Azure at the edge, IBM in the basement, and databases running wild—Where can you help? In this episode, Paul Croteau unpacks the real signals that it’s time to modernize, simplify, or double down. From hybrid cloud wins to legacy saves, this is your cheat sheet for spotting opportunity before your competitors do. And yes, you sell Azure Local, Database-as-a-Service, and IBM Modernization, so listen today and find out how!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto.
SVP of sales. Engineering at Telaris and this
is next level. Biz tech.
Everybody, welcome back. We got some hot topics for you
today. We're talking about Azure at
(00:21):
the. Edge.
IBM in the basement and databases everywhere.
On with us today. We got Paul Crito from Tierpoint
National Channel Director. Good to see you on, buddy.
Welcome. And always good to chat with
you, Josh. Good to be back.
It is true. It is good to be back.
It's been a little while. You know, I, you know, bounced
around a bit, done some things, different roles, but I always
(00:42):
love engaging with you and the entire team.
I love it. Let's let's jump in, man.
I mean, let's let's maybe start it.
It was so long ago. Let's start with your
background, kind of your journey.
There's maybe some clues to it in the background for anybody
watching this on video, but talkus to us about, you know, your
journey, how you got here and, and kind of what your role is
now. Well, first the Earth cooled,
(01:04):
no. So yeah, I've got a unique
journey. I've done a lot of different
things in my life. You know, I've been in the IT
space since the early 90s. I started my career at Anderson
Consulting back before it was called Accenture.
That's where I got my initial foundation in enterprise systems
and large scale infrastructure. Some really cool stuff there are
supporting the sales team in LasColinas just north of Dallas.
(01:28):
That job led me to getting my MBA full time at Texas A&M in
the mid 90s. Kind of the life altering phrase
that the, the associate partner told me.
I've worked in there for 2 1/2 years.
I was a contractor there and they left my work.
I was very good at what I did. And I said, hey, Bill, you know,
(01:49):
why haven't you guys hired me full time?
I've obviously proven myself 2 1/2 years.
You've had me around and he and he looked me in the square,
square in the face and he said, Paul, I'll be honest with you,
you've got a music degree. You might as well have a
criminal record on your resume as far as Anderson is concerned.
I mean, that took me back just alittle.
Now think about it, because in the 80s it was all about
(02:11):
creative thinking out-of-the-box.
We want creative liberal arts folks and music makers and
artists. This is early 90s where greed is
good. Gordon Gekko.
And so Anderson was Anderson andhe said, like, we just, it's
just not going to fit our our requirements.
See, I said, well, what can I doto fix that?
I love working here. He says, well, maybe if you got
your MBA that would certainly besomething worth talking about.
(02:31):
So I committed full time. I said great.
So I I quit Anderson, my wife quit her teaching job.
We moved to College Station. I was full time student for two
years. Now, the timing of all this is
really interesting because I gotthere in 94, what happened in
95, Netscape IPO in August of 95.
And that's largely what most folks considerthe.com boom.
(02:54):
And I recognized right away, this is different.
This is a paradigm shift. The cultural shift is going to
change the world. And so while studying
organizational behavior and, and, and marketing, my degree
was in services and marketing accounting, which I was horrible
at. And I was learning HTML and
expanding my my graphic arts skills 'cause I had done some
(03:15):
freelance work as a graphic artist.
So I learned how to build web pages.
My first resume during grad school was online and HTML with
graphics. And so I got my MBA.
I graduated from Texas AM and in1996 and and I got a full time
job at EDS in Plano, TX, north of Dallas as a Webmaster.
So now I'm diving into data center support and deploying
(03:35):
things, cutting my hands on the rails in Iraq, rack and stack
and cabling, swapping out gear, etcetera, supporting operating
systems. Very, very interesting time
duringthe.com boom. Then I left.
EDSEDS was kind of slowly adopting technology.
I was with a group with an EDS called C2O, stood for Chaos to
Order. We're about a 600 person team at
(03:56):
the time led by Butch winners out of San Francisco.
And after a couple of years in arow of the Global Operations
Council, EDS not really recognizing the paradigm shift,
basically the entire division said we're out of here and we
all exploded to different.com startups.
I went to a company called Data Return.
They were an early innovator in what we can call the cloud
today. They are the first Microsoft
(04:17):
hosting partner of the year thatever existed.
We were really, really strong inthe Microsoft side.
Then as we were growing, I decided I I've been an SE for a
long time. I want to go into sales where
they make the big money. And so I willingly left data
return to take on a data center sales role at SBC before it
became AT&T, right before the.com bust.
(04:40):
So engineering role, we all knowengineers are pretty much
protected, hard to find, they dowell.
And I went to sales and then boom.com bust happened.
That was not good timing on my part.
It was an interesting time in the world for folks in
technology sales. But eventually that led to me
being hired at Rackspace where Iwas for 15 years on and off.
(05:02):
I was there for a long time, left Rackspace, acquired a
company I went to and bought me back and that's where I kind of
got introduced into the channel.So I was an SE enterprise SE at
Rackspace and then I got involved in channel about 20,
2016, 2017 eventually became their channel CTO, their channel
field CTO. And so it, it was neat to learn
(05:24):
about the channel and learning the how the process works, the
relationships, what the sellers out in channel are used to
doing, how they sell, the various types of sales that
there are selling styles, relationships, etcetera.
So that that Channel world was new to me and I love it.
I've been involved in channel for roughly 10 years now and I
(05:45):
love it. And I've established reputation
as as a go to resource to help folks solve problems.
I love work with the partners and, and today national channel
director at tear point. So all my history from an
engineer as a salesperson, as a channel field CTO, etcetera, has
really formed my current resume.I think I'm in probably the
(06:05):
best, most logical spot right now at to your point, managing
the relationships with my TS DS.It's been great.
I, I, I've got a lot of great experience and, and I, I tend to
take things from a different perspective than a lot of folks.
I try to keep it entertaining. Obviously, I speak quickly.
I need to slow down. I recognize that.
But I try to help people sell and succeed, and that that comes
(06:28):
with solving customer problems. And I think we'll probably talk
about that a little bit in this episode here.
OK, I, I, I love this background, but we're going to
get into projects, products herein just a second, but I can't
help but, but you know, obviously for, for anybody not
on the, on the video side, there's a guitar in the
background, there's a saxophone or two in the background and
(06:50):
some other things. What's the in, in your opinion?
I see a good correlation betweenthose in music and those in
tech. There seems to be a vested
interest into both. Why, what, why, why, why does
someone excel? Like what?
What is it about in your perspective?
Right You, you got a lot more experience and education here.
(07:11):
What? What's the catch?
Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a common question and I see tons
of musicians in in tech. This wall is my conversation
starter wall. I have this up on purpose.
It's to break the ice to people I don't know.
And you always find folk. I was in band in high school.
I play guitar, I write songs, all the love the brain.
People think right side and leftside, but it's more complicated
(07:33):
that there's front, there's different lobes, etcetera.
Music is math, it's history, it's language, it's science,
it's a lot of different things. Object oriented programming and
music are very, very similar as far as how things group
together, the relationships, etcetera.
I think there's just music is technical, it's complex and,
and, and I think people that aremusically inclined easily pick
(07:54):
up on on technical concepts. My son was a saxophone player
like me. He just graduated college a
couple weeks ago as a software developer.
He's got a job lined up startingnext month.
It took to him. He got he got deep into coding
much better than me and it just clicked.
But I think the musical brain and the programming technical
side of how things are organizedand communicate are very, very
similar. I love it.
(08:14):
Yeah, Alright. OK.
So let's let's get into a quick primer on who Tierpoint is,
right, long time supplier of Telaris.
But for anybody that's not familiar, just give us the broad
brush strokes, who you are, where you differentiate and then
we'll dive into a couple specific products here that.
Sounds great. So in, in a nutshell, you know,
(08:34):
Tierpoint is a leading provider of hybrid IT solutions.
We're not putting you in a box. We're the hybrid IT solution
provider, which means that you were helping companies design,
deploy, manage right scale, the right mix of public cloud,
private cloud, Co location managed services on top of that
plus some other managed servicesthat we'll get into.
(08:57):
We operate in about 40, a littlemore than 40 US based data
centers. All of our support is US based
as well. We're trusted by thousands of
clients, several thousand clients across the mid market
and enter size enterprise space.But I think what makes us
different, you know, if all you got is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail. We've got a full toolkit.
(09:18):
We're not just trying to force you into a specific technology.
We have a full portfolio so we can help customers figure out
where the workloads should be, where should the data be, who
should be taking care of the workloads and supporting it and
running the data, etcetera. It's about meeting clients where
they are on their cloud journey.One of the ways I like to look
(09:39):
at it, you know, to your point'smore of a a real world cloud
partner, we understand that not,you know, companies are not just
all in cloud or they're not justall on Prem.
