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Welcome to Breaking Down the Buzz, the podcast where we explore the thrilling world of tech and
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history leaders. From AI to the latest trends, we cut through the noise and decode the tech buzz
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and share our collected insights and insider knowledge.
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Welcome back to Breaking Down the Buzz, where we dive deep into the tech world's most fascinating
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personalities. Today we're thrilled to have a very special guest. He's a wizard in the digital
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realm and a certified guru in information security, me play West Bay, the vice president of
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support and delivery at synergy technical. But all done, there's more to play than meets the eye.
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When he's not safeguarding digital landscapes, you can find a pushing limit as an iron
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man triathlete. That's right, endurance resilience and a can do attitude both in tech and on the track.
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On a personal note, he's not just a tech superstar. He's also a great friend and an inspiring figure
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to many. So without further ado, let's welcome Clay West Bay to Breaking Down the Buzz.
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Clay, thank you for joining us on Breaking Down the Buzz and welcome to the Synergy Technical.
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I don't think I've ever been here before. It's good to be here and this is a great place.
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He like it. I love to work here. Yeah, you know, that's good. That's actually a good thing.
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So I thought it would be fun for us to talk about sort of what we see as important for 2020
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for us since we're recording this on the 21st of December and it'll all be in early January.
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I know it's going to be 2024. How on earth, when did you join the Synergy?
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20, 13, I believe at the end of 2020. Wow, you're just a little, little kid back then.
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It's been a while, Sam. They know how. Decade. Then, you like to say that a decade. Yeah.
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That's a decade. A decade. A decade. A decade. A decade. Working with me. Who cares?
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Or, all right. So let's talk about the elephant in the room first of all. And that would be
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generative AI. Everybody's talking about generative AI and kind of what it's doing.
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What do you think for 2024? Yeah, I mean, I'm excited because I feel like
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we've been in that buzz and that hype period, which is great. We're getting to hear about
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all the possibilities and the cool things that could come. But I feel like 2024 is really going to
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be the year where we get to see a lot of that come to fruition with an organization and with our customers.
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And so the actual building, I guess, starts to happen and I think that's going to be
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great for a lot of things that I know we're going to talk about today. But in terms of
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what our customers are thinking about, it's how to act prepare for that. So I know we're going
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to touch on that today, but I know that those are many of the questions that you and I are getting
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on the daily basis. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what I would say is that first of all, anybody, if you think
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generative AI is not happening in your organization, you're just flat out wrong. I can promise you that
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someone is using chatchip with your data. I mean for sure. Sure. I think that there are some
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things that are important that we need to be thinking about, security for sure, but even
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skilling people up on generative AI. So we have folks in our organization not necessarily on the technical
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side, but more on the operation side who are playing around with it and aren't necessarily
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getting what they want out of it. And I do think that there's some skilling that needs to happen
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across all organizations around when you're using generative AI. How do you prompt? It's sort of like
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you wouldn't walk into a deli and say, make me a sandwich. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean,
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the search is absolutely going to get better with this generative AI. So being able to come all
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of that data within your organization and get a clean output, you know, it is going to be
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right at the forefront of every user. So I think that's the big reason why you and our
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getting a lot of the conversations around how do I make sure that only people have access to what
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they should have access to. Right. And you know, we've got this, we've got organizations out there with
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orphaned data that, you know, has IP and it has sensitive information that has just been
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sitting there for a while and people have access to it and they really didn't shouldn't. I mean,
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didn't know they had it but now we're generating content in natural language with all of this. So
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it's going to be really important that access reviews are in place and all of that's actually taking
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place to stuff. Yeah, you know, even from a synergy perspective, so we're what would be called
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a born in the cloud organization where we have never had on-premise workloads. You know, we started
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as a cloud per day one and we were in Office 365 from like literally the very first day when I
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got the business license for the company. And that's great, but it has some challenges. So as we
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were doing our review, preparing for copilot specifically, one of the things that we were looking at
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was what data has been shared and with whom. And one of the things that people don't think about is
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particularly like with one drive. If you have shared a file in one drive and you have shared it via a
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link, then basically what that means is that anyone within your organization that has access to that
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link now has access to that data. So it is possible that I could have maybe shared a cop plan with you
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for someone in your organization. And while that was shared between the two of us, it's a link that
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is available to anybody within synergy technical. And so one of the things that people really need to
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think about are how do I go through my data and determine where data has been shared that while it may
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seem like it has been privately shared, it has not necessarily been privately shared. And how do I
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fix that? And I think that organizations need to get ahead of that. Prior to rolling out these tools
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because boy, you don't want to have a website. Yeah. And you know, I think what we saw a lot of during
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the pandemic from a lot of organizations that were racing to get into the cloud because their
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workforce was spread all over the place. And they needed immediate solution. A lot of those
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sharing capabilities and permissions and access review type conversations and got overlooked
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for speed. For speed. Yeah, exactly. Got to get there. We got to get there now. And now,
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you know, a lot of people are coming back and saying, hey, can you help us
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look at what we have in place? Because we know we've probably had some holes and
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need to deploy birds out. Right. Right. The other interesting thing about generative AI for me,
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I was just watching something and it was related more to the stock price for Google.
