Ep.132 Victory and Defeat Real-Life Cases of Security and Cloud Transformation Pt. 2/3 with Adam Burke
Welcome to the podcast that’s designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus and this is Next Level BizTech.
Hey, everybody, welcome back. We got an interesting track for you today. We’re talking about victory and defeat, real life cases of security and cloud transformation. We get asked a lot, what are these things really like? What are these deals really like? And so we thought we’d create this track for you. And on with us today, longtime friend of the family, Mr. Adam Burke, VP of Sales of Quest Technologies. Welcome on, man.
Thanks for having me, Josh. It’s awesome to be here.
Excited when I got the call to jump on. I was like, yeah, absolutely. I can’t wait. So looking forward to it. I know. Crazy. Crazy. We haven’t done this yet. I’m excited. Excited to have you on for the first time. So if you don’t screw this up, we’ll have to have you on for many more in the future. Right on.
So I always like to kick this off with backstories. So walk us through this. I know you’ve got a cool backstory, how you got in this field, kind of where you started out, and, you know, anything windy path along that journey is helpful.
Yeah, so I got involved in the channel about about 14 years ago, I, you know, my family started the company Quest Technology Management. Our legal name is Quest Media and Supplies. So my parents started out of our garage back in 82. So I was born in 83. So it’s kind of been part of my life. Since I’ve since I’ve been around, after college, I decided to do a brief stint. I went into college September of 2001. So if you remember that timeframe, some things happened in the world. And I made the decision to go to the ROTC path and be an infantry officer, took commission as a second lieutenant, did some time with the 101st Airborne. Got some platoon leadership and some executive offer officer time. And then I left the army as a captain in 2010. Awesome job. But, you know, it was kind of more of a kind of more of a volunteer approach and then do a couple of years and then go get back to normal life. And that was kind of my plan. So got out and it’s funny, I knew I was gonna come back to Quest, but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be doing. You know, nepotism is great, but you got to produce. So I got out, I finished up my army time at Fort Benning in Georgia, and which is kind of close to Atlanta. So my dad and I have always been close. We both always really enjoy road trips. So he flew into Atlanta, Georgia. And I packed up everything from from Fort Benning, had my dog in the car, sent the wife home on a plane, and we drove the truck, I put it to pick up my dad, he drove with me across across the United States, made it back home in 36 hours from Georgia to Sacramento, California. And honestly, we could have done it in half the time. But my wife and my mom by the time we got to New Mexico, like they told us like you guys got to stop this is ridiculous stop we’re on a we’re a three hour rotation, right? Just burned like a cannonball run sounds like you’re just we’re just swapping listening to CNBC talking business. It was great. There’s no reason sleep is for the week. But but anyways, as we’re driving, I was sharing with my dad like what I did a lot when when I was overseas, I was in when I was in Iraq. And when I was over there, it was part of we were doing something called counterinsurgency. So coin operations. And there was a time like after the Anwar awakening, if you remember the history of the, you know, the Iraq war. There was a time when some of the people that we were fighting kind of decided, yeah, you know, fighting against the Americans is not necessarily the best plan, not a good life decision. Maybe we maybe we join up with them and protect our own regions. So we were operating in these kind of remote patrol bases and working with and paying people who three months before may or may not have been tried to blow us up. So it was a weird dynamic. There was a weird it was it was over there during the it was called the surge, if you remember, like 2007 to 2009. So I was sharing this with my dad and and then we had just entered, if you remember, like phone plus magazine back in the day, before channel partners, we just started dipping our toe into this whole telecom world, we’ve been a var and MSP forever. And, and, and so so we talked about that we talked about some of the things I did over there as far as working with local, local leadership, local people that maybe are, you know, friend foe, not quite sure. And he said, Well, why don’t you go try to figure out this channel situation? Like, why don’t you go figure out like, hey, we’re our friends who are foes? Who can we work with? Like, you did it over there. Like, you know, there’s no bullets over here. There’s no blowing up over here. Like, maybe try it out over here. So so that was really, we came up with a quest partner program. And our attempt to enter the channel during a drive across America. Coming back from from forbidding. So that was, that was a lot of fun. And we just kind of started building it from there. And I still have some old business plans. They’re hilarious. You’ll laugh at them about how I was going to just go out and I was just going to go out and recruit, you know, 50 partners in the first year, I was just going to get 50 partners to come sell my stuff. That was what I was going to do. And here’s how it’s here’s how we’re going to sell more stuff. And it didn’t exactly work out like that. But but that’s how we started out. That’s how I got involved in the channel. I love it. I love the history, definitely a unique history. But it’s that, you know, hey, I guess if you can, if you can do what you did there, I think to your point, right? Maybe gets a little bit easier over here. Not that, not that there aren’t moments of tenseness and passion and, you know, deadlines and things like that. But yeah, I think you’re primed. I think you’re primed and ready.