They live in between. And so that's kind of where we
shine because we can do the on Prem, we can do the color, we
can do the public cloud, the private cloud and VM Ware, the
Hyper V, the, the, the, the, the, the hybrid solutions of
(10:00):
cloud plus hardware plus Colorado, etcetera.
What makes this different, I guess, is our ability to to
blend cutting edge new technologies with traditional
technologies, fantastic consulting, professional
services. We're not trying to be
everything to everyone. We're trying to be the right
partner, helping people and clients, businesses solve the
(10:22):
right problems instead of just pushing products at them.
Awesome. OK, we're we're before we get
into products, I've got one lastquestion here.
So you've had this, this kind ofawesome always seems like
you're, you're, you're at the right time of paying attention
to what's next, where things aregoing.
So as you look back over this career path, what's a lesson
(10:43):
that you've learned either from a mistake made, a great mentor,
a tough customer, and anything that kind of approaches how you
or changes how you approach things now?
There's a lot of ways to answer that.
A full sales funnel solves lots of problems in the sales
process. But that's kind of a an
interesting answer. I think focusing on business
(11:06):
outcomes is something that not enough people do.
As engineers, we want to show our technical muscle and say,
look, I got this great skill set.
I got, I know how to do this thing.
I can deploy it faster and leaner and etcetera, make this
great IT solution. But it's the biggest lessons
I've learned is that technology design has to start with the
(11:26):
business outcomes. What are we shooting for?
When regarding the sales funnel comment I made, sometimes
sellers the funnels not as as full as they like.
And so they get a lead or an interested client and the client
says, I need this and the sellerwill rush to quote that for them
without asking the why. And sometimes sellers get
(11:47):
frustrated when providers like us ask, hey, can we get where
your client can we? We want to know the why,
understand the context of this decision.
Cause a lot of times sellers and, and, and providers will get
into this like lift and shift loop where, OK, I'm just going
to take what they've got. They're asking for this.
It's an RFP or it's a quote. I got to match a quote.
And let's, let's you know, let'sdo your mess for less somewhere
(12:09):
else, you know, can you get me abetter price on this stuff?
And you get into this like Bake Off of replicating the same
problems in a new environment. That's the the you're less for
mess, but I think when you startfocusing on the you know what's
driving this need you, you ask for this connectivity, You ask
you're adding another 100 mailboxes or you're adding a
couple circuits or or you're adding a new location.
(12:31):
What's the why behind this? Help me understand the context
because most likely you're goingto find business reasons to say,
hey, there's a lot more we can talk about.
Yeah, you're adding three officelocations now and you need those
circuits and you need some hardware in each location for
Wi-Fi or whatever, but you're growing.
So what does that mean from a back office perspective?
Maybe you were involved in a merger and now you've got
(12:53):
redundant e-mail systems and redundant Salesforce instances
and redundant IT infrastructure that needs to be optimized and
consolidated. So when you get to the Y versus
the get it done, here's the quote kind of situation, you can
be more far more successful as aseller, provide more value to
your clients, but you've got to get your partners involved
(13:14):
earlier in the sales process if possible.
At the end of the day, we're notjust trying to win deals.
We're trying to help customers make the right decisions given
the positive customer outcomes that will serve them now as well
as the future. When you ask the why, you don't
cover new business units and newpotential ways to help the
client down the road. So let's shift gears, let's go,
(13:36):
let's go products here. So years ago we saw AWS come out
with a product that said, you know, OK, maybe maybe you don't
need all infrastructure in the cloud.
Maybe you like our stack, but you want to put it on Prem.
It's crazy idea, but brilliant for customers where they need
that equipment there, right? AWS calls this Outposts.
(13:58):
You guys are a big Azure shop. And so this this product has
come out called Azure Local, where now you know, Microsoft
seems to have a great rise in the market just because of
multiple different reasons, right?
Licensing is just kind of that anchor.
So talk to us about the edge of the cloud from an Azure
perspective, this product calledAzure local.
(14:18):
So you guys have a unique play with this in regard to hybrid.
So first of all, what is Azure local in your words and what's
the problem that it solves? Sure.
Short answer is Azure Local brings public cloud capabilities
to the actual location where clients want it, whether it's on
their Prem, could be in a cola facility, it could actually be
(14:39):
in a competitor data center. For all that we care.
We're going to manage it for them.
It's it's tier points answer to a gap in the hybrid cloud space.
Bringing Azure's services. They're fantastic services.
It used to be called Azure Stackand then like late last year
they changed it to Azure Local. Microsoft is known to change
names and words every now and then, but we can run it anywhere
and we are kind of leading the way in the channel.
(15:01):
We've got very strong Azure expertise.
We're also good at AWS as well, but in a nutshell, it's hyper
converged. That's hard to say for me.
Infrastructure running on there,what's it Apex, AIAI, OPS
platform. It's like an umbrella of AI
technologies. And then you interface with it
(15:21):
via Azure Arc, which is, I don'tlike to say single pane of
glass, but it's a single platform.
We can access it plus a bunch ofother stuff.
And we're really. Really good at that.
Integrating clients, other systems with as your local, it's
one of the benefits that as yourart gives us that that single
pane of glass, that single platform place to manage all the
IT. And as a managed service
(15:41):
provider, we, we generally prefer to provide that
management for our clients. They get the same API, the same
code base, etcetera. But with it being local, getting
lower latency, better control, more access to our support now,
why would someone want to do this?
Maybe they're tired of the egress fees coming out of cloud.
(16:02):
There's a big wave the past yearor two of data repatriation,
people getting their stuff out of the cloud and putting it
local or on the edge. And so sometimes it's about, you
know, protecting data for, for data sovereignty.
Sometimes it's copyright or PII information.
There's a famous case a couple years ago now, I guess, of a
(16:23):
movie studio, a movie trailer got leaked out because it was on
public cloud and someone didn't set up the apples properly and,
and it got leaked out. And so you want to control your
proprietary content, a big thingin the entertainment industry,
you want that stuff on Prem could be the same for medical
data, for private research data,Department of Defense stuff,
having those, the cloud functionality.
What is cloud? It's, it's the ability to to add
(16:44):
and turn off resources when you need and don't need them,
instant scalability, paying for what you use, etcetera.
But it's on Prem or in, you know, Colorado versus some of
the facility that you can't get to.
So whether it's about, you know,performance or compliance or
cost control, it basically brings the public cloud
computing capabilities to the location of clients want them,
(17:05):
where they, where they or at least where we think it's best
to put them. Well, and, and it seems like
there's, there's a couple other benefits here.
It seems also, you know, there'sa nice local survivability
benefit to this as well. You're, you're not having to get
into this idea of CapEx in the infrastructure if you don't want
to. It's all an OpEx.
And I guess can you, when you get into these conversations
(17:27):
with customers and you think about, you know, we're, we're
talking about we're super flexible, we're tier point, it's
hybrid. What do you need?
Do you need all hyperscaler? Do you need private cloud?
Do you need local? Are you finding that you're
having to bring up, oh, by the way, we can do this with Azure?
Or is it a certain segment of customers that go, oh, this is
really advantageous in manufacturing or retail or like
(17:48):
what, what where are you seeing that that plays the best?
Well, the cloud functionality isthe utility of compute, memory
and storage, etcetera. So it's getting back to the
business conversation. Why are you using cloud today?
What made you go there? Why do you want to leave it,
etcetera. Where are your workloads?
Where should they be? Why?
(18:09):
And then let's get them there. It's it's industry agnostic,
it's client size agnostic. So we end up, you know, trying
to steer conversations with our clients back to the why asking 5
why's, if necessary, what are you trying to accomplish?
What do you want to do today? Bigger picture, what do you want
to do today? And, and what's keeping you from
doing that? You're not doing it or why
(18:30):
aren't you doing that? And that's a whole separate
conversation we can talk about is the questions to ask, but it
gets away from technology. Stop selling things and start
talking business consulting, solving problems and helping
them grow and scale, etc. Are you?
Finding that on the Azure local thing, are you this idea that I
think there's a lot of people that don't even know that this
(18:51):
exists from a customer side, areyou finding that you're having
to bring up this idea of we could do Azure local as part of
the equation as well or are customers, are they aware of it
that's even? Options, sales calls, people
don't know that you can put cloud in your own place.
So, yeah, so when they hear that, like I didn't know I could
do that. And that's one of the best
things you can hear during your sales calls.