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And it was something around you know what technologies do you want to invest in? And this analyst
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was saying, you know, I expect that Google, I'm not saying this is going to happen when they
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declare. But this analyst was saying, I expect that Google stock price should is going to start to
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follow bit because with the adoption of generative AI tools like chat GPT or Bing chat or whatever,
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people are no longer using Google for search because when you use a search engine,
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it will give you kind of all of the places that you can go look and research that content. Whereas
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when you use a tool like a Bing chat or a co-pilot or a chat GPT, not only will it give you
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those resources, but it will summarize them for you. And it'll basically do the research for you.
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And so what's happening and I know this is happening with me is there's a shift to using the
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generative AI tools to search for answers rather than the Bing search or the Google search or the
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the whatever. Well, that's not just me. I do it every day. I mean literally every single day
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and I research something. So yeah, I think other things that we need to really be thinking about
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are the regulatory side of that. So you know, if you have data that has compliance requirements,
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you need to be thinking about that. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think this is where Microsoft
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really shines and you know all of the work that they put into the Microsoft purview
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compliance we is really going to pay off in I think customers are really going to find that
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official as as you know it's a key component of preparing for for generative AI and organization.
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And I think that the security compliance demands are only going to strike that in 2020,
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for on customers. So that you know we adjusted to a cybersecurity panel recently with Adrian
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a couple other folks from our team and you know that that was a big topic of what organizations
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were talking about and you know one of the big components that organizations are talking about
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our round security and compliance is really getting their whole organization involved and not just
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their security team, so you know educating their workforce on on security and compliance and
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what to be on the lookout for in this area. So in trying to get them engaged and excited about
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security, which isn't always the easiest to get reached out. Yeah, then you get excited real fast.
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But you know I think the insider risk focus is going to pick up in 2024.
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Yeah, I can see that. So yeah it all it all you know it all brings a lot of challenges
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but it also brings a lot of great things that I think we're going to see with people being able to
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do things in natural language and build a natural language that's so much better.
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Other guys took a lot of special-ass skills and really skilled talent that there's a real
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shortage about there today. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean there's a lot of things that are exciting
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but I think generative AI is one of the most exciting. If not, the most exciting thing that has happened in
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technology possibly in my lifetime honestly. I mean there's been some really cool things the
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internet, you know because I'm of the generation prior to the internet but generative AI is just
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moving things so much faster than anything we've ever seen before. Flying cars, they're coming.
