Lounge: Feb 21 2024: Negligence in Cybersecurity, Generative AI: Insights from Canalys Chief Analyst, and Vendor Program Changes

[00:00:00] Well, it's Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, and I'm Dave Sobel, and welcome to the Business

[00:00:18] of Tech Lounge.

[00:00:20] The idea here, we're doing a show live once a week now, including, quote, development, testing, maintenance, and running of the applications. It continued to provide the services after the acquisition by Marriott. According to the judgment in the case, Accenture identifies an analysis suspicious activity and creates security alerts directed to the information risk and

[00:01:43] security incident management team. The court's finding was that by virtue of A violation caused, a breach caused in this scenario where customer data was released isn't just a breach of contract here, it isn't a breach of contract, but in fact, they focused on negligence. And the idea is not only the MSSP have responsibility to the hotel chain, it had it to the customers too.

[00:04:05] 5,000 previously in response to the Invanti VPN vulnerability. The move to VDI provides more secure capabilities and allows for the use of personal devices.

[00:04:11] The Navy's broader move to zero trust includes a shift away from the risk management framework

[00:04:17] and towards continuous monitoring and ongoing risk assessments.

[00:04:21] The Cyber Ready Initiative focuses on incorporating cybersecurity capabilities into every phase

[00:04:28] of the ecosystem. various tasks. Nerdio has also doubled that annual recurring revenue through partner expansion and customer growth. The updated Nerdio Enterprise Partner Program now includes a deal protection system. The program is designed to provide partners with increased security and confidence in their deals.

[00:05:40] Now, why do we care?

[00:05:43] One of my hopes for this format for doing live and with to me security-wise, and I'm asking the audience, am I right? Is this happening more in SMB, or is this only happening at that mid-marketed enterprise level? I think that's why we care, because there's an opportunity here for a little bit more. Those are our top stories today. Moving on, I wanna actually address a question

[00:07:03] that's been on my mind.

[00:07:04] Jay McBain from Canales believes the opportunities for GSIs or ISVs far surpasses the near-term opportunities for MSPs or VARs and the biggest risk for generative AI is that it never becomes a product at all.

[00:08:20] MSPs may be better suited to invest more in security skills and practices over that time

[00:08:26] frame. they're very MSP focused, but they're not the only vendor that's gearing up in this way. So let's discuss. To do so, let's bring on the chief analysts for channels, partnerships and ecosystems for Canalis, Jay McBain to the show. Jay, thanks for joining me today. Well, thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. Jay, help me square this circle.

[00:09:42] On one hand, AI seems like it's a big thing

[00:09:45] and vendors are leaning into it as an opportunity,

[00:09:48] particularly for this year. beefing up their hybrid and cloud and edge technology to go do it. And we're in that phase for the next 18 months. You had a story about Nerdio at the beginning. There's a perfect example where an ISV of Microsoft, actually they were up for Microsoft's top ISV of the year, two years in a row, finalist.

[00:11:01] So talk about an ISV that's going all in.

[00:11:04] The same story of ConnectWise and Datto, Kaseya,

[00:11:07] the same story to Navel and Ninja, where I can come in and start addressing this opportunity. Now, top of mind for me feels like exactly what you just hit on, was those consultative opportunities that feel like they're happening right now for the next 18 months. It feels like a real area of opportunity is both in helping customers with their frameworks,

[00:12:20] their ethical considerations,

[00:12:22] and then secondarily, making sure their data is in

[00:12:25] a good state to be consumed by AI, for MSPs, they're going to see Gen AI for the first time in the PSA and RMM and stuff they use. They're not tuning their own models. They're not building their own data lakes at this point. Why did the CEO of Snowflake and Datadog come into that ninja round a couple of weeks ago? Well, they see this seven million endpoints

[00:13:40] and they see the data lake that can happen

[00:13:43] within the tools we use, not building out our own data lake for either Co-Pilot, Microsoft, or Einstein GPT at Salesforce, whatever tools you're using in your business, those are gonna become part of the basic toolset. Kind of like there's analytics today and there's security built in and there's a whole set of 100 other things built in, it's gonna be built in. It's not gonna cost you another $5 a month to get that capability because it's gonna be ubiquitous,

[00:15:02] not only at Microsoft and the biggest of companies,

[00:15:05] but right across the 200,000 SaaS companies

[00:15:08] that are out me today. Absolutely. So next up, I want to revisit something. I've launched an interview with TJ Carwall just recently. And if you missed it, here's a sample. So let's start with kind of the headline here. You've launched Friday AI.

[00:16:21] Tell me kind of what it is and how we got there.

[00:16:24] You know, we have an appliance that we plug in on premise that takes all of the

[00:17:43] management aspects and learns your environment. And in fact, my real takeaway

[00:19:03] was it felt like AI at a level I wasn't seeing from call it out. This is interactive. We're taking comments as we go. And I want to throw up one from William who was very much focused on the earlier conversation and said, as more apps move to the cloud, he thinks we'll see more MSPs leverage VDI and DAS for their clients that have custom applications,

[00:20:22] hybrid deployments for a small group of users

[00:20:24] and for natural deployments like call centers and retails, users. The remaining partners who generate less than $500,000 in annual VMware revenue may not receive invitations to join the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. This move by Broadcom to focus on its top 2,000 customers and cut off smaller partners has created turmoil in the channel. Rival vendors are now stepping in to rescue VMware partners, offering alternative solutions

[00:21:44] to replace the live shows. And I went to my co-host on Killing It, who focuses his time on helping vendors build their channel programs. Let's hear from Ryan Morris, Principal Consult integration transaction services and so on. And number three, aftermarket support and staying power with the install base. Vendors only choose indirect channel programs

[00:24:21] in their go to market strategy when and if a channel

[00:24:25] can achieve those three things more effectively that's generated by a partner who is actively producing. When you think about it, every vendor has an active incentive to manage both of those objectives by either reducing the number of partners in their program or significantly increasing the expectations

[00:25:41] of partners who stay in the program.

[00:25:43] But the question is, how did they go about

[00:25:46] implementing these strategies? assess your existing vendors, partner programs, and go to market strategies, and prefer to work with vendors who prefer to support you. Great advice, I appreciate it, Ryan, giving me a little bit of insight. And continuing it, we're gonna be asking questions, but I want to get one from a comment already from William

[00:27:02] just on this exact space.

[00:27:04] William says, the MSP and vendor relationship

[00:27:07] is built on a strong foundation of trust You're going to want to make sure that you're spending your time thinking about this area and giving the right investments. I really am looking forward to more of these opportunities to have discussions with all of you online as we go forward with these live shows. We're going to continue taking questions. Now I want to, one more thing before we end the day today, I want to give you a preview

[00:28:20] of the episode and interview that's going to drop this weekend on the podcast feed as

[00:28:25] well as on YouTube. a lot of the time, a lot of these issues could have been resolved much earlier due to communication and definitions of knowing what's my role, what's their role, and a sort of big brother with an arm on the shoulder to say, I got you within this area. Why don't you tell me the story then? So tell me about, was it a first time MSP, how you got engaged? Tell me how it started and then the story.

[00:29:41] We had an MSPs near me, right? That's what they searched for. And they found a local one. It was very important for them to be local because, you know, with networks, which management,

[00:31:02] you know, the firewall servers, what have Wednesday, 3 p.m. Eastern, and we'll take questions ahead of time. If you send in your question as a voice memo or as a video, we'll play it here on the show and answer live. You can send those in at question at mspradio.com.

[00:32:20] Really appreciate you joining me today

[00:32:22] at the Business of Tech Lounge,

[00:32:23] and we will talk to you again next time.