1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,420 unusual icebreakers continue. 2 00:00:03,420 --> 00:00:08,220 And Ariel has been very generous and 3 00:00:08,220 --> 00:00:12,620 been listening to my crazy icebreaker ideas. 4 00:00:12,620 --> 00:00:19,140 So it popped into my head the other day of it doesn't have to be a full crowd. 5 00:00:19,140 --> 00:00:24,300 But if you had to do karaoke, what is your go-to karaoke song? 6 00:00:24,300 --> 00:00:26,300 And I can go first. 7 00:00:26,300 --> 00:00:36,700 I'm a fan of rock and so I would probably do No One Knows by Queens of the Stone Age. 8 00:00:36,700 --> 00:00:41,080 It's a pretty simple lyrics, nothing too crazy, 9 00:00:41,080 --> 00:00:45,020 pretty memorable lyrics that I could probably pull out. 10 00:00:45,020 --> 00:00:47,860 I've listened to it quite a few times. 11 00:00:47,860 --> 00:00:51,860 It's on my running playlist, which helps with that. 12 00:00:51,860 --> 00:00:54,860 I've heard it quite a few times. 13 00:00:54,860 --> 00:00:57,860 But I feel like it's a good, 14 00:00:57,860 --> 00:01:04,860 not a huge range where I have to hit like Mariah Carey levels on the top. 15 00:01:04,860 --> 00:01:08,500 So or the Berryman low bottom. 16 00:01:08,500 --> 00:01:12,180 So right in the middle, kind of my range. 17 00:01:12,180 --> 00:01:14,100 Yeah. 18 00:01:14,100 --> 00:01:16,100 Nice. 19 00:01:16,100 --> 00:01:19,940 Teenage Dirtbag by Weedus. 20 00:01:19,940 --> 00:01:27,940 Anything by the band Placebo that they've got, which tends to not be much. 21 00:01:27,940 --> 00:01:35,380 Or it's tough. 22 00:01:35,380 --> 00:01:36,380 There's so many choices. 23 00:01:36,380 --> 00:01:39,220 If they've got Rock in the Suburbs by Ben Folds, 24 00:01:39,220 --> 00:01:42,700 I think I got to throw that out there because it's got to be light. 25 00:01:42,700 --> 00:01:44,620 You can't go too heavy with this song, 26 00:01:44,620 --> 00:01:47,500 especially if you're doing karaoke in front of like with, 27 00:01:47,500 --> 00:01:53,500 maybe you're in a bar rather than just with a group in a private room. 28 00:01:53,500 --> 00:01:54,500 Yeah. 29 00:01:54,500 --> 00:02:00,500 I mean, Teenage Dirtbag is a real, real easy one to throw out there. 30 00:02:00,500 --> 00:02:03,500 Or a bunch of songs by Blink 182 as well, 31 00:02:03,500 --> 00:02:08,500 because I'll just revert to feeling like a teenager again. 32 00:02:08,500 --> 00:02:11,500 I was gonna say, I like that Matthew. 33 00:02:11,500 --> 00:02:13,500 He said, what's your karaoke song? 34 00:02:13,500 --> 00:02:15,500 And he's like, well, here's my whole set. 35 00:02:15,500 --> 00:02:17,500 I'm doing a whole show. 36 00:02:17,500 --> 00:02:20,500 Wait, does everyone, let me hide the sheet. 37 00:02:20,500 --> 00:02:23,500 Does everyone not have a set list? 38 00:02:23,500 --> 00:02:25,500 I love it. 39 00:02:25,500 --> 00:02:26,500 Oh my gosh. 40 00:02:26,500 --> 00:02:30,500 I think I've answered this before in a different like meeting. 41 00:02:30,500 --> 00:02:35,500 And my go to is just anything that does not have a lot of singing 42 00:02:35,500 --> 00:02:40,500 and just a lot of music so I can just dance awkwardly on stage. 43 00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:41,500 Okay. 44 00:02:41,500 --> 00:02:42,500 And there's just no singing. 45 00:02:42,500 --> 00:02:43,500 Just up there. 46 00:02:43,500 --> 00:02:45,500 Would you do like a lip sync battle? 47 00:02:45,500 --> 00:02:48,500 Would your song change if you were doing lip syncing instead? 48 00:02:48,500 --> 00:02:50,500 Yes, that would be fine. 49 00:02:50,500 --> 00:02:55,500 Boy, I would love if I did a lip sync battle. 50 00:02:55,500 --> 00:02:57,500 That's a totally different thing. 51 00:02:57,500 --> 00:03:02,500 But I probably choose some sort of like musical theater like, you know, 52 00:03:02,500 --> 00:03:07,500 singing in the rain or something, you know. 53 00:03:07,500 --> 00:03:09,500 Somewhere you can like dance around. 54 00:03:09,500 --> 00:03:10,500 Yes. 55 00:03:10,500 --> 00:03:12,500 Make a production of it. 56 00:03:12,500 --> 00:03:13,500 I'm with you Ariel. 57 00:03:13,500 --> 00:03:16,500 I'm like, I am tone deaf and I know it. 58 00:03:16,500 --> 00:03:18,500 You will never see me do karaoke. 59 00:03:18,500 --> 00:03:20,500 I definitely Google them aside. 60 00:03:20,500 --> 00:03:22,500 Funny as karaoke songs when you can't sing. 61 00:03:22,500 --> 00:03:23,500 Google it. 62 00:03:23,500 --> 00:03:24,500 So I now have a list. 63 00:03:24,500 --> 00:03:26,500 I still wouldn't sing any of these because they're like, 64 00:03:26,500 --> 00:03:27,500 want to be by the spice girls. 65 00:03:27,500 --> 00:03:30,500 And I was like, I say, maybe you have an alize. 66 00:03:30,500 --> 00:03:34,500 But I'm with you, Ariel, that I'm like, because you immediately think 67 00:03:34,500 --> 00:03:38,500 of right like Tom Holland lip sync battle doing umbrella. 68 00:03:38,500 --> 00:03:42,500 And I was like, if you could do it as like a whole choreographed 69 00:03:42,500 --> 00:03:46,500 performance, then it sparks some joy in me. 70 00:03:46,500 --> 00:03:48,500 But I still don't even want to lip sync. 71 00:03:48,500 --> 00:03:51,500 Let's just say that enough like theater tryouts as a child that I 72 00:03:51,500 --> 00:03:54,500 failed scarred me enough for life that I was like, I was a dance 73 00:03:54,500 --> 00:03:57,500 minor, but I still would never want to move my lips. 74 00:03:57,500 --> 00:04:01,500 So that's my answer to that. 75 00:04:01,500 --> 00:04:04,500 Whereas I'm realizing I didn't even think of musical theater 76 00:04:04,500 --> 00:04:05,500 numbers. 