Backup, With Jerome Wendt of DCIG

Hello, I'm Dan Tomaszewski and this is the connecting it podcast.

Welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Tomaszewski and joining me today is Jerome W endt, the founder and president of D CIG Jerome. Welcome.

Well, thank you, Dan. Pleasure to be on your show today.

Oh yeah. We're, we're super excited to have you on, uh, really want to get into this, this information and have a good conversation with you. I know you've got a wealth of knowledge and I know you're going to bring to all our MSPs listening. So to kind of start out, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what DCIG is?

Sure. So again, Dan, thanks again for having me on this podcast, a, you know, really a pleasure to meet you and, uh, and join you and share a little information about DCG and, uh, you know, help, help reach your audience. So, yeah, just a little about DCIG, uh, uh, data, uh, DCIG stands for the, uh, data center intelligence group and really what DCIG is, is technology analyst firm. And as you and I were just briefly discussing not really DCIG his goal is to look, you know, not somehow, you know, like, you know, where everyone's heading or what's going on in the industry in terms of, you know, like, you know, what sort of statistics or where, uh, you know, what are some of the broad industry trends, which certainly comes into play in our research and influences what we researched, but really our goal is to help really understand the products that are available in the marketplace. And what DCIG his background has always been is, uh, really helping companies do the RFoG and our requests for our RFAs and RFPs were really help understand the products that are available, sort of separate them on the different classes and make the best buying decision possible. Uh, that that was my background. I used to be a storage engineer and storage administrator, uh, for a number of large enterprises. And it just seemed, that was always, most of my job has always trying to make, you know, it wasn't actually administrating technology was always doing buying decisions. So really what DCIG has done is formalized that process to really evaluate the technologies and come up with a really solid recommendation based upon the available, uh, features that are in the product and make recommendations based upon that.

No, that's, that's, that's phenomenal and really excited. Like I said, I think we've got some great topics and I want to get into this first one with you. And for all our MSPs that are, that are listening, you know, consolidation is coming to data protection. What does that mean? Like if I'm an MSP today, what does that, that lane look like?

Yeah, that's, uh, you know, this is kind of, I, this is what I really kind of hit me upside the head really here in the last, I'd say couple of months, I sort of had my big aha moment, if you want to, if you want to use that. Phrasiology, uh, you know, when I look at backup, it's always, you know, you look up, you know, specifically data protection, it kinda it's, it's sort of almost, there's almost like different pillars of day protection. Like you have security over here. You have backup here, you might have data loss prevention, you might have archiving. Those were all kind of separate their own little pillars, their own separate disciplines, where you may have different software that would manage those, those different areas. I mean, there was always, you know, some overlap, but really what's starting to happen. Uh, and I think you're really gonna start seeing it when looking at, uh, some of the SAS applications that are out there are software as a service such as you, you, you look at Microsoft office three 65 G suite Salesforce, where suddenly

It, data protection

Starts getting real cloudy. And you, you, I mean, I think many MSPs already understand that when you're being called to back up these sort of applications, uh, you know, again, office three 65 G suite. Now it's called a workspace. You can no longer, uh, you no longer responsible for the application anymore. You don't have to, you know, backup and recover that really, that falls to Microsoft or Google or Salesforce, they handle the application. But you, as an MSP or in the case of, you know, if you're servicing your customers, you're still responsible for recovering that data. And are you backing up and recovering that data? And, you know, on one hand, that sounds rather simple. They're like, well, what's the big deal I'm backing up, recovering the data? Well, it suddenly gets really complicated because if you're, you know, whether you're backing up a few hundred mailboxes, um, or a few thousand, uh, tried to back, you know, first backing up, you know, has its own challenges, you know, getting it out of the Microsoft cloud, uh, into, you know, into the wherever you're going to start, whether it's on premises or in your cloud, or in some other, you know, back in their cloud, again, whether it's with Azure or the Google cloud platform or AWS, um, you know, that, that creates his own set of challenges, but then trying to get it back in again, because both Microsoft and Google limit how much data you can recover at one time.

