Mike Kowalski of Telarus discusses the evolving landscape of data centers and cloud technology, focusing on Azure, IBM, and database management. We explore the importance of building relationships in technology sales, share a case study on hybrid solutions for political websites, and delve into the challenges of database management. The conversation also touches on the relevance of IBM workloads and the future trends in technology, particularly the adoption of AI.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Presto, SPP
of sales Engineering at Telaris and this is next Level Biztech.
Hey everybody, welcome back. We got a new track for you here.
A lot, a lot of things to cover today.
(00:23):
We're talking about Azure at theedge, IBM in the basement and
databases and how we kind of move through some of these
changes on back with us returning guests, Mr. Mike
Kowalski, Solution architect, data center and cloud at
Teleris. Mike, welcome back on Buddy.
Yeah. What's going on, Josh?
Thanks for having. Me.
Well, you didn't screw it up last time, so we thought we'd
have you back on Give the peoplegive the people what they want.
(00:47):
And who better to talk about allthis good stuff, man?
Data center, cloud, Azure, IBM, dude, let's we got a lot.
Let's jump in. Yeah, let's do it.
So you, you started out here just for a little bit of color
and background in this kind of regionalized engineering role.
You've morphed into this real data center and cloud solution
(01:09):
architect and that's, that's a full time thing.
What you, you kind of had, I mean, walk us through a little
bit of your background, but what's sparked this, this focus
around data center and cloud andhow do you stay tight with, you
know, all these solutions, Azuredatabase, IBM, you know, where
do you, how do you lock it all in?
It's an ever changing market andit's an ever changing
(01:30):
technology. So you just have to kind of keep
up with it. I always tell people when they
get into the business, we we geta lot of new TAS that come into
the space. I say you're never more than 6
to 8 months behind. Just get caught up as fast as
you can and then you're going tobe an expert in no time
particular. For me, I really like being in
this data center space because Istarted off in a physical world.
(01:52):
I started off in an old school world of where the only
computers that were 64 bit were very expensive workstations.
They were Silicon Graphics, theywere HP, they were Sun
Microsystems. And of course IBM X86 didn't
catch on to the 64 bit bug until, you know, Linux came out
(02:13):
and started becoming a little bit more powerful.
So me being in the role that I'min now, it's very comfortable
for me to talk about this historical data, this legacy
technology, because some of it is still applicable to today's
marketplace, right? They still need a place to put
it, house it, cool it. Back then it was just regular
servers or big IBM's or big Sun boxes.
(02:36):
Now they're highly condensed, very powerful, ultra high
density type of deployments. But there's still a fair amount
of companies out there that are running this technology and
they're also trying to figure out how can I take advantage of
modern technology. So this role at Telaris
especially allows me to be very nimble, cover a lot of different
(02:59):
types of use cases, cover a lot of different types of ground,
and it keeps me young, keeps me going.
I'm kind of like the IBM in the basement sometimes, right?
I I got to get myself to the gymat 4:30 every morning so I can
keep up with these young technologies, right?
It's, you know, and it's, it's funny to, it's funny to, if you
think about kind of how full circle this has come.
And we talk about this a lot in in the team chat.
(03:22):
You know, it's part of just the broader cloud team of, OK, we
all started out in some capacity.
Many of us have have mounted, you know, servers in a data
center, been in the data center space.
And then, you know, the big run,the hyper scalers, you know,
10-15 years ago, a lot of that coming back and being hybrid and
hybrid. And now, now we're talking about
looking at the next NVIDIA and the next Blackwell chip.
(03:42):
And these guys are trying to stuff and everybody's trying to
stuff 100K dub. You're hearing 34500K dub into a
cab. It's about making the data
center as efficient as possible.So it's just, I guess what's
just changing is just how peopleare paying for it and where
they're paying for it and who wants to own what, but not at
the core. There's still so many
similarities though, right? There are there are a lot of
(04:03):
similarities. I think there's a lot more as a
service today. Whereas before you're kind of
locked in to buy your own hardware, host your own
hardware, manage your own hardware.
