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You're listening to B to B Tech talk
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about new technology and technological
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Welcome to B to B tech Talk with ingram
Micro. I'm your host, Shelby's cardiac
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and our guests today are two thought
leaders from Open Gear Todd, right
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Chechi, vice president of sales for the
Americas and brian keepers, Director of
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channel sales for the Americas.
Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Thanks.
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Great to be here. So today we're
talking about network resilience, why
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it's important and how to achieve it.
But before we get into those
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discussions, brian tell us about New
Jersey based Open gear here. Okay, so
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I've been with the company a little
over five years now, almost six years.
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And when I started we didn't have a
Channel program. But what we did have
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is a fantastic product. So just to kind
of give you the high level view of what
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open gear is, it's not a outdoor
apparel, which is something that I get
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often. But it is, it's all about remote
access and infrastructure. So as we
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talk about I. T. And Todd's going to
talk to you quite a bit about how our
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customers are using our products. But
at a high level what we do and the
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reason that we've been able to be
successful is because we allow
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customers to gain remote access to
network devices anytime from anywhere,
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even if the network is down. And so we
do business with 75% of the Fortune 100
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companies and our business has been
booming during the current pandemic,
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which has been fantastic for us. So we
have locations all over the world and
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we do business with some of the largest
companies in the world globally. Well
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that remote access is the name of the
game, especially in this decentralized
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working environment. So, Todd, when we
talk about network resilience, what
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does that mean, and why is it critical
for business continuity?
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It's a great question really. Network
resilience is the ability to withstand
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and recover From a disruption of
service. So it's not if the network is
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going to go down as we all know, it's
when it goes down, and the question
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then becomes, you know, does it take
you 10 minutes to recover? Does it take
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you 10 hours or does it take you 10
days? So, you know, you look at someone
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like fastly that had an outage the
other day, they recovered in an hour.
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So a global outage, they were able to
recover in an hour. My guess is that
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they have some sort of remote access
solution in place or they wouldn't have
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been able to do that. So it's very,
very fundamental. We call it out of
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band management, it's very fundamental
for for business continuity because it
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really is the foundation of the
business. The network is the business
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today. So if that network goes down,
you can't transact with your customers,
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you can't communicate with your
customers, we couldn't do this podcast.
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It's a networking download and if it
did, hopefully we can recover quickly
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to get back online. So talk about
network resilience though, is that the
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same as network redundancy brian,
here's how I would summarize that ston
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is a perfect example. I think Todd's
going to touch on a little bit about,
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I'm going to talk to you about a little
bit about how were complementary to a
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lot of other technologies, but the
example would be for ston ston does a
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lot of complicated computations,
thousands per second. And so it's a
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router at the end of the day. So now
that the technology has progressed,
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ston, everything is moving to the edge.
So when they have critical locations,
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what ston companies do is they
recommend that you stack multiple
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routers at those critical locations so
that if one router goes offline, the
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other one takes over. That. To me is
redundancy. What our product does is it
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gives you, so we have no moving parts
of solid state. We have a cellular fail
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over capability. We give them the
ability to provision products. There's
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a lot of things that we do. So Todd
talked about the traditional out of
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band, which is the remediated problem.
When it occurs. We certainly do that.
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But then beyond that we do smart out of
band, there's a lot of other elements
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that so for us, no moving parts, we
don't have to worry about a router
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locking up. So we're there and we're
connected into a console port onto
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devices like Cisco and juniper and Palo
Alto. So, so if you look at router
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switches and firewalls, those are going
to be the three primary things that
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we're going to connect to. And for us,
we're going to give them resilience and
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being able to get back to that takeover
console access and remediate the
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problem from wherever they are. And so
that's how I would I would say the
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difference between resilience versus
redundancies. Right, Right. Well, and
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so, you know, to understand the product
better than, I mean, you mentioned the
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in band and out of band Todd, What's
the difference between those two and I
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guess especially for our listeners
today, who have, you know, a good
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understanding of this already. What's
the difference between traditional out
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of band and smart out of band? Yeah. In
ban is in band management is going over
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your production network out of band is
going through a secondary network and
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we call it the management plane. The
independent management plane out of
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band management has sort of grown up in
terms of how we, how we think of it are
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independent management plane today is
four G L T E. So we get into that box
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remotely and do it through the
secondary, a secondary ethernet
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interface, for example. And that that's
our management. So that's very, very
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important because you don't want to
manage your network with your network
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because that defeats the whole purpose
of never resilience. So odd. A band
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management people been doing it for
years and the way they did it was with
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the pots line they would dial into the
box is usually a Cisco terminal server.