So, you know, when you're doing your own

Recovery, you know, on premises, uh, you, you have control over everything. You know, you have control over the data, you have control over the machines. Suddenly you lose all those items you sell and you have control over. And you're now trying to restore it into someone else's in cloud infrastructure. So what I find happening is suddenly backup is not really so much about, you know, backing up the data, which is still certainly part of it. But now you're looking at things like, like anti ransomware, like you really don't even want the data, uh, to be even compromised. You're, you're looking at items like data loss prevention, uh, you're looking at detecting ransomware and stopping the ransomware attack even as it, you know, even before it starts or, you know, if it starts because so much of enterprise ransomware, it's not just targeting your production data, but it's actually going after the backup software, the backups themselves to, to compromise those. So really what backup software has to become is a much more comprehensive. You have to look at backup solutions that address these different, different touch points. And so when I talk about consolidation coming to data protection, when really mean is that suddenly these different aspects, whether it's archiving data, loss prevention, uh, anti ransomware software, uh, AR um, anti-malware software, those sort of aren't all have really have to start being encapsulated into, into backup software, to, uh, you know, basically stop the data loss before it even begins, because you can't, you can't always count on a recovery happening in a reasonable amount of time. Does that make sense? What I'm trying to explain there?

No. Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense. And I think a lot of times too, I mean, we, we hear from MSP, is it like ORC end customers? If I'm an MSP going out to an end customer, they're like, well, does it Microsoft just back up my data or doesn't Salesforce just back up my data. And obviously we've seen recently where they've come out publicly and it's in their things saying no, like Salesforce, especially, you know, from the data backup. So I think your points are

Right. Absolutely. And they've been pretty clear about that from the get go, but I think, you know, again, it gets kind of cloudy, you know, you always say to use the term cloudy, but it gets a little cloudy in the sense that, uh, you know, Microsoft, you know, they are perverting, the, are providing some, you know, tasks that are historically associated with data protection, whether it's, you know, replication or high availability, uh, you know, some of those, uh, even a little bit of archiving, like with their, uh, data retention policies went out. I mean, they do have some basic, you know, attributes that fall under the data protection umbrella, but it's your job as a, as, as an MSP or an individual to make sure you, you have all those other basis covered, whether it is, you know, data recovery, or just protecting data. Because again, if you're, if you or your clients are exposed to a, a ransomware attack, it it's your responsibility to recover the data. I mean, Microsoft will probably try to help out where they can, but ultimately they're gonna, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's still on your shoulders to protect your data.

No, absolutely. And those are great points. Um, you know, something else I want to talk to you about is just the cloud based management software that essentially manages remote hardware and software. I know you've got some good information on that. So let's talk about that for a couple of minutes.

Sure. So, you know, it's, you're here again, another it's, it's really kind of interesting what's happening is, you know, I think, you know, COVID really kind of brought this to light, uh, at so many, so many individuals are working remotely now, but, and, and so there's, there's some more data at remote locations and what I'm seeing from, uh, some different providers is that, you know, you, you know, I, I don't know, feel like me. I have my own home office. I've, I've, you know, I've got multiple PCs, laptops. I have a lot of data that I start on NAS devices, all this data has to be protected. Well, you know, you now you suddenly take a, you know, a, uh, an it professional like myself. And, you know, I'd say almost, almost everyone, whether they're, you know, everyone kind of almost falls under the, the, uh, the umbrella of an it professional, where they're storing some type of data. There may be doing application development from home. They might be, uh, uh, just generating documents. They are generating images. I mean, everyone's, you know, it and business are so Tyler interrelated now that you're putting these very sophisticated in these remote locations, but just because you're putting a lot of data and, you know, and fairly robust devices at three small remote locations, and now like you're being it now, but how many of us are really data experts? If you know what I mean? I mean, our job is to push stuff over the finish line. And I get this case where we're producing a podcast. Well, I mean, in the background, you're recording it, you're making copies of it. Uh, but at the end of the day, you know, at some point you may want a reference thing. Who's really responsible that who's managing that well, that's really where MSPs can step in and offer a service to protect some of these things, but they still have to be able to get and manage these devices, recover it, uh, you know, maybe make a secondary copy on premises and move it on. And what you're beginning to see is software that's really starting to, uh, and, and even, uh, all in one device, if they go into these remote offices that can protect these sort of devices. Uh, and then, but you know, now not just having devices that do that, but more importantly, the sort of cloud this cloud management software that you can log in and manage that. And where that then becomes really valuable for the MSP perspective is, okay, now you're deploying backup devices into these environments. Uh, you really want a cloud interface that you know, that you can manage, but also give your clients the ability to have the, also like these multi-tenant cloud solutions, so that, so the, uh, they can deploy it on premises, but then they can log in central and say, okay, I can manage my three devices, my 30, 70 vices, no matter where they reside and, and manage that all and, and provide the sort of, you know, backup recovery, uh, in a timeframe that they can, they can accomplish it. So you may have a local copy for, you know, maybe zero to 30 days of the coupon premises, but they also have sort of a cloud option where it automatically gets migrated off to the cloud. So if your local environment, maybe it does get blown up by ransomware, you still have a copy off premises that that's kept kept secure. So I'm, I'm seeing these cloud management solutions rapidly emerging right now to address these sorts of situations. And they're already available.

