformation of multiple sectors.
Certified as a Top Employer in Spain for the seventh consecutive year, UST Spain is not only a preferred partner in the digitization processes of the national business fabric but also aspires to position itself as a high-quality international nearshore center that drives the growth of Spanish companies in Ibero-America. This commitment to excellence has recently been reinforced by the granting of the Large Enterprise 2025 distinction, a recognition held by only five companies in the entire country and which, in the IT sector, belongs solely to UST.
With an agile and creative approach, UST supports its clients from start to finish, turning ideas into tangible solutions and generating real impact on their businesses. Guided by a culture of proactive leadership focused on people, and under the values of humility, humanity, and integrity, the company understands that having the right technology is just the first step: what truly transforms is having the talent capable of realizing that technology to its fullest potential.
In this interview, Francisco Cosín, Head of Cloud & DevOps for Spain and LATAM at UST, shares with Revista Cloud his insights on the maturity of the cloud market, the keys to adoption in multi-cloud environments, the challenges faced by SMEs, and the essential role of security and sustainability in the journey to the cloud.
Cloud Computing Adoption
- What percentage of your clients have migrated to the cloud, and how has this percentage evolved in recent years?
There isn’t an exact figure that illustrates this migration; more cloud service deployments are occurring than actual migrations. It’s not so much that companies want to migrate to the cloud, but rather that when a business launches, for example, a new product or service or a new version of it, they launch it in the cloud. What is happening is that companies are adopting a hybrid solution as the best cloud approach, maintaining data, services, or products in the cloud and on-premise in parallel. However, it is true that companies in more traditional sectors like Banking and Telecom still have about 70% of their data on-premise.
- What are the main benefits your clients have observed by adopting cloud solutions?
The main benefit is the ability to align spending with the project’s benefits, achieving optimized profitability. Ultimately, it’s an evolution from a previous model where a contract for infrastructure could mean a 3-year commitment for a company, whereas now, under the cloud model, companies make a pay-per-use payment with no future commitments.
- Do you think the adoption of cloud computing in Spain is on par with other countries in Europe?
No.
The deployment of local regions and access to the network in other countries like Ireland or the UK has been done before in our country, although this is a trend that has been reversing in recent years. The number of Data Centers has significantly increased, driven by the arrival of the three major hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) that already have their cloud regions operational in our country, positioning us as the main interconnection hub in Southern Europe. According to Spain DC data, our country has 160 MW installed, with a forecast of exceeding 600 MW by 2026.
Multi-Cloud Environment
- In your opinion, why are more companies opting for a multi-cloud environment instead of relying on a single provider?
This largely depends on business agreements and diversification policies with providers. We recommend opting for a multi-cloud environment to minimize risks and avoid vendor lock-in. The biggest concern for any business is maintaining operations without interruptions, so the best way to ensure that is in a multi-cloud environment where, if one provider has an issue, the business can continue its operations because we have backup, and we can deploy on another cloud provider.
What are the main benefits of a multi-cloud strategy? In addition to backup, as I mentioned earlier, you also have the specific capabilities of each provider.
And the main challenges? The main challenge is knowledge management, having professionals with technical expertise in various clouds as we do at UST. Another challenge, which we originally found but has minimized now due to openness, is the cost of traffic between clouds.
- How do you help companies manage the complexity that arises from implementing a multi-cloud environment?
We design a multi-cloud framework with the necessary tools so that we offer automation that facilitates precise governance and avoids risks.
At UST, we do not provide a global solution nor merely design; we implement and accompany clients as a technology partner in all stages of their business development. That is why our clients trust us, and we maintain an average of ten years of relationships with many of them across various sectors, including finance, industry, retail, healthcare, public sector, and technology, among others.
Our engine, the reason we have this capacity to manage complexity, is the team we form at UST. We are over 35,000 employees in 35 countries, with over 300 IT professionals in Spain and 3,000 globally making up the technology team.
Barriers to Cloud Adoption in SMEs
- What are the main barriers preventing SMEs from adopting cloud solutions on a large scale?
Primarily, the lack of IT professionals capable of managing cloud environments. Typically, an SME does not have a specialized and multidisciplinary IT team, and they turn to a trusted technology partner and integrator like UST.
- What are the most common concerns of SMEs regarding security and cost when migrating to the cloud?
It’s more of a financial understanding issue when managing non-depreciable assets. More than a security issue, the challenge is cultural; often, an SME sees technology as an expense rather than a strategic investment for business growth.
- What solutions does your company offer to help SMEs overcome these obstacles?
We provide strategic consulting and top-tier professional services so that the adoption and management of the cloud is transparent to the business. Our team of professionals is multidisciplinary. We do not deploy a global solution; instead, we analyze each client and their specific needs.
Migration and Complexity
- What aspects of cloud migration are typically most complex for companies?
Typically, the analysis and planning fail.
- How do you help reduce this complexity?
We have a well-developed practice of advisory processes and project execution for cloud service adoption that avoids common mistakes and maximizes benefits in tight timelines.
- What measures do you consider necessary to build more confidence in SMEs for migrating to the cloud?