77 00:04:05,500 --> 00:04:07,500 And now I have a separate list. 78 00:04:07,500 --> 00:04:11,500 So I'm going with Matthew to be his agent and stage manager, 79 00:04:11,500 --> 00:04:13,500 but I will not be performing. 80 00:04:13,500 --> 00:04:16,500 My favorite one of my favorite lip sync battles. 81 00:04:16,500 --> 00:04:20,500 And I'll end with this is the rock doing Taylor Swift's 82 00:04:20,500 --> 00:04:24,500 shake it off on Jimmy Fallon. 83 00:04:24,500 --> 00:04:27,500 And it's amazing because he's lip syncing. 84 00:04:27,500 --> 00:04:31,500 And so it's Taylor Swift singing, but it's the rock. 85 00:04:31,500 --> 00:04:33,500 It's amazing. 86 00:04:33,500 --> 00:04:36,500 Yeah. 87 00:04:36,500 --> 00:04:38,500 I'm a stone doing all I do is win. 88 00:04:38,500 --> 00:04:42,500 I just decided if I had to do one, that was incredible. 89 00:04:42,500 --> 00:04:44,500 And that's just a fun song. 90 00:04:44,500 --> 00:04:45,500 So yeah. 91 00:04:45,500 --> 00:04:47,500 Awesome. 92 00:04:47,500 --> 00:04:53,500 Well, just like karaoke singers rely on their technology. 93 00:04:53,500 --> 00:04:54,500 I'm doing. 94 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:55,500 Thank you. 95 00:04:55,500 --> 00:04:58,500 So many businesses for the day today. 96 00:04:58,500 --> 00:04:59,500 Yes. 97 00:04:59,500 --> 00:05:00,500 All right. 98 00:05:00,500 --> 00:05:04,500 So today on our tech for business podcast, we're joined by 99 00:05:04,500 --> 00:05:08,500 Matthew, our GRC analyst and BC so and Andrew, our customer 100 00:05:08,500 --> 00:05:10,500 strategy advisor. 101 00:05:10,500 --> 00:05:15,500 Who last time we talked workstations this time we're 102 00:05:15,500 --> 00:05:18,500 talking servers and applications. 103 00:05:18,500 --> 00:05:21,500 I'm going to kind of throw it over to Matthew because I know 104 00:05:21,500 --> 00:05:24,500 you had a lot planned for today and I'll let you just dive 105 00:05:24,500 --> 00:05:25,500 right in. 106 00:05:25,500 --> 00:05:27,500 Thank you. 107 00:05:27,500 --> 00:05:28,500 Yeah. 108 00:05:28,500 --> 00:05:30,500 So those of you who listened to the other podcast know that we 109 00:05:30,500 --> 00:05:35,500 realized pretty early on how much of this topic we could 110 00:05:35,500 --> 00:05:38,500 cover during the timeframe we'd set aside so that you guys 111 00:05:38,500 --> 00:05:41,500 don't listen to us just talk for an hour and a half flat. 112 00:05:41,500 --> 00:05:45,500 And so we really wanted to segment servers from this 113 00:05:45,500 --> 00:05:49,500 because it's such a completely different conversation. 114 00:05:49,500 --> 00:05:52,500 Even though you can generalize some of it and you've probably 115 00:05:52,500 --> 00:05:55,500 heard it be generalized, it really shouldn't be the 116 00:05:55,500 --> 00:05:59,500 conversation should be bigger from the types of servers and 117 00:05:59,500 --> 00:06:03,500 how we'll dig into all of this to the way your applications 118 00:06:03,500 --> 00:06:06,500 can impact that, the licensing can impact that. 119 00:06:06,500 --> 00:06:10,500 There's a bigger conversation and a different conversation that 120 00:06:10,500 --> 00:06:14,500 goes into how does everything that we do keep running and when 121 00:06:14,500 --> 00:06:21,500 should we replace it, then how should we replace workstations? 122 00:06:21,500 --> 00:06:26,500 And so with that being said, while AJ and I both have these 123 00:06:26,500 --> 00:06:29,500 conversations, I think AJ had one yesterday, which is a little 124 00:06:29,500 --> 00:06:31,500 more recent than my last one. 125 00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:34,500 So AJ, what's the first thing for you that kind of comes up 126 00:06:34,500 --> 00:06:36,500 when you're having these conversations about replacing 127 00:06:36,500 --> 00:06:38,500 servers? 128 00:06:38,500 --> 00:06:45,500 You know, first thing is really what is the goal of the company? 129 00:06:45,500 --> 00:06:47,500 Everybody hears the cloud. 130 00:06:47,500 --> 00:06:52,500 Everybody knows, you know, okay, the cloud is, for lack of 131 00:06:52,500 --> 00:06:56,500 better words, somebody else's computer that's always available. 132 00:06:56,500 --> 00:07:00,500 It's resources that are available to everybody instead of 133 00:07:00,500 --> 00:07:02,500 having to hold them yourself. 134 00:07:02,500 --> 00:07:04,500 Is that the goal of your company? 135 00:07:04,500 --> 00:07:06,500 If that is, great. 136 00:07:06,500 --> 00:07:09,500 Let's talk about some of the things that do that. 137 00:07:09,500 --> 00:07:15,500 Coming into the applications, Microsoft has done a very good 138 00:07:15,500 --> 00:07:20,500 job at taking a lot of the services that they have traditionally 139 00:07:20,500 --> 00:07:27,500 hosted on their servers on a server that you manage, and 140 00:07:27,500 --> 00:07:33,500 they've transitioned them over to Azure and 365. 141 00:07:33,500 --> 00:07:35,500 One of the easiest examples is mail. 142 00:07:35,500 --> 00:07:37,500 People don't have mail servers anymore. 143 00:07:37,500 --> 00:07:39,500 It's through 365. 144 00:07:39,500 --> 00:07:41,500 And so... 145 00:07:41,500 --> 00:07:43,500 A quick shout out there, or you shouldn't have mail servers 146 00:07:43,500 --> 00:07:46,500 unless you have a very specific need for them. 147 00:07:46,500 --> 00:07:52,500 Hosting your own exchange server is a real task. 148 00:07:52,500 --> 00:07:54,500 Yes, especially nowadays. 149 00:07:54,500 --> 00:07:56,500 Not to let my feelings shine through too heavily. 