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I don't know if I'm waiting. Absolutely. Getting off the right. Yeah, right. I mean there's an argument
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around self-driving cars. This is totally off topic but there's an argument around self-driving cars and
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actually my husband Jonathan and I were having this conversation one day when we were sitting in
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traffic and we the discussion that we had because you know we're two IT geeks was if everyone was
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in a self-driving car would there be traffic anymore? Because in theory you know the whole one
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person's slows down and slows everybody else down thing wouldn't be happening. So would there be
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traffic anymore or would there be more traffic because the scenario where a self-driving car
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maybe drives up you get out and there's no parking spaces and now it's driving around the block
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over and over again what if you have everybody doing it? So you know there there's
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and you've got more people that maybe didn't want to get out because they didn't want to drive
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but now it's driving home so I'm going to get out more. Yes that's also true you know you're right
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I didn't think of that I didn't think of not one of our predictions for 20 or but yet still
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somewhat interesting. All right so other things to think about one of the things that I believe will
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will really start to see more of in 2024 are the prevalence of the low code applications
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and tool sets like power automate really you know as as we get more AI tool sets I think that
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the combination of low flow or excuse me low flow of low code applications and AI is going to give
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people the ability to automate things faster than then we had seen previously sure so that for me
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is super interesting and I do think we're going to see a lot of that I'm you know I don't know if you're
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seeing any of that with your team now. No you know our our business app team you know I think
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they're excited about you know being able to to like I said put together things in natural
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language and and speed up some of the processes and things that they have today you know that
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take some digging into and and some real development but you know I think you know it's exciting to be
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kind of see some of the features coming down the road where you know we can be coding something
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and then all of a sudden be prompted for did you think about you know adding this line before
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did you check this or what you like to add this let me go ahead and add it for you so I think
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they're definitely excited about that yeah and I think even you know if you take the the technical
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team out of it so again we have an amazing technical team that can solve almost if any business
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process challenge that they run into if I put my old sio hat on and put your old iT leader hat on
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there were so many things that business users would come to IT with and say can you help me
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automate this process that while they were important when you work in IT you generally have a
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queue of project work that's you know as tall as me deep you just do and so some of those things
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that while they would be value add sort of never got surfaced up to priorities for the organization
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and I do think that these the the low code applications and and tools that's like power
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automate are going to give individuals that maybe aren't necessarily technical the ability to
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automate some things that wouldn't historically have been able to do so you know things like
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take this email and when I receive it right this data here update the spreadsheet or whatever
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that that's something that historically would have probably come to IT but maybe it doesn't have to
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yeah I mean building this flows out doesn't have to be so technical and complex anymore
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yeah you're you're you're standard user can can take on some of those things so yeah
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yeah I think that that's going to lend itself to a necessary skill set of probably
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business process mapping you know you could really easily run into a scenario where you had
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all these crazy flows that weren't necessarily put together in a logical fashion so I do think that
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that skill and it is a skill of being able to map a business process is going to be really
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necessary but I do think that there's an opportunity for a lot of really cool things to get
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done and it is not even necessarily simplistic things but just coding can happen faster the
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sure base yeah yeah so let's talk about the shortage in IT skills that we know exists
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and what do you think about IT staffing in 2024 and I think I think you know we're running into
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the convergence of all these different things coming together at the same time and so
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I think you know there's the laggards to cloud right the the folks that still have some
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like a C apps or services that they need to they know they need to move to cloud or the vendor
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is maybe forcing them to cloud now right because it's time to go they've done they've got a
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sense that that product or whatever it is and so you've got that happening so while the same
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time to organization is trying to digest everything we just talked about with security and compliance
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around gender to AI and how they're going to handle that and so and then at the same time you've
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got this real shortage in the industry and not just IT industry but in a lot of different
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industries but you know really skilled senior resources in a lot of different areas so
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and then and then you've got AI saying okay you can do more with less now so it's just it's an interesting
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that's coming together here in 2024 and so I do think that organizations will struggle a little bit
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with not having that senior talent but they'll look to AI to maybe offset that
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and I know you know a trend that's been happening over time is taking really smart recent
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college graduates train them up within Europe because we do it and and and so that that trend is just
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going to continue and I think you know their organizations are just going to continue to pour into
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those really junior resources and try to build them up to kind of fill this gap. Yeah yeah I
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think what we're seeing certainly is you know it's a weird market because there are a lot of IT