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It was attached to other terminal or to
other routers and switches and they
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would get into the unit. But you're
pretty limited in terms of what you
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could do with a pots line. Like for
example when we started doing cellular
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back in 2010, we actually pioneered it.
That was really something that no one
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else is doing. And so now for the first
time we were able to actually
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communicate with devices, internet of
things if you will remotely. And what I
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mean by that is now we can send smS
text messages to devices, we could get
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email alerts, we could get S. And M. P.
Traps. You can't do any of that stuff
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with a little pots line. So that was
that's very very important. And because
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of that there was more proactive
monitoring, alerting and remediation.
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So that's where we we incorporated the
smart into out of bed is because of the
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cellular interface. So let's talk about
when a network fails. So talk to stay
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with you. I understand that opened year,
commissioned a study about network out
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of it outages and found that improving
network resilience was really the
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number one priority. For nearly half a
49% of the respondents were nearly a
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third have lost more than $1 million 12
months do To network outages. So what
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were the most eye opening findings? And
I guess how do they highlight the
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importance of network resilience? It
was it was a really good study actually.
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If you look in kind of dive into some
of the details, 30% of the 500
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companies that we surveyed Have lost
like $1 million dollars in revenue in
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the past year. So you think about that,
you know, 30% of 500, companies that $1
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million $150 million. And these are
just the companies that we talked to.
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So this is not a unique problem. This
is a problem for every business. And if
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you think about it as C E O spends a
lot of money on routers and switches
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and storage and compute and all these
things. But his network is enough. None
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of that matters. You know what I'm
saying? So it's really, really critical
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for them to to have a network resilient
solution in place, what we call it
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smart out of band. But that is that is
really, really critical that that was
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that came out in this study. The other
thing that was interesting is 40% of
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the network outages took more than one
day to resolve. So imagine being down
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for a day, you know fast, It was down
an hour and we were all asleep when it
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went down what happened in the early am,
but being down a whole hour that keeps
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cios up at night, you know, they got a
report if their public company, they
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got a report, you know why they're
company didn't hit their numbers this
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past quarter. So it's important for
them to have. And then the other thing
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that came out of this was, you know,
one of the things you don't want to do
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during a now you just have to get in
the car or plane to go fix it. You want
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to do a remote, you want that secure
remote access. And this study actually
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said that uh network engineers one of
the most common challenges for them in
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terms of our mediation is having to
travel to the site trying to get there
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while this is all going on in the
network's down not having not be able
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to get there quick enough. So that was
at 42%. So you know a few few things uh
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nuggets there that you know that came
out of the study again proved that how
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important it is to have a network
resilient solution in place. You know
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I'll tell you my husband works in I. T.
And when he would get that that dreaded
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call in the middle of the night that he
had to you know we're in Dallas and he
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would have to drive out to the data
center in Fort Worth. And I'll tell you
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enough months and years of that. And it
does it does keep you up at night and
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it just makes you sick to your stomach
whenever that phone rings because
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you're thinking uh that's the call that
I've been dreading. So you can relate
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to this with your husband in the
industry. Exactly yeah. So trying to
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solve that problem for it professionals
and ceos that's a real thing. So when
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we talk about network resilience, let's
discuss what that means for businesses
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and then specifically channel sales.
And so how does open gears partner
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program really helped partners grow
their business? And and I guess um what
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challenges do you kind of talk to them
about that? Network resilient network
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and have can, can achieve. Sure. That's
a great question and I can tell you I
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have answered that question probably
1000 times. So the good news is I know
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exactly how to answer it. And the
better news is our product is really is
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tailored for many resellers. And so
when I talked to ingram staff about it
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and I do sales trainings and whatnot. I
talked to him about unique product
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offering. So complimentary to the
Ciscos and jennifer's and others follow
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Altos. So as we look at it, if you're
selling these products, then there's a
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high likelihood that they need our
product. And I also tell the resellers
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specifically as far as going out. So we
have a we have a unique product
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offering as we talked about. So we do
smart out of band, we have a
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centralized management told that lays
over the top of it that gives them a
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view of what's connected with the
statuses of it. We do fell over to
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cellular. So when something goes out
they have a four G lte connection to
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get back to it. And we do provisioning.