I didn't know you did that. That's that's a, that's a a
(19:14):
buying signal. It's a great sign that you've
you've, it's a challenge. If you're familiar with the
challenger sale, it, it challenges their way of
thinking. So yeah, we do bring it up
because a lot of folks don't realize, you know, it's
possible. Alright, let's let's go to
product #2 here on the on the list.
Let's talk about database as a service.
So I mean, database, no secret, right?
(19:37):
It's at the core of everything. Everything lives and breathes in
some version of a database. So the hyperscalers, there's a
lot of cloud databases out thereif people want to DIY this.
But first of all, just walk us through, we see this coming up a
lot more in conversations and there is not very many people
that do this in the channel. So you guys have such a, such an
awesome niche here. How does the tear point database
(20:00):
as a service? How does it stand out from a
customer trying to do it themselves or some of these
other hyperscaler options? The DIY thing is applicable to
every facet of technology, especially in database
databases. It's a lifeblood.
It's today's gold, it's today's oil, it's today's Bitcoin,
whatever you want to call it, it's today's thing.
(20:20):
Without data, businesses don't exist.
And so it, it, it relates to customer experience when you go
shopping at your favorite e-commerce site and they're
making recommendations based on past visits, social media is
pinging you with ads based on the words you say when you're
not even using your Dang device.And why am I getting ads for,
for fake grass now? Because my yard's dead.
Oh, I must have said that near my phone or I must have tweeted
(20:42):
about it or something. You know, the data is, is gold.
And, and analyzing, protecting and monetizing that data are
very, very important. But doing it yourself is is
difficult. A lot of times this gets to a
staffing issue. Clients and businesses can't
properly stack their teams. DB as are smart and expensive.
And if you overwork them like any person, they're going to
(21:05):
find work elsewhere. So we help customers, we step in
and say, well, OK, where's your data?
What are you doing today? What's what database platforms
is the sequel, is it Oracle? Is it, you know, my SQL
etcetera. Let us take the grunt work away
from you. Let's handle the patching, the
the the maintenance performance,the tweaking backups, HA, the
tuning. Let us focus on that stuff.
(21:26):
You so your DB as can focus on the more fun brain work of hey,
let's analyze that data, let's optimize it and monetize it.
A lot of times we'll find we'll be talking to clients and the
conversation wasn't originally about databases.
They came to us saying, hey, we've got an app latency issue
and they think maybe it's the network, maybe it's DNS because
it's always DNS. Always DNS man.
(21:48):
Always DNS, but they, they probably have a problem with the
apps. Well, hey, we do a quick, you
know, proof of concept or an assessment and we realize, no,
you got a problem with your database query structure, your
database layout. We can optimize this for you
then I have no idea. So optimizing databases,
tweaking database queries and things of that sort they didn't
think about because they're so busy patching it and keeping up
(22:08):
online, etcetera. They don't have time to kind of
think that way. So in the hyper scalers, you're
kind of boxed into a single cloud database option.
You can't really do a lot creativity, they perform
wonderfully, but you've got to know what you're doing.
And it's difficult for companiesto hire the quantity of quality
resources needed to get the mostout of a team.
(22:29):
And so we can step in with a fantastic team of engineers,
cloud engineers, DB as etcetera and and use our scale, our 24/7
abilities to come in and help clients get the most out of that
data. Is you mentioned a couple of
from a database perspective, right as partners are out there
listening and talking to customers and hearing the pain
(22:51):
points and things they're tryingto accomplish.
Is it, is it my sequel? Is it Oracle?
Is it a, is it a bigger list? Is it 5 databases?
Is it 2 databases? Just any other names you want us
to know as what we? As what we support, Yeah, yeah,
Sequel, Oracle, My SQL, Postgres, and of course the
cloud versions in Amazon and Azure as well.
(23:12):
We're not. We're not in the Google space,
so we don't play in that space. The Auroras and all of those.
Awesome. Exactly.
Exactly. Beautiful, great trigger points,
great pain points. What if you're going to give a
partner? I think this is such a great,
very, very unique wedge offering.
What's your favorite 1-2 questions?
(23:34):
Is there, if the customer's like, yeah, we've got some
infrastructure projects and if you want to try to see if
there's any database needs in there, what's Paul's favorite
one or two questions to kind of expose that a little bit?
Around databases specifically, yeah, yeah.
Just asking questions. How are your apps performing?
Are your clients complaining about any latency issues?
Are you seeing bad data come in?Are you seeing transactions
(23:56):
failing in the e-commerce side of the platform?
Do you have problems backing up your data?
Are you properly packing up yourdata?
Is your data secure? Are you sure you know, have you
tested your backup and restore of your data?
So it's just asking performance questions and, and this is one
(24:16):
of my things that not a lot of folks talk about.
I again like to focus on staffing questions.
How are you? Is your team staffed from a
database perspective? For example, is there someone on
your IT team, maybe specificallyon databases that if they left
or quit or were fired, their absence or departure would wreak
havoc on your internal capabilities.
It would create chaos on the team because of the tribal
(24:37):
knowledge of the the things thatthey know.
They know the bodies are buried into a password.
They know the code. Are there any staffing concerns?
Are you? Do you think you're properly
staffed to handle your current and future data state?
Would you be able to handle a spike in interest?
What if someone mentioned your product and it went viral?
Could your database handle that?What if someone did a TikTok or
(24:58):
an Instagram post and suddenly they want to buy a lot of your
stuff? You have the capacity.
Do you know, Are you sure? Is that secure?
Are you sure? So just creating some kind of
uncertainty asking do you have the people?
Do you have the skills? Do you think you can scale?
Are you sure really? So that's that's kind of the
approach I like to take. I like, I like that.
I mean, databases really are AI mean scaling, scaling compute,
(25:19):
you know, horizontally is is tricky.
Vertical is tricky. I think databases are are a
science within a science from a scale perspective.
I mean, that is a that's a PhD within its own.
And I love your point of who does that for you?
Oh, oh, Timmy over here. Does it just Timmy?
Well, what does? Timmy take.
(25:40):
Vacations does, Timmy, you know.Timmy's really a VM Ware expert
that just did the database stuffbecause we didn't have anybody
because he that gets into the whole concept.
I mean around staffing. I say this all the time, but
it's I think it's bears repeating.
If you have a mission critical business function that has to be
up 24/7, it's part of your business.
If your global economy, your e-commerce site has to be up
(26:01):
24/7. If you're in the medical
industry and you know, 911 services or medical monitoring
or or video or security monitoring, that can't not be
on. It has to be always on for every
single technology that you want covered 24/7.
One person is not going to cut it.
Two people on your staff is not going to cut it.
You need 6. Why do you need 6, Paul?
First, second, third shift, Monday through Friday, first,
(26:24):
second, third shift on the weekends.
That's 6. Now you should have a 7th
because people get sick, they goon vacation, they go to clients,
they have training, etcetera. So ideally 7.
And a lot of, I've been saying this thing for literally for 10
years, A lot of clients, especially in the smaller space
will say no, we got Timmy, he's got a smartphone we can reach
many time. Well, Timmy's going to want to
go to the baseball team with hiskid on Saturday and out of just
(26:45):
happen when they happen, not when you want them to happen.
So Timmy needs a backup. Maybe Timmy's got Sally, but
maybe Sally's got something going on that weekend because it
was her weekend. To do XYZ.
You don't have 6 folks and that's just the database side,
for example. But you need networking,
operating system, cybersecurity,public cloud, and all these
before you know it 6 * 6 is 36 math right there.
(27:10):
You know full staff of IT folks to properly support every facet
of your business. And, and that just isn't
possible for many, if not most businesses out there.
That's why you leverage a company like it's your point.
It has a 24/7 staffing, the 24/7monitoring where folks can come
in and provide the expertise when you need it, not just when
you can deliver it. Let's go, let's go.
(27:32):
Final product here did a little bit of research on this before
so we're going to talk about IBMand you think Oh my gosh it's
2025 how are we talking about IBM?
What's the talk track there? I, I titled this section of the
forgotten giant. And so I, I looked at this and
I, I found, I found two kind of varying answers on this.
On the low side, there's 50,000 A S4 hundreds still in use.
(27:56):
On the high side, 80 to 100,000 A S4 hundreds still in use.
So we know clearly in 2025 IBM workloads, they're still
everywhere. But, but it's just not a, it's
not a conversation that comes upa lot.
But when it does, I mean walk usthrough in your opinion, what's
the state of IBM in the enterprise and and where do you
(28:17):
guys play here helping modernizeand maintain?
Well, as the saying has been fordecades, no one ever got fired
for hiring IBM. They are legendary for a reason.
You can say 10s of thousands of them out there, close to 100
thousands, and they're running incredibly important information
systems across financial, you know, banking, healthcare,
(28:37):
manufacturing, logistics and travel.