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folks that have been laid off for let go for for one reason or another and I think we've we've seen
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that all across the industry but there seems to be a shortage of the really super technical
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deep into the weeds niche type folks which are often the folks that we're looking for because you
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know when someone engages us they're looking for a really deep expert in a technology and so I think
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those folks are really really difficult to find I think that you know if you're looking for a mid-level
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manager those people are around but if you're looking for somebody who can who can really
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dig in they're harder to find. Conversely I think it was a tough market for for kids graduating from
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school this year because while they might be really really smart and really technically adept they
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don't necessarily have experience and so again for for an organization like ours we can't hire
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somebody straight out of college and build $225 an hour for them I you know any CIO or their their
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solve they're grain is gonna say you're smoking something you can't you can't build me that
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little kid for that kind of price I'm so I know that what we're seeing is that we're hiring kids
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out of school and investing in them for a good couple of years and having them sort of shadow
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projects and be junior to more senior folks to get them to where they need to be but it's it's odd because
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you know four or five years ago I think we probably could have found kids coming out of school that
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that deep experience because those internships were available and I think internships may
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be got hurt of the past couple of years too but it's it's been a weird market for sure yeah
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yeah stepping yeah and I just again I think you know if I'm an organization that is like I said it
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maybe maybe a lagger and I'm being pushed into cloud and so I've got you know all of these
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different projects and initiatives happening but I've got these early junior resources it could could
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be a real challenge and and and and and then like I said at the same time trying to wrap their heads
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around generous of AI and what that's bringing into the organization at the same time so I think I think
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2024 is going to be interesting I also think one of the trends you know we've helped the ton of
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organizations obviously move move to cloud but and then with the pandemic a lot of organizations
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have kind of changed their how their staff works a lot of you know some companies are 100%
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remote out right some are you know 80 to 90% remote but that corporate network hasn't really changed
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very much so I think I think you know CIOs and leadership there are going to be taken a
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fresh looking thing you know we used to have all our data center and and this private data center
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or even on our corporate headquarters do we really you know need this type of network architecture
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do we need these appliances is something that's going to be been taking a take an
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closer look at to see if there's some efficiencies to be had there yeah yeah yeah I think and we
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we have this is a topic that the cloud adoption trends are certainly going to change a little bit
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we're seeing a lot more now and I think we continue to see multi cloud environments there are a lot
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of companies that aren't necessarily comfortable having all of their data at Microsoft are all
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their data at AWS or in Google and and are looking to to distribute that a little bit or a lot
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the other thing is that you know a lot of organizations have have applications now that are
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cloud native and so they're they're trying to take this cloud native applications and integrate
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them with applications that aren't necessarily cloud native and so we're certainly seeing a lot of that
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um there is a focus on sustainability certainly you know a lot of organizations are are waking up to
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we maybe need to make some changes and how we do things and our technology has to
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have a better sustainable impact so we're certainly seeing that I think the biggest thing
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that we're going to see is multi cloud environments it's funny because our conversations 10 years ago
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were I think this cloud thing is going to take off yes organizations are just on us I'm not sure
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it's going to take off and I don't think we're ready to do that and now it's multi cloud
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uh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's quite the it's quite the change it's been quite the journey
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yeah it's in it although I can say and you know who they are there are organizations that we were
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talking to 10 years ago about moving to the cloud because we started synergy with the thought
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that cloud is the future and you know if we were right thank goodness because I quit my job as a CIO
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to do that but there are organizations that now just now are signing their first statement of work
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to move to the cloud that we were talking to 10 years ago and I know you sure yeah yes I do yeah
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yeah it's been quite the journey um anything else you want to talk about for 2024 what's what's on
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the triathlon schedule is an important question definitely shorter right yeah right shorter
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our our means a little bit more races but definitely shorter integration yes and then my kids are
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getting into endurance sports now so that's fun I'm becoming a supporter are you a supporter or
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are you a pacer time a pacer my wife tends to be the pacer and I I tend to be more of the support
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the cheerleader yeah the cheerleader and you know just the logistics managers and they're
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project we need to make that come true that's true project and security it all comes into play
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when you're out there awesome I'm looking forward to 2024 I think we're gonna have a great year
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I think it's gonna be fantastic you know looking forward to just seeing all of the great things not
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only that are staffed it because they do great things every day but that that our customers do
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and and have a good to help them with yeah it's gonna be fantastic
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Welcome to Breaking Down the Buzz, the podcast where we explore the thrilling world of tech and
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history leaders. From AI to the latest trends, we cut through the noise and decode the tech buzz
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and share our collected insights and insider knowledge.