And really the MSP market hasn'treally, really didn't show
itself. And if they did, it was really,
really big expensive companies that would come in and start
doing some of this management for you.
Then we moved on to now cloud service providers, which are
(04:25):
also Ms. PS. So you kind of get that
flexibility of maybe I want to own my own, maybe I don't want
to own all of it. And so we can start walking
through that pathway to what's the strategy of best, what's
best for your business. So maybe walk us through that
just a tiny little more before we kind of get into some of
these these three topics that wementioned.
(04:47):
Walk us through in your role, how do you help partners and
maybe what's what do you feel sets us apart, how you're
approaching some of these data centers and cloud conversations
and how you're guiding partners from I don't know what I have to
the close deal. I'm a use a terrible analogy.
I use it from time to time basedon my audience.
So I'm just, you know, bear withme on this.
(05:10):
I've been through one marriage, but before I got to that
marriage I had to do a lot of dating and I was always focused
on how I could do a better job at making them happy.
Go through little bit later on in life, technology evolves, we
get a little bit wiser and now when I re entered the dating
pool, I'm thinking how can I make them a better person?
(05:33):
How can I contribute to their life?
How can I not just sit here and talk about me all the time?
How can I talk about them? How can I address their needs,
their concerns? Because if if if I just sit
there and go through that process, kind of psychological
process, you build a little bit deeper relationship, you build
it's a little less offensive when people are just going in
(05:55):
and blowing up. Hey, we sell this technology.
It's the best since sliced bread.
Let me tell you why I apply thatto what I do here, because we
don't just sell one service or one technology.
These businesses want to be heard, they want to be
understood and they want to be taken care of.
So if we go in there and just talk about ourselves the entire
time, they're going to get turned off and they're not going
(06:18):
to see that connection. If we go in there and ask them
some questions and have them gettalking about their baby and how
their baby needs some help and how we will care for their baby,
we're going to get a lot further.
And so we build these relationships that once we kind
of break the ice and we start connecting on a level that's
(06:40):
past selling, I always like to say I don't, I don't sell
anything. I'm here to inform, educate, and
most importantly, listen. Get them talking about what they
think is the problem and they'regoing to say things that
ultimately lead to other opportunities and other problems
that we can solve and other services that we can sell.
So take your time, build that relationship.
(07:03):
Don't be the guy that just goes in there or gal that goes in
there and just trying to sell. Just connect with the person and
have the technology conversationsecond.
Love it, love it. We'll do hilarious relationship
advice after dark if we if we run on cloud topics.
I love the it's a lot of parallels though.
(07:23):
I mean, it is. It is a very psychological sales
process. We've we've all been, I think,
riddled back in the day with theengineers that come into the
conversations that that are justthere to tell the customers, no,
you're dumb and this is the wrong way to do it.
Like nobody wants to be talked to like that in life, let alone
in a business conversation. So I love the, I love the
(07:44):
thought process. Let's talk about, let's talk
about an example here as we leadinto a moment in the time, a
moment in time maybe where there's a deployment or a
customer pivot or just something, something that
happened out in the deal or in the field that maybe just
reshaped how you approached the design or how you approached how
you were helping on that opportunity.
(08:06):
Working on a a new client, building that rapport, building
that relationship took a little bit of time and they told us
what they wanted to tell us. But when they first, when they
then started to trust us, they started telling us a little bit
more and a little bit more. And that led to the ultimate
design and the win for this particular client.
(08:26):
And what it is, is they run political websites.
They are a safe haven for political people to host their
environments and as you can imagine some of those may be
controversial and maybe some of them aren't well liked and maybe
some of them will draw the wrongattention.
So they wanted to build a safe and secure environment to host
(08:47):
these different websites. They were doing it within a
multi tenant managed environmentthat is not unsecure, but they
didn't have a good grasp of their costs.
They didn't have a good grasp ofwho their neighbor was.
They didn't have all of these different pieces that lined up.