It's incredibly, it's a vital component.
It's a national treasure. And they're still in place
because they run, they don't break, they're very, very
robust. The issue is that in the rush to
modernize, oh, got to go to the cloud and got to virtualize and
got to do AI, well, these IBM workloads, they get left behind
(28:59):
not because they're irrelevant, they are very relevant, but it's
because they're very specialized.
They're complex, and they're notreally well understood by the
younger generation of cloud native architects.
I mean, back in the day, I'm oldenough to be involved in the
year 2K, the Y2K problem the world was going to end in, you
know, January 1 of 2000. People are on call.
(29:21):
We had to call COBOL programmersout of retirement back then to
be around take a look at code. Well, here we are 25 years
later, literally, and IBM is still a thing.
COBOL is still a thing, AS 400 is still a thing.
It's very, very relevant. Folks just don't mess with it
because it works. But there are problems.
For example, Power 8 series IBM servers are very pervasive in
(29:45):
society. They went end of support end of
last year, if not earlier, meaning no more patches, no more
support from IBM and that's Power 8.
Power 9 replaced it. Power 9 goes end of support in
January of next year. So another eight months or so
from now or less. That means Power 10s coming out
and there's a road map for Power11 through 13, etcetera.
(30:08):
Moving those workloads. At some point you have to say,
look, power rates are not being patched anymore.
They are now cyber threats. People can get to them.
And these are such mission critical systems, literally life
and death at times, they have tobe migrated.
And we've got the capabilities of assessing what you've got,
figuring out where should those workloads be.
(30:28):
If it's something as simple as migrating a Power 8 to a Power
10, swapping it out, procuring the hardware, moving the data
and workloads there and done, that's a simple, easy peasy.
Or where's your workload today? Let's think about a redundant
system. Let's figure out where your
production should be. It's on Prem Now I'll tell you
what, why don't we put that production workload in a tier
point data center in our redundant networking and power
(30:51):
connectivity and all the staffing, etcetera.
We can run ADR site, a smaller footprint back at your location,
all new hardware, we're going tomanage the failover, the Dr.
replication, etcetera. Now you've got a truly redundant
system on modern hardware, you're good to go.
Or let's just do the whole thing, put it in our data center
or let's put it in a in a private cloud.
You can, we can do a private IBMcloud in one of our facilities
(31:13):
as well. So it's multi tenant lowering
your costs, still secure. So there's a lot the all the
options that folks have today inpublic cloud for the
applications apply in the IBM space.
But like you said, Josh, no one's talking about it in the
channel. And while the the deals pay
great and they're usually very large, once you get that locked
in the I86, the X86 stuff comes in all the other workloads.
(31:36):
Oh, you did this so well, we gota bunch of Microsoft stuff or we
have this public cloud stuff. Can you help us with that?
And man, talk about a sticky data.
What's, what's it called? Data gravity situation.
You get the IBM data under contract.
Show your clients that you know how to support that stuff.
They trust you with that. That data brings in like the
sun. All these are the planets of
(31:56):
other databases of public cloud and VM Ware.
All these are the workloads thatwe can assist with.
So not a lot of folks in the channel are talking about it.
We've got content we can deliverfolks get help.
Your sellers out there really have those conversations.
And the important thing is as a seller, you don't need to know a
thing about this. You're asking the business
questions. Hey, are you guys, you currently
using IBM systems in your in your in your Business Today, you
(32:19):
by chance running Power 8 or Power 9?
Oh man, you are there. So I know that these are going
out of and on the end of supportsoon.
Not my area of expertise, but I've got a great partner that I
think we should have a 15 minuteconversation with to say here's
what's happening here at potential potential risks.
Here are your options. You know, same conversation
we've been having the past year about the DM Ware.
What are your options re license, put it somewhere re
(32:40):
platform, we can do that. Separate topic, but IBM, no
one's talking about it in channel.
We want to help clients protect those very expensive
investments, that legacy gear, modernize it and then integrate
it with all the other cool stuffthey're working on.
Yeah. And, and, and what I like about
this is that not every tech stack is the same, but when
somebody or not every OEM story is the same.
(33:02):
But when when you come into thischannel and you say we have IBM
expertise and support, you just can't fake that.
Like you can't you? You have to be so freaking
really good at that. And I've seen that with you
guys. Like some of the funnest deals
that we've done with you guys have been some wild IBM stuff.
And so love, love the questions,love the setup.
(33:24):
Yeah, that's, that's as hard as anything.
And I don't know, I maybe that stuff's just going to be around
forever. It's crazy.
It's about, it's about you know,helping clients get to better
outcomes, solve problems, optimize.
You know, I talking about databases.
You know, we had a, a situation where we had a sales opportunity
with a large financial services firm.
(33:46):
They were in one of our competitors private clouds and
they were depending on them for DBA services.
They were having problems with reporting, problems with
performance and they had a process that was taking like 44
to 48 hours to do despite their attempts on their own through
their and through their service provider to, to fix it.
(34:06):
We came in and brought our own perspective, our own engineering
team and we kind of re architected, architected the
database. I talked about, you know, query
structure, things of that sort. It took that 4844 to 48 hour
process and they're initially into an 18 hour process.
So greater than 50% improvement got the deal obviously and have
have short network code much, much shorter even then.
(34:28):
So it's these have these conversations, you know, find
ways to optimize the client's situation.
And at the end of the day, the positive customer outcomes I
keep on saying is about speedingup the processes, making things
more cost effective and time is money.
So a 48 hour project now an 18 hour project that can freeze up
the resources to go elsewhere atoptimizing your business.
(34:49):
It's all about having those business conversations.
What's the why? What are you trying to
accomplish? What are you trying to do?
How do we get you there? I love it.
I guess final thoughts here, let's let's get our crystal
balls out. Let's talk about whatever it is
we want to talk about. I mean, you think about we're
talking about here the edge withAzure Local, we're talking about
(35:13):
databases. I mean all this kind of bleeds
into the AI story. So I guess as you think about
this with AI and edge and compliance, all these kind of
continue to evolve. I mean, what's on the road map
for you guys and how do you kindof see some of these offerings
evolve and, and how do you want,want advisors to consider all of
this? Yeah, I'll do a road map 1st.
(35:33):
Just we've got, we're announcingsome really cool cyber security
services in the next couple of months.
I can't talk about it in much detail, but it's something that
we're addressing and we're rolling out soon.
You definitely, Josh, will be inthe Privy in the knowledge on
that stuff when it rolls out forsure, given your background and
expertise. So that's a specific road map
thing. But in general, you know,
organizations these days are trying to figure out how to
(35:54):
mitigate risk, how to balance that innovation with risk.
There's peer pressure. You know, 10-15 years ago it was
cloud. Peer pressure.
Got to go to the cloud, got it. Why?
Because everyone else is, well, that's great, now got to deploy
AI. Why?
Because everyone else is. No, that's not why you deploy
these things. You got to figure out what the
technology is out there today, how does it apply to your
(36:14):
business? Can it be done safely, securely,
cost effectively, etcetera. So right now in the age of AI
and the changing of data center and colocation is roaring right
now and NVIDIA is doing crazy things.
We want to help businesses modernize, but not technically
help them modernize strategically help them figure
(36:34):
out what technologies are out there and then how to best apply
them. Whether that's putting the
workloads in Azure local, near or closer to where they should
be. Whether that's, you know,
getting them off their legacy IBM and putting them on the more
modern IBM technology, whether it's optimizing their data,
their databases, etcetera. So, so what's next?
You know, you don't have to be able to predict the future.
(36:56):
You just have to ask the questions that reveal where your
client is heading. Business questions, not tech
questions. They may dip into technology.
And if they do sellers out thereand they start going in places
you might not be familiar, say, hey, not, not my area of
expertise, but I got a guy, I got a gal.
We can definitely cover all these things you're talking
about. Let's schedule a quick 15 or 30
minute conversation with my partner to dig deep on that.
(37:18):
But let's get back to your big picture business conference
conversations. We're at the end of the day,
we're helping clients anticipateand prepare for what's next.
And that continues to change almost every day there.
You go. It's a good place to wrap it.
Awesome stuff, man. Paul, appreciate you coming back
on lots of lots of knowledge, lots of good stuff today.
I'm trying, Josh. I appreciate the invite.
(37:38):
I look forward to doing this again sometime.
I love it. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for today. As always, Spotify, Apple,
wherever you're coming, make sure that you're following and
subscribing so that you can get these every Wednesday when they
come out. But until next time, that wraps
us up. For today, this has been Azure
at the edge. IBM in the basement and
(37:58):
databases everywhere, Paul. Corto, national channel director
at Tierpoint. I'm your host.