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Welcome back to Breaking Down the Buzz, where we dive deep into the tech world's most fascinating
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personalities. Today we're thrilled to have a very special guest. He's a wizard in the digital
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realm and a certified guru in information security, me play West Bay, the vice president of
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support and delivery at synergy technical. But all done, there's more to play than meets the eye.
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When he's not safeguarding digital landscapes, you can find a pushing limit as an iron
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man triathlete. That's right, endurance resilience and a can do attitude both in tech and on the track.
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On a personal note, he's not just a tech superstar. He's also a great friend and an inspiring figure
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to many. So without further ado, let's welcome Clay West Bay to Breaking Down the Buzz.
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Clay, thank you for joining us on Breaking Down the Buzz and welcome to the Synergy Technical.
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I don't think I've ever been here before. It's good to be here and this is a great place.
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He like it. I love to work here. Yeah, you know, that's good. That's actually a good thing.
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So I thought it would be fun for us to talk about sort of what we see as important for 2020
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for us since we're recording this on the 21st of December and it'll all be in early January.
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I know it's going to be 2024. How on earth, when did you join the Synergy?
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20, 13, I believe at the end of 2020. Wow, you're just a little, little kid back then.
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It's been a while, Sam. They know how. Decade. Then, you like to say that a decade. Yeah.
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That's a decade. A decade. A decade. A decade. A decade. Working with me. Who cares?
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Or, all right. So let's talk about the elephant in the room first of all. And that would be
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generative AI. Everybody's talking about generative AI and kind of what it's doing.
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What do you think for 2024? Yeah, I mean, I'm excited because I feel like
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we've been in that buzz and that hype period, which is great. We're getting to hear about
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all the possibilities and the cool things that could come. But I feel like 2024 is really going to
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be the year where we get to see a lot of that come to fruition with an organization and with our customers.
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And so the actual building, I guess, starts to happen and I think that's going to be
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great for a lot of things that I know we're going to talk about today. But in terms of
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what our customers are thinking about, it's how to act prepare for that. So I know we're going
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to touch on that today, but I know that those are many of the questions that you and I are getting
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on the daily basis. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what I would say is that first of all, anybody, if you think
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generative AI is not happening in your organization, you're just flat out wrong. I can promise you that
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someone is using chatchip with your data. I mean for sure. Sure. I think that there are some
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things that are important that we need to be thinking about, security for sure, but even
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skilling people up on generative AI. So we have folks in our organization not necessarily on the technical
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side, but more on the operation side who are playing around with it and aren't necessarily
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getting what they want out of it. And I do think that there's some skilling that needs to happen
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across all organizations around when you're using generative AI. How do you prompt? It's sort of like
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you wouldn't walk into a deli and say, make me a sandwich. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean,
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the search is absolutely going to get better with this generative AI. So being able to come all
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of that data within your organization and get a clean output, you know, it is going to be
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right at the forefront of every user. So I think that's the big reason why you and our
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getting a lot of the conversations around how do I make sure that only people have access to what
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they should have access to. Right. And you know, we've got this, we've got organizations out there with
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orphaned data that, you know, has IP and it has sensitive information that has just been
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sitting there for a while and people have access to it and they really didn't shouldn't. I mean,
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didn't know they had it but now we're generating content in natural language with all of this. So
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it's going to be really important that access reviews are in place and all of that's actually taking
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place to stuff. Yeah, you know, even from a synergy perspective, so we're what would be called
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a born in the cloud organization where we have never had on-premise workloads. You know, we started
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as a cloud per day one and we were in Office 365 from like literally the very first day when I
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got the business license for the company. And that's great, but it has some challenges. So as we
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were doing our review, preparing for copilot specifically, one of the things that we were looking at
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was what data has been shared and with whom. And one of the things that people don't think about is
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particularly like with one drive. If you have shared a file in one drive and you have shared it via a
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link, then basically what that means is that anyone within your organization that has access to that
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link now has access to that data. So it is possible that I could have maybe shared a cop plan with you
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for someone in your organization. And while that was shared between the two of us, it's a link that
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is available to anybody within synergy technical. And so one of the things that people really need to
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think about are how do I go through my data and determine where data has been shared that while it may
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seem like it has been privately shared, it has not necessarily been privately shared. And how do I
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fix that? And I think that organizations need to get ahead of that. Prior to rolling out these tools
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because boy, you don't want to have a website. Yeah. And you know, I think what we saw a lot of during
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the pandemic from a lot of organizations that were racing to get into the cloud because their
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workforce was spread all over the place. And they needed immediate solution. A lot of those
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sharing capabilities and permissions and access review type conversations and got overlooked
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for speed. For speed. Yeah, exactly. Got to get there. We got to get there now. And now,
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you know, a lot of people are coming back and saying, hey, can you help us
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look at what we have in place? Because we know we've probably had some holes and
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need to deploy birds out. Right. Right. The other interesting thing about generative AI for me,
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I was just watching something and it was related more to the stock price for Google.