150 00:07:56,500 --> 00:07:59,500 I still remember how to configure them. 151 00:07:59,500 --> 00:08:02,500 And, you know, still remember that stuff. 152 00:08:02,500 --> 00:08:07,500 But, you know, it's really where are you going and trying to 153 00:08:07,500 --> 00:08:12,500 find an equivalent to what is available for you. 154 00:08:12,500 --> 00:08:15,500 And so Microsoft is an easy example because they have a lot 155 00:08:15,500 --> 00:08:19,500 of things and most, you know, if it's Google, great. 156 00:08:19,500 --> 00:08:23,500 Google has a lot of those services as well. 157 00:08:23,500 --> 00:08:28,500 When you come to specific applications, it's really working 158 00:08:28,500 --> 00:08:30,500 with that vendor. 159 00:08:30,500 --> 00:08:32,500 And it's really identifying those. 160 00:08:32,500 --> 00:08:35,500 So I would say the first step is identifying what is dependent 161 00:08:35,500 --> 00:08:38,500 upon those servers. 162 00:08:38,500 --> 00:08:40,500 You know, we talked about Microsoft. 163 00:08:40,500 --> 00:08:42,500 There's ERP systems. 164 00:08:42,500 --> 00:08:44,500 There could be a database. 165 00:08:44,500 --> 00:08:47,500 They don't communicate with you aboutれて- café. 166 00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:49,500 connected to. 167 00:08:49,500 --> 00:08:51,500 Then what does it mean? 168 00:08:51,500 --> 00:08:53,500 So, you know, Python is an easy way to do this. 169 00:08:53,500 --> 00:08:55,500 And couldn't win it on cloud because they didn't know 170 00:08:55,500 --> 00:08:56,500 that. 171 00:08:56,500 --> 00:08:58,500 But, don't整te, don't nervi blood or cosaetate others. 172 00:08:58,500 --> 00:09:00,700 Do you want to have, like a dynamite that it could take 173 00:09:00,700 --> 00:09:02,500 millions of look at it from the source? 174 00:09:02,500 --> 00:09:03,500 Because if it was going to pull our ends, 175 00:09:03,500 --> 00:09:05,500 then it would be a couple of best ways to do this service. 176 00:09:05,500 --> 00:09:07,500 If you're somebody could give you a training skill what that 177 00:09:07,500 --> 00:09:10,500 model works. 178 00:09:10,500 --> 00:09:12,220 You can complete a tutorial for that server or 179 00:09:12,220 --> 00:09:13,500 no, just create engineers. 180 00:09:13,500 --> 00:09:18,940 more. You know, I don't even want to guess because I don't. 181 00:09:19,980 --> 00:09:24,980 I'm going to age myself and whatever. But hypervisors or 182 00:09:24,980 --> 00:09:32,180 hosts are very common now where you have one or two pieces of 183 00:09:32,180 --> 00:09:38,060 hardware, actual physical hardware, and they have virtual 184 00:09:38,060 --> 00:09:43,860 machines or VMs hosted on them and you can spin up and run 185 00:09:43,860 --> 00:09:48,620 multiple servers on that host, right? So you could have your 186 00:09:48,620 --> 00:09:55,740 domain controller and a print server in your domain services 187 00:09:55,780 --> 00:09:59,420 or whatever services you're running, you can have it on 188 00:09:59,420 --> 00:10:01,740 that one. It's, you know, they're definitely different 189 00:10:01,740 --> 00:10:08,300 VMs. So that's the environment that we're looking at now of can 190 00:10:08,300 --> 00:10:14,660 we translate that to the cloud or replace that hardware? Most is 191 00:10:14,660 --> 00:10:19,420 that cycle of four, five years. The discussion came up 192 00:10:19,420 --> 00:10:23,300 because I have a customer. It was as Matthew said yesterday, 193 00:10:23,780 --> 00:10:28,940 the warranty is coming up in 2024 in March. And the company 194 00:10:28,940 --> 00:10:33,140 told him told our contact, hey, our goal is to be in the cloud 195 00:10:33,140 --> 00:10:39,260 by January of 2025. And we said, okay, that's perfect. We'll 196 00:10:39,260 --> 00:10:44,980 renew the warranty for one more year, which is easier through, 197 00:10:45,020 --> 00:10:48,780 you know, HP or Dell or whatever service, we can say, 198 00:10:48,780 --> 00:10:51,980 hey, let's renew this, this warranty, making sure that if 199 00:10:51,980 --> 00:10:54,660 something happens to that hardware, especially engine 200 00:10:54,660 --> 00:10:59,940 hardware, that we have that coverage. And then, okay, we 201 00:10:59,940 --> 00:11:05,020 have a, you know, we have an end date to replace that hardware 202 00:11:05,020 --> 00:11:09,940 and have that plan. It is great that that company goal is to 203 00:11:09,940 --> 00:11:15,700 have it, we're going to have a lot more backing on on the 204 00:11:15,700 --> 00:11:18,660 initiatives that we're proposing and from the IT 205 00:11:18,660 --> 00:11:22,820 department, because that's the company's goal. It's, you know, 206 00:11:22,820 --> 00:11:27,460 it can be more difficult when you need to get leadership 207 00:11:27,460 --> 00:11:31,300 involved in saying, hey, this is why we should do it. You know, 208 00:11:31,300 --> 00:11:33,940 and in a lot of the reasons are, you know, frankly, moving 209 00:11:33,940 --> 00:11:37,780 anything to the cloud or any resource that is always available. 