Exploring Open Source Solutions for Risk Reduction in IT Services with Doug Milburn

[00:00:02] [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk open source. Coming off of the crowd strike issue, I got an interesting

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_00]: hitch in my inbox that open source was the solution and that I should have Doug Milburn

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: on my show. I had bet I was a little skeptical and even said as much during the pitch. They

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: wanted to make their case so Doug Milburn joins me from 45 Drives on this bonus episode

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: of The Business of Tech.

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[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: to book a time to talk. I'm looking forward to that discussion.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Well Doug, thanks for joining me today.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're going to start right at the bit. Give me your pitch on why you think open source is

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: the solution that we as technologists, managed services providers and IT services should be

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00]: deploying with customers.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, you know what? Risk reduction. It's all about risk reduction. You need to get

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_01]: your customers systems that work and that continue to work. I mean, that's it right?

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's that whole thing of risk. It's got to be reliable. It's got to work and it's

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_01]: got to be secure. And yeah, and you know, especially if you're not serving SMBs,

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: it's got to be cost effective.

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And the solution that checks all those boxes is open source.

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so I'm going to push back a little bit. There's a classic XKD comic that we all talk about

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: when we talk about open source. There's all these great projects, but actually when you

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_00]: really dig into open source, there's a collection of things and there's always

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_00]: connections of projects and there's always this one small project run by this one guy out in

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: the middle of nowhere that doesn't get enough support that is part of that ecosystem.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Log4j is exactly that sort of example. It's not entirely fair to say you're completely reducing

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: that risk. You're trading one set of risks for another. So let's get into it a little bit more.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what makes the model actually different? And it's able to overcome this, in my mind,

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: rightful perception that it actually is not this massive army of developers. In fact, it is

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: kind of hamstrung by resources too. Give me how that actually works.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, look, I'm going to say it's how you use open source. Open source itself is just a concept.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_01]: It's community developed software. Got this real advantage that it pulls a collective brain in.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: It's driven by the people who use it, the organizations that contribute or the ones that use it.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So it ends up being as powerful or more powerful often than any efficient than proprietary sources.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a giant category. So your apps to generalize on it just isn't fair.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we do it at our company. It's about how you use it. And an open source, the risk

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: open source, if you do open source, if a customer does or organization does open source

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_01]: on their own, you can do this if you want. But look the risks. Let me compare it to legacy.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to talk about enterprise proprietary. That word proprietary, legacy enterprise covers

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_01]: that and whatever else. And I know it's not really part of the discussion here, but they own you.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And any time they can reach into your system and change things through updates,

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_01]: forced updates and things like that, they can change the terms. So many organizations use VMware

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_01]: and that the carpet got pulled out from underneath contractually. You've got this big

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_01]: contractual risk in that of people owning you and you have no control. You have to trust.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_01]: You can't verify. Flip over the other side. Open source. You want to tackle these things

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_01]: by open source. Open source, it's project risk. It's people go in, you know, yeah,

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_01]: as you would developers, there's distros, Linux distros everywhere, there's projects all over.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And you got to make sense of that is what you got to do. Because if you're going to

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: an implement open source on an ad hoc basis, you have something called project risk,

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_01]: you've traded contractual risk and somebody owning you for project risk.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And the way that you mitigate that is, you know, you as a managed service provider,

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: what you need to do is you need to figure out how you implement it. You need to break it down.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: You need to catch your implementation of it. It's about your implementation. There's so many

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: pieces there, you got to bring the right pieces together to get the jobs done. That's what we

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_01]: do at 45 Drives. And we very much bring it all together. And we make it, you know, give an example.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I will use the word enterprise, but it's not the right word for this. Rocky Linux.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, the Linux, the basic operating system itself, there's so many distros in Linux

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_01]: and they have their own environments on top of that or whether they're just

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: shelling to them or whether they got UIs on top of it. And so, Rocky is the open free,

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say the word enterprise, but what it means is it's stable. It's for people who are in

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_01]: business. That word is just a buzzword gets thrown around. It's for people in business

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_01]: who want to run something and just want it to work. What does it mean? You know, updates

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_01]: updates are a huge risk element in keeping your computer systems going, as you might have noticed

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: with the CrowdStrike thing, right? And a little incident that happened. And that whole thing,

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, the Linux world has that so under control because the way updates get rolled out,

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: you've got very, very active development on kernels. You've got all kinds of new and

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: exciting stuff happening. Great. You got distros that grab that. And their big thing is that

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_01]: they're the new and exciting distros. You're not going to use this in business, right? And what you do