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And it was something around you know what technologies do you want to invest in? And this analyst
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was saying, you know, I expect that Google, I'm not saying this is going to happen when they
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declare. But this analyst was saying, I expect that Google stock price should is going to start to
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follow bit because with the adoption of generative AI tools like chat GPT or Bing chat or whatever,
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people are no longer using Google for search because when you use a search engine,
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it will give you kind of all of the places that you can go look and research that content. Whereas
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when you use a tool like a Bing chat or a co-pilot or a chat GPT, not only will it give you
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those resources, but it will summarize them for you. And it'll basically do the research for you.
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And so what's happening and I know this is happening with me is there's a shift to using the
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generative AI tools to search for answers rather than the Bing search or the Google search or the
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the whatever. Well, that's not just me. I do it every day. I mean literally every single day
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and I research something. So yeah, I think other things that we need to really be thinking about
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are the regulatory side of that. So you know, if you have data that has compliance requirements,
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you need to be thinking about that. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think this is where Microsoft
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really shines and you know all of the work that they put into the Microsoft purview
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compliance we is really going to pay off in I think customers are really going to find that
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official as as you know it's a key component of preparing for for generative AI and organization.
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And I think that the security compliance demands are only going to strike that in 2020,
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for on customers. So that you know we adjusted to a cybersecurity panel recently with Adrian
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a couple other folks from our team and you know that that was a big topic of what organizations
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were talking about and you know one of the big components that organizations are talking about
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our round security and compliance is really getting their whole organization involved and not just
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their security team, so you know educating their workforce on on security and compliance and
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what to be on the lookout for in this area. So in trying to get them engaged and excited about
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security, which isn't always the easiest to get reached out. Yeah, then you get excited real fast.
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But you know I think the insider risk focus is going to pick up in 2024.
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Yeah, I can see that. So yeah it all it all you know it all brings a lot of challenges
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but it also brings a lot of great things that I think we're going to see with people being able to
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do things in natural language and build a natural language that's so much better.
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Other guys took a lot of special-ass skills and really skilled talent that there's a real
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shortage about there today. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean there's a lot of things that are exciting
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but I think generative AI is one of the most exciting. If not, the most exciting thing that has happened in
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technology possibly in my lifetime honestly. I mean there's been some really cool things the
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internet, you know because I'm of the generation prior to the internet but generative AI is just
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moving things so much faster than anything we've ever seen before. Flying cars, they're coming.