Establishing a trust relationship with the client based on expert knowledge and absolute transparency. We don’t give our clients a global solution; instead, we analyze each case, each workload, and design a roadmap advising the client with constant communication.
- Have you noticed a difference in cloud adoption between industrial sectors (for example, financial services vs. retail)?
Financial services still have a significant on-premise anchor, but there’s a willingness to break away from the historical infrastructures that hinder their agility. We are seeing, for example, the emergence of new banks that are starting as cloud natives, created 100% in the cloud. Traditional banks are betting on a two-speed development, either launching a second brand in the cloud or developing new products in the cloud. A similar landscape exists in the Telecom sector.
Cloud Security
- In terms of security, what challenges do companies face when migrating to the cloud?
The regulatory complexity and the need for compliance regulations is a challenge for companies adopting cloud environments. Companies cannot be lax when transferring corporate policies and the legal framework that affects them to the cloud. They must ensure regulatory compliance concerning data protection, GDPR, or the recent DORA regulation, to name two examples of well-known regulations due to their media impact. Moreover, there are highly regulated sectors like finance or healthcare that have additional measures required for data protection that need to be understood and implemented.
From our cybersecurity perspective, operating monitoring and response capabilities in cloud environments poses significantly different challenges than those typically presented in traditional infrastructures. The dynamic nature of the cloud, where critical assets are created, scaled, and disappear in a matter of minutes, requires a complete rethinking of the incident detection and response strategy.
Legacy models, primarily based on monitoring static networks and persistent assets, prove insufficient in environments where the attack surface is constantly redefined. In cloud settings, risk no longer solely resides in traditional vectors but in the complexity of managing identities, permissions, and configurations which, if not continuously monitored with the right context, may lead to unauthorized access or unintended exposures.
This shift forces SOCs to natively integrate cloud telemetry sources and prioritize detecting deviations in expected behavior within environments and services. Resilience, in this scenario, stops being just a reactive capacity to incidents and becomes the ability to proactively adapt to an environment that changes at the same speed as the business that supports it.
The differentiating value is in ensuring monitoring that not only reacts to security events but allows for maintaining a clear and updated view of factors that could increase operational risk. In the cloud, this perspective is critical to sustaining response capability and preserving the integrity of environments against increasingly aimed cyber threats seeking to exploit the volatility and complexity of these scenarios.
What are the most effective security measures you recommend implementing when working in the cloud? Data governance, 24×7 monitoring, and the principle of least privilege. That is, considering security in each project from minute one.
- How do you address security in multi-cloud environments, especially considering the increasing cyberattacks on cloud platforms?
Attacks are usually aimed at the most vulnerable environments, regardless of where the data is located. When a perpetrator wants to launch an attack, they don’t target the provider but rather the client. The key, which is our approach, is knowing how to secure each cloud platform. Security depends on the expertise of those managing the client-level infrastructures, not on whether you are in one cloud or another.
The Role of Partners
- What role do partners play in the success of a cloud migration?
Partners are key to the success of cloud adoption, from orientation to implementation and subsequent ongoing support. The knowledge and experience of the partner in the cloud can accelerate and maximize a company’s digital transformation. At UST, as a technology partner and integrator, we face diverse challenges that allow us to enhance our capabilities for the benefit of our clients. The value of the partner lies in having a team of professionals with up-to-date technical training and continuous learning, enabling them to take on projects of all kinds and across various sectors, supporting clients in growing their business.
- How do you ensure that migration projects are well-supported from planning through execution and maintenance?
Our technological practices ensure that frameworks and value propositions are in constant evolution. We leverage our experience to serve the success of our clients.
- What additional services do you offer to help companies manage their cloud infrastructure after migration?
The establishment of a Cloud Center of Excellence allows for continuous improvement, as one of the greatest advantages of the cloud is leveraging the enhancements and new services the provider offers, as well as optimizing costs through rationalization.
Sustainability and the Future of Cloud
- Do you believe sustainability is becoming a key factor when choosing cloud solutions?
More and more clients are asking us to accompany them as a technology partner in improving their sustainability and business accessibility. Sustainability goals are marked by continuously reviewed regulations. In the European Union, strategies are being reassessed to avoid impacting competitiveness compared to other geographies.
- How are you helping companies reduce their carbon footprint and energy consumption through cloud solutions?
At UST, we help our clients optimize the systems and applications hosted in the cloud to incur minimal costs and thereby reduce the associated energy consumption.
- How do you see the future of cloud computing, and what new trends do you anticipate will shape the evolution of multi-cloud environments in the coming years? We are seeing increasing collaboration between clouds, breaking down barriers such as restrictions from some enterprise software providers regarding running workloads in the cloud. On the other hand, there’s a trend towards bringing processing capabilities closer to the data source through Edge computing.
The conversation with Francisco Cosín makes it clear that digital transformation goes far beyond technology: it’s about strategy, talent, and trust. In a context where cloud computing is already an essential enabler for innovation and competitiveness, UST positions itself as a committed technology partner, capable of accompanying companies at every stage of their digital evolution, from migration to continuous optimization. Their close, personalized, and human-centered approach, combined with solid global experience, makes UST a key ally in confidently tackling the challenges of an increasingly interconnected, agile, and sustainable future.