So those are some of the things that
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that we do that really that
differentiate us from from others. And
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if we look at that ops automation and
those types of things. So we're in the
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data center, we're at the edge, we do
ston, we're cloud IOT, so we're unique
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product offering for them. And I
mentioned the complimentary piece to
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that. So The other two pieces that I
think are important or that we have
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dedicated resources to them. So on Time
Team you have regional sales manager
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and you have a sales engineer and those
people are talking to the end user in
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conjunction with the reseller and
helping close that business. And then
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we also have for the Channel team, the
team that I'm responsible for. We have
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Channel managers across the country.
And in addition to that, we have a
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Channel sales engineer. So our Channel
S. C. Is one of the best in the
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business and he's been in the industry
for a long time and he understands it.
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So when he's talking to the S E C S. C.
S, the pre sales engineers, those
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people know what out of band management
is and those people know how to speak
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to it intelligently. So that's the
thing that really has helped us
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differentiate. We have a partner portal
and we have a lot of content that's out
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there that can help our partners close
the business. But I think our secret
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sauce is that we have people in place
to help support them as well. So a
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combination of those two things and
like I said, I tell people all the time,
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the biggest impediment to our success
is awareness and that's a really cool
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place to be because not too many
companies can say that. So let's see.
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They don't know what out of band
management is and they don't know who
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opened gear is and once we have that
conversation, the opportunity is there.
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And so I'm confident in saying that
because I've seen it proven over and
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over again. So that's the cool thing
about working for the company that we
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work for, definitely. Well, it seems
like it's, it's pretty easy to be able
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to talk about network resilience for
channel sales. So how do you maintain
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and grow those relationships while
talking about network resilience? Yeah,
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sure. So with the partners, what we're
trying to do is identify the pain
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points and Todd and his team really
have done a great job of that because
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we have some experts. And so as we look
at, if you're hearing things like
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remote sites or branch build outs or
refreshes, data center build outs and
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you look at SD WAN deployments, zero
touch provision. Those are the kind of
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things that we're looking for. If
you're selling a lot of routers and
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switches and PDS and firewalls, those
are the kind of things that we're
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looking for. So to start to start the
conversation, are you doing any of
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those things? And then asking the
simple questions, what do you do for
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out of band? And here's what I can tell
you. We are the market leader for this
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space. So we have over 50% market share.
And so margins are subjective, but I
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can tell you we have great margins and
what we're seeing a street prices on
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our products 10, 10 to 15% of them srp
and with the partner discounts, there's
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some good margin to be had there. We
have a deal registration program and I
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mentioned the team that supports that
too. So when you look at all that,
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those are the kind of things that we're
doing to start the conversation. Once
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we get to that we've got a team in
place that can help them be as involved
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as uninvolved. They want to be with
well Todd coming back to you. How is
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open gear really helping with the work
from anywhere environment and how have
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you helped your customers adjust to
this new this new world we live in.
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Yeah, I think in a lot of different
ways our products really are essential
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to work from home. I mean in a home
environment and we've we've helped our
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customers directly and we've helped our
customers customers indirectly. And
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what I mean by that is just to start
with one example is we did a case study
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recently with worldwide technology and
they couldn't during the pandemic. They
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are the largest fiscal reseller in the
United States or north America. They
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weren't able to get into their building
in their advanced technology center
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called the A. T. C. This is where all
the solution. Architects, sales
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engineers actually demonstrate your
solutions whether it's storage or
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rescue when whatever it is. So since
they couldn't get into the building,
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they actually got into the building
using our product. They have about a 75
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to 100 of our units in these racks and
A. T. C. And they were actually able to
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log into the device through our user
interface, Get in and demonstrate the
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solution to our customers. Now this is
a $10 billion company that is using our
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product and it became very very
essential to them to use so that they
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could sell stuff. You look at a company
like you're familiar with netflix who
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people during the last 18 months. How
many outages with these with these
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companies did we have during dependent?