Josh, the Presto SVP of Stealth.Engineering.
At Telaris Next Level, Biztech has been a production of Telaris
Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto.
SVP of sales. Engineering at Telaris and this
is next level. Biz tech.
Everybody, welcome back. We got some hot topics for you
today. We're talking about Azure at
(00:21):
the. Edge.
IBM in the basement and databases everywhere.
On with us today. We got Paul Crito from Tierpoint
National Channel Director. Good to see you on, buddy.
Welcome. And always good to chat with
you, Josh. Good to be back.
It is true. It is good to be back.
It's been a little while. You know, I, you know, bounced
around a bit, done some things, different roles, but I always
(00:42):
love engaging with you and the entire team.
I love it. Let's let's jump in, man.
I mean, let's let's maybe start it.
It was so long ago. Let's start with your
background, kind of your journey.
There's maybe some clues to it in the background for anybody
watching this on video, but talkus to us about, you know, your
journey, how you got here and, and kind of what your role is
now. Well, first the Earth cooled,
(01:04):
no. So yeah, I've got a unique
journey. I've done a lot of different
things in my life. You know, I've been in the IT
space since the early 90s. I started my career at Anderson
Consulting back before it was called Accenture.
That's where I got my initial foundation in enterprise systems
and large scale infrastructure. Some really cool stuff there are
supporting the sales team in LasColinas just north of Dallas.
(01:28):
That job led me to getting my MBA full time at Texas A&M in
the mid 90s. Kind of the life altering phrase
that the, the associate partner told me.
I've worked in there for 2 1/2 years.
I was a contractor there and they left my work.
I was very good at what I did. And I said, hey, Bill, you know,
(01:49):
why haven't you guys hired me full time?
I've obviously proven myself 2 1/2 years.
You've had me around and he and he looked me in the square,
square in the face and he said, Paul, I'll be honest with you,
you've got a music degree. You might as well have a
criminal record on your resume as far as Anderson is concerned.
I mean, that took me back just alittle.
Now think about it, because in the 80s it was all about
(02:11):
creative thinking out-of-the-box.
We want creative liberal arts folks and music makers and
artists. This is early 90s where greed is
good. Gordon Gekko.
And so Anderson was Anderson andhe said, like, we just, it's
just not going to fit our our requirements.
See, I said, well, what can I doto fix that?
I love working here. He says, well, maybe if you got
your MBA that would certainly besomething worth talking about.
(02:31):
So I committed full time. I said great.
So I I quit Anderson, my wife quit her teaching job.
We moved to College Station. I was full time student for two
years. Now, the timing of all this is
really interesting because I gotthere in 94, what happened in
95, Netscape IPO in August of 95.
And that's largely what most folks considerthe.com boom.
(02:54):
And I recognized right away, this is different.
This is a paradigm shift. The cultural shift is going to
change the world. And so while studying
organizational behavior and, and, and marketing, my degree
was in services and marketing accounting, which I was horrible
at. And I was learning HTML and
expanding my my graphic arts skills 'cause I had done some
(03:15):
freelance work as a graphic artist.
So I learned how to build web pages.
My first resume during grad school was online and HTML with
graphics. And so I got my MBA.
I graduated from Texas AM and in1996 and and I got a full time
job at EDS in Plano, TX, north of Dallas as a Webmaster.
So now I'm diving into data center support and deploying
(03:35):
things, cutting my hands on the rails in Iraq, rack and stack
and cabling, swapping out gear, etcetera, supporting operating
systems. Very, very interesting time
duringthe.com boom. Then I left.
EDSEDS was kind of slowly adopting technology.
I was with a group with an EDS called C2O, stood for Chaos to
Order. We're about a 600 person team at
(03:56):
the time led by Butch winners out of San Francisco.
And after a couple of years in arow of the Global Operations
Council, EDS not really recognizing the paradigm shift,
basically the entire division said we're out of here and we
all exploded to different.com startups.
I went to a company called Data Return.
They were an early innovator in what we can call the cloud
today. They are the first Microsoft
(04:17):
hosting partner of the year thatever existed.
We were really, really strong inthe Microsoft side.
Then as we were growing, I decided I I've been an SE for a
long time. I want to go into sales where
they make the big money. And so I willingly left data
return to take on a data center sales role at SBC before it
became AT&T, right before the.com bust.
(04:40):
So engineering role, we all knowengineers are pretty much
protected, hard to find, they dowell.
And I went to sales and then boom.com bust happened.
That was not good timing on my part.
It was an interesting time in the world for folks in
technology sales. But eventually that led to me
being hired at Rackspace where Iwas for 15 years on and off.
(05:02):
I was there for a long time, left Rackspace, acquired a
company I went to and bought me back and that's where I kind of
got introduced into the channel.So I was an SE enterprise SE at
Rackspace and then I got involved in channel about 20,
2016, 2017 eventually became their channel CTO, their channel
field CTO. And so it, it was neat to learn
(05:24):
about the channel and learning the how the process works, the
relationships, what the sellers out in channel are used to
doing, how they sell, the various types of sales that
there are selling styles, relationships, etcetera.
So that that Channel world was new to me and I love it.
I've been involved in channel for roughly 10 years now and I
(05:45):
love it. And I've established reputation
as as a go to resource to help folks solve problems.
I love work with the partners and, and today national channel
director at tear point. So all my history from an
engineer as a salesperson, as a channel field CTO, etcetera, has
really formed my current resume.I think I'm in probably the
(06:05):
best, most logical spot right now at to your point, managing
the relationships with my TS DS.It's been great.
I, I, I've got a lot of great experience and, and I, I tend to
take things from a different perspective than a lot of folks.
I try to keep it entertaining. Obviously, I speak quickly.
I need to slow down. I recognize that.
But I try to help people sell and succeed, and that that comes
(06:28):
with solving customer problems. And I think we'll probably talk
about that a little bit in this episode here.
OK, I, I, I love this background, but we're going to
get into projects, products herein just a second, but I can't
help but, but you know, obviously for, for anybody not
on the, on the video side, there's a guitar in the
background, there's a saxophone or two in the background and
(06:50):
some other things. What's the in, in your opinion?
I see a good correlation betweenthose in music and those in
tech. There seems to be a vested
interest into both. Why, what, why, why, why does
someone excel? Like what?
What is it about in your perspective?
Right You, you got a lot more experience and education here.
(07:11):
What? What's the catch?
Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a common question and I see tons
of musicians in in tech. This wall is my conversation
starter wall. I have this up on purpose.
It's to break the ice to people I don't know.
And you always find folk. I was in band in high school.
I play guitar, I write songs, all the love the brain.
People think right side and leftside, but it's more complicated
(07:33):
that there's front, there's different lobes, etcetera.
Music is math, it's history, it's language, it's science,
it's a lot of different things. Object oriented programming and
music are very, very similar as far as how things group
together, the relationships, etcetera.
I think there's just music is technical, it's complex and,
and, and I think people that aremusically inclined easily pick
(07:54):
up on on technical concepts. My son was a saxophone player
like me. He just graduated college a
couple weeks ago as a software developer.
He's got a job lined up startingnext month.
It took to him. He got he got deep into coding
much better than me and it just clicked.
But I think the musical brain and the programming technical
side of how things are organizedand communicate are very, very
similar. I love it.
(08:14):
Yeah, Alright. OK.
So let's let's get into a quick primer on who Tierpoint is,
right, long time supplier of Telaris.
But for anybody that's not familiar, just give us the broad
brush strokes, who you are, where you differentiate and then
we'll dive into a couple specific products here that.
Sounds great. So in, in a nutshell, you know,
(08:34):
Tierpoint is a leading provider of hybrid IT solutions.
We're not putting you in a box. We're the hybrid IT solution
provider, which means that you were helping companies design,
deploy, manage right scale, the right mix of public cloud,
private cloud, Co location managed services on top of that
plus some other managed servicesthat we'll get into.
(08:57):
We operate in about 40, a littlemore than 40 US based data
centers. All of our support is US based
as well. We're trusted by thousands of
clients, several thousand clients across the mid market
and enter size enterprise space.But I think what makes us
different, you know, if all you got is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail. We've got a full toolkit.
(09:18):
We're not just trying to force you into a specific technology.
We have a full portfolio so we can help customers figure out
where the workloads should be, where should the data be, who
should be taking care of the workloads and supporting it and
running the data, etcetera. It's about meeting clients where
they are on their cloud journey.One of the ways I like to look
(09:39):
at it, you know, to your point'smore of a a real world cloud
partner, we understand that not,you know, companies are not just
all in cloud or they're not justall on Prem.