210 00:11:38,820 --> 00:11:44,020 Something you don't have to manage. Mail is a great example, 211 00:11:44,380 --> 00:11:48,100 because it's pretty much almost always moved over to the cloud 212 00:11:48,100 --> 00:11:54,260 now and hosted somewhere else. It's always up. Or it has, I 213 00:11:54,260 --> 00:11:56,820 don't know what Microsoft guarantees, but, you know, four 214 00:11:56,820 --> 00:12:02,820 nines or five nines of availability. You know, 215 00:12:03,540 --> 00:12:06,820 management is a lot easier, you can do it from anywhere, you 216 00:12:06,820 --> 00:12:12,420 don't have to come into the main location to access the 217 00:12:12,420 --> 00:12:15,340 server. You don't have the server costs, you don't have 218 00:12:15,340 --> 00:12:17,900 everything that's related to that server costs to the 219 00:12:17,900 --> 00:12:20,780 security of that server. What happens if something happens 220 00:12:20,780 --> 00:12:26,620 to it to the data? So all of those translate to that 221 00:12:26,620 --> 00:12:31,660 physical hardware. So it's trying to find what solution 222 00:12:31,660 --> 00:12:35,820 works best. One of the big challenges that we're going to 223 00:12:35,820 --> 00:12:42,060 have to have with this customer is they have a database that 224 00:12:42,060 --> 00:12:48,140 we have to see if we can move it to a cloud resource. That's 225 00:12:48,140 --> 00:12:53,580 not always possible. And I've had other discussions where 226 00:12:53,580 --> 00:12:58,860 they have, they host one thing on, you know, their hardware, 227 00:12:58,860 --> 00:13:02,460 physical hardware on site, and everything else is moved up. 228 00:13:02,460 --> 00:13:06,300 We've done a pretty much full migration as much as we can to 229 00:13:06,300 --> 00:13:11,020 a cloud resource, but it's not always possible, but it's looking 230 00:13:11,020 --> 00:13:18,300 into it. And that's really where it's finding the solutions 231 00:13:18,300 --> 00:13:23,900 using a technology partner like CIT to say, hey, what am I 232 00:13:23,900 --> 00:13:30,380 running? How can this move? Talking to your vendor of, okay, 233 00:13:30,380 --> 00:13:34,060 you're using QuickBooks. Okay, what does QuickBooks have? I 234 00:13:34,060 --> 00:13:37,900 know QuickBooks has QuickBook Cloud. What does that look like? 235 00:13:37,900 --> 00:13:42,380 What is their timeline for the migration? Because it's not 236 00:13:42,380 --> 00:13:46,060 just going to be a flip of a switch, and it never is. And 237 00:13:46,060 --> 00:13:50,620 again, I applaud this company for saying January of 2025. 238 00:13:50,620 --> 00:13:55,660 That's a realistic goal for a lot of these things in being able 239 00:13:55,660 --> 00:13:59,260 to set benchmarks of saying we want to get our new QuickBooks 240 00:13:59,260 --> 00:14:05,180 in by July. So we know we can run through several months of 241 00:14:05,180 --> 00:14:11,180 going, do we have everything and doing a spot check? Again, it's 242 00:14:11,180 --> 00:14:15,580 a, you know, all the different systems you have, you have to 243 00:14:15,580 --> 00:14:17,980 think about that on the whole scale. And if you're going to 244 00:14:17,980 --> 00:14:25,100 change stuff on a full scale, that's a lot of changes. So 245 00:14:25,100 --> 00:14:31,180 having a realistic timeline too is something to keep in mind. 246 00:14:31,180 --> 00:14:36,940 You know, January of 2025, I think is a good goal. It's also, 247 00:14:36,940 --> 00:14:40,060 you know, we're having these conversations now to make sure 248 00:14:40,060 --> 00:14:43,900 that we can hit that goal. And that's still going to be, you 249 00:14:43,900 --> 00:14:46,060 know, we're going to have to make sure we keep things on 250 00:14:46,060 --> 00:14:49,820 track on our side and be able to help facilitate those 251 00:14:49,820 --> 00:14:54,620 conversations to make sure we hit that goal. Yeah, I think I 252 00:14:54,620 --> 00:14:57,660 like, I agree with everything you've said. There's so much of 253 00:14:57,660 --> 00:15:02,700 this that is important for how we think about this long term, 254 00:15:02,700 --> 00:15:05,180 right? This, we're talking about this at a technical level, 255 00:15:05,180 --> 00:15:07,100 and that's where people think about it because we're talking 256 00:15:07,100 --> 00:15:09,580 about hardware, we're talking about technical hardware, but 257 00:15:09,580 --> 00:15:12,540 it's really a business conversation. And when we're 258 00:15:12,540 --> 00:15:15,980 talking about hardware lifecycle, the reason we have to 259 00:15:15,980 --> 00:15:19,740 think about what do you want to do in five years is because 260 00:15:19,740 --> 00:15:22,540 it's not as simple as just replacing the laptop, right? 261 00:15:22,540 --> 00:15:25,580 We're talking about, like you said, every piece of hardware 262 00:15:25,580 --> 00:15:28,060 and software that is critical to your infrastructure 263 00:15:28,060 --> 00:15:31,820 effectively. If this goes down, how bad is that for you? And 264 00:15:31,820 --> 00:15:33,820 then we're talking about what can we take off your hands? 265 00:15:33,820 --> 00:15:35,900 We're talking about, like you said, going to the cloud, 266 00:15:35,900 --> 00:15:39,660 creating a hybrid environment. We're talking about how we can 267 00:15:39,660 --> 00:15:43,980 make things more resilient in office. You spoke about 268 00:15:43,980 --> 00:15:48,860 hypervisors and VMs. And without digging too deeply into 269 00:15:48,860 --> 00:15:52,860 those, one of the most common questions I still get is what 270 00:15:52,860 --> 00:15:57,580 differentiates a server. And the answer is you decide it is 271 00:15:57,580 --> 00:16:00,380 one in the short term that really is the only thing that 272 00:16:00,380 --> 00:16:04,380 makes it a server. People can argue the hardware in it. 273 00:16:04,380 --> 00:16:07,100 Yes, sure, there's special server hardware that is only 274 00:16:07,100 --> 00:16:09,500 designed to go in servers, but that's not because it can't go 275 00:16:09,500 --> 00:16:13,180 in workstations, it's just it goes in servers because we want 276 00:16:13,180 --> 00:16:18,380 the better stuff in there. And so the overarching idea here is 277 00:16:18,380 --> 00:16:24,380 not so much we need to replace the server. It's we need to 278 00:16:24,380 --> 00:16:27,180 think about exactly what our environment is doing. And we 279 00:16:27,180 --> 00:16:29,900 need to think about how we can make it better and more 280 00:16:29,900 --> 00:16:33,100 resilient and future-proof it as best as possible. 