I I can't think of any. Um and if we
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had had one, they have been able to
recover very quickly because like I
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said, they're all customers bars. So
you know, another example would be like
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Tic tac and zoom very heavily used
during the last 18 months. Both of them
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actually ride on the cloud that we
actually, I can't stay this customer's
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name but they ride on the same on the
cloud, the same cloud of this customer
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and they use our product to manage well
to deploy the network, but also to
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management, manage it after it's been
deployed. So, I mean very, very
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critical to, you know, I mean, zoom was
one of the hottest companies out there
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and it became very, very important for
us to be able to continue to do our
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jobs remotely. And then another
customer of ours is Comcast. How do we
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help them? Well, we made sure that
their network was up so they could
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bring broadband to their neighborhoods
at the far edge. And as as you know,
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there was a huge increase in demand for
for people that were working from home.
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So not only do we help get these guys
up and online and zero touch provisions,
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their routers and switches, but we also
after it's up we actually help manage
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it so that they know they have that
network resilience in the event of an
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outage, not only work from home but
school from home. Yeah. Yeah. So we've
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seen a lot of changes in our work
environments and and our network needs.
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So as we start to wrap up this episode
we asked everybody the same question
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and that's where do you see technology
going in the next year and that can be
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anything from your specific corner of
the world to your your furthest
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reaching interests. So brian let me
start with you. I think just to just to
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echo what I said earlier as we see
these trends remote network access,
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we're going to see that to continue to
be important. And uh and I think that's
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really the biggest thing. I know
there's some technology trends that
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Todd can speak to that above my pay
grade. But I think as we see the
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network moving to the edge, there's
more pain points, failure points and
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when those places are there, that's
where we come in, tell that about you.
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Yeah. You know, there's probably a few
areas that I see becoming more
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important. Cisco announced at Cisco
live virtual event network is a service.
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So I think that is going to pick up
momentum in the near future. And
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probably the other manufacturers start
to pick up on that, that whole
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recurring revenue model, you know,
Bitcoin is really popular right now.
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And how does ingram transact with their
partners and cryptocurrencies? How do
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end users transit act with their
partners in cryptocurrencies? That in
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the next five years could be something
to think about. And then the other
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thing that I've been watching pretty
closely is this whole idea of mill,
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which in college athletics it stands
for name image and likeness. So they
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can now put logos on their jerseys and
they can actually start making money.
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You know, the people that are there.
Good obviously. So I look at this from
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a business standpoint. You know, what,
what is your digital currency? You
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yourself you're doing a zoom call for
example, it's a sales call. You got
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these four or five people on the call
and maybe I'm wearing an ingram hat
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with the company will go on to promote
your business to the people are
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presenting to. So I think, you know, I
think that's something that could get
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big as well in the next 55 years or so,
interesting stuff. Well, I certainly
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appreciate your insights today. If any
of our listeners though, have more
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questions, how can they find out more
about what we talked about today? So we
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have, uh, we have an internal resource
at ingram Micro and that's mr Michael
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00:19:32.660 --> 00:19:37.780
Patino. So Michael dot Patino at ingram
micro dot com. You can also reach out
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to my team directly. So, and that
information is available on our website.
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00:19:42.930 --> 00:19:48.560
So go to partners dot open gear dot com.
Get signed up for a partner portal and
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uh let's go start making some money
brian and todd. Thank you so much for
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joining me today. Thanks Shelby.
Pleasure. Welcome. Thank you man and
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thank you listeners for tuning in and
subscribing to this episode of B two B
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00:20:03.080 --> 00:20:06.720
Tech Talk with Anger Micro. If you
liked this episode or have a question,
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00:20:06.730 --> 00:20:11.390
please join the discussion on twitter
with the hashtag B to B tech talk until
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next time I'm Shelby Startalk. You've
been listening to B to B Tech Talk with
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00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:20.720
Anger Micro. This episode was sponsored
by ingram Micro's. Imagine Next BtB
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00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:24.700
Tech Talk is a joint production with
sweet fish Media and Anger Micro ingram
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00:20:24.700 --> 00:20:28.250
Micro production handled by laura
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an episode. Subscribe today on your
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Mm
1
00:00:08.039 --> 00:00:12.240
You're listening to B to B Tech talk
with ingram Micro. The place to learn
2
00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:16.440
about new technology and technological
advances before they become mainstream.