No, I mean, that's, you're right. I mean, they're emerging and they're continuing to develop and new features and new things that everyone needs to keep on top of, because it's really important with the way the world's changing on basically month over month. It's changing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's and you know, and the products are rapidly mature. I mean, companies are putting a lot more am. I would say companies, I mean, vendors providers are putting a lot more resources into these, uh, into these. I mean, we're, I'm seeing it across the board. I mean, some are, you know, I think the technology has been there for awhile, but it's like anything else until there's, until there's a customer demand for it that onto, sorry, prioritize putting development resources into it. So I've really seen an uptick, uh, substantially here in the last, certainly this year in the last six to 12 months, we're coming, okay, let's, let's get this working because all of a sudden our, our customers have all their, how their workforce working from home. So they need the, you know, the, these, these more advanced features, tremendous data protection, or to basically provide data protection to their clients or their employees or contractors and get those data backed up. And it, because it is not necessarily their core competency, we need to make it simple for them to use, but still provide the sort of robust features and capabilities that, you know, really an enterprise expects. And, and they're definitely, you know, definitely happening in that respect. So anyone who wants those sort of solutions can certainly, uh, certainly find them and take advantage of them.

Yeah. And he started to dabble in this a little bit, but I guess one of the questions I'd have for you, I mean, disaster recovery, I mean, it seems like it's a practical reality now for SMBs. I mean, do you agree with that? I mean, what's, what's your take on disaster recovery for SMBs?

Oh yeah. I mean, I would say SMBs are starting, are really sitting in the sweet spot now for providing a disaster recovery. Uh, you know what, I've look at some of the, the companies that are really, what's gonna Mark. I did a, we did DCG did a top five report on all the one disaster recovery solutions, uh, earlier this year, I think, or maybe the last year in fourth, quarter of 2019. And what it was like when I started, when I, I actually stopped looking at enterprise solutions that have like these all-in-one disaster recovery solutions. Cause you know what, they don't exist for the enterprise. They are really doing disaster recovery and enterprise is really hard because they are so complicated, but SMBs and even up to maybe small and mid-sized enterprises, you got some really great options, uh, in the sense that, I mean, literally, I mean, uh, there's a few companies out there. We can literally call them on the phone at once. You know, once the backup is complete, you can actually call them up with the phone and they can actually provide, you know, they'll do the whole recovery for you of the recovered. You know, they'll do the backups for you. They'll do the full data, know disaster recovery in their data center. And I mean, they'll help you provide the documentation. You need to actually create the run books and then you can follow the, then they can actually implement the disaster recovery on their own at their data center, in their, in their location. So, you know, enterprises, you know, there's no places where enterprises can, you know, dial and smile to get, you know, smile and dial to get that sort of service. I mean, with SMBs, not only are they out there, but there's a few of them to choose from. So when you start getting into that sort of, uh, you know, you have those sorts of options available to you becomes very powerful where, you know, again, you have to choose the right solutions or to get that, um, you know, to get that sort of disaster recovery option. I mean, just sometimes you can't always keep using your own backup software, you have to switch their backup software, but then you get all the benefits that go with it, you get their cloud, you get their, their sort of their white glove support while they bring it back up for you. They'll actually, they, they actually give you, uh, testing scenarios where they'll give you like certain certificates that you can take to, uh, you know, your compliance officer or third party, uh, governmental agencies or regulatory agency saying, Hey, let's not only are we saying we can do a DVR, but our provider has provided a certificate showing we've actually recovered. We can do it. And whenever you need us to prove, we can do a dr week, we can call them up and prove it. So, you know, SMBs are sitting in a great spot to, you know, I mean, I remember when I used to be a, I used to work as a system administrator for a police department in, um, in, uh, Kansas. And it was just like, it was always in the back of my head, like, you know, what the hell am I going to do if you know, things go down because, you know, I I've never practiced this. You know, I, I built, I built a system six months a year ago, two years ago. I don't know if that software is even available, how, you know, who do I turn to to recover it? I mean, it was just, there was always this sort of like this, this sort of knot in your gut about what's going to happen. You know, SMBs don't have to deal with that anymore. I mean, they can really go to these organizations and say, Hey, uh, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not free. I mean, I'm not going to say that, but just knowing, just having that assurance that you can go out there and actually recover it. Um, you know, companies will, will set aside money, you know, we'll, we'll budget money to do that. I mean, I think they'd be foolish not to do that.