Yeah, that was a good, it was a good entry point. So yeah. And we thank you for your service as well. So love love that. Really appreciate that. So let’s talk then. Let’s talk a little bit about about quest before we get get back into counterterrorism and negotiations here. Talk about quests. How do you go to market? You guys have so many amazing things. And we’re many years into this partnership with you guys. But just give us give us the the rundown on quest and kind of how you guys differentiate.
Yeah, absolutely. So been in business about about 42 years. We started out as a value added reseller, which we are we continue with that practice today helping organizations select technology.
You know, and purchase different things. It could be, you know, Cisco route switch, Palo Alto, Fortinet, VMware, Microsoft, all the major OEMs and manufacturers. We act as a value added reseller to help with that. And then we also have a professional services organization with a couple hundred engineers that help with the build, operate and transfer right so helping people They bought stuff. Let’s help them put it together. Let’s help them get the most out of their investments and then handed over their IT teams to manage ongoing About 25 years ago we got into the managed services space. So our first customer was a regional bank in Northern California. If you remember Cisco Mars equipment back in the day.
They bought a bunch of it and they’re a network engineer left and they they’re their CFO talked to Tim and Mike and said, hey, can you help us monitor and alert this and core to our business model who we are and what we believe in is that we’re an IT company and how can we help
I know I mentioned, you know, we’re a bar or a PS organization or a managed services group or we do application development, we do business continuity. Those are all things that we do. But at our core, what we really believe is we’re an IT company and how can we help And we have a lot of different assets and building blocks in our kit bag, if you will, that can address clients needs and that’s really What we focus on when we’re building out our capabilities. What are our clients looking for help with and how can we Address that need. So if our partners are looking for a certain capability.
If you know their clients are looking for a certain technology. How do we help bring that to market, you know, folks like you are fantastic. You guys give me a call and say, hey, can you guys do XYZ And I know, you know, tomorrow’s engineers and people around there always kind of joke around like, yeah, call Adam. He’ll say yes. The reason we do say yes is because our organization is built to accommodate a need. Right. It’s not built to It’s not we didn’t we didn’t build something and then take it to market. We have very, very few skewed offerings, if you will, where it’s like, hey, This is the way we think you should do this. There’s multiple paths and multiple ways to help organizations. And that’s really key to how we how we go to market. It relates as simple as we’re an IT company and how can we help. Yeah, I love that. And I think I’m trying to remember when this was it was actually one of the first Events that that we ever did. I think launching part of the security practice maybe six years ago that you and I did. We had a big big X X CIA FBI buddy of mine in there and it was just kind of eye opening to see that that side and some of those things. And since then, I think we’ve always looked at you guys as such an incredible wedge of you know, there’s There’s so many different options of where you can help these partners and these customers. There’s a list of, you know, hundreds of OEMs in some capacity here that We can wedge in and I think that’s that’s here we are, you know, six plus years into the partnership and we’re still to this point, right? We just know that if we text we we might not know that you do this and then we find out that you do this. And so I would constantly Encourage people that are listening to this man. There’s there’s gonna be so many things that we talk about. It’s just going to be a tip of the iceberg. But but you’ve been super helpful in in helping these partners kind of wedge in and then that always snowballs into well, what about this? What about this? Even within those same customer. So Love the love the ability that you give the partners in those accounts.
Yeah, it’s it’s really the partners and the partners have been amazing telling us what their what their clients are looking for help with, right? So we We don’t necessarily have a crystal ball as far as what the right solution sets going to be. But all of a sudden, you know, if you address a client’s need or a customer’s need, and then you follow that up with, hey, if you ever have a would you could you kind of question? Give me a call and we’d love to work that through with you. Right? Like we’d love to understand like, okay, totally get it. Like we had one client partner of yours who they they They really like the Morocco Cisco, Morocco stack and they were rolling out Cisco, Morocco, but they also had some some single sign on capabilities and some other like layered security some SAS based and some ZT and eight things that they wanted to bolt on like so they’re They were trying to do a Cisco, Morocco, Okta integration.