3
00:00:16.450 --> 00:00:20.390
This podcast is sponsored by ingram
Micro's. Imagine next. It's not about
4
00:00:20.390 --> 00:00:23.750
the destination, it's about going
someplace you never thought possible.
5
00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:28.860
Go to imagine next dot ingram micro dot
com to find out more. Let's get into it.
6
00:00:29.540 --> 00:00:33.840
Welcome to B to B tech Talk with ingram
Micro. I'm your host, Shelby's cardiac
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00:00:33.850 --> 00:00:37.460
and our guests today are two thought
leaders from Open Gear Todd, right
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00:00:37.460 --> 00:00:42.000
Chechi, vice president of sales for the
Americas and brian keepers, Director of
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00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:46.760
channel sales for the Americas.
Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Thanks.
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Great to be here. So today we're
talking about network resilience, why
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it's important and how to achieve it.
But before we get into those
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discussions, brian tell us about New
Jersey based Open gear here. Okay, so
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I've been with the company a little
over five years now, almost six years.
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And when I started we didn't have a
Channel program. But what we did have
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is a fantastic product. So just to kind
of give you the high level view of what
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open gear is, it's not a outdoor
apparel, which is something that I get
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often. But it is, it's all about remote
access and infrastructure. So as we
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talk about I. T. And Todd's going to
talk to you quite a bit about how our
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customers are using our products. But
at a high level what we do and the
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reason that we've been able to be
successful is because we allow
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customers to gain remote access to
network devices anytime from anywhere,
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even if the network is down. And so we
do business with 75% of the Fortune 100
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companies and our business has been
booming during the current pandemic,
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which has been fantastic for us. So we
have locations all over the world and
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we do business with some of the largest
companies in the world globally. Well
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that remote access is the name of the
game, especially in this decentralized
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working environment. So, Todd, when we
talk about network resilience, what
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does that mean, and why is it critical
for business continuity?
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It's a great question really. Network
resilience is the ability to withstand
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and recover From a disruption of
service. So it's not if the network is
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going to go down as we all know, it's
when it goes down, and the question
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then becomes, you know, does it take
you 10 minutes to recover? Does it take
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you 10 hours or does it take you 10
days? So, you know, you look at someone
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like fastly that had an outage the
other day, they recovered in an hour.
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So a global outage, they were able to
recover in an hour. My guess is that
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they have some sort of remote access
solution in place or they wouldn't have
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been able to do that. So it's very,
very fundamental. We call it out of
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band management, it's very fundamental
for for business continuity because it
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really is the foundation of the
business. The network is the business
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today. So if that network goes down,
you can't transact with your customers,
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you can't communicate with your
customers, we couldn't do this podcast.
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It's a networking download and if it
did, hopefully we can recover quickly
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to get back online. So talk about
network resilience though, is that the
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same as network redundancy brian,
here's how I would summarize that ston
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is a perfect example. I think Todd's
going to touch on a little bit about,
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I'm going to talk to you about a little
bit about how were complementary to a
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lot of other technologies, but the
example would be for ston ston does a
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lot of complicated computations,
thousands per second. And so it's a
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router at the end of the day. So now
that the technology has progressed,
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ston, everything is moving to the edge.
So when they have critical locations,
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what ston companies do is they
recommend that you stack multiple
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routers at those critical locations so
that if one router goes offline, the
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other one takes over. That. To me is
redundancy. What our product does is it
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gives you, so we have no moving parts
of solid state. We have a cellular fail
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over capability. We give them the
ability to provision products. There's
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a lot of things that we do. So Todd
talked about the traditional out of
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band, which is the remediated problem.
When it occurs. We certainly do that.
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But then beyond that we do smart out of
band, there's a lot of other elements
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that so for us, no moving parts, we
don't have to worry about a router
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locking up. So we're there and we're
connected into a console port onto
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devices like Cisco and juniper and Palo
Alto. So, so if you look at router
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switches and firewalls, those are going
to be the three primary things that
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we're going to connect to. And for us,
we're going to give them resilience and
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being able to get back to that takeover
console access and remediate the
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problem from wherever they are. And so
that's how I would I would say the
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difference between resilience versus
redundancies. Right, Right. Well, and
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so, you know, to understand the product
better than, I mean, you mentioned the
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in band and out of band Todd, What's
the difference between those two and I
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guess especially for our listeners
today, who have, you know, a good
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understanding of this already. What's
the difference between traditional out
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of band and smart out of band? Yeah. In
ban is in band management is going over
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your production network out of band is
going through a secondary network and
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we call it the management plane. The
independent management plane out of
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band management has sort of grown up in
terms of how we, how we think of it are
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independent management plane today is
four G L T E. So we get into that box
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remotely and do it through the
secondary, a secondary ethernet
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interface, for example. And that that's
our management. So that's very, very
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important because you don't want to
manage your network with your network
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because that defeats the whole purpose
of never resilience. So odd. A band
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management people been doing it for
years and the way they did it was with
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the pots line they would dial into the
box is usually a Cisco terminal server.