281 00:16:33,100 --> 00:16:35,900 Mail servers are still the best example. And I know Andrew went 282 00:16:35,900 --> 00:16:40,380 into that a couple of times, but the move to Exchange Online, 283 00:16:40,380 --> 00:16:44,700 which became Microsoft 365, significantly helped a lot of 284 00:16:44,700 --> 00:16:48,460 customers. It's helped many businesses, not just because 285 00:16:48,460 --> 00:16:52,860 there have been multiple security issues with local 286 00:16:52,860 --> 00:16:58,140 Exchange servers in recent years, but because those, all of 287 00:16:58,140 --> 00:17:01,420 this now became handled by Microsoft. You didn't have to 288 00:17:01,420 --> 00:17:03,660 worry about it. You didn't have to do updates or make sure 289 00:17:03,660 --> 00:17:07,820 you were checking things. Back when I started as a 290 00:17:07,820 --> 00:17:12,780 Service Center technician, Exchange Online security issues 291 00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:15,420 and technical warnings were one of the majority of things I 292 00:17:15,420 --> 00:17:18,860 looked at because if someone configured them incorrectly, all 293 00:17:18,860 --> 00:17:21,020 of a sudden you're getting pinged from all over the world 294 00:17:21,020 --> 00:17:27,260 because mail is something people can sell online. So when we're 295 00:17:27,260 --> 00:17:30,140 talking about it, we're really building down to that asset 296 00:17:30,140 --> 00:17:34,540 knowledge. And for me, as you guys have heard, if you listen 297 00:17:34,540 --> 00:17:37,500 to this as someone who works heavily in the GRC space and 298 00:17:37,500 --> 00:17:41,420 talks about regulations and compliance, there is so many 299 00:17:41,420 --> 00:17:44,860 things we need to keep in mind for that. And I often come back 300 00:17:44,860 --> 00:17:50,140 to the FFIEC who has a tiered system for how they judge 301 00:17:50,140 --> 00:17:54,940 things, but one of their higher tier ones for servers states 302 00:17:54,940 --> 00:17:59,660 that every server should only perform one function. And that 303 00:17:59,660 --> 00:18:01,900 doesn't mean that there's only one thing running on it, but 304 00:18:01,900 --> 00:18:06,700 it means it should only provide one service to the 305 00:18:06,700 --> 00:18:10,060 organization, whether that is the print server, like Andrew 306 00:18:10,060 --> 00:18:13,180 mentioned, whether that's a file share, whether that's your 307 00:18:13,180 --> 00:18:16,860 domain name services or DNS services. What you're looking 308 00:18:16,860 --> 00:18:21,340 for is a system that allows for resilience by saying if this 309 00:18:21,340 --> 00:18:27,740 thing breaks, can I still keep running in some way? The 310 00:18:27,740 --> 00:18:31,820 servers that Andrew described of everything's on one big 311 00:18:31,820 --> 00:18:34,460 server and then that service gets shut down and you lose 312 00:18:34,460 --> 00:18:38,220 everything is how it was run back when I started doing this 313 00:18:38,220 --> 00:18:41,340 and it's the way some organizations still run. The 314 00:18:41,340 --> 00:18:44,780 resiliency is zero. If something breaks and requires a 315 00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:48,700 reboot, you lose access to everything. So we're trying to 316 00:18:48,700 --> 00:18:51,980 come up with ways to break that out, come up with every 317 00:18:51,980 --> 00:18:55,660 service. And for me, it still always starts with an asset 318 00:18:55,660 --> 00:18:59,340 management list. Every single application you need, every 319 00:18:59,340 --> 00:19:01,740 single server and piece of hardware you currently have, 320 00:19:01,740 --> 00:19:05,100 break them all down, find the ones that work best, find out 321 00:19:05,100 --> 00:19:08,300 how you can make them survive, find out where they should 322 00:19:08,300 --> 00:19:11,100 go. Can they be moved to the cloud? Speak with those vendors 323 00:19:11,100 --> 00:19:14,220 if it's a specific tool. Maybe you need a hybrid 324 00:19:14,220 --> 00:19:16,060 environment where some things are in the cloud and some 325 00:19:16,060 --> 00:19:19,180 things are in your office. That's okay. That still may be 326 00:19:19,180 --> 00:19:23,420 incredibly cost effective for you. But what you're trying to 327 00:19:23,420 --> 00:19:28,060 do is really confirm and create a system that allows you to 328 00:19:28,060 --> 00:19:31,740 move forward. Sometimes moving everything to the cloud 329 00:19:31,740 --> 00:19:35,020 isn't the right goal for you. And sometimes that means you'll 330 00:19:35,020 --> 00:19:39,500 need a couple of hosts, maybe a bunch of VMs all doing 331 00:19:39,500 --> 00:19:43,420 different things. I know this is going to sound a little 332 00:19:43,420 --> 00:19:46,140 crazy to a lot of people, but I honestly think that most 333 00:19:46,140 --> 00:19:50,300 organizations need at least one host and four VMs nowadays. 