They live in between. And so that's kind of where we
shine because we can do the on Prem, we can do the color, we
can do the public cloud, the private cloud and VM Ware, the
Hyper V, the, the, the, the, the, the hybrid solutions of
(10:00):
cloud plus hardware plus Colorado, etcetera.
What makes this different, I guess, is our ability to to
blend cutting edge new technologies with traditional
technologies, fantastic consulting, professional
services. We're not trying to be
everything to everyone. We're trying to be the right
partner, helping people and clients, businesses solve the
(10:22):
right problems instead of just pushing products at them.
Awesome. OK, we're we're before we get
into products, I've got one lastquestion here.
So you've had this, this kind ofawesome always seems like
you're, you're, you're at the right time of paying attention
to what's next, where things aregoing.
So as you look back over this career path, what's a lesson
(10:43):
that you've learned either from a mistake made, a great mentor,
a tough customer, and anything that kind of approaches how you
or changes how you approach things now?
There's a lot of ways to answer that.
A full sales funnel solves lots of problems in the sales
process. But that's kind of a an
interesting answer. I think focusing on business
(11:06):
outcomes is something that not enough people do.
As engineers, we want to show our technical muscle and say,
look, I got this great skill set.
I got, I know how to do this thing.
I can deploy it faster and leaner and etcetera, make this
great IT solution. But it's the biggest lessons
I've learned is that technology design has to start with the
(11:26):
business outcomes. What are we shooting for?
When regarding the sales funnel comment I made, sometimes
sellers the funnels not as as full as they like.
And so they get a lead or an interested client and the client
says, I need this and the sellerwill rush to quote that for them
without asking the why. And sometimes sellers get
(11:47):
frustrated when providers like us ask, hey, can we get where
your client can we? We want to know the why,
understand the context of this decision.
Cause a lot of times sellers and, and, and providers will get
into this like lift and shift loop where, OK, I'm just going
to take what they've got. They're asking for this.
It's an RFP or it's a quote. I got to match a quote.
And let's, let's you know, let'sdo your mess for less somewhere
(12:09):
else, you know, can you get me abetter price on this stuff?
And you get into this like Bake Off of replicating the same
problems in a new environment. That's the the you're less for
mess, but I think when you startfocusing on the you know what's
driving this need you, you ask for this connectivity, You ask
you're adding another 100 mailboxes or you're adding a
couple circuits or or you're adding a new location.
(12:31):
What's the why behind this? Help me understand the context
because most likely you're goingto find business reasons to say,
hey, there's a lot more we can talk about.
Yeah, you're adding three officelocations now and you need those
circuits and you need some hardware in each location for
Wi-Fi or whatever, but you're growing.
So what does that mean from a back office perspective?
Maybe you were involved in a merger and now you've got
(12:53):
redundant e-mail systems and redundant Salesforce instances
and redundant IT infrastructure that needs to be optimized and
consolidated. So when you get to the Y versus
the get it done, here's the quote kind of situation, you can
be more far more successful as aseller, provide more value to
your clients, but you've got to get your partners involved
(13:14):
earlier in the sales process if possible.
At the end of the day, we're notjust trying to win deals.
We're trying to help customers make the right decisions given
the positive customer outcomes that will serve them now as well
as the future. When you ask the why, you don't
cover new business units and newpotential ways to help the
client down the road. So let's shift gears, let's go,
(13:36):
let's go products here. So years ago we saw AWS come out
with a product that said, you know, OK, maybe maybe you don't
need all infrastructure in the cloud.
Maybe you like our stack, but you want to put it on Prem.
It's crazy idea, but brilliant for customers where they need
that equipment there, right? AWS calls this Outposts.
(13:58):
You guys are a big Azure shop. And so this this product has
come out called Azure Local, where now you know, Microsoft
seems to have a great rise in the market just because of
multiple different reasons, right?
Licensing is just kind of that anchor.
So talk to us about the edge of the cloud from an Azure
perspective, this product calledAzure local.
(14:18):
So you guys have a unique play with this in regard to hybrid.
So first of all, what is Azure local in your words and what's
the problem that it solves? Sure.
Short answer is Azure Local brings public cloud capabilities
to the actual location where clients want it, whether it's on
their Prem, could be in a cola facility, it could actually be
(14:39):
in a competitor data center. For all that we care.
We're going to manage it for them.
It's it's tier points answer to a gap in the hybrid cloud space.
Bringing Azure's services. They're fantastic services.
It used to be called Azure Stackand then like late last year
they changed it to Azure Local. Microsoft is known to change
names and words every now and then, but we can run it anywhere
and we are kind of leading the way in the channel.
(15:01):
We've got very strong Azure expertise.
We're also good at AWS as well, but in a nutshell, it's hyper
converged. That's hard to say for me.
Infrastructure running on there,what's it Apex, AIAI, OPS
platform. It's like an umbrella of AI
technologies. And then you interface with it
(15:21):
via Azure Arc, which is, I don'tlike to say single pane of
glass, but it's a single platform.
We can access it plus a bunch ofother stuff.
And we're really. Really good at that.
Integrating clients, other systems with as your local, it's
one of the benefits that as yourart gives us that that single
pane of glass, that single platform place to manage all the
IT. And as a managed service
(15:41):
provider, we, we generally prefer to provide that
management for our clients. They get the same API, the same
code base, etcetera. But with it being local, getting
lower latency, better control, more access to our support now,
why would someone want to do this?
Maybe they're tired of the egress fees coming out of cloud.
(16:02):
There's a big wave the past yearor two of data repatriation,
people getting their stuff out of the cloud and putting it
local or on the edge. And so sometimes it's about, you
know, protecting data for, for data sovereignty.
Sometimes it's copyright or PII information.
There's a famous case a couple years ago now, I guess, of a
(16:23):
movie studio, a movie trailer got leaked out because it was on
public cloud and someone didn't set up the apples properly and,
and it got leaked out. And so you want to control your
proprietary content, a big thingin the entertainment industry,
you want that stuff on Prem could be the same for medical
data, for private research data,Department of Defense stuff,
having those, the cloud functionality.
What is cloud? It's, it's the ability to to add
(16:44):
and turn off resources when you need and don't need them,
instant scalability, paying for what you use, etcetera.
But it's on Prem or in, you know, Colorado versus some of
the facility that you can't get to.
So whether it's about, you know,performance or compliance or
cost control, it basically brings the public cloud
computing capabilities to the location of clients want them,
(17:05):
where they, where they or at least where we think it's best
to put them. Well, and, and it seems like
there's, there's a couple other benefits here.
It seems also, you know, there'sa nice local survivability
benefit to this as well. You're, you're not having to get
into this idea of CapEx in the infrastructure if you don't want
to. It's all an OpEx.
And I guess can you, when you get into these conversations
(17:27):
with customers and you think about, you know, we're, we're
talking about we're super flexible, we're tier point, it's
hybrid. What do you need?
Do you need all hyperscaler? Do you need private cloud?
Do you need local? Are you finding that you're
having to bring up, oh, by the way, we can do this with Azure?
Or is it a certain segment of customers that go, oh, this is
really advantageous in manufacturing or retail or like
(17:48):
what, what where are you seeing that that plays the best?
Well, the cloud functionality isthe utility of compute, memory
and storage, etcetera. So it's getting back to the
business conversation. Why are you using cloud today?
What made you go there? Why do you want to leave it,
etcetera. Where are your workloads?
Where should they be? Why?
(18:09):
And then let's get them there. It's it's industry agnostic,
it's client size agnostic. So we end up, you know, trying
to steer conversations with our clients back to the why asking 5
why's, if necessary, what are you trying to accomplish?
What do you want to do today? Bigger picture, what do you want
to do today? And, and what's keeping you from
doing that? You're not doing it or why
(18:30):
aren't you doing that? And that's a whole separate
conversation we can talk about is the questions to ask, but it
gets away from technology. Stop selling things and start
talking business consulting, solving problems and helping
them grow and scale, etc. Are you?
Finding that on the Azure local thing, are you this idea that I
think there's a lot of people that don't even know that this
(18:51):
exists from a customer side, areyou finding that you're having
to bring up this idea of we could do Azure local as part of
the equation as well or are customers, are they aware of it
that's even? Options, sales calls, people
don't know that you can put cloud in your own place.
So, yeah, so when they hear that, like I didn't know I could
do that. And that's one of the best
things you can hear during your sales calls.
I didn't know you did that. That's that's a, that's a a
(19:14):
buying signal. It's a great sign that you've
you've, it's a challenge. If you're familiar with the
challenger sale, it, it challenges their way of
thinking. So yeah, we do bring it up
because a lot of folks don't realize, you know, it's
possible. Alright, let's let's go to
product #2 here on the on the list.