Yeah. Well, you bring up some points. I mean, you were like you said, a system administrator. So if you're a managed service provider selling to SMBs, those are the things that are keeping you up at night. Those are the things you're worried about. And like you said, now there's the solutions out there for the MSPs to be able to take, you know, to be able to, you know, show that compliance, give it to their customers. Um, and really, you know, me testing their backups, making sure things are working correctly. I mean, the technology has advanced so much.

Absolutely. And, and, you know, it's a, it's a great segue to moving to the cloud. I mean, I, you know, I get it, I mean, at PE you know, and I, I was a system administrator or even a storage administrator, uh, you know, there's always a certain hesitancy in moving, you know, in adopting any MSP. But you know, these Astor recovery is a, you know, is a clear and present danger and, you know, threat or concern for every, every organization. So knowing that you can come in, offer the service, prove it works well, then you get very comfortable working with that MSP. Uh, and you know, I think that's a, that's a great segue into, into a lot of organizations that still have on premises. I mean, I, I, I mean, I, personal opinions, I don't know why any SMB would even still have any on-premise of gear or, you know, just a nominal or would only have a novel amount just to run their operation. You know, maybe they have some, you know, data they're storing onsite or whatever, but, you know, for anything that you're, you know, you need to use long-term applications or whatnot, moving to the cloud makes so much sense. So providing that dr. Service gives them a logical segue. Okay. I trust them to do this. What else can you provide for me to move to the, to offer those cloud services?

Yeah. It's that land and expand model it's get in there, get in there with their pain point and the pain point being backup, something we're seeing. I mean, you just look around the globe today. I mean, and you're seeing the municipalities, the school systems. I mean, I think that they've become a bigger target even more now with COVID because, you know, hackers know that schools are teaching virtually, they know that things are happening. And I think, you know, you're seeing the investment I we're seeing, you know, from what I'm hearing and seeing, you know, the educational sectors, investing more in technology today than they ever were, you know, because they have to find a way to teach them to continue to educate. And, but then you're seeing, you know, schools are locked out of virtual learning because hackers took over and compromised credentials and they didn't have backups in place and it's taken some of these districts longer time. So I think, you know, like you said, having these plans put them in place, test them, give people the peace of mind, show them the compliance of it. I mean, that's really key these days.