With I forget the there was another identity management feature that they’re trying to bolt on as well. And they needed a way to help the Okta instance communicate with their their local Morocco appliances and things like that. And We just rather than trying to sell them something new. We brought with the partner and plugged in a senior, you know, CCI level network engineer. And we were able to help them integrate those solutions as opposed to rip and replace everything. So it’s It’s a what do you what are you trying to do? Like what it what’s the what’s the challenge you’re struggling with like
The hard thing when you’re communicating this to partners is there’s not necessarily a PDF that explains that solution. I just talked about. There’s no like Sales brief that says oh, yeah, if you’re trying to do a single sign on solution integration with three year old Okta Techno or three year old Meraki licensing and then it’s also got a call back to a Microsoft instance in a cloud
There’s no there’s no like one page sales brief you can hand a partner and be like hey go do this like It’s really that it’s really that conversation. You got to understand. Hey, what are the what are the building blocks? We’re dealing with here. Yeah, and I think the way that I like to equate that is that you’ve got You’ve got knowledge and you’ve got resources that you know, we always talk about Oh, is this an inch deep or a mile wide? You know, I would say you guys are five miles wide and about five miles deep, right? And I know you know, I don’t want to come across saying I Were everything to everybody but what what you have is is if you’ve got Meraki knowledge, you’ve got Okta knowledge You’ve got network knowledge. You’ve got cloud knowledge, right? These there’s just naturally knowledge in those proficiencies of which comes with you know The common OEMs and then some non-common. So yeah, it always lends itself. Well in those conversations for sure
Yeah, and in quarter core our belief there too one of the areas that we differentiate is we don’t necessarily We don’t necessarily believe that we have to be the experts in everything. There are fantastic people out there and There are customers out there who are looking for connections to the appropriate technicians now I we went through the quest went through the dot-com bust with everyone else and back in 2000, you know, we had a couple hundred employees and When that when that boom bus cycle hit it was really really painful from a business standpoint having to let go people who? You just don’t have work for them at the time, right? so like we’ve made the decision as we’ve grown and as we’ve scaled that You know when you need resources you coordinate resources to attack a certain project at that time You don’t necessarily have to take the business model from 20 years ago and have a hundred engineers sitting on your staff waiting for work Like that’s you can do that That’s a method. It’s it’s dangerous. It’s a lot of overhead and it’s very leveraged So it’s really that it’s finding that finding that balance like hey, you know There’s a there’s a great, you know gig economy out there and really good resources. You want to run their own business? You tag them in bring them under a project management get the job done and and and and then keep moving so let’s Let’s look back here at some lessons learned. So go back 5 10 15 However many years you want to go back give me a hard lesson that you’ve learned on your own or maybe something you got from a great mentor
Yeah, so check your ego at the door if you’re if you’re in sales or you’re in partnerships you’re gonna And you you’ve coached me through this I think when we first met I think before you were part of the last I think you kind of helped let me know. Hey, this is the way You know some partners communicate and this is the way some partners like to go through deals It’s like they’re not necessarily gonna agree with your approach to it Adam and You know don’t send that email
You know, so like it’s just leave the email take a walk You know, so checking your ego at the door Trying to find the common areas where you can work together on things and succeed together Those are huge and lessons that have you know, I consistently learn
over and over again don’t have that definitely dialed in perfectly but you know and then picking up the phone and Communicating just pick up the phone and talk to a partner about what they’re trying to do or a customer. Hey, what?