When I offered to them to do a dedicated private environment,
(09:10):
they were kind of a little bit hands off because they didn't
want to do this themselves. They didn't want to do anything
except for run their software platform and advocate for these
different political websites. When we came in there with one
of our infrastructure as a service suppliers and they
provided A dedicated physical environment that is in their own
(09:31):
cage, that is in their own data center.
It really kind of flipped the switch in them saying we'll have
full control over the hypervisor.
We can plug in anything that we want to into that hypervisor.
We can manage it any way that wewant.
We can open or close any of the capabilities that we want to our
users. And by the way, it was 35% less
(09:55):
than they're paying on their regular bill.
They got really excited. What they didn't get excited
about was it has a finite capability.
Now we overbuilt it just a little bit to account for some
of that growth, but they're saying, hey, during a political
storm, if this thing takes off and gets really busy and we
don't want to be cramped and, and stuck into this.
(10:15):
So we built into a hybrid model.They have that dedicated
footprint that has a dedicated cost.
And then if they're needing morecapacity, they're making more
money. They're they're they feel free
about, OK, let's bring in other resources.
So dynamically it grows. It grows into not only AVM Ware
based hypervisor, but it also conversed into any of the other
(10:37):
AWS Azure types because then it's unlimited.
And once they had that safety net and their investors saw,
hey, if something goes viral on our site, we're not going to
get, we're not going to get shutdown from a capacity standpoint.
We sold it. The installation went great.
They're up and running. It's been a fantastic
opportunity to kind of showcase what Hybrid can do for you.
(11:01):
Let's let's move into then let'stalk a little bit about this
whole Azure Local thing. So let's jump into a couple of
these topics. So Azure Local had a few
different names throughout the years, right?
Microsoft, like others, loves tochange these names.
So you know, it is this for anybody that's not familiar,
it's this platform that allows you to say, OK, I've got my
Azure portal. I can command and control from
(11:22):
the cloud however I want to do it.
But I want to take that infrastructure that is used in a
Microsoft data center and drop it on Prem for XYZ whatever
reasons, right? But still control it to your
point like you mentioned before and in the other example.
So where do you see that? Like where do you see that
really shine or maybe any story where that was that solved for?
Is it a latency thing? Is it a compliance thing?
(11:44):
Is it a data thing? I mean, walk us through where
that fits. What's all the above really?
It's all of the above and it's also the Broadcom thing.
Hey, I don't want to drop another VM Ware based node into
my environment because I don't want to pay Broadcom the money.
I'm not getting the support, I'mnot getting the value out of it.
And I think Azure has been a very it they took a little time
(12:06):
to catch up to AWS, but now they're there at parity and
they're doing some very cool things.
And I think Azure local is one of them.
Hey, I I have deployments withinthe Azure clouds in regions
where I don't want to have data centers in regions where I don't
want where I don't have people, But I'm an established business
and I have Co location and I or I have a dedicated facility that
(12:26):
I host my own equipment and I want to be done with hyper VI
want to be done with Broadcom and VM Ware.
Let's let's federate all of thisinto one mesh where I can
control where my pops are, because maybe my application is
latency sensitive and it's just not good enough to be in a
(12:48):
region within a hyper hyper scaler.
I actually need it in Topeka, KSand that's where I'm going to
build it and I need one in Cleveland, OH, and that's where
I'm going to build it. And so it really gives them that
capability of sniper like strategy of addressing where
their their trouble markets are and where they need to perform
(13:09):
the best. And you're right, it has gone
through some iterations and it'sgoing to continually go through
iterations, but hopefully for the better, hopefully it draws
down price performance goes up, usability goes up, accessibility
to some of the bolt on applications goes up, right.
It's just going to be an evolving thing.
Let's shift gears then. Let's talk about, I think one of
(13:30):
the hardest things in tech to doin databases.
And so, you know, I got, I got excited.
I think we all got excited when we had a supplier to pop into
the ecosystem that said, you guys know we do database as a
service, right? And I think we're at that point,
we were so preconditioned to go,people barely touch anything
beyond infrastructure. Nobody wants the application at
(13:51):
the time. Nobody wanted the database at
the time, you know, so we started seeing things like patch
management for security and stuff come in.
That was amazing. So here comes database as a
service. I think we don't we don't we
haven't seen people conditioned for years to be talking about
this in the same way that they have about other things.
So before we get into maybe likejust some of the complexities of
(14:14):
why databases are so hard, I cancome back to that.
But how do we how do we just help partners help the Tasmania
enunciate this play more? How would you how would you
guide them to uncover these and just talk about this a little
more? Yeah.
And I really like this question,Josh, because there's a theme
here. You're used to doing something
(14:34):
in this space. If you're, if you're a telephony
person, then you're used to talking about UC and then you
got a little bit crazy, started talking about CC and now we're
talking about CX. If you're a circuit person,
you're, you're slinging circuitsand that that's still a great
business. It's the lifeblood of any
infrastructure. But then you start talking
(14:54):
about, oh, what are you doing for redundancy and what are you
doing for diversity and what areyou doing for failover?
What are you doing? And then they start having the
SD Wan conversation. They start having these sassy
conversations, right. So it's an evolution of getting
comfortable enough to ask that one more question and be
unafraid to see where it goes. If you've moved from telephony
(15:16):
and circuits and you're startingto talk about infrastructure and
you're start talking about data centers, get a little bit more
comfortable and start asking about workloads.
Workloads is the overcompassing word of, hey, I'm running this
application, I'm running this database, I'm serving these
clients, right? That is, that is a workload and
part of that is a database. There are very few things that
(15:41):
are common within environments around every business, but
database is probably in 90 to 99% of all of the applications
that are being run by your clients.
Extending them the ability to help offset some of the skill
set required to stay in front ofthat is yeah, it's pretty hard
(16:03):
to do as an employer. They might have their dedicated
team or dedicated person for database, but it is a person or
it's a team, right? It's expensive.
They take vacations, they take 4O1K.
And I'm not advocating to get rid of these folks, not at all.
What I'm saying is maybe you're a business that can't afford to
have this type of infrastructure, but you're
paying for it. Move it as a service.
(16:26):
Get in a company that can do those types of services for you.
So you get that 24/7 reliability.
You get the ever scaling knowledge base of a business
trying to stay competitive in the marketplace by offering the
latest and the greatest in database technologies.
And as you move it to a service,you can customize it.
(16:49):
You can get yourself aligned with the supplier that best fits
your business size, your budget,your requirements and that will
stay consistent throughout your business.
And then your your the TAS out there.
If things change within the business and you need to scale
up from SMB to enterprise, they will either keep you in
alignment with the right supplier or they will go find
(17:09):
you that supplier that will seamlessly transition your
business as it grows from one step to the next.
So get comfortable with having an application conversation in a
database is more likely to get you a response of, yes, I use a
database. Well, how are you supporting
that today? Is it a drain on your resources?
Are you getting a good value outof the investment that you're
(17:31):
making now with that? Or do you feel like you could do
a little bit better? I love that.
Yeah. I I want to keep expanding on
that. I think you, to your point, like
you try to build an application today and you make it about 5
minutes and then you realize, yeah, I can't store the stuff in
the browser. I need a database in some
(17:52):
capacity, whether you're going cloud, whether you're in a data
center, whether you're whatever you're doing, I think you could
probably start this conversationby saying, hey, do you like
debris there? Oh my gosh, I do too.
Let's talk about your database because you probably have one
that's about the same reality toyour point.
And I think we're just to give people a little more color where
(18:13):
databases get really hard is scaling them right.
You can in infrastructure, if I need more compute cycles to
process an incoming request to, you know, do whatever my
application needs to do, I can just throw more and auto scale
that up. And I can scale that
horizontally pretty easily. But then when it comes to a
(18:35):
database, you think about the complexity of database, I can't,
I can read a lot, but I can onlywrite once.
So what do I do then? Well, I just have this one
server and I'm speaking from experience of we struggled
through this. I have this one server.
Well, I guess I could add more RAM to this one server because I
can't change the table