Let's talk about database as a service.
So I mean, database, no secret, right?
(19:37):
It's at the core of everything. Everything lives and breathes in
some version of a database. So the hyperscalers, there's a
lot of cloud databases out thereif people want to DIY this.
But first of all, just walk us through, we see this coming up a
lot more in conversations and there is not very many people
that do this in the channel. So you guys have such a, such an
awesome niche here. How does the tear point database
(20:00):
as a service? How does it stand out from a
customer trying to do it themselves or some of these
other hyperscaler options? The DIY thing is applicable to
every facet of technology, especially in database
databases. It's a lifeblood.
It's today's gold, it's today's oil, it's today's Bitcoin,
whatever you want to call it, it's today's thing.
(20:20):
Without data, businesses don't exist.
And so it, it, it relates to customer experience when you go
shopping at your favorite e-commerce site and they're
making recommendations based on past visits, social media is
pinging you with ads based on the words you say when you're
not even using your Dang device.And why am I getting ads for,
for fake grass now? Because my yard's dead.
Oh, I must have said that near my phone or I must have tweeted
(20:42):
about it or something. You know, the data is, is gold.
And, and analyzing, protecting and monetizing that data are
very, very important. But doing it yourself is is
difficult. A lot of times this gets to a
staffing issue. Clients and businesses can't
properly stack their teams. DB as are smart and expensive.
And if you overwork them like any person, they're going to
(21:05):
find work elsewhere. So we help customers, we step in
and say, well, OK, where's your data?
What are you doing today? What's what database platforms
is the sequel, is it Oracle? Is it, you know, my SQL
etcetera. Let us take the grunt work away
from you. Let's handle the patching, the
the the maintenance performance,the tweaking backups, HA, the
tuning. Let us focus on that stuff.
(21:26):
You so your DB as can focus on the more fun brain work of hey,
let's analyze that data, let's optimize it and monetize it.
A lot of times we'll find we'll be talking to clients and the
conversation wasn't originally about databases.
They came to us saying, hey, we've got an app latency issue
and they think maybe it's the network, maybe it's DNS because
it's always DNS. Always DNS man.
(21:48):
Always DNS, but they, they probably have a problem with the
apps. Well, hey, we do a quick, you
know, proof of concept or an assessment and we realize, no,
you got a problem with your database query structure, your
database layout. We can optimize this for you
then I have no idea. So optimizing databases,
tweaking database queries and things of that sort they didn't
think about because they're so busy patching it and keeping up
(22:08):
online, etcetera. They don't have time to kind of
think that way. So in the hyper scalers, you're
kind of boxed into a single cloud database option.
You can't really do a lot creativity, they perform
wonderfully, but you've got to know what you're doing.
And it's difficult for companiesto hire the quantity of quality
resources needed to get the mostout of a team.
(22:29):
And so we can step in with a fantastic team of engineers,
cloud engineers, DB as etcetera and and use our scale, our 24/7
abilities to come in and help clients get the most out of that
data. Is you mentioned a couple of
from a database perspective, right as partners are out there
listening and talking to customers and hearing the pain
(22:51):
points and things they're tryingto accomplish.
Is it, is it my sequel? Is it Oracle?
Is it a, is it a bigger list? Is it 5 databases?
Is it 2 databases? Just any other names you want us
to know as what we? As what we support, Yeah, yeah,
Sequel, Oracle, My SQL, Postgres, and of course the
cloud versions in Amazon and Azure as well.
(23:12):
We're not. We're not in the Google space,
so we don't play in that space. The Auroras and all of those.
Awesome. Exactly.
Exactly. Beautiful, great trigger points,
great pain points. What if you're going to give a
partner? I think this is such a great,
very, very unique wedge offering.
What's your favorite 1-2 questions?
(23:34):
Is there, if the customer's like, yeah, we've got some
infrastructure projects and if you want to try to see if
there's any database needs in there, what's Paul's favorite
one or two questions to kind of expose that a little bit?
Around databases specifically, yeah, yeah.
Just asking questions. How are your apps performing?
Are your clients complaining about any latency issues?
Are you seeing bad data come in?Are you seeing transactions
(23:56):
failing in the e-commerce side of the platform?
Do you have problems backing up your data?
Are you properly packing up yourdata?
Is your data secure? Are you sure you know, have you
tested your backup and restore of your data?
So it's just asking performance questions and, and this is one
(24:16):
of my things that not a lot of folks talk about.
I again like to focus on staffing questions.
How are you? Is your team staffed from a
database perspective? For example, is there someone on
your IT team, maybe specificallyon databases that if they left
or quit or were fired, their absence or departure would wreak
havoc on your internal capabilities.
It would create chaos on the team because of the tribal
(24:37):
knowledge of the the things thatthey know.
They know the bodies are buried into a password.
They know the code. Are there any staffing concerns?
Are you? Do you think you're properly
staffed to handle your current and future data state?
Would you be able to handle a spike in interest?
What if someone mentioned your product and it went viral?
Could your database handle that?What if someone did a TikTok or
(24:58):
an Instagram post and suddenly they want to buy a lot of your
stuff? You have the capacity.
Do you know, Are you sure? Is that secure?
Are you sure? So just creating some kind of
uncertainty asking do you have the people?
Do you have the skills? Do you think you can scale?
Are you sure really? So that's that's kind of the
approach I like to take. I like, I like that.
I mean, databases really are AI mean scaling, scaling compute,
(25:19):
you know, horizontally is is tricky.
Vertical is tricky. I think databases are are a
science within a science from a scale perspective.
I mean, that is a that's a PhD within its own.
And I love your point of who does that for you?
Oh, oh, Timmy over here. Does it just Timmy?
Well, what does? Timmy take.
(25:40):
Vacations does, Timmy, you know.Timmy's really a VM Ware expert
that just did the database stuffbecause we didn't have anybody
because he that gets into the whole concept.
I mean around staffing. I say this all the time, but
it's I think it's bears repeating.
If you have a mission critical business function that has to be
up 24/7, it's part of your business.
If your global economy, your e-commerce site has to be up
(26:01):
24/7. If you're in the medical
industry and you know, 911 services or medical monitoring
or or video or security monitoring, that can't not be
on. It has to be always on for every
single technology that you want covered 24/7.
One person is not going to cut it.
Two people on your staff is not going to cut it.
You need 6. Why do you need 6, Paul?
First, second, third shift, Monday through Friday, first,
(26:24):
second, third shift on the weekends.
That's 6. Now you should have a 7th
because people get sick, they goon vacation, they go to clients,
they have training, etcetera. So ideally 7.
And a lot of, I've been saying this thing for literally for 10
years, A lot of clients, especially in the smaller space
will say no, we got Timmy, he's got a smartphone we can reach
many time. Well, Timmy's going to want to
go to the baseball team with hiskid on Saturday and out of just
(26:45):
happen when they happen, not when you want them to happen.
So Timmy needs a backup. Maybe Timmy's got Sally, but
maybe Sally's got something going on that weekend because it
was her weekend. To do XYZ.
You don't have 6 folks and that's just the database side,
for example. But you need networking,
operating system, cybersecurity,public cloud, and all these
before you know it 6 * 6 is 36 math right there.
(27:10):
You know full staff of IT folks to properly support every facet
of your business. And, and that just isn't
possible for many, if not most businesses out there.
That's why you leverage a company like it's your point.
It has a 24/7 staffing, the 24/7monitoring where folks can come
in and provide the expertise when you need it, not just when
you can deliver it. Let's go, let's go.
(27:32):
Final product here did a little bit of research on this before
so we're going to talk about IBMand you think Oh my gosh it's
2025 how are we talking about IBM?
What's the talk track there? I, I titled this section of the
forgotten giant. And so I, I looked at this and
I, I found, I found two kind of varying answers on this.
On the low side, there's 50,000 A S4 hundreds still in use.
(27:56):
On the high side, 80 to 100,000 A S4 hundreds still in use.
So we know clearly in 2025 IBM workloads, they're still
everywhere. But, but it's just not a, it's
not a conversation that comes upa lot.
But when it does, I mean walk usthrough in your opinion, what's
the state of IBM in the enterprise and and where do you
(28:17):
guys play here helping modernizeand maintain?
Well, as the saying has been fordecades, no one ever got fired
for hiring IBM. They are legendary for a reason.
You can say 10s of thousands of them out there, close to 100
thousands, and they're running incredibly important information
systems across financial, you know, banking, healthcare,
(28:37):
manufacturing, logistics and travel.
It's incredibly, it's a vital component.