I’m sensing some hesitancy on this path. We’re on or I’m there’s something going on here. Can we talk about it? They’re just people like everyone else. There’s never there’s nothing nefarious going on it’s just sometimes people are just trying to work out the details of Hey, they want to pay it this way or they’re looking for this type of comp model or you know This happened to him to two business cycles ago and they don’t want to be in that same place again So it’s just it’s just establishing that kind of Personal that personal engagement with folks So capping on kind of that thought right, you know, check your ego you and I are always talking about, you know Sharing books and you know the history I think you have such a unique history in this space There’s there’s the book that’s always come up in our space that by Chris Voss never split the difference, right? And he did similar background to yours counterterrorism, you know negotiating lives for money and things like that what Besides that we’re just throwing on a good book recommend here What what are some skills because I can’t ask this to everybody cuz not everybody has this background But what are some of those skills that you learn that you kind of take with you to the business world? Talking to customers doing deals things like that Yeah, so that’s a great book Christ, I probably should reread that it’s been a couple years but one of the things that I definitely appreciate about that and that I’ve taken you know, experienced personally is when you’re having a conversation around potential challenges in the deal, right or you know Partners and customers might not always agree on how something is going to be supported or delivered or SLAs You know call out those gaps if there’s any gray area it’s it’s gonna come up at some point in the negotiation And if it doesn’t come up in the negotiation Sometimes the salesperson is like whoo. All right got away with one right got that got that across the goal line
But that’s that whatever that gap is if there’s a gap in roles and responsibilities Or if there’s a gap and like hey, how’s this actually gonna get paid for or what’s the actual budget of this or I know I know you said you’re okay with time material, but you issued a ten thousand dollar PO What happens if time material goes over ten thousand dollars? That’s a you can hear people freak out on a sales call if you ask those uncomfortable questions But if you don’t have that clarity that clarity is going to
Come about One way or another so you can either be a little uncomfortable upfront or you can deal with it after the sales done and operations And then that can be a challenge too And then really important from that book is is the idea of ending a conversation or ending the call With the statement that you want to work together You want to see through this you want to basically like, you know collaborate and you appreciate the opportunity to work together That was something that in that book he calls out you end your conversation with that Oftentimes people will start the negotiation project process with that But by the end of that, you know legal review call or whatever You basically, you know end the call like gritting your teeth and saying have a blessed day
Like don’t do that. Don’t do that. Just remember what you’re there for you’re there You’re there to help the customer your your your peers your your mutually there, you know You have something to offer they have something to offer if you that that’s probably one of the best takeaways from that book As I’ve seen is like hey end the conversation Restating why why you’re all there? What what’s the purpose of you guys you can be on that call? Love it. Love it. All right Let’s talk about you know back to this idea this theme of victory and defeat and transformation Let’s talk about cloud first. So I mean you guys are you know for anybody that hasn’t worked with you obviously, you’re a Swiss army knife, okay, so we talked about wedge services, but Walk me through an example where maybe you came into it and the customer was defeated and and you helped on that kind of cloud Transformation. So maybe the the business problems the tech stack all that good stuff
Yeah, so we got we got brought in by a partner to To an opportunity that was kind of it wasn’t dead in the water But they were really struggling with how they were going to manage You know deployment of about about about 200 firewalls
There’s it was it was 30 locate through excuse me 30 countries They they had selected and they had invested time and going through You know different technology reviews and they had selected
Fortigate firewalls and HA pairs at about 200 sites But when they were going through their other negotiations around How they were going to integrate that they had they had a Splunk instance and they had a very established security operations team And they were working on how they’re gonna get the you know the for the gate and the for the manager to push logs and they were going through all sorts architectural design challenges and things like that and
That was all good but at the end of the day They were struggling with how they were going to finance the deployment and then they couldn’t figure out how to actually manage the support operation patching and Physical dispatch of all the different locations. So it wasn’t necessarily a technology challenge. They had they had a 24-7 sock I think they were on like a I believe they were on like a pager duty ticketing system and they were they were tying in with a Splunk instance and then they were obviously Standardized on the Fortinet Fortigate and for to analyze their features
But they got 200 sites around the world in 30 different countries and they had 18 months to get this job done And we were brought in to just be the day to support So they brought us in like hey quest they got a source these from a national bar. They’re going to tie these in with their existing sock analyst team and You know day two what’s it cost for a quest to manage these firewalls?
And we got brought in and we went through the pricing exercise But then we were told yeah, they don’t know how to to distribute these they don’t know how to get them to be deployed We said well we can we can help deploy so we have project management teams we do infrastructure services we can cable up the D marks we can pull you can extend it and drop those in and build them into the 200 sites and That was that was one of those moments that every salesperson hates to hear like oh, I didn’t know you guys did that Yeah, we do that And then you know our our our rep who was working with a partner also said well You know doesn’t sound like you guys Necessarily have the Fortinet folks on staff they were dealing with professional services from from the vendor But that wasn’t a long-term solution They didn’t have any full-time employees who are going to be actually managing it They had the sock analysts and they had the Splunk and the PagerDuty and the network operations team. It was a fortune 100 company But they didn’t have they didn’t have resources So they’re gonna have to hire people and train people and so you know our rep and the partner said well Would you like us to manage maintain support these and provide the whole asset as a service?