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I don't know if I'm waiting. Absolutely. Getting off the right. Yeah, right. I mean there's an argument
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around self-driving cars. This is totally off topic but there's an argument around self-driving cars and
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actually my husband Jonathan and I were having this conversation one day when we were sitting in
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traffic and we the discussion that we had because you know we're two IT geeks was if everyone was
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in a self-driving car would there be traffic anymore? Because in theory you know the whole one
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person's slows down and slows everybody else down thing wouldn't be happening. So would there be
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traffic anymore or would there be more traffic because the scenario where a self-driving car
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maybe drives up you get out and there's no parking spaces and now it's driving around the block
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over and over again what if you have everybody doing it? So you know there there's
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and you've got more people that maybe didn't want to get out because they didn't want to drive
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but now it's driving home so I'm going to get out more. Yes that's also true you know you're right
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I didn't think of that I didn't think of not one of our predictions for 20 or but yet still
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somewhat interesting. All right so other things to think about one of the things that I believe will
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will really start to see more of in 2024 are the prevalence of the low code applications
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and tool sets like power automate really you know as as we get more AI tool sets I think that
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the combination of low flow or excuse me low flow of low code applications and AI is going to give
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people the ability to automate things faster than then we had seen previously sure so that for me
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is super interesting and I do think we're going to see a lot of that I'm you know I don't know if you're
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seeing any of that with your team now. No you know our our business app team you know I think
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they're excited about you know being able to to like I said put together things in natural
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language and and speed up some of the processes and things that they have today you know that
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take some digging into and and some real development but you know I think you know it's exciting to be
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kind of see some of the features coming down the road where you know we can be coding something
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and then all of a sudden be prompted for did you think about you know adding this line before
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did you check this or what you like to add this let me go ahead and add it for you so I think
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they're definitely excited about that yeah and I think even you know if you take the the technical
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team out of it so again we have an amazing technical team that can solve almost if any business
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process challenge that they run into if I put my old sio hat on and put your old iT leader hat on
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there were so many things that business users would come to IT with and say can you help me
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automate this process that while they were important when you work in IT you generally have a
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queue of project work that's you know as tall as me deep you just do and so some of those things
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that while they would be value add sort of never got surfaced up to priorities for the organization
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and I do think that these the the low code applications and and tools that's like power
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automate are going to give individuals that maybe aren't necessarily technical the ability to
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automate some things that wouldn't historically have been able to do so you know things like
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take this email and when I receive it right this data here update the spreadsheet or whatever
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that that's something that historically would have probably come to IT but maybe it doesn't have to
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yeah I mean building this flows out doesn't have to be so technical and complex anymore
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yeah you're you're you're standard user can can take on some of those things so yeah
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yeah I think that that's going to lend itself to a necessary skill set of probably
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business process mapping you know you could really easily run into a scenario where you had
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all these crazy flows that weren't necessarily put together in a logical fashion so I do think that
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that skill and it is a skill of being able to map a business process is going to be really
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necessary but I do think that there's an opportunity for a lot of really cool things to get
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done and it is not even necessarily simplistic things but just coding can happen faster the
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sure base yeah yeah so let's talk about the shortage in IT skills that we know exists
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and what do you think about IT staffing in 2024 and I think I think you know we're running into
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the convergence of all these different things coming together at the same time and so
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I think you know there's the laggards to cloud right the the folks that still have some
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like a C apps or services that they need to they know they need to move to cloud or the vendor
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is maybe forcing them to cloud now right because it's time to go they've done they've got a
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sense that that product or whatever it is and so you've got that happening so while the same
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time to organization is trying to digest everything we just talked about with security and compliance
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around gender to AI and how they're going to handle that and so and then at the same time you've
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got this real shortage in the industry and not just IT industry but in a lot of different
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industries but you know really skilled senior resources in a lot of different areas so
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and then and then you've got AI saying okay you can do more with less now so it's just it's an interesting
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that's coming together here in 2024 and so I do think that organizations will struggle a little bit
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with not having that senior talent but they'll look to AI to maybe offset that
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and I know you know a trend that's been happening over time is taking really smart recent
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college graduates train them up within Europe because we do it and and and so that that trend is just
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going to continue and I think you know their organizations are just going to continue to pour into
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those really junior resources and try to build them up to kind of fill this gap. Yeah yeah I