334 00:19:50,300 --> 00:19:52,540 Any less than that. And I'm wondering what you're doubling 335 00:19:52,540 --> 00:19:56,460 up on. As I said, the FFIC has these requirements and some 336 00:19:56,460 --> 00:20:00,620 environments I'm looking at have six to eight hosts and we're 337 00:20:00,620 --> 00:20:04,780 talking 30 or 40 servers. And when I say servers in this case, 338 00:20:04,780 --> 00:20:09,740 I mean VMs running on those hosts. And the reason for that 339 00:20:09,740 --> 00:20:15,500 is that if you're running a piece of software that handles 340 00:20:15,500 --> 00:20:18,380 your financial data, but you're also running one that 341 00:20:18,380 --> 00:20:21,260 handles your internal communication data, you shouldn't 342 00:20:21,260 --> 00:20:26,300 have to lose both if one of them breaks. And so if one 343 00:20:26,300 --> 00:20:29,900 breaks, that services down, okay? But everything else is 344 00:20:29,900 --> 00:20:33,580 running because you've segmented them safely. And so like I 345 00:20:33,580 --> 00:20:35,820 said, these conversations feel like we're having technical 346 00:20:35,820 --> 00:20:37,740 conversations, but really we're having that business 347 00:20:37,740 --> 00:20:41,020 conversation. Which of these things is the most critical? 348 00:20:41,020 --> 00:20:43,740 How comfortable can you feel with one of them disappearing? 349 00:20:43,740 --> 00:20:47,500 How long can they disappear for? We have an RTO and RPO 350 00:20:47,500 --> 00:20:51,740 podcast that may be helpful in those types of conversations. 351 00:20:51,740 --> 00:20:55,740 But there's so much of this is really just a the servers are 352 00:20:55,740 --> 00:21:01,340 not in and of themselves important. Because no one's 353 00:21:01,340 --> 00:21:03,740 physically touching them the same way a workstation is being 354 00:21:03,740 --> 00:21:05,980 touched. The thing that makes them important is what you're 355 00:21:05,980 --> 00:21:09,100 doing with them. And so if you aren't planning for what 356 00:21:09,100 --> 00:21:11,260 they're going to do, what they're going to do in the future 357 00:21:11,260 --> 00:21:14,540 and how you're going to replace those on a regular schedule, 358 00:21:14,540 --> 00:21:17,100 you're basically in reactive mode hoping something doesn't 359 00:21:17,100 --> 00:21:21,980 break. And that is the part that I feel a lot of people don't 360 00:21:21,980 --> 00:21:23,660 want to think about and definitely don't want to talk 361 00:21:23,660 --> 00:21:29,660 about that. Yeah, I agree. It's it's just like if a workstation 362 00:21:29,660 --> 00:21:32,380 is doing a specific function that we talked about last time 363 00:21:32,380 --> 00:21:35,980 like the shipping computer. What is your business going to 364 00:21:35,980 --> 00:21:40,700 look like if you don't have that running? If you unplugged 365 00:21:40,700 --> 00:21:45,340 your server, what aren't you going to be able to do? 366 00:21:45,340 --> 00:21:50,060 It's always kind of funny where when we're decommissioning 367 00:21:50,060 --> 00:21:53,260 things and I'm sure Matthew has done that set. At some point 368 00:21:53,260 --> 00:21:56,300 you just need to pull the plug if that is turning off the 369 00:21:56,300 --> 00:22:01,660 service and you see what breaks. And we call this a 370 00:22:01,660 --> 00:22:05,820 scream test where we pull the plug and see who screams first 371 00:22:05,820 --> 00:22:09,820 the loudest about something not working anymore. Exactly. 372 00:22:09,820 --> 00:22:13,020 They're bad. We don't want to do that. But sometimes it's a 373 00:22:13,020 --> 00:22:17,820 necessity. And within any transition of these kind of 374 00:22:17,820 --> 00:22:21,820 services, you have that. You have that point where you just 375 00:22:21,820 --> 00:22:26,380 need to you know, you just need to initiate that scream test 376 00:22:26,380 --> 00:22:30,300 see what happens. But that's built in that that should be 377 00:22:30,300 --> 00:22:33,820 something you know about. The extreme case would be like I 378 00:22:33,820 --> 00:22:36,780 wonder what we're running in our environment that depends on 379 00:22:36,780 --> 00:22:39,420 our server and going in the server closet and just pulling 380 00:22:39,420 --> 00:22:42,780 plug. That would be a little extreme so I don't recommend 381 00:22:42,780 --> 00:22:48,060 that. But you know, talking and knowing about the different 382 00:22:48,060 --> 00:22:52,540 functions that occur within your business. That is the place 383 00:22:52,540 --> 00:23:00,460 to start of going what what do people use on a daily basis on 384 00:23:00,460 --> 00:23:07,980 a weekly basis on a monthly basis and is that dependent upon 385 00:23:07,980 --> 00:23:11,980 something that you are responsible for as the business. 386 00:23:11,980 --> 00:23:16,060 Can I make somebody else more responsible for it? 387 00:23:16,060 --> 00:23:20,220 And be able to take some honestly you sleep a little easier 388 00:23:20,220 --> 00:23:26,220 at night. You know, I have had many you know coming back to 389 00:23:26,220 --> 00:23:29,820 our tech days, Matthew. When you mention the mail and a lot of 390 00:23:29,820 --> 00:23:32,620 things can go wrong with services. I just think of 391 00:23:32,620 --> 00:23:39,660 people who may not pay for a static IP right. People you have 392 00:23:39,660 --> 00:23:42,460 to go in and you have to change a record to make sure mail can 393 00:23:42,460 --> 00:23:49,900 flow to the organization again because their IP changed. 