so so Rather than just helping with the deployment or helping with the day to we also helped because we have that var background And we have that MSP background We were able to help source all the hardware Deliver it as a service over over I believe as a five-year contract
Where you know we manage the licensing we manage the patching we manage the dispatch we manage the deployment and we we deployed You know 220 sites over 30 30 countries, and I think we finished it up about Four months ahead of schedule so much so that the the procurement guys called us up and said hey could you guys? You know just hold certain aspects of your billing because we didn’t think you guys would be Operational by this time and this isn’t budgeted for next quarter for that part of the payment. We said yeah sure that’s It’s like sandbagging to me. I’m all for it. Yeah, so so you know they you know they You know we didn’t really have that budgeted to have you guys done, so we had a great deployment great opportunity, but it was It was having that conversation like hey you got the tech stack figured out you have your deployment figured out But there’s a couple gaps there, and that’s really where quests can flourish and like help people like hey It’s not all it doesn’t all necessarily you know work out exactly the way you plan it So that’s where we’re that’s where we love to get engaged and help with that that outcome conversation awesome I What’s great about that is that if you look back? Maybe traditional thinking or years ago products that we had available in the channel that might have to be three four five different vendors that we bring In and and what you’ve given the ability to do in that for that partner is cool one vendor makes the customers life easy They don’t have to you know figure out who’s coordinating what you’ve got a lot of different components in that valuable components But it’s it’s being managed by by your group and so that makes it easier And then of course who do you think that customer calls next time they need another? Complicated project right they’re calling the Swiss Army knife, so I love awesome example there Yeah, yeah, those are those are a lot of fun and one of the most exciting things that I think that that partners don’t give themselves enough credit for is They’re in the room with the people making those decisions, and they’re trusted to be in that room and they might not be the expert on application development or manage firewall services or You know cloud migration, but you’re in the room with the people making those decisions And they don’t have all the answers especially in the middle market especially in that Hundred to thousand user base group which by the way there’s ten thousand of those companies in the United States right now ten thousand Middle market accounts that don’t necessarily have all the assets or resources that they need And they’re looking for people to help them with those decisions And so I don’t think partners give themselves enough credit to the way they can they can Really position themselves to hey, I don’t have knowledge exactly about this, but give me a minute I’ll go find somebody who can help you and That’s an amazing opportunity. I mean it’s just it’s you know you’re seeing more and more investment in the channel We’re seeing people come after that that that That potential revenue out there. It’s it’s it’s changing the game for sure and I think partners really need to recognize You have an amazing opportunity to get involved in some huge Massive deals if you just Just scratch the surface just ask the question well Yeah, I mean we could we could probably come back and run our whole entire episode on this about how many different examples of Transformations that you guys have made I mean we obviously we’re talking about cloud and security But I think about some of the other conversations that we’ve had lately about your ability You know that that was a you know for two net and management and licensing right which is a huge thing on its own But take the shift this just for a second now to Infrastructure right whether that’s prem. That’s VMware. That’s Azure stack. That’s AWS outpost. That’s Hyperscalers natively I mean you’ve got depth and resources in all of those areas too, right?
Yeah, so so we We build and operate We built and operate two of our own data centers in Northern, California and then we operate on about 16 other sites around the country where we’ve Deployed private architecture private private instances Azure stack Targets for backups and then all those sites are you know can be interconnected and we have clients who have express routes and direct connects to the hyperscalers – right so We’ve got a long-term Microsoft practice. We work in AWS world Pretty robust application development team and all of these 15 years ago, we talked about like the convergence of things like you know The MSP world and the telecom worlds are going to converge that’s happened But with applications and kind of software dominating everything You know security is touching everything cloud is everywhere like people are just doing it without even knowing And you know, we’re kind of they’re helping them either migrate manage or support it or just or just helping them design Hey, what are we gonna do with this data? You’re seeing You know artificial intelligence and those types of programs getting launched and huge Investments and chipsets right now and people trying to figure out how to capitalize on that You know, we’re trying to help organizations just understand what they have available to them right now and what they could do next so We’re gonna shift this to we’re gonna keep down this combat theme for just a second So if anybody’s not heard of there’s a there’s a large Gentleman out there by the name of Jaco willing who we’ve always we’ve talked about as well X Navy SEAL go watch anything that he does and it’s it’s Terrifying and inspirational at the same time but one of these themes he carries is extreme ownership And so, you know throughout one of these books he talks about the four laws of combat He talks about cover and move simplify prioritize and decentralized command Is there a parallel, you know, you’ve been in so many conversations, right as you’ve translated this down to the business side Is there a parallel there with those and kind of the technology decision track?