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think what we're seeing certainly is you know it's a weird market because there are a lot of IT
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folks that have been laid off for let go for for one reason or another and I think we've we've seen
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that all across the industry but there seems to be a shortage of the really super technical
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deep into the weeds niche type folks which are often the folks that we're looking for because you
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know when someone engages us they're looking for a really deep expert in a technology and so I think
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those folks are really really difficult to find I think that you know if you're looking for a mid-level
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manager those people are around but if you're looking for somebody who can who can really
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dig in they're harder to find. Conversely I think it was a tough market for for kids graduating from
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school this year because while they might be really really smart and really technically adept they
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don't necessarily have experience and so again for for an organization like ours we can't hire
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somebody straight out of college and build $225 an hour for them I you know any CIO or their their
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solve they're grain is gonna say you're smoking something you can't you can't build me that
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little kid for that kind of price I'm so I know that what we're seeing is that we're hiring kids
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out of school and investing in them for a good couple of years and having them sort of shadow
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projects and be junior to more senior folks to get them to where they need to be but it's it's odd because
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you know four or five years ago I think we probably could have found kids coming out of school that
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that deep experience because those internships were available and I think internships may
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be got hurt of the past couple of years too but it's it's been a weird market for sure yeah
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yeah stepping yeah and I just again I think you know if I'm an organization that is like I said it
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maybe maybe a lagger and I'm being pushed into cloud and so I've got you know all of these
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different projects and initiatives happening but I've got these early junior resources it could could
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be a real challenge and and and and and then like I said at the same time trying to wrap their heads
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around generous of AI and what that's bringing into the organization at the same time so I think I think
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2024 is going to be interesting I also think one of the trends you know we've helped the ton of
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organizations obviously move move to cloud but and then with the pandemic a lot of organizations
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have kind of changed their how their staff works a lot of you know some companies are 100%
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remote out right some are you know 80 to 90% remote but that corporate network hasn't really changed
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very much so I think I think you know CIOs and leadership there are going to be taken a
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fresh looking thing you know we used to have all our data center and and this private data center
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or even on our corporate headquarters do we really you know need this type of network architecture
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do we need these appliances is something that's going to be been taking a take an
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closer look at to see if there's some efficiencies to be had there yeah yeah yeah I think and we
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we have this is a topic that the cloud adoption trends are certainly going to change a little bit
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we're seeing a lot more now and I think we continue to see multi cloud environments there are a lot
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of companies that aren't necessarily comfortable having all of their data at Microsoft are all
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their data at AWS or in Google and and are looking to to distribute that a little bit or a lot
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the other thing is that you know a lot of organizations have have applications now that are
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cloud native and so they're they're trying to take this cloud native applications and integrate
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them with applications that aren't necessarily cloud native and so we're certainly seeing a lot of that
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um there is a focus on sustainability certainly you know a lot of organizations are are waking up to
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we maybe need to make some changes and how we do things and our technology has to
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have a better sustainable impact so we're certainly seeing that I think the biggest thing
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that we're going to see is multi cloud environments it's funny because our conversations 10 years ago
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were I think this cloud thing is going to take off yes organizations are just on us I'm not sure
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it's going to take off and I don't think we're ready to do that and now it's multi cloud
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uh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's quite the it's quite the change it's been quite the journey
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yeah it's in it although I can say and you know who they are there are organizations that we were
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talking to 10 years ago about moving to the cloud because we started synergy with the thought
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that cloud is the future and you know if we were right thank goodness because I quit my job as a CIO
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to do that but there are organizations that now just now are signing their first statement of work
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to move to the cloud that we were talking to 10 years ago and I know you sure yeah yes I do yeah
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yeah it's been quite the journey um anything else you want to talk about for 2024 what's what's on
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the triathlon schedule is an important question definitely shorter right yeah right shorter
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our our means a little bit more races but definitely shorter integration yes and then my kids are
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getting into endurance sports now so that's fun I'm becoming a supporter are you a supporter or
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are you a pacer time a pacer my wife tends to be the pacer and I I tend to be more of the support
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the cheerleader yeah the cheerleader and you know just the logistics managers and they're
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project we need to make that come true that's true project and security it all comes into play
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when you're out there awesome I'm looking forward to 2024 I think we're gonna have a great year
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I think it's gonna be fantastic you know looking forward to just seeing all of the great things not
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only that are staffed it because they do great things every day but that that our customers do
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and and have a good to help them with yeah it's gonna be fantastic