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It was attached to other terminal or to
other routers and switches and they
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would get into the unit. But you're
pretty limited in terms of what you
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could do with a pots line. Like for
example when we started doing cellular
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back in 2010, we actually pioneered it.
That was really something that no one
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else is doing. And so now for the first
time we were able to actually
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communicate with devices, internet of
things if you will remotely. And what I
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mean by that is now we can send smS
text messages to devices, we could get
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email alerts, we could get S. And M. P.
Traps. You can't do any of that stuff
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with a little pots line. So that was
that's very very important. And because
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of that there was more proactive
monitoring, alerting and remediation.
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So that's where we we incorporated the
smart into out of bed is because of the
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cellular interface. So let's talk about
when a network fails. So talk to stay
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with you. I understand that opened year,
commissioned a study about network out
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of it outages and found that improving
network resilience was really the
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number one priority. For nearly half a
49% of the respondents were nearly a
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third have lost more than $1 million 12
months do To network outages. So what
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were the most eye opening findings? And
I guess how do they highlight the
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importance of network resilience? It
was it was a really good study actually.
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If you look in kind of dive into some
of the details, 30% of the 500
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companies that we surveyed Have lost
like $1 million dollars in revenue in
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the past year. So you think about that,
you know, 30% of 500, companies that $1
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million $150 million. And these are
just the companies that we talked to.
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So this is not a unique problem. This
is a problem for every business. And if
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you think about it as C E O spends a
lot of money on routers and switches
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and storage and compute and all these
things. But his network is enough. None
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of that matters. You know what I'm
saying? So it's really, really critical
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for them to to have a network resilient
solution in place, what we call it
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smart out of band. But that is that is
really, really critical that that was
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that came out in this study. The other
thing that was interesting is 40% of
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the network outages took more than one
day to resolve. So imagine being down
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for a day, you know fast, It was down
an hour and we were all asleep when it
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went down what happened in the early am,
but being down a whole hour that keeps
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cios up at night, you know, they got a
report if their public company, they
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got a report, you know why they're
company didn't hit their numbers this
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past quarter. So it's important for
them to have. And then the other thing
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that came out of this was, you know,
one of the things you don't want to do
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during a now you just have to get in
the car or plane to go fix it. You want
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to do a remote, you want that secure
remote access. And this study actually
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said that uh network engineers one of
the most common challenges for them in
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terms of our mediation is having to
travel to the site trying to get there
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while this is all going on in the
network's down not having not be able
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to get there quick enough. So that was
at 42%. So you know a few few things uh
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nuggets there that you know that came
out of the study again proved that how
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important it is to have a network
resilient solution in place. You know
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I'll tell you my husband works in I. T.
And when he would get that that dreaded
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call in the middle of the night that he
had to you know we're in Dallas and he
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would have to drive out to the data
center in Fort Worth. And I'll tell you
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enough months and years of that. And it
does it does keep you up at night and
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it just makes you sick to your stomach
whenever that phone rings because
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you're thinking uh that's the call that
I've been dreading. So you can relate
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to this with your husband in the
industry. Exactly yeah. So trying to
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solve that problem for it professionals
and ceos that's a real thing. So when
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we talk about network resilience, let's
discuss what that means for businesses
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and then specifically channel sales.