Yeah, so so the simplification is in the the four laws of combat That’s core to To our business model and how we Try to communicate our strategy and be available, right? So very simple model for an IT company and how can we help? Right if an organization needs help and is asking for help and it’s okay spending money for help Everyone on our team is empowered to engage Get contracts going get get engineers on the phone Ask questions. We have a model within our business where you’re very flat organization And we have you know people say like open door policies, but like anyone can raise their hand and be like, hey We talked about it earlier There’s a gap in this Understanding of what we’re doing for this client or what this client thinks we’re going to be doing for them And it could be a potential risk for both of us like I see a problem here Can we talk about it? Anyone can do that? That could be an inside sales rep who’s got you know One year of experience or you know, one of our senior national channel managers who’s been here for 20 years, right? Everybody has the ability to do that and to make those decisions. So that decentralization of command is the idea of
Hey, I have a left limit and a right limit and I can operate with I can operate within that lane and my commander’s intent is Go find organizations that need our help. This is this is Tim talking go find organizations that need our help that have Funds to pay for us to help them and are okay working with quest If you if you get if you get three yeses for those three simple rules within our organization They have money to work with us. They have budget to work with us. They understand they have a problem that they need to address okay, and And I’m totally blank on the third one money and Decisions decentralized command to simply simplify just keep it simple. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and keeping it simple there So that the those those three rules within our organization, right? They have a pain. They’re okay working with us and they’re okay paying us for our time. Yeah Everyone on our team is empowered to engage directly. That’s one of the reasons and you guys have you guys have worked with a lot on this That’s one of the reasons I believe our instant response and instant containment is is so effective because we don’t overcomplicate it Right. It’s IR at quest is calm we have a 24-7 team that responds to those emergency requests and Whether you’re a customer or not, we’re launching an engagement within Sometimes as fast as 15 minutes and getting engineers on the phone talking to non customers people who have never met us before Because right now back to the for an IT company and how can we help their organizations getting breached hacked and In deep trouble all the time 24-7 or you know, it’s it’s we’re about to go into a holiday week Probably gonna be some people getting hit. It just happens You got to be very very responsive and or be very responsive. You have to keep it very very simple request comes in ticket gets open and Lead manager on duty calls the person understands exactly what’s what’s going on We either launch or we don’t you know based on their ability to to engage So I love that. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of jocko And by the way, I have a personal goal that at some point He will be a speaker at a Dolores partner advisor Counselor partner event and if I have to sell, you know sent, you know multiple million dollar deals in order to help fund that We’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna get jocko as a as a as a speaker at one of your guys defense I love it. I am down to support that theme
All right, let’s Let’s talk here. Let’s talk about AI for a minute. So, you know, we’re talking about transformation Obviously, there’s a lot of transformation around that So we’ve been talking about Productization. I mean from your perspective though, where’s the where’s the angle here? That you see you got this battle the customers are gonna face But where’s the opportunity here to really help with with as you see the next couple years of AI transformation?