Absolutely. And, and you touched on it. I mean, you, you, you, you, when you mentioned education, you hit on a key point. In fact, I read a, um, there was one study that came out here. I think it was earlier this year, like in January or February, something like that, uh, where someone found that of all the companies, you know, pipes of, you know, verticals that, uh, hackers are attacking, uh, government agencies are, are like repre government agencies, manufacturing, construction represent like 40% of all the attacks, because yeah. Well, think about, you know, when you think about it, I mean, if you're, if you're in a government agency and you could, all your data gets compromised. I mean, you're, you're, you know, you've got the whole public, you know, staring down at you. You want to, you know, so hackers go after them because these governed agencies are more likely to pay, which, you know, it seems sort of counterintuitive, but it's true because they don't want to, they don't want to be explained to their, to the voting public, why they can't get government services back online. So they're more likely to pay to, you know, to decrypt their data. So I'm way with construction manufacturing. I mean, they get paid for how quickly they get buildings up or in the case of manufacturing, how quickly they get widgets sent down the line. So that, and these are often some of the areas that are, have the weakest it infrastructures in terms of security and protection. So, you know, if you're MSP, those are, you know, look at, you know, look at your Rolodex or look who's in your area. You'll find these government, uh, you know, construction and manufacturing industries to call upon because those are the ones that hackers are, are prioritizing as far as when their attacks.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, another thing, you know, we're starting to see a lot and we hear MSPs talking about this too, is just the predictive analytics and the impact on the business and system availability. Can, can you kinda guide into this with me and let's talk about this for a couple of minutes.

Yeah. So this, you know, it's, this is sort of, uh, you have to really be smart and I rock, you have to really be smart about thinking about predictive analytics and what's happening in that space because, you know, really anyone, anyone can say we have predictive analytics and it can mean, it means a lot of different things. So you have to really kind of pull back the covers a little bit when you're, when you're looking at, at what they can offer, as far as predictive analytics, uh, some of the, uh, more internet, you know, w we talked, I mentioned earlier on about, uh, you know, the beginning of our conversation here about, uh, what, uh, you know, what hackers are doing, or, you know, we're talking about ransomware and whatnot and how you have to talk about, you know, data loss prevention. And it really what I think what we're starting to see now with predictive analytics. I think the, the, the logical segue into is start to look for software that, uh, really is kind of a capsulated in your backup software or your data protection. However you want to phrase that, that not, you know, that kind of starts detecting ransomware, that looks for it, that analyzes it, but then it starts to go to the next step. And actually, you know, it starts acting on that where it, uh, you know, I'm aware of at least one software product where it goes in there, it identifies, you know, that okay, that they're, you know, as identified maybe a strain of ransomware that's running in your environment, not only does it identify and say, you know, you know, just setting up an alert is nice. Okay. I mean, at least, you know, it's in your environment, but this software actually goes, you know, the next step and it actually starts shutting some of it down where it, um, you know, it, it actually starts quarantining where that software is. And then it actually goes next to the actual recovery. Some of the files that were infected are encrypted. Okay. Now, to me, that's like really starting to get, you know, uh, really start to get where artificial intelligence needs to go within the, the software solutions. So, you know, I think most, I would say most products you're looking at now, or many products are starting to identify the, the presence of, and again, I keep going back to ransomware because one of my main themes that I keep talking about, it's, it's not a matter of if you get attacked by ransomware, it's a matter of when I've read it. There's one know it's depending on who you listen to, or what stats you believe it's anywhere from 20 to 50% of us muses were affected by ransomware in the last year alone. Okay. Uh, that that's, I mean, so it's, yeah, it's insane. And yet there's more and more different strains coming to market most antivirus or anti ransomware providers, you know, they, they don't even try to catch all the strains of ransomware. I think I just talked to someone the other day, it says like 4,000 or it's either 4,000 or 400,000 was some insane number come to market every single day. Okay. So there's no way they can, you know, account for every version. So they have to look for changes in the environment. And those were really an, um, where they, artificial intelligence comes into play and backup software really has to kind of play, you know, either have to work hand in hand in glove with your existing antivirus software, or it has to have its own sort of intelligence built in that compliments your existing security software. And what I'm really promoting is really, you know, try to, you know, prevention is better than recovery every time. I mean, if you have to recover something like, uh, again, we talked about office three 65, but, uh, but if you have to recover it, you know, even one server, much less dozens or hundreds, as I've talked to a few people who've had to have had those experiences, it's incredibly painful. So what you really wanna do is you really want to look for artificial intelligence in the software that actually stops the pack because you as an MSP, I mean, whether you like it or not, the calls are still gonna come to your phone, even though like, well, we didn't, you know, you know, it's, it's, you know, we're just representing the software or, you know, it's, it's, your, your customers are going to trust you to protect them because you're their it provider. You're the, your, their new it staff. So make sure that when you bring this stuff to market, you're, you're not just thinking about backing it up. You're talking about stopping the data, you know, stopping ransomware, stopping these attacks before they even start. No. Yeah. That's you always, it's hard. And I think that's one of the things