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: is you stay on something like Rocky and Rocky holds you back. I mean, if it's mission critical,

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_01]: security hole or something that can move through right away, but all those other,

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, new and wonderful things that they want to push through,

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_01]: they get vetted very, very heavily. So staying in something conservative like

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: that's mission critical. And then just the way you implement it. You know,

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_01]: it's your approach. It's your architecture that you create at the start of it. If you

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_01]: create the right architecture, use the right components approach at the right way,

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_01]: you can get results that are so bulletproof, so safe, so reliable, they'll compete just

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_01]: about anything that's proprietary. And then if you do that, do that right on top of it,

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: you now own your client owns your implementation. Nobody can pull the carpet out. There's no

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_01]: contract renewal for it. What if the distro or whatever project kind of disappears? Well,

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_01]: you still own it and you can still use it as long as you want. Example,

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: SenOS got the carpet pulled out from underneath it by the good people at Red Hat and IBM.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And they just said, yeah, no more free. This whole conservative,

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, business oriented distro Linux just disappeared. It's a good branched.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we're actually founding sponsor, Rocky, and then along comes Rocky,

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_01]: take what they got, move off, do your own thing with it. The level of security is quite

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_01]: amazing. You compare that to proprietary software where they decide they're going to change

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_01]: and that they're changing for their purposes. Most of the time it lines up, they're not evil

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_01]: people and ought to get you in fact quite the opposite of their serve customers. But

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_01]: when they push updates, they make changes, you know, so many times it's for their purposes

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and they own you. And, you know, and it's totally the opposite open source. It's all,

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: it's by the community for the community. Well, so I want to push on this a little bit

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_00]: because I mean, I hear you, but one of the things you laid out there was in order to make this leap,

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00]: you as a managed services provider, you see services company have to do all of this

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_00]: additional work of selecting and designing and working with the systems. One of the reasons why

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: closed source has worked traditionally in kind of a managed services and IT services

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: delivery is those companies then also have resources and commit to working with their

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00]: partners, particularly in a channel style relationship. You have people and resources to

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: work with to help you with that bid. And particularly if you're a typical,

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, small business managed services provider, you're managing an entire collection of products

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: in a way you're actually saying no to go to open source, you have to open this up to have to

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: select across more products that you are unfamiliar with, you have to be involved with

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_00]: more of that. Oh, and we're removing the mechanisms of support that are there for you.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: How would you advise then, you know, a managed services provider IT services company

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: that's looking at that saying like, well, that's a lot of work I'm trading for it.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Who's going to help me with that? And how is going to get me through that process

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_00]: if those, if there aren't companies privately to do it?

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, it's interesting is exactly what we do for a living. And, you know, and we

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_01]: sell the whole MSP world itself and that movement through to small business.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: We're actually just coming out with a division. It's going to be our professional division

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's going to sell to MSPs and take what we do. We've done that work that work is

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_01]: out there to do. You got to go up the learning curve on it. It's a lot of work.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And depending how big or if you have enough critical mass in your organization,

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_01]: you can have the resources to do that. If not, you don't have the resources to do it and you

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: got to get it somewhere else. It's what we do in storage and virtualization.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Stand alone servers clustered and you know, Proxmox virtualization. We do we package it up.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_01]: We make it simple. We automate it. We put the packages together and we just make it really,

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_01]: really simple for our customers to use. So I want to get a sense. So you're talking about open

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: source. Are you saying open source? Do you believe in open source everywhere from my

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: perspective as kind of an analyst? The Linux on the desktop conversation is dead and gone and

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_00]: no longer relevant and it doesn't have a market share. Like are you essentially saying

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_00]: no, Dave, you're wrong. Like we actually should be replacing everything with open source.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's a great question. It's really pertinent to us right now. The server room,

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01]: that first I'm concerned everything in the server room add,

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_01]: proprietary doesn't make sense to me in the server room. It's like the alternatives.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: It's better. It's faster, better, cheaper. It's like open source for the server room.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_01]: You got to know how to do it, but faster, better, cheaper. And you know, it really does own the

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_01]: server room and you get to desktop and it's just absolutely a fascinating subject. So

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_01]: in our organization, we're actually actively moving Linux onto desktops.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll keep you informed. Let you know how it goes. We've had some real success in certain

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_01]: areas. Why? Microsoft and okay, I'm not a Microsoft hater. Like I got a lot of respect for them.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up with Microsoft open ecosystem. They used to do things pretty shaky, technically Windows 3.1

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and they got better, continuously better and they came all a hardware zoo down, right?