so I think I think we’re kind of at the top of you know, the initial hype cycle as far as Things are really ramping up a lot of investment, you know, you got Microsoft you got Google you got the big The big Goliath’s out there duking it out on the investment side of the house and and and you have you know, Wall Street you
Know in incentivizing I don’t know if you follow sales bro But he had a really funny meme the other day about like, you know Someone coming out for their sales call and just saying AI and then walking back and they’re you know, they’re their stock price you know doubles so so I think we’re kind of in the spot right now or the Investment and the market is gonna dump a ton of money into this. I don’t think that people have figured out exactly how to monetize it yet but That’s that’s AI tell me shut up That’s me. That’s me tapping the desk too hard on the mixer went wild, but though sorry go ahead No, so so I think we’re early but I think that organizations can prepare by Classification of data understanding where their data is Being very very proactive and reading the T’s and C’s of the agreements that they’re signing And understanding who owns what I think a lot of us kind of go to the default terms and conditions agree When we look at our own private, you know data and what’s being shared
You know, there’s others IT professionals in the security space you have tick-tock on their personal phones. Sure, okay That’s a method. I don’t know why you would do that but people do So like there’s there’s there’s a Lot out there around data classification and how you can manage what you have and I think I think it gets back to you Know getting the basics, right? Understanding where your data resides who has access to it how your people are going to manage it What you want to share with AI what you want to build with it? It’s an application like any other but it’s it’s definitely got some, you know, pretty cool capabilities
Part of me is kind of scared about it because I Don’t think book. I don’t think people, you know fully respect the capabilities of the platforms they have enabled right now and I think AI is going to 10x you know some of the capabilities and some of the speed of What they’re doing and I Don’t know I think having stupid people do things quickly is a bad idea and I I think that you know, we sometimes get so excited about The capabilities we don’t necessarily respect what it took to get there and Yeah, I’m I’m still a little bit on the fence around This is a good thing or not I’m not quite sure it’s a good thing. Yeah, we’re preparing for the tsunami one way or another The good thing I think is is what it all translates to is there’s a lot of areas here that we can help And you know, there are many people that can help with that right yourself included in what this journey is data classification Obviously, I think that’s a huge one infrastructure the list goes on and on. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see It can be used for good – I mean machine learning like we were we were an early adopter and kind of next generation you know
You know next generation anomaly based detection for antivirus, right? So you used to have the old school you everyone’s probably heard this analogy a million times We used to have the old school like signature based threat detection, right? Hey, this is a duck and oh my signature said that the ducks are bad So block the duck neck, you know, that was an old way of doing it back in, you know McAfee days and you had huge, you know boot storms that would happen when you launched your BDI and everyone had a certain antivirus on it and that would fire up and tank your systems and We live through that and then we went to the more of the the very very thin anomaly based detection It’s basically this machine learning like hey, this is this code this this operating This this system right here could be potentially malware. It’s got an executable that I’ve never seen before We’re just gonna block that we don’t even know what it is But we’re gonna block that until we till we know more that that is is powerful That’s machine-based learning. That’s anomaly detection. That’s something that’s you know, it could be used for good It could also of course the bad actors the bad actors have access to the same tools we do So yeah All right. So final final thought here So we’ve already kind of talked about you know future and and where we’re at where we’re going what’s coming how we’re gonna enable that how we’re gonna help transform but Take us home here with you know advice for partners, right? You’ve obviously You’ve clued in to a million different ways that you guys can help And so if I’m a partner and I’m listening I want to go a little bit deeper into security your cloud transformation my customers my new prospects What’s your advice? Is there a track that you send me down? Is there a place that you send me to get educated or the questions that you want people to be asking to open up these doors More what’s your take there?
Yeah, I just I just advise the partners to Be very curious about what their clients are dealing with and then Ask for other talk to other people within the organization around struggles that they’re having
Because end users are great signals for areas that might be struggling in IT. cyber security is always something that people are challenged with we we run we run what we call checkup programs where we come in and we kind of do a right seat ride evaluation of seven areas where we find people
Typically get breached right there’s usually Six or seven areas where if you don’t have those aspects your technology tied up And and you know in a disciplined manner maintained
It’s a it’s a potential breach area So get a little bit of knowledge in areas where people get hit areas where your clients are struggling and just be curious about What they’re doing you don’t have to be an expert In cyber security to ask the question Hey, who manages your firewalls for you? Yeah You don’t have to be an expert to ask the question. Have you guys tested your backups in the lab? Just common sense kind of approaches You don’t have to know speeds and feeds to to ask common sense questions and You know a lot of you know a lot of end users will appreciate, you know A third party coming in and helping them identify areas where they can improve some might not but my biggest Our most successful engagements happen when someone asks the question. Hey, you know, would you like some help with that?
Love it. Love it Well, a lot of questions man Lots of great nuggets as I as I knew there would be Adam. I really appreciate you coming on buddy Yeah, no, I appreciate it the opportunity It was it was a lot of fun. So thanks for thanks for having me All right, everybody as always just keep in mind these episodes are out there dropping every Wednesday So wherever you’re listening Spotify Apple music go subscribe you get that information Before anybody else does and so stay in tune for you know, this one and the next one coming up So that wraps us up for today Mr. Adam Burke VP of sales at Quest Technologies victory and defeat real life cases of security and cloud transformation I’m your host Josh Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus.