Ep.171-How Licensing Rules the Game—Even When You Don’t See Its Adjacent Reach- Ed Tybursky, Remend

Jump in today as we talk with a great Telarus partner, Ed Tyburski of Remend. Ed introduces a totally new concept with his license-first consulting approach. He brings us tons of different conversations on examples of how he's opened up adjacent doors, solved unplanned problems, and most importantly, painted value much differently for a customer who never saw it coming. Don't miss this topic as Ed dives deep!

Episode Transcript

(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 a cool topic for you today.
We're talking about licensing. We're talking about

(00:23):
infrastructure, all those things.
Specifically, we're talking about how licensing rules the
game even when you don't see itsadjacent reach.
And on with us today, we've got a man who I've known a long time
in the space, Mr. Ed Tyburski ofVermend.
Ed, welcome on man. Yeah, great to be here.
Full circle, I know. Crazy let's talk let's talk a

(00:47):
little bit about before we get into kind of the topic of the
hour here, fill us in just a little bit about you, you know,
kind of give us your you know, I'd like to hear everybody's
life path on this story, right? How did you get into this space?
Did were you always destined fortech?
And then kind of walk us througha little bit about what got you
into this and then we'll get into remain.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. So no, probably like most

(01:09):
people, I started this path in my life in the music.
So I was a music theory and composition major that turned
into law enforcement, which found myself becoming a
programmer for a small actuary firm doing insurance software
out of the Bay Area. So you know, full circle.
I think I've touched pretty muchevery industry that led me kind

(01:31):
of into the voice and telecom area at Octel Lucent and then in
the room when they named Avaya. And I remember thinking this
VoIP thing is never going to take off a full man's game.
And I went to print.com inthe.com era with that lasted
about a whole 90 days. So full circle I would say, you
know, little bit of everything in my career really focused kind

(01:53):
of more on the software end froma development perspective.
And then ended up at a small startup in the Bay Area called
Gobeam, which if you're in the channel, if you're in telecom,
you've heard of Gobeam. They're one of the pioneer UC
providers back in the early 2000s, some familiar names.
And the ecosystem stayed there about 5 years through the COVID,
not to be confused with COVID, Yeah, the COVID acquisition,

(02:18):
which I believe became Megapath to now Fusion Connect, some kind
of way, way around that. But then moved over into
architecture and was really focused on infrastructure for
about a decade at Wells Fargo through the Wachovia merger and
kind of ended up through a transition and faults and really
kind of a bet in a way, meaning that I was more of a utility

(02:40):
guy. And then started focusing on
licensing kind of right around circa 2008, mostly for friends
and consulting firms and just kind of helping them figure out
some of the pitfalls. Mostly when you're working for a
large enterprise, you're, you'refinding yourselves in these
conversations often. So it's kind of a long road, but
a lot of dips and turns and hereI am.

(03:03):
So I love, I love the path. Walk us through, I guess then,
OK, who's, who's remand, right. I mean, you, you're, you're
getting into some complex environments.
You're in SAP and Oracle and allthese things.
I mean, what's your, what's youredge when you walk into those?
And I guess you know who is remand for anybody that doesn't
know. Yeah.
So Remand is a primarily a software advisory firm.

(03:26):
So we focus on Tier 1 publishers.
So if you think Tier 1, you think SAP, you think Oracle,
Microsoft, IBM, believe it or not, there's still a lot of IBM
out there. What we do in the world of
software is really think of it and for your audience, think of
it as 10. So remove 10 and put in Sam's
Software Asset Management. We help people understand their
usage. We do a forensic audit on the

(03:48):
usage ability of all of their entitlements.
We look back at certain dates oftime, we compare that to their
entitlements and then we tell them a story of kind of how
they're structured within their contract.
So Remand is an independent firm.
We've focused on not reselling. We focused on helping customers
really understand the value of those entitlements.
A lot of these contracts are legacy contracts, meaning that

(04:10):
some, you know, we've seen contracts from the 80s, right.
So the value of those assets, it's kind of like commodity
could be worth more, could be worth less.
We help the customers determine that and then kind of set them
on a path to really understanding what the value of
the software is and the opportunity to lower that cost.
I love that such a such a different angle, right?
I mean, I don't I don't I don't hear a lot of people coming at

(04:31):
it kind of wedging in having a conversation like that.
So it's got to be very well received on.
Oh my gosh, finally somebody that understands this right,
that speaks our language. Yeah.
One of the differentiators I would say for us in particular
around the space is that, you know, we're not these publishers
aren't bringing this business. You know, we're not on the hook
in any type of compliance partnership with them.
In a lot of the major firms, particularly the BIG4 rely upon

(04:54):
revenue specifically from SAP and Oracle in a lot of these
environments. So you know, are you really
getting kind of that independenttechnology advisory conversation
happening with these large firms?
So there is an opportunity, you know, for us in to entering
these conversations saying, look, we're going to take an
independent holistical view. We're we're motivated to help
you save money. We're not motivated to provide

(05:17):
you with a bunch of implementation services that are
correlating to our relationship with or you will.
So it's a little bit of a different kind of niche there in
our approach. So, so take us back right
through, through all this experience, I'd love to hear
about the lessons that people have learned along the way,
right? Whether we've stubbed our own
toe or we've had a great mentor that we've been surrounded with.

(05:37):
What's a what's a lesson that you learned that that's kind of
stuck with you? There's a lot, right?
So there's a lot. I mean, you and I are a lesson.
We met what, 1010 years ago or so and it took me X amount of
time for us to really start kindof gaming momentum in this
pillar. I think the biggest lesson, you
know, in my world, language matters and what I say, what I

(05:59):
mean by that is that if customers under audit with a
particular vendor, what we say can have dramatic effects to the
tunes of hundreds of millions ofdollars.
So, you know, some of the lessons you learn along the way,
as you know, you flip up, you make mistakes, spend a lot more
time listening versus kind of dictating.
And then it kind of translates to, you know, some of the way

(06:21):
that I've had mentors tell me some of the best opportunities
come from listening. So the lessons, I would say the
biggest lesson I've learned is to listen more, to stop talking
as much as I do because I love, we're technicians, we just love
to architect 24/7, you know, Butsometimes that has gotten me in
trouble, I would say long ago, you know, you, you say a little

(06:41):
too much, you give a little too much away.
And then all of a sudden, you know, things tend to walk away
from you. So I I think I really center on
that. You know, obviously I've been in
the field since the 90s. So there's a there's a lot of
little things that I could probably illustrate, but I would
say yeah. Cornerstone around listening.
Fair. OK.
So so let's before we kind of get into present day and start

(07:02):
talking about like some of this,we're talking a little bit about
it, right? Some of this adjacent reach the
licensing gives you. I mean, walk us back through
early days discovery calls as you kind of got into this space.
What were they like? What did you learn about
uncovering needs? Like I I think advisors love to
hear how people uncovered and maybe walk us through what you
did early and, and what you learned there.
Yeah. The the, the early days were a

(07:24):
little bit more reactive, right.So I think this is where kind of
the markets have changed a little bit.
So if you go back circa 2010 isharound that area, you know, a
lot of the inbound was was very reactive.
So I call it, I call it ambulance chasing, kind of like,
you know, the lawyers waiting inthe, the emergency room for
their, for their auto victim to come in and they can make a ton
of money and there is a lot of money that happened in that.

(07:46):
But it was such a reactive meaning that when you're looking
at publishers like Oracle, they're so punitive to the
customers, right. So, you know, if if there
there's a customer we had, they literally cure cancer.
I mean, that's, that's their business.
They were looking at kind of a compliance situation of
$1,000,000 and I, when I explained to them that Oracle
will take the $1,000,000 in lieuof, you know, you curing cancer.

(08:09):
It was a little bit of an eye, eye awakening for them.
And, and so in the early days, alot of it was that it was really
reactionary. So business was just coming, you
know, so it's kind of like who do I call, right?
So, you know, we're not Ghostbusters, but we are
remained and, and they're calling us and we're we're
getting them out of these hurdles and, you know, through a
lot of remediation and consulting and just how their
view of software house has happened.

(08:30):
I would say over, you know, today things have changed a
little bit. I know we'll kind of get into
that or I can get into it now, But you know, the, the market is
shifting to more of folks looking at kind of a proactive
approach, in particular in the economic climate.
Like what is our future state going to look like in the
licensing world? You know, Oracle, how to Oracle

(08:52):
did a significant kind of or I would say unique presentation
where they still, you know, 71% of all infrastructure still on
Prem, right. We think cloud is this is this
major transformative, you know, initiative that it's all too
late. We're we're all too late to the
game. But as of October, 71% of all
workloads are still on Prem. Which is which?

(09:13):
Which will interrupt me for a second, which is crazy because
coming fresh off of, you know, doing Google next and doing
reinvent, here is here we are. You know, I mean, I started
playing with AWS maybe O eight O9 when it had two services.
Now it's approaching, you know, $100 billion run rate, Google's
approaching a $50 billion run rate.
And yet I I think that's great to call out 71% is still on

(09:35):
Prem. Still on Prem, still still
opportunities, still hyper scalers are still investing in
moving these workloads and kind of transforming if you know, we
can get in some of the data tiers related to what they're,
what AWS is doing at the Aurora and how they're attacking these
workloads. But the reality is the core
systems that are running your customers, businesses are still

(09:55):
in the data center, are still inIraq, are still in an old piece
of infrastructure that because of licensing and how it affects
it, you know, there's a little bit of dust on it, but they're
just blowing on it and hoping and praying it doesn't go down,
you know, and that's quickly coming to an end where, you
know, folks, you know, it's getting more and more expensive,
infrastructure's aging, startingto retire.

(10:17):
What is the opportunity there? I think it's still vast to be
honest. I mean, yeah, let's, I mean,
let's let's dive into that, right?
You talked about what AWS is doing, what they're saying with
Aurora compounding on the Oracle, which what's some of
your thoughts there? I think, you know, from a
transition perspective, it makesa lot of sense.
They're funding changes, right? So AWS is coming in saying,

(10:37):
look, if you have Oracle workloads, we'll fund the
transformation to Aurora. It is interesting.
Does it work some of the times? Some of the times, you know,
there's a Postgres component, there's there's other, there's
Hadoop, there's a lot of other variants and flavors.
At the end of the day, Oracle still makes the best database
server. Just does, you know, these
investments that folks have made, particularly in Oracle,

(11:01):
they're binding, meaning they can't get out.
So if you do these migrations, you're still on the hook for the
licensing elements of it. So it is slowing some of that
adoption while it's being funded.
It sounds like a great story. It really may not be the option
of your customer. And as a technology advisor,
this is where you kind of enter in and say, listen, we have some
solutions now. Aurora might make sense for AWS.
Does it make sense for you as anorganization?

(11:23):
How about you look at these hybrid solutions?
And when you start looking at companies like Expedient and
what they're doing and some of the other, I would say hybrid
environments or even the hyper scalers, even Rackspace and kind
of, you know, these other organizations that were kind of
legacy names in the industry, you know, they are providing
unique things and housing for some of these infrastructures.
And the answer is when you go toa hyperscaler, in particular

(11:47):
with Oracle, you know, you couldhave hundreds, hundreds of
thousands of dollars of impact on licensing because of the way
Oracle interprets a core. So gets a lot more complex.
And you know, it's, it's one of those ones that we can get off
on a tangent here. So I want to be careful.
It's a good, it's a good call out.
I mean, I think the, the, the theme is that people need to not

(12:09):
forget is that AWS has map funds, Azure migration, there's
funds Google Now rolling out nowthat we've got opportunity to
monetize this on our channel andthe supplier base.
People like rapid scale things like that.
There's there's ability to do migrations.
These guys are hungry to do it. So I love, I don't want people
to forget that call out. So no, that's good.

(12:31):
Yeah, that's that's an importantone.
OK. So, so let's, I, I, I like to
always kind of talk about how wethink things are going to go
versus how they actually go. And so if you think about this
as the deals have grown and you're in these customer
conversations, when did you start realizing that, you know,
maybe what the client thinks they need?
That's like, I need this ERP license is really just the start

(12:54):
of another converse, a bigger conversation.
Luckily, that's kind of the cornerstone of our business.
So, you know, a lot of the impact is I need this, I need to
buy this, right? And it correlates to licensing.
When they say in particular the ERP, I need more ERP users.
Great. Let's analyze usage.
Let's understand what Mr. Lopresto as an individual has

(13:14):
done over the past 18 months. And this is where it kind of
crosses into the temp conversation, right?
Oh, he's logged into the system one time.
Well, there's an annual cost associated with this and you
have Betsy over here that's doing XY and Z.
And when you start looking at the enterprise ecosystem of
usage, it really changes that conversation dramatically too.
No, you don't actually need to buy more, right?

(13:36):
The the conversations now shift to you can actually reduce here
and maybe you're over provision by 200.
Now what do we do? And by the way, if you get off
of this aging infrastructure andyou remove yourself and we kind
of leverage some of these hybridconversions, you know, I can
probably save you about 100,000 a year of OpEx because we can
drop XY and Z. So it every conversation for us

(13:57):
is leading in from an infrastructure perspective
combining with licensing, they're always tied into
together. I can tell you from my
experience, every customer, we all have this handled,
everything's handled and we start going down path one and
honestly, we always end up on path 17.
You know, the variant of optionsis, is this is where it goes
back to listening. You're, you're listening to

(14:19):
customers needs, but then you'realso giving them options and how
we determine the best path to goforward as we provide data and
real costs associated with thoseenvironments saying here's the
fiscal impact of making these decisions.
You can do whatever you want. We're just here to provide you
options. And if you want to write a $10
million check, I'm not here to stop you.

(14:40):
Please go right ahead. However, this conversation I had
earlier today is don't write the$10 million check.
Why don't you write a $400,000 check instead?
And you know, you start having these unique entry points into
conversations and then with departments that you probably
have never touched before, right?
So it's, it's a, it's a broad question to answer, I would say

(15:01):
for us. Well, I'm, we talked about this,
you know, at the events and we talked about what, you know, we
put out the tech trends report and some of the things that that
initially showed us was OK, people, people are looking at
cost cutting, but cost cutting to fund innovation.
So what might seem like on the surface to somebody that if, if

(15:21):
a customer comes to you and says, I just, I want to look for
some analysis on my license and you think I don't, I don't know
if there's any money to be made on that.
Well, here you are. If you save some money on those
licensing, how many times are you saving the money on that
licensing to fund the migration to the infrastructure to fund
the migration somewhere else, right?
All the time that's, that's, youknow, the, the free, the freeing

(15:41):
of OpEx in relation to what they're already using.
And, and let's be clear, when we're restructuring, it's
contractual, it's not functionalin a sense.
So folks aren't, you know, you're not going to your laptop
and you know, all of a sudden something's missing.
And if it is missing, it's possible in the sense, but
you've never used it. So if that's the day you want to
decide to use that functionalityand all of a sudden is gone, you

(16:03):
know, it is a different conversation with management
kind of going up and saying, youknow, this is something I need.
But that's a fraction of what we're doing, you know, in the,
in the Microsoft world and how we attack Microsoft and where a
lot of the audience is going to be interested in is, you know,
yes, we've had the opportunity to lower seven of the figures of
optics that have shifted to someof the providers in particularly

(16:26):
in the UC and C cast space that basically we saved them the run
rate within Microsoft and it funded their digital
transformation initiative. So it really and how to defund
that. Well, we're pulling the SIP log.
So part of the output is we understand the way usability
has. And believe it or not, they had
an asterisk system. And so you kind of look at it

(16:46):
and say, yeah, really interesting global rollout in
asterisks. Oh yeah, we're in 68 countries.
And so you start having these conversations and it's just the,
the, the, the path just keeps opening and opening up, But it's
all just data-driven and it's all starts with licensing, which
is really interesting if you think about it, because the,
it's not so much we need to costsave and where are we going to,

(17:08):
you know, there's the usual places to look, you know, and,
and easily grab, you know, thesesavings.
The, the hard part in software is you really have to
forensically look at and understand usage over an 18
month period, right. And then.
But it does paint the story. Good point.
All right, let's go. Let's go into an example.
So walk us through something that starts in one lane, ERP,

(17:31):
software, infrastructure, and just ends up pulling through all
these other things. I mean, walk us through how a
deal like that transpires or what was the turning point.
I, I, well, we can use a couple examples. 1 is a lot of software
audits kind of lead into a lot of digital transformation.
But you know, specifically, I can just pull one out and I'll
use the Microsoft example. It really was a restructuring of

(17:52):
an enterprise agreement on a termed agreement, which we can't
participate in anyways. Let's be clear, right?
So it's kind of those ones that there's an EA.
So you know, from an opportunity, it leads into
really why are you doing this and what is your road map?
And then just start having the road map conversation on one
example. Another example is digital
transformation. You know, you, you, you get into

(18:13):
kind of these infrastructure pieces and as you're pulling out
data, you know, you're seeing rapid 7 in the environment.
You're, you're, you're having conversations on the database
and then a providers coming in talking about an XDR within a
certain element on a single host.
And the sisal is losing his mindand you're you're then switching
to you shouldn't be this excitedabout a Trellix XDR instance on

(18:35):
a single host. What are you doing for your
entire security posture. So in our world, it's, there's
not one example I can give you 1000 of literally the deployment
of the specific entitlements have a correlation to what their
infrastructure is doing and how they're changing.
But specifically we've had a lotof telecommunication pivots just

(18:57):
from the SIP analysis that we'repulling out of the M365
environment and saying, great, you have a Cisco on Prem, that's
amazing. I understand that you have 5000
Calling Plans with Microsoft. No, we don't.
Yeah, you do. Here's the data.
So you don't have a Cisco, you don't have a Cisco strategy.
You have a Cisco strategy with your employees are just

(19:19):
providing Calling Plans for Teams integration.
It's a very different data-driven conversation, so.
Do you, do you find I guess in and in in let's playbook some of
these engagements a little bit? I mean, start us off with, and I
know the stat is that 62% of allstats that are made-up.
So let's make up our stat to ourbest effort here.

(19:39):
What percentage of the time do you feel like the customers even
expect the conversation to pivotwhen you uncover things like
this? Never, never they're surprised.
It's always a surprise. It's, it's pretty much, I would
say 90% of the time it's a surprise and calling out, you

(20:04):
know, it's interesting because you mentioned rapid scale, you
know, I can't tell you how many times I hear, oh, well, we're
thinking of doing this or it's being led by AWS or with a
single vendor. And then you start kind of
peeling back with these with these CIOs and IT directors and
saying. What is the motivation of this
planning and what are you truly trying to do?

(20:25):
And it's always such a single layer approach.
And so for as ATA, you're alwayslooking at a multi layer
approach, right? Bringing in yourself and your
team to kind of understand, lookat this holistically and say,
what is the path that was followed?
But what was the impression of the customer?
How did we get there? We were probably having an
Oracle conversation and he said,oh, by the way, we're yeah,

(20:46):
we're considering migrating our entire database, our our entire
ecosystem to AWS. And my comment was, you have 16
data petabytes of storage. How do you possibly believe
you're going to do that? Well, AWS said, and now you're
in a conversation that just pivoted.
Did he expect to be there? No.
But did I listened? And then the conversation kind
of organically had happened. So, you know, when you look at

(21:09):
in an Oracle world, believe it or not, there's still Siebel out
there, still a thing. By the way, the CIO, Hey, we're,
we're, how do we get out of Siebel because we need to move
to Salesforce. Interesting.
You're moving to Salesforce. How are you handling your CX?
Well, we're looking at XY and Z.We can help you with that.
And those are some of the conversions conversations that

(21:29):
come out. That's why I said the pivot for
me is a little bit interesting because as ATA, in a sense,
you're always listening and trying to provide value.
And a customer once told me he said the greatest value to you
isn't that you save me in compliance, is that I can call
you for anything and you'll point me to a number of vendors
that will be able to provide me a solution to save me time and
research. And I always like that he said

(21:51):
that to me. So yeah.
I like it. Let's go sell him some more
stuff. So, OK, so think about this.
I like to talk about the ripple effect.
So there's a lot of ripple effect in these tech decisions.
And I think it's hard to, if youdon't have that radar up, if
you're not looking for these things, you don't know quite
what that ripple effect is. So how do you, how do you walk

(22:14):
into these conversations, help the clients understand this
downstream impact when you're thinking of that licensing and
platform? Is it just a I don't think you
need that and that just takes them, takes the shock off or or
what's how do you, how do you navigate that?
It's long, it's a long process. So not nothing I'm saying just
happens overnight. There's a lot of the larger the

(22:36):
organization, the larger the ego.
So you have to overcome it's, it's typically the most junior
person has the, the largest bite.
So you know a lot of barking, weleverage data.
So you know the data, like I said, when we give X amount of
options, it can get up to 17 different paths you can go.
But the data and the numbers, luckily for us, the CFO consumes

(22:59):
a lot of the the output that we have.
Why? Because it has a financial
impact. And if there's reasoning in
relation to why that's going to happen, they'll typically
listen. How we get there really is
leveraging publishers and providers within your portfolio,
right? So they've been vetted, they
have financials, they have a financial standing.

(23:20):
They're they're, they're, they have status, they have
references and it's something you can go to a customer and
say, listen, this is a well vetted organization and this is
how they stack up. So they're looking at a company
like us that has just saved them$100 million and giving them
kind of a recommendation and saying these are some of our
valued providers that are are you're able to kind of leverage

(23:40):
Now, like I said earlier, the the bigger you are, the longer
it takes, you know, the average deal and kind of the enterprises
could be up to 18 months. It's just, it's the way it is,
right? But crisis also can advert and
rapidly speed that up. So we see that a lot too.
So it's a, it's an interesting kind of way in our world that we

(24:01):
approach this. But, you know, is there any kind
of secret into navigating it? Trust.
It's just comes down to trust. You know, it took me a long way
to get there. But, you know, trust.
When they trust you and you've provided valuable service and
valuable recommendations, they will pretty much bring you to
the seat of the table to at least give an opinion on
whatever it is that they need. So for those advisors then that

(24:25):
are are have sold a single product to this customer and
they want to go expand that dimension.
What's your advice for spotting those those pivot points or
calling out those pivot points that then open up the the next
16 paths? I think, I think a lot of it is
just understanding the road map,right, Get out of the weeds.

(24:47):
So I see a lot of advisors really in the technical weeds
with folks. And you know, and it's just our
nature in particular if we've come as from a solutions
background that we want to just get our hands on the keyboard.
I mean, it's still to this day, it's really hard for me to just
not do it all. You have to have a strategy
meeting, you know, talk about trends.
A lot of the content within hereand a lot of the stuff that's

(25:09):
coming out of, I would say even to our university, you know,
leverage a lot of that stuff to kind of put in your own words
and have established QBRS with your customer where you're
talking about trends. And, you know, something may
just dawn and a light will go off and say, Oh yeah, we've
actually been thinking about that.
If you're not present your customer, they will move on
without you, right? Some of my best success has been

(25:33):
from what are your goals over the next 18 months as an
organization? Where are you trying to go?
You know, if they're in retail, that's a great one right now.
Obviously they're not selling a lot of sweaters.
How, what's your, what's your approach over the unforeseeable
future that your supply chain may be squeezed by the current
economic climate? You know, these are
conversations. You know, we have some quick
wins. Maybe you're in a mobility

(25:54):
discussion. Maybe you're in a A10
discussion. Maybe you're in, you know,
leveraging your core it kind of around where your expertise are.
They're they're all looking for solutions.
I was on the call yesterday withthe VP of IT of a large brand.
He said, when can you fly down to studio said you'd have lunch.
I want to show you everything wehave.
So you know, it, it just, yeah, it's good.

(26:17):
I hope you're not busy next week.
You know, it's just I, I, I think my advice really is just
try as hard as you can to understand what their, what
their objectives are over the next 18 months.
Yeah, you know, the, the, the QBR thing is great.
I, I would love to see more out of that, more people doing that
because show me something that hasn't come from sitting down

(26:40):
with one of your great customersin a QBR, right?
Just that I, I, I think some people struggle to find well,
what's the right way for me to approach this customer that now
I need them to know that I can I'm, I'm confident in helping in
all these other areas. And I'll never forget one of the
one of the eye opening moments ayear or two ago with, you know,

(27:01):
with a partner that had a big customer and we had sold
hundreds of thousands of dollars, four or five different
products over the years to this customer.
This is the guy that is the contract signer.
I mean, he intimately knows all the products that we have sold,
right? He's been in all the discussions
and he'd said, hey, I got a question for you guys.

(27:23):
Yeah. Oh, yeah, you bet.
How do you guys get paid again? There we go.
Dude, this is like year 4 into the relationship.
If you trust us that much that you don't even care that you
haven't thought about it, you haven't asked about it.
I'm, I'm sure we've brought it up numerous times, but it, it
gives you context to go, these people are in a different world.

(27:44):
They have priorities, they have things they are, they need to
be, have these strategy sessionsdrawn out.
So I love that call out challenge everybody to go do
more of your QBRS with your top customers like nothing bad is
going to come of that. No, you shouldn't be.
You shouldn't be afraid to get in front of them at any point.
I mean, that's we're in a relationship business.

(28:04):
Trust is formed by relationships.
And absolutely get in front of your customers and and keep
bringing it up. All they can tell you is no, you
know, or hang up on you, but just call back.
That's all. Right, man.
For every, for every, for all, for all the 9 Nos, the 1 is a
yes. That's all that matters.
What what's the what's the the batting average example I got to

(28:24):
use? You only got to hit three out of
every 10 to make it in the Hall of Fame.
Like it's not that bad. It's not that bad.
It's not that bad. OK, final, maybe final thought
here. I guess as you as you think
about this, you know, we got a we got an evolving landscape, we
got, you know, just weird times where people are looking to
optimize and then figure out also have to invest for AII mean

(28:48):
all these trends coming out. What is the what's your kind of
advice to bring this home? And what do you, what do you see
as maybe just some of the next triggers, the next things to
unlock opportunities coming up? Well, I, I think, you know, I
could talk about a couple things.
So what is software, right? So if you're looking at software
and we talked about that 71% of,of infrastructure on premise,

(29:10):
you know, the, these publishers are motivated to migrate their
current spend in the millions with an uplift, right?
They don't know the value of their assets and, and you know,
really put yourself kind of in the middle of of these
conversations because you know, a lot of publishers are going to
bully their customers into making long term decisions,
right? Or locking them into things that
they may not be aware of and why?