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Great environment for it. So I give Microsoft their due, but there's practices in Microsoft

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_01]: that really irritate me and they just poke me in the eye. And if they didn't do that,

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: this probably wouldn't be a hot topic. One of them forced updates. Okay? First updates from an

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_01]: irritation being late for video conference because you didn't say yes to their update and then

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: it just decided to do it. And you got to sit there and watch Billy Gates' little spinny thing

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_01]: go where you're supposed to be logged on and get my cell phone in there, you know,

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: slacken somebody and saying, yeah, I'm going to be late for a video conference. Just bear with me

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_01]: as an update. That's irritating. Okay? But it gets worse than that. So in updates, the inability to

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_01]: manage updates, that's the time issue and assuming it all goes well. So in our organization,

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, last week, we had two outages, our sales force. We had two sales groups

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_01]: and they use Microsoft Outlook. You know, it's Windows environment, use Microsoft Outlook,

[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_01]: which I'm uncomfortable with Outlook. I'm on Microsoft on my desktop. I'm on Linux at home

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_01]: and I use Microsoft here. And I got nothing inherently against it, but then they pushed

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: these updates through. So they updated Outlook, push update, and they broke its ability to

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_01]: handle certain types of attachments that are just the type that we use. And so what happened

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: is you'd send an email and your Outlook would freeze for five minutes,

[00:14:20] [SPEAKER_01]: shut down our sales force. A couple of days later, they pushed another update down to Windows itself

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and we use Roland printers in one part of the operation and their manufacturing and shut that

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_01]: down. And you go and then along comes CrowdStrike, right? And you go, that model of, you know,

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_01]: look, US president said, trust and verify. If you're un-proprietary, trust have faith is what

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_01]: you got. You have no ability to verify. And how serious that is when you shut people down. It's

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_01]: one thing if you're just irritating and causing small productivity losses,

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_01]: you all get over that just part of doing it. But the ability, you know,

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_01]: it amazed me. We stand back and think about it and I look at how we deal with updates and

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_01]: open source. They're vetted, they're layered. You know, we can choose what we put in if it's

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_01]: frivolous and their, you know, Windows decides to update the menus, you're going to go to ribbons

[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_01]: instead of menus. And that gets jammed through your software that you paid for. Now we got

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_01]: to train a bunch of people, a bunch of users, right? And I didn't want that. It's of no

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_01]: advantage to me. And I got to put up with that. But when they can reach in through

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_01]: your firewall, anytime they want, change anything they want. It gives you that risk,

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_01]: unwanted frivolous updates. What if they make a whoopsie honest mistake, which we believe

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: CrowdStrike was and shut you down? Whoops. Or what if somebody, let's say somebody

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: co-opted and decided to put a back door into your proprietary software. And then the

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_01]: the updater reaches in and jams that back door in there. You'll never know. And, you know,

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_01]: let me tell you, you know, an open source, there was an event happened about three or four months

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_01]: ago where a developer discovered he noticed that his SSH shell, the login screen was just

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_01]: taken a little bit longer. He dug into it, he went in the source code and he found that there

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_01]: is a, you know, the whole thing unraveled. There's a back door that was jammed into SSH,

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, which is the shell program that runs that everybody uses to, you know,

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_01]: console into their Linux and that it had a very serious, like probably state level

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_01]: back door put in there. Hadn't worked its way out yet, but he noticed it. Well,

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_01]: it was noticed by the community because one person noticed a fraction of a second longer

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_01]: in a login. Imagine calling up Microsoft and saying, yeah, I just noticed my login screen

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_01]: takes a half second longer. You know, you're the Snickers and the other end and

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_01]: they go on what they're doing. Not saying that Microsoft is evil and going to put that stuff in,

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_01]: but they will get co-opted. You know, the open source community is open to it. They are just as

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_01]: open. Just your odds of finding out, well, you know, it's trust can't verify. So I,

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm going to push back a little bit here, Doug, because actually your stories about

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_00]: updates actually tells me you don't hire a managed services provider because most

[00:17:17] [SPEAKER_00]: managed services providers, part of the responsibility is managing those patch

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: rollouts, particularly around Microsoft. Microsoft gives all the tools for providers to do that

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_00]: and be involved in the testing and making sure that software was working together.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So I know my audience is screaming right now saying, yeah, but that's our job. That's what we do

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and the value we bring to the customer is preventing that. I know if no managed services

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_00]: provider that I know would say just leave auto updates on, they actually make sure that

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_00]: they're part of the process to understand what's being deployed and they've done the,

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_00]: understood the interaction between other line of business applications. So I want to make sure

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_00]: that we're focusing on the right stuff here because, you know, I'm not entirely convinced

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_00]: we can get to an up completely open source world if you've got companies that are building,

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, a line of business applications that need to be in place, you know,

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm not entirely sure it's fair to say, well, Linux doesn't have this.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I'll observe CrowdStrike had a Linux panic this just a month ago. Like they had an issue

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00]: with their product running on Linux that caused a kernel panic. So if you were running CrowdStrike

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and Linux, you could also take down that system. So there are still interactions

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_00]: that are that are dealt with here unless you can get to a world of only open source software,

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_00]: which I'm not convinced we can get to, you're still going to have some level of these

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_00]: interactions to deal with. What's your reaction to that pushback?