And so how does open gears partner
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program really helped partners grow
their business? And and I guess um what
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challenges do you kind of talk to them
about that? Network resilient network
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and have can, can achieve. Sure. That's
a great question and I can tell you I
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have answered that question probably
1000 times. So the good news is I know
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exactly how to answer it. And the
better news is our product is really is
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tailored for many resellers. And so
when I talked to ingram staff about it
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and I do sales trainings and whatnot. I
talked to him about unique product
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offering. So complimentary to the
Ciscos and jennifer's and others follow
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Altos. So as we look at it, if you're
selling these products, then there's a
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high likelihood that they need our
product. And I also tell the resellers
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specifically as far as going out. So we
have a we have a unique product
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offering as we talked about. So we do
smart out of band, we have a
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centralized management told that lays
over the top of it that gives them a
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view of what's connected with the
statuses of it. We do fell over to
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cellular. So when something goes out
they have a four G lte connection to
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get back to it. And we do provisioning.
So those are some of the things that
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that we do that really that
differentiate us from from others. And
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if we look at that ops automation and
those types of things. So we're in the
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data center, we're at the edge, we do
ston, we're cloud IOT, so we're unique
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product offering for them. And I
mentioned the complimentary piece to
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that. So The other two pieces that I
think are important or that we have
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dedicated resources to them. So on Time
Team you have regional sales manager
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and you have a sales engineer and those
people are talking to the end user in
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conjunction with the reseller and
helping close that business. And then
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we also have for the Channel team, the
team that I'm responsible for. We have
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Channel managers across the country.
And in addition to that, we have a
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Channel sales engineer. So our Channel
S. C. Is one of the best in the
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business and he's been in the industry
for a long time and he understands it.
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So when he's talking to the S E C S. C.
S, the pre sales engineers, those
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people know what out of band management
is and those people know how to speak
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to it intelligently. So that's the
thing that really has helped us
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differentiate. We have a partner portal
and we have a lot of content that's out
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there that can help our partners close
the business. But I think our secret
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sauce is that we have people in place
to help support them as well. So a
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combination of those two things and
like I said, I tell people all the time,
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the biggest impediment to our success
is awareness and that's a really cool
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place to be because not too many
companies can say that. So let's see.
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They don't know what out of band
management is and they don't know who
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opened gear is and once we have that
conversation, the opportunity is there.
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And so I'm confident in saying that
because I've seen it proven over and
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over again. So that's the cool thing
about working for the company that we
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work for, definitely. Well, it seems
like it's, it's pretty easy to be able
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to talk about network resilience for
channel sales. So how do you maintain
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and grow those relationships while
talking about network resilience? Yeah,
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sure. So with the partners, what we're
trying to do is identify the pain
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points and Todd and his team really
have done a great job of that because
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we have some experts. And so as we look
at, if you're hearing things like
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remote sites or branch build outs or
refreshes, data center build outs and
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you look at SD WAN deployments, zero
touch provision. Those are the kind of
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things that we're looking for. If
you're selling a lot of routers and
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switches and PDS and firewalls, those
are the kind of things that we're
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looking for. So to start to start the
conversation, are you doing any of
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those things? And then asking the
simple questions, what do you do for
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out of band? And here's what I can tell
you. We are the market leader for this
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space. So we have over 50% market share.
And so margins are subjective, but I
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can tell you we have great margins and
what we're seeing a street prices on
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our products 10, 10 to 15% of them srp
and with the partner discounts, there's
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some good margin to be had there. We
have a deal registration program and I
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mentioned the team that supports that
too. So when you look at all that,
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those are the kind of things that we're
doing to start the conversation. Once
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we get to that we've got a team in
place that can help them be as involved
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as uninvolved. They want to be with
well Todd coming back to you. How is
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open gear really helping with the work
from anywhere environment and how have
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you helped your customers adjust to
this new this new world we live in.
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Yeah, I think in a lot of different
ways our products really are essential
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to work from home. I mean in a home
environment and we've we've helped our
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customers directly and we've helped our
customers customers indirectly. And
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what I mean by that is just to start
with one example is we did a case study
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recently with worldwide technology and
they couldn't during the pandemic. They
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are the largest fiscal reseller in the
United States or north America. They
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weren't able to get into their building
in their advanced technology center
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called the A. T. C. This is where all
the solution. Architects, sales
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engineers actually demonstrate your
solutions whether it's storage or
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rescue when whatever it is. So since
they couldn't get into the building,
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they actually got into the building
using our product. They have about a 75
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to 100 of our units in these racks and
A. T. C. And they were actually able to
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log into the device through our user
interface, Get in and demonstrate the
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solution to our customers. Now this is
a $10 billion company that is using our
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product and it became very very
essential to them to use so that they
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could sell stuff. You look at a company
like you're familiar with netflix who
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people during the last 18 months. How
many outages with these with these
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companies did we have during dependent?
I I can't think of any. Um and if we
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had had one, they have been able to
recover very quickly because like I
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said, they're all customers bars. So
you know, another example would be like
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Tic tac and zoom very heavily used
during the last 18 months. Both of them
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actually ride on the cloud that we
actually, I can't stay this customer's
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name but they ride on the same on the
cloud, the same cloud of this customer
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and they use our product to manage well
to deploy the network, but also to
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management, manage it after it's been
deployed. So, I mean very, very
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critical to, you know, I mean, zoom was
one of the hottest companies out there
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and it became very, very important for
us to be able to continue to do our
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jobs remotely. And then another
customer of ours is Comcast. How do we
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help them? Well, we made sure that
their network was up so they could
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bring broadband to their neighborhoods
at the far edge. And as as you know,
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there was a huge increase in demand for
for people that were working from home.
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So not only do we help get these guys
up and online and zero touch provisions,
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their routers and switches, but we also
after it's up we actually help manage
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it so that they know they have that
network resilience in the event of an
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outage, not only work from home but
school from home. Yeah. Yeah. So we've
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seen a lot of changes in our work
environments and and our network needs.
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So as we start to wrap up this episode
we asked everybody the same question
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and that's where do you see technology
going in the next year and that can be
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anything from your specific corner of
the world to your your furthest
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reaching interests. So brian let me
start with you. I think just to just to
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echo what I said earlier as we see
these trends remote network access,
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we're going to see that to continue to
be important. And uh and I think that's
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really the biggest thing. I know
there's some technology trends that
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Todd can speak to that above my pay
grade. But I think as we see the
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network moving to the edge, there's
more pain points, failure points and
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when those places are there, that's
where we come in, tell that about you.
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Yeah. You know, there's probably a few
areas that I see becoming more
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important. Cisco announced at Cisco
live virtual event network is a service.
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So I think that is going to pick up
momentum in the near future. And
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probably the other manufacturers start
to pick up on that, that whole
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recurring revenue model, you know,
Bitcoin is really popular right now.
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And how does ingram transact with their
partners and cryptocurrencies? How do
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end users transit act with their
partners in cryptocurrencies? That in
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the next five years could be something
to think about. And then the other
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thing that I've been watching pretty
closely is this whole idea of mill,
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which in college athletics it stands
for name image and likeness. So they
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can now put logos on their jerseys and
they can actually start making money.
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You know, the people that are there.
Good obviously. So I look at this from
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a business standpoint. You know, what,
what is your digital currency? You
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yourself you're doing a zoom call for
example, it's a sales call. You got
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these four or five people on the call
and maybe I'm wearing an ingram hat
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with the company will go on to promote
your business to the people are
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presenting to. So I think, you know, I
think that's something that could get
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big as well in the next 55 years or so,
interesting stuff. Well, I certainly
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appreciate your insights today. If any
of our listeners though, have more
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questions, how can they find out more
about what we talked about today? So we
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have, uh, we have an internal resource
at ingram Micro and that's mr Michael
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Patino. So Michael dot Patino at ingram
micro dot com. You can also reach out
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to my team directly. So, and that
information is available on our website.
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So go to partners dot open gear dot com.
Get signed up for a partner portal and
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uh let's go start making some money
brian and todd. Thank you so much for
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joining me today. Thanks Shelby.
Pleasure. Welcome. Thank you man and
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thank you listeners for tuning in and
subscribing to this episode of B two B
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Tech Talk with Anger Micro. If you
liked this episode or have a question,
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00:20:06.730 --> 00:20:11.390
please join the discussion on twitter
with the hashtag B to B tech talk until
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00:20:11.390 --> 00:20:16.080
next time I'm Shelby Startalk. You've
been listening to B to B Tech Talk with
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00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:20.720
Anger Micro. This episode was sponsored
by ingram Micro's. Imagine Next BtB
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Tech Talk is a joint production with
sweet fish Media and Anger Micro ingram
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00:20:24.700 --> 00:20:28.250
Micro production handled by laura
Burton and Christine fan. To not miss
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an episode. Subscribe today on your
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Mm