MSPs, you know, I was an MSP as well, and you struggle sometimes to get the message out there of, we want it to be preventative. We want to, we want to prevent these things. And it's all about education. It's all about, you know, a lot of times businesses from an MSP perspective, they're like, you're just trying to sell me another solution. You're just trying to sell me something to make more revenue. That's why I really feel it's real important that you educate your clients. You need to be able to talk to them about why these things need to be put in place, not just say, well, when your business is down, what's going to happen. Like walk through the scenarios that could cause the business to go down in the practical sense that they can put it together. So really again, I love that comment and, you know, again, being preventative, it's hard, but you do really need to, if you're an MSP listening today, take advantage of those QPRs, educate your customers are the threats and their vertical, their industry, show them real life examples. And then you're taking them down a journey that then makes it easier to get the right solutions in there.

Right. And, and, you know, the good news is there are solutions out there it's, it's not like we're, um, we're, you know, we're, we're presenting problems without any solutions. And it's like, you know, you have all these problems. I mean, there, there are solutions available and, and, and really, you know, and again, I, I'm not necessarily trying to hide DCIG, but really that's what we were, you know, we were, we're trying to do with these, with these different top five reports is like, okay, Hey, listen, here's, here's some solutions that are available that, you know, you know, when we, when we evaluate these solutions and we come up with these top five reports, everything we're talking about here, these are what we're looking for. That's how they, you know, how we, we sorta, you know, separate the cream or identify the cream of the crop for you. I mean, yeah. Okay. Maybe not, everyone's a perfect fit for you, but out of those top five, something's going to be there for you to, for you to help. And, you know, we're, that's really what we're trying to help people do not, not identify the best solution for you, but just help you get the shortlist. So you can really evaluate the best products for your environment or for your, for your clients, respectively.

Well, that's awesome. And we really want to kind of get into one of our last questions here, and then I'll, we'll wrap it up. You know what I mean? You want to have a couple of final thoughts, but, you know, I, I saw something from you and I think you have really good information on this, but are we seeing the rise of serverless computers?

Yeah. That, um, so here's, you know, here's something I think you can really help your clients on where you don't. Yeah. And this is more of almost, I mean, I think this is more for those organizations who want to be a MSPs who kind of want to be, uh, you know, maybe the long the development pad. I mean, it's not necessarily for everyone. So in, in the latest, um, at VM world, uh, uh, just last month. Okay. Uh, the CEO of VMware said, yeah, we're seeing, uh, our clients move to the cloud that they're increasing the number of VMs year over year by three X. Okay. And I'm just like, okay, you know, I, I've got a little, I've got, you know, I'm, I'm not a huge organization. I have some, uh, uh, you know, I have account in, in, uh, AWS where I host some of my services over there. And it's like, you really got to keep your eye on that, on that thing, because, you know, if you spin up a VM, okay, then it consumes another IP address. So that is compute, you know, consuming some storage resources

And all of a sudden, you know, my costs. I mean, again, I'm a small shop. I don't have that much if they suddenly quadrupled. Okay. Now, I mean, now every time you,