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, look, the whole thing in Linux, where the instance of course run proprietary stuff

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_01]: on top of there, you know, as we replacing our desktops, we've dealt with the whole thing of

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_01]: what do you do for software that runs on top of it. And some of its proprietary soft that

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_01]: we're doing and we've found in two different groups in here are software development group

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_01]: is software development technology development, Fourth 5 Drives. They design boards, they create

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_01]: software and stuff like that. They're running fully on Linux, almost fully in Linux. They still

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_01]: have proprietary software that they use is still some circuit board CAD and things like that they

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_01]: use. We have other stuff like Slack for example runs on top of there. And where you are with

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_01]: that is yeah, you have to manage. It really is my point I go, you have to manage it if you have a

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_01]: good MSP and they're managing it great. My take is that the proprietary you can try to manage all

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_01]: you want. And go ask Microsoft to show you the source code because you notice something bad.

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_01]: You're not doing it. You're taking them in faith. And that's and that is the big

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_01]: difference. Number one my point you have to manage it Linux lets everybody manage it.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just part of it. You manage it ultra transparent, absolutely clear on everything that comes

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_01]: through. It's not like the stuff that put tends to push through the other guys.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: The proprietary guys tend to be like an omnibus bill in government. It's got a mishmash of stuff.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I get my Linux says last night I'm sitting down in my living room and pops up you have

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_01]: updates available and I can look through the list of everything they're all granular. I

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_01]: can see exactly what it gives you a better ability to manage it. And you're 100% right

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_01]: if you run a proprietary software and it's going to screw up. You're in trouble. But I look at that

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_01]: and I look at CrowdStrike and the ability to get into kernel level and it's like our approach

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_01]: to screwing against how you approach it. You want to develop something that's secure and is just

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: going to run. I believe you can do it better on open source. What we do, we lock up root

[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_01]: the owner of the system. They got root. They want to give us access to root. They give us access

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_01]: to root and the amount of software that everything, you should have nothing unless absolutely

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_01]: necessary that gets into root. That CrowdStrike thing, it boggled me. It just boggled me

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: that they'd set that up and these organizations who are doing mission critical work

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_01]: would have that situation where those updates get pushed through like that and that they'd set

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: that up. That's one extreme. If you've got a great, somebody's managing it, if it's your own IT or

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: you're using an MSP, great. How well can they do it? You can do it better. I would suggest it's

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_01]: my belief that you can do it better on open source. Why? Because you can go my example SSH.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You can go all the way to source code if you choose to. I'm not saying everybody's going

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01]: to get there. It's just not going to get there, but you've got a community of people.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And then that whole thing of pace of things moving through. It tends to be very controlled.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_01]: There is so much betting that happens. Just different pace and it's different level of

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_01]: trust and verify. There's huge advantage to it if you're really serious about security,

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_01]: which I think people should be. So many of our customers take it very seriously. Your

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_01]: audience's customers, your IT goes down. Running a dental office, law office, small business,

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_01]: school board, etc. Their computers go down and they're shut down. That's it. The cash flow stops

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and it needs to be taken seriously. Open source I believe is the best way to take that seriously.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, Doug Milburn is the co-founder of 45 Drives, a company known for its high performance,

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_00]: large scale storage solutions. He also serves as the vice president of Proto Case,

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_00]: 45 Drives parent company, which specializes in custom manufacturing for industries like aerospace

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_00]: and defense. His commitment to open source solutions is highly notable with 45 Drives

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00]: providing Linux first systems while offering Windows support as needed.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Doug, I appreciate you joining me to make your case. Awesome. Thank you very much.

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Pleasure talking to you, Dave.

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_00]: By our Why Do We Care Merge at BusinessOf.tech. Finally, if you're interested in advertising on

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_00]: this show, visit MSPRadio.com slash Engage. Once again, thanks for listening to me and I will

[00:23:52] [SPEAKER_00]: talk to you again on our next episode of The Business of Tech. Part of the MSP Radio Network.