(29:33):
Because they don't have time, right?
So it's just, you know, the, the, the reverse of, you know,
they didn't understand how, how some folks are being paid to
they just, they have trust in a platform.
Obviously they're just going to migrate and look at these
opportunities. But make no mistake, these these
vendors are getting aggressive. You know, they're, they're also
adding a lot of the components that pertain to some of the

(29:54):
folks, you know, watching this. So you want to keep top of mind
that changes are happening. They're looking at
infrastructure changes, you know, publishers are changing
them to lock insurance where, where you know, they're
leveraging A hyperscaler througha subscription model that only
they control and they set the terms and the price.
So that is happening within everybody's, everybody's
customers today, right? So it's, it's always, it's

(30:16):
always great to just stay aware of what's going on and what the
changes might because you never know what kind of opportunity
they might just be shopping for a new ERP.
You never know, right, If you don't ask the question.
So as far as on the AI front, you know, AI is everywhere,
right? So I've told a lot of
advisories, advisors this. We've done a lot of it.

(30:37):
We've done a lot with AI. You know, the interesting thing
with AI is it's not a one-size-fits-all.
It's never going to be. And you know, one department may
use a yellow, the other department may use a core.
You know, you may have Genesis creeping in and next thing you
know, there's five different implementations.
We have a customer that's using four different vendors to solve
12 different problems within their ecosystem.

(30:58):
So you know, AI is going to continue to evolve.
It's never going to be a set andforget.
It's going to be a constant conversation you want to bring
up in your QBRS. How is this working?
You know, attrition does matter.Are you getting value, you know,
and continuously having those conversations within your
customer base because you never know one vendors great for one

(31:19):
another vendor might be great for a second thing.
Explain Z. So what I can say globally
though, if I tie it all together, there's some
interesting things that are happening kind of a network
space. You know, meter is something
that we're really interested in looking at primarily on what you
know and are smart, how we handling smart net negotiations.
And then kind of looking throughan OpEx model and kind of

(31:39):
changing some of the infrastructure and lowering cost
through, you know, some of the renegotiations we're doing at
that level is, is pretty interesting.
But the landscape to some eyes, software, I, we, I obviously AI
is already there, but even the networking, everything's going
to an OpEx model. So everybody is Broadcom, right?
I mean, we all know what Broadcom did.

(31:59):
Subscriptions are the way, right?
These companies want to offer, you know, they want to manage
their businesses on subscriptionmodel.
And I mean, for heaven's sakes, you know, I bought for a
customer. We help them procure like an old
Maximo environment that's like old is old people still use it.
And IBM wanted to sell them a subscription for on Prem, you

(32:20):
know, so it's it's just it's everywhere.
Every customer wants to put everybody in on this type of
subscription. So I would say for me in my
world over the next five years, every publisher, every company
is going to be putting a gun to their customers head and saying
you need to buy our subscriptionfor something that may or may or
may not have value to you in your runtime.

(32:41):
I love it. It's a great place to wrap.
Ed, good to catch up. Appreciate you coming on.
Awesome. Awesome topic, man.
Awesome. Thank you.
OK, everybody, that wraps us up for today.
As always, don't forget you can catch this every Wednesday when
it drops Wednesday morning. Catch it on Spotify, Apple
Music, be sure to follow, subscribe, all that good stuff

(33:01):
so that you get these before anybody else does.
So until next time, I'm your host, Josh Lopresto, SVP of
sales engineering at Telaris. Ed Tibersky, Evermen This has
been how licensing rules the game even when you don't see
it's adjacent reach. Thanks everybody.
Next Level Biztech has been a production of Telaris Studio 19.

(33:21):
Please visit telaris.com For more information.