394 00:23:49,900 --> 00:23:53,100 They didn't pay for a static one or they couldn't pay for a static 395 00:23:53,100 --> 00:23:56,380 one. 396 00:23:56,380 --> 00:24:00,860 That's just one example of one of the responsibilities you 397 00:24:00,860 --> 00:24:06,780 don't have to worry about anymore. And knowing that your 398 00:24:06,780 --> 00:24:09,740 services are backed up to at least a certain point and 399 00:24:09,740 --> 00:24:13,340 there's other products that help getting it past 400 00:24:13,340 --> 00:24:16,940 the 30 days that Microsoft has. But you don't have to 401 00:24:16,940 --> 00:24:21,660 necessarily pay for that and continue to have that. So 402 00:24:21,660 --> 00:24:27,500 really just peace of mind of moving those things as much as you can 403 00:24:27,500 --> 00:24:32,140 to make it somebody else's responsibility and being able to 404 00:24:32,140 --> 00:24:36,060 have it. One of the big conversations I have 405 00:24:36,060 --> 00:24:39,100 is basically just about that. I have a risk management 406 00:24:39,100 --> 00:24:44,460 conversations constantly. And as part of that we're talking 407 00:24:44,460 --> 00:24:48,220 about transference of risk. Who can we give this risk to so 408 00:24:48,220 --> 00:24:51,420 that it's not on our hands. In this case that's what you're 409 00:24:51,420 --> 00:24:56,060 doing when you move to Exchange Online. I'm showing my age. 410 00:24:56,060 --> 00:24:59,900 When you move to Microsoft 365 is you're saying I trust 411 00:24:59,900 --> 00:25:03,500 Microsoft to do this. Microsoft is taking on that risk for me. 412 00:25:03,500 --> 00:25:06,060 And there are so many things you can do that with. It's why 413 00:25:06,060 --> 00:25:08,780 QuickBooks now has QuickBooks online because they are offering 414 00:25:08,780 --> 00:25:12,300 to take on that risk so you can transfer it from yourself to 415 00:25:12,300 --> 00:25:16,860 them. So many of these things are about doing that. 416 00:25:16,860 --> 00:25:21,020 Servers are a huge upfront cost for a lot of organizations. 417 00:25:21,020 --> 00:25:24,460 The amount you have to pay down just to get those servers in 418 00:25:24,460 --> 00:25:27,980 office and then effectively you're thinking of them as 419 00:25:27,980 --> 00:25:31,420 depreciating assets over the course of their life. 420 00:25:31,420 --> 00:25:34,060 When you move to the cloud most of the time it's 421 00:25:34,060 --> 00:25:37,180 subscription based. So yeah there's still that recurring cost 422 00:25:37,180 --> 00:25:40,780 but it's over time. And one thing that I found that's been 423 00:25:40,780 --> 00:25:43,340 interesting is it doesn't actually it's not actually that 424 00:25:43,340 --> 00:25:45,660 much cheaper to move to the cloud. Sometimes it's a little 425 00:25:45,660 --> 00:25:50,460 more expensive. But because it isn't an upfront cost it does 426 00:25:50,460 --> 00:25:55,340 feel a little better sometimes to just say it's going to be 427 00:25:55,340 --> 00:26:00,140 X amount per month versus I need to drop in some cases and 428 00:26:00,140 --> 00:26:03,820 I did a server replacement not too long ago that was I think 429 00:26:03,820 --> 00:26:09,260 it was $80,000 per server that we were replacing. 430 00:26:09,260 --> 00:26:12,700 And we ended up doing I think five or six hosts for this 431 00:26:12,700 --> 00:26:16,860 organization. And then there was all the servers on top of 432 00:26:16,860 --> 00:26:21,900 that. So for them to move the cloud wasn't an option but the 433 00:26:21,900 --> 00:26:24,780 cost of doing that they were they were looking at I think it 434 00:26:24,780 --> 00:26:27,100 was ended up being close to a half million dollars for the 435 00:26:27,100 --> 00:26:29,820 costs of that after they were done with everything. And 436 00:26:29,820 --> 00:26:33,100 that's again a recurring five-year cost. Now you should 437 00:26:33,100 --> 00:26:34,940 be including that in your budget. You should be ready for 438 00:26:34,940 --> 00:26:37,260 that. But at the same time you're going to want to 439 00:26:37,260 --> 00:26:40,140 mitigate that as much as you can. Technology is important and 440 00:26:40,140 --> 00:26:43,180 you want to spend as much as you have to. But the five-year 441 00:26:43,180 --> 00:26:45,420 cycle gives you time to confirm that's what you have to 442 00:26:45,420 --> 00:26:49,820 spend. And not to harp on about it but again asset 443 00:26:49,820 --> 00:26:52,060 management. You can't confirm that's what you need to 444 00:26:52,060 --> 00:26:54,940 spend if you don't know what you have. Please do asset 445 00:26:54,940 --> 00:26:57,260 management. 446 00:26:58,140 --> 00:27:02,380 Nice. This is a big conversation. I'm glad we split it up 447 00:27:02,380 --> 00:27:05,580 into multiple podcasts today. I want to make sure that 448 00:27:05,580 --> 00:27:08,540 we're covering everything you want to cover. But so what 449 00:27:08,540 --> 00:27:12,940 I've heard from our workstations conversation and our 450 00:27:12,940 --> 00:27:15,340 server conversation it's really important to know what 451 00:27:15,340 --> 00:27:21,100 you have and then where you want to go. And my question is 452 00:27:21,100 --> 00:27:26,060 besides budget because that's always a hurdle. What is the 453 00:27:26,060 --> 00:27:29,900 biggest hurdle that businesses are kind of bumping up to 454 00:27:29,900 --> 00:27:33,740 when they're talking about their server life cycle and 455 00:27:33,740 --> 00:27:37,900 kind of replacement. And then how would you approach that? 456 00:27:37,900 --> 00:27:40,460 I'm going to harp on about it again. It's not knowing what 457 00:27:40,460 --> 00:27:42,460 they have. It's not knowing exactly what they're doing. 