It's a national treasure. And they're still in place
because they run, they don't break, they're very, very
robust. The issue is that in the rush to
modernize, oh, got to go to the cloud and got to virtualize and
got to do AI, well, these IBM workloads, they get left behind
(28:59):
not because they're irrelevant, they are very relevant, but it's
because they're very specialized.
They're complex, and they're notreally well understood by the
younger generation of cloud native architects.
I mean, back in the day, I'm oldenough to be involved in the
year 2K, the Y2K problem the world was going to end in, you
know, January 1 of 2000. People are on call.
(29:21):
We had to call COBOL programmersout of retirement back then to
be around take a look at code. Well, here we are 25 years
later, literally, and IBM is still a thing.
COBOL is still a thing, AS 400 is still a thing.
It's very, very relevant. Folks just don't mess with it
because it works. But there are problems.
For example, Power 8 series IBM servers are very pervasive in
(29:45):
society. They went end of support end of
last year, if not earlier, meaning no more patches, no more
support from IBM and that's Power 8.
Power 9 replaced it. Power 9 goes end of support in
January of next year. So another eight months or so
from now or less. That means Power 10s coming out
and there's a road map for Power11 through 13, etcetera.
(30:08):
Moving those workloads. At some point you have to say,
look, power rates are not being patched anymore.
They are now cyber threats. People can get to them.
And these are such mission critical systems, literally life
and death at times, they have tobe migrated.
And we've got the capabilities of assessing what you've got,
figuring out where should those workloads be.
(30:28):
If it's something as simple as migrating a Power 8 to a Power
10, swapping it out, procuring the hardware, moving the data
and workloads there and done, that's a simple, easy peasy.
Or where's your workload today? Let's think about a redundant
system. Let's figure out where your
production should be. It's on Prem Now I'll tell you
what, why don't we put that production workload in a tier
point data center in our redundant networking and power
(30:51):
connectivity and all the staffing, etcetera.
We can run ADR site, a smaller footprint back at your location,
all new hardware, we're going tomanage the failover, the Dr.
replication, etcetera. Now you've got a truly redundant
system on modern hardware, you're good to go.
Or let's just do the whole thing, put it in our data center
or let's put it in a in a private cloud.
You can, we can do a private IBMcloud in one of our facilities
(31:13):
as well. So it's multi tenant lowering
your costs, still secure. So there's a lot the all the
options that folks have today inpublic cloud for the
applications apply in the IBM space.
But like you said, Josh, no one's talking about it in the
channel. And while the the deals pay
great and they're usually very large, once you get that locked
in the I86, the X86 stuff comes in all the other workloads.
(31:36):
Oh, you did this so well, we gota bunch of Microsoft stuff or we
have this public cloud stuff. Can you help us with that?
And man, talk about a sticky data.
What's, what's it called? Data gravity situation.
You get the IBM data under contract.
Show your clients that you know how to support that stuff.
They trust you with that. That data brings in like the
sun. All these are the planets of
(31:56):
other databases of public cloud and VM Ware.
All these are the workloads thatwe can assist with.
So not a lot of folks in the channel are talking about it.
We've got content we can deliverfolks get help.
Your sellers out there really have those conversations.
And the important thing is as a seller, you don't need to know a
thing about this. You're asking the business
questions. Hey, are you guys, you currently
using IBM systems in your in your in your Business Today, you
(32:19):
by chance running Power 8 or Power 9?
Oh man, you are there. So I know that these are going
out of and on the end of supportsoon.
Not my area of expertise, but I've got a great partner that I
think we should have a 15 minuteconversation with to say here's
what's happening here at potential potential risks.
Here are your options. You know, same conversation
we've been having the past year about the DM Ware.
What are your options re license, put it somewhere re
(32:40):
platform, we can do that. Separate topic, but IBM, no
one's talking about it in channel.
We want to help clients protect those very expensive
investments, that legacy gear, modernize it and then integrate
it with all the other cool stuffthey're working on.
Yeah. And, and, and what I like about
this is that not every tech stack is the same, but when
somebody or not every OEM story is the same.
(33:02):
But when when you come into thischannel and you say we have IBM
expertise and support, you just can't fake that.
Like you can't you? You have to be so freaking
really good at that. And I've seen that with you
guys. Like some of the funnest deals
that we've done with you guys have been some wild IBM stuff.
And so love, love the questions,love the setup.
(33:24):
Yeah, that's, that's as hard as anything.
And I don't know, I maybe that stuff's just going to be around
forever. It's crazy.
It's about, it's about you know,helping clients get to better
outcomes, solve problems, optimize.
You know, I talking about databases.
You know, we had a, a situation where we had a sales opportunity
with a large financial services firm.
(33:46):
They were in one of our competitors private clouds and
they were depending on them for DBA services.
They were having problems with reporting, problems with
performance and they had a process that was taking like 44
to 48 hours to do despite their attempts on their own through
their and through their service provider to, to fix it.
(34:06):
We came in and brought our own perspective, our own engineering
team and we kind of re architected, architected the
database. I talked about, you know, query
structure, things of that sort. It took that 4844 to 48 hour
process and they're initially into an 18 hour process.
So greater than 50% improvement got the deal obviously and have
have short network code much, much shorter even then.
(34:28):
So it's these have these conversations, you know, find
ways to optimize the client's situation.
And at the end of the day, the positive customer outcomes I
keep on saying is about speedingup the processes, making things
more cost effective and time is money.
So a 48 hour project now an 18 hour project that can freeze up
the resources to go elsewhere atoptimizing your business.
(34:49):
It's all about having those business conversations.
What's the why? What are you trying to
accomplish? What are you trying to do?
How do we get you there? I love it.
I guess final thoughts here, let's let's get our crystal
balls out. Let's talk about whatever it is
we want to talk about. I mean, you think about we're
talking about here the edge withAzure Local, we're talking about
(35:13):
databases. I mean all this kind of bleeds
into the AI story. So I guess as you think about
this with AI and edge and compliance, all these kind of
continue to evolve. I mean, what's on the road map
for you guys and how do you kindof see some of these offerings
evolve and, and how do you want,want advisors to consider all of
this? Yeah, I'll do a road map 1st.
(35:33):
Just we've got, we're announcingsome really cool cyber security
services in the next couple of months.
I can't talk about it in much detail, but it's something that
we're addressing and we're rolling out soon.
You definitely, Josh, will be inthe Privy in the knowledge on
that stuff when it rolls out forsure, given your background and
expertise. So that's a specific road map
thing. But in general, you know,
organizations these days are trying to figure out how to
(35:54):
mitigate risk, how to balance that innovation with risk.
There's peer pressure. You know, 10-15 years ago it was
cloud. Peer pressure.
Got to go to the cloud, got it. Why?
Because everyone else is, well, that's great, now got to deploy
AI. Why?
Because everyone else is. No, that's not why you deploy
these things. You got to figure out what the
technology is out there today, how does it apply to your
(36:14):
business? Can it be done safely, securely,
cost effectively, etcetera. So right now in the age of AI
and the changing of data center and colocation is roaring right
now and NVIDIA is doing crazy things.
We want to help businesses modernize, but not technically
help them modernize strategically help them figure
(36:34):
out what technologies are out there and then how to best apply
them. Whether that's putting the
workloads in Azure local, near or closer to where they should
be. Whether that's, you know,
getting them off their legacy IBM and putting them on the more
modern IBM technology, whether it's optimizing their data,
their databases, etcetera. So, so what's next?
You know, you don't have to be able to predict the future.
(36:56):
You just have to ask the questions that reveal where your
client is heading. Business questions, not tech
questions. They may dip into technology.
And if they do sellers out thereand they start going in places
you might not be familiar, say, hey, not, not my area of
expertise, but I got a guy, I got a gal.
We can definitely cover all these things you're talking
about. Let's schedule a quick 15 or 30
minute conversation with my partner to dig deep on that.
(37:18):
But let's get back to your big picture business conference
conversations. We're at the end of the day,
we're helping clients anticipateand prepare for what's next.
And that continues to change almost every day there.
You go. It's a good place to wrap it.
Awesome stuff, man. Paul, appreciate you coming back
on lots of lots of knowledge, lots of good stuff today.
I'm trying, Josh. I appreciate the invite.
(37:38):
I look forward to doing this again sometime.
I love it. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for today. As always, Spotify, Apple,
wherever you're coming, make sure that you're following and
subscribing so that you can get these every Wednesday when they
come out. But until next time, that wraps
us up. For today, this has been Azure
at the edge. IBM in the basement and
(37:58):
databases everywhere, Paul. Corto, national channel director
at Tierpoint. I'm your host.
Josh, the Presto SVP of Stealth.Engineering.
At Telaris Next Level, Biztech has been a production of Telaris
Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
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