Your, your company's, you know, your clients open up a VM or, you know, I mean, they, the way one, one MSP I talked to, he says, you know, he, he kinda could five and he says, VMs are like crack for your, um, for your clients. So I think there's, you have to be aware that at some point, uh, everyone who subscribes to cloud compute it, it's like the cost just start escalating way faster than your, than your clients may anticipate. Now, on one hand, as an MSP, that might be really exciting because all of a sudden your revenues, and especially if you're reselling cloud services, it's great. Okay. You're making a lot of money on it. Okay. Because your, your billables keep going up, but the serverless thing is going to be the next thing that's going to be sweeping through because all of a sudden you don't need, I mean, you just get, like, you know, you just use fractional CPU on a lot of these, uh, a lot of these cloud services. And in the case of Amazon, like, you can make like a million calls per month at no charge. Well, at some point your clients are going to start figuring out that, Hey, uh, why have all these VMs that are just providing, uh, you know, just, you know, nominal amounts of services are basically to run, you know, we have applications running on a specific VM that they're consuming. You know, they're, they're running my bills every month, but they only really only need to run, you know, once a day or once an hour or something like that. And that's really where serverless compute really starts. So they can start converting these, these applications that only need, need to be called upon once in a while to, uh, uh, you know, to just spin up, perform the function they're called upon to do and shut back down. In fact, I'm aware to aware of one, uh, organization here in, um, where I live in Omaha, Nebraska, that that's, that's completely skipped. You know, they're trying to skip the whole VM, uh, model altogether. They're trying to go to serverless compute, and they're not seeing their cloud costs go up at all, or just nominally, because, you know, they're increasing some storage and whatnot, but really, you know, just their cloud compute costs are going up very nominally. So, and, and when I talked to some of these development agency or, you know, developers for the different backup softwares, and especially as you start looking like a subscription-based SAS cloud backup services and whatnot, that's what they're doing. That's how they're developing their applications. That's how they can scale so seamlessly and solo costs because they're not spinning up more and more VM. They're just using more and more, uh, serverless compute type options. So if you don't know much about serverless compute it, behooves you to start getting in front of this started understanding it. A lot of your clients are already, I mean, uh, you know, especially if you're in the enterprise environment, I think I just read another statute. Uh, I was doing some research here recently where like 73% of all development in enterprises is now occurring in serverless. So this, this is coming. It's not, you know, it's not today. It's probably not even tomorrow or maybe even next year, but, you know, going into 20, 22 and beyond you better be ready for this. Cause it is, uh, it it's coming. It's going to, and it's going to hit really hard. It's going to be, it's going to be another huge shift again that you need to prepare it for and make sure you have solutions identified that can help you, you know, help walk your clients through this shift. Are you going to find them going to someone else?

No, that that's, that's great. I mean, I'm, I'm learning a lot right now on that as well, because you know, I've heard a little bit, but really what you're talking about makes, makes complete sense. And it's going to be interesting to see as we go in and as we see work from home and a lot of enterprises change here going into 2021, 2022, uh, you know, that's something that I'm going to definitely put on my radar is the serverless computing drum. You've been a wealth of knowledge today. Is there anything you want to leave our listeners with our MSPs that are listening today? Is there one last thing that you really want to make sure that,

Yeah, so I think the other thing too, that I'm really sorry to spend some time on too. It's just, it's sort of a topic that's becoming top of mind. It has to be around orchestration software. And we talked a little about disaster recovery at the beginning. Uh, you know, that's sort of another thing you want to look at, you know, just how you can bring all these things, uh, you know, bring different services together, prioritize which services come up and when they come up again, another, another kind of cool feature to look at. And so just sort of the capstone, everything, you know, it is changing very quickly right now. I mean, we're, we're seeing, uh, if, uh, I would say companies right now as a whole are moving more towards, you know, they want subscript, they increasingly want subscription-based services. They don't, uh, I mean, sir, there's always going to be some organizations that are going to still do on premises are still gonna offer those sort of, uh, you know, those sorts of services. But I would say those are just going to be the really large enterprises that really have the, you know, the money and resources and expertise to build it. When you start to look at, you know, midsize enterprises, SMBs, they're going to want to move to the cloud, they're going to want subscription services. So when you start looking for solutions to support them, you know, look for ones that offer these cloud-based services that are, uh, you know, subscription base that you can resell, because I think it would really, cause I just thought that it's only becomes a recurring revenue stream for you. There's often very little upfront costs. I mean, it's easier for your clients to fit into their budgets because again, they're looking at monthly, quarterly, even annual costs. Uh, but, uh, but it's usually a lower upfront cost and it's more recurring. So I have to get into all the depreciation, all that. So it's, it's it MSPs, you know, if you're, especially, if you're doing with S SMB SMEs, you want to start embracing these sort of solutions that take you down that path and you can offer those to your clients.

No, that's, that's, that's great advice. And you know, really, I mean, you've gotten, you've thrown off so much good information on this, and I appreciate you taking the time, you know, to be on this podcast with us. And I know our, I know our listeners are going to really be able to take advantage of this. So, uh, I want to thank everybody. Thanks for listening to the connecting it podcast. Make sure you subscribe, rate us five stars on the iTunes store. And until next time see you later,