458 00:27:42,460 --> 00:27:45,740 They don't. Part of that is maybe they're trusting 459 00:27:45,740 --> 00:27:48,460 someone internally to do it all. But again this is a 460 00:27:48,460 --> 00:27:52,460 business conversation and you need to be aware as 461 00:27:52,460 --> 00:27:55,660 business leaders of exactly what's going on in your 462 00:27:55,660 --> 00:28:00,700 system. If you don't understand part of it or if it just 463 00:28:00,700 --> 00:28:02,700 is kind of one of those things that makes you glaze over 464 00:28:02,700 --> 00:28:05,740 which I fully understand. There are people who fully 465 00:28:05,740 --> 00:28:07,900 glaze over as soon as I start talking I can see it 466 00:28:07,900 --> 00:28:13,020 happen. But it's really about you need to be able to make 467 00:28:13,020 --> 00:28:15,500 an informed decision and if you trust someone else to 468 00:28:15,500 --> 00:28:17,980 make that decision for you that person needs to be in 469 00:28:17,980 --> 00:28:21,420 these discussions. They need to be fully made aware of 470 00:28:21,420 --> 00:28:27,500 what's going on. Because you can't fix what's the 471 00:28:27,500 --> 00:28:33,180 saying. You can't. I've forgotten the saying you 472 00:28:33,180 --> 00:28:36,700 can't fix what you don't understand is not right. 473 00:28:36,700 --> 00:28:42,620 Paraphrasing. Yeah. You can't do this correctly and 474 00:28:42,620 --> 00:28:45,420 save money in a correct and actually financially 475 00:28:45,420 --> 00:28:47,900 responsible way. If you don't know what you're actually 476 00:28:47,900 --> 00:28:50,540 saving money on. And a lot of times when I see people 477 00:28:50,540 --> 00:28:53,420 who still have those all in one service and sadly I 478 00:28:53,420 --> 00:28:55,900 still do see them pretty regularly. It's because 479 00:28:55,900 --> 00:28:58,940 someone said I know a way to do all of this in one for 480 00:28:58,940 --> 00:29:01,980 a small amount of money. Cool. You're going to 481 00:29:01,980 --> 00:29:05,660 experience significant downtime. No question about it. 482 00:29:05,660 --> 00:29:08,140 It's going to happen and I can probably guarantee as we 483 00:29:08,140 --> 00:29:10,220 get closer to that three or four year mark you're 484 00:29:10,220 --> 00:29:13,340 going to experience that downtime once a month. If 485 00:29:13,340 --> 00:29:16,540 not more often than that. So know what you have and 486 00:29:16,540 --> 00:29:18,860 where you're putting it. And that for me is the 487 00:29:18,860 --> 00:29:21,820 the number one biggest hurdle. What about you Andrew. 488 00:29:21,820 --> 00:29:25,340 I would say I would say that's number one. Number two 489 00:29:25,340 --> 00:29:32,060 is vendor availability of does your vendor currently 490 00:29:32,060 --> 00:29:38,860 have an option that you can move to cloud resources. 491 00:29:38,860 --> 00:29:44,060 Not everyone does. And knowing what that is and if 492 00:29:44,060 --> 00:29:48,140 you need to transition from that onsite to the 493 00:29:48,140 --> 00:29:52,620 cloud or a full different system that needs to be 494 00:29:52,620 --> 00:29:57,900 looked at as well. Because if a piece of hardware or 495 00:29:57,900 --> 00:30:02,540 excuse me a piece of software isn't meeting your needs 496 00:30:02,540 --> 00:30:07,500 you know it's you need to assess if it's really the 497 00:30:07,500 --> 00:30:09,900 right program for you. If that's your goal to move to 498 00:30:09,900 --> 00:30:12,460 the cloud and the only thing is keeping you is 499 00:30:12,460 --> 00:30:17,500 you know this this program that does a certain function 500 00:30:17,500 --> 00:30:21,180 most of the time there's another program that can 501 00:30:21,180 --> 00:30:24,940 that can help you with that. And it's again working with 502 00:30:24,940 --> 00:30:28,860 that vendor understanding that and really saying you 503 00:30:28,860 --> 00:30:31,660 know sometimes it's been pushed like I've had a push 504 00:30:31,660 --> 00:30:35,420 vendors of going what options do you have. Like what do 505 00:30:35,420 --> 00:30:38,060 you have anything available or else you know maybe we're 506 00:30:38,060 --> 00:30:39,820 going to have to look somewhere else and that's you 507 00:30:39,820 --> 00:30:42,780 know that that's that's a hard hard hard thing to 508 00:30:42,780 --> 00:30:46,460 swallow sometimes. Because we you know it's the it's a 509 00:30:46,460 --> 00:30:50,220 sunk cost fallacy right. We've spent you know 10 years 510 00:30:50,220 --> 00:30:54,380 and X amount of dollars on training and have so much 511 00:30:54,380 --> 00:30:57,900 invested in it but you know that that's a past 512 00:30:57,900 --> 00:31:01,580 cost. What is going to be your future cost because of 513 00:31:01,580 --> 00:31:06,060 because of this lack of you know cloud transition 514 00:31:06,060 --> 00:31:09,980 or lack of supportability if they're like oh we have to 515 00:31:09,980 --> 00:31:12,940 you know we shut down and or we got bought and we don't 516 00:31:12,940 --> 00:31:17,420 support it anymore. So again it starts with that asset 517 00:31:17,420 --> 00:31:19,980 management of knowing what you have and then knowing what 518 00:31:19,980 --> 00:31:23,660 the options are for each of those. 519 00:31:24,460 --> 00:31:27,420 Thanks. Well we're running low on time so it might be 520 00:31:27,420 --> 00:31:30,380 something that we come back to in the future. I think 521 00:31:30,380 --> 00:31:32,780 these are really important conversations but I just 522 00:31:32,780 --> 00:31:35,500 wanted to thank Matthew and Andrew for joining us 523 00:31:35,500 --> 00:31:39,740 today. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this podcast 524 00:31:39,740 --> 00:31:42,620 please like subscribe. It's how we know that you're 525 00:31:42,620 --> 00:31:45,660 interested in these topics or if you have a topic you'd 526 00:31:45,660 --> 00:31:51,100 like us to discuss reach out to us at info at cIT-net.com 527 00:31:51,100 --> 00:31:55,260 or head out to our website cIT-net.com 528 00:31:55,260 --> 00:32:13,740 slash podcast and we'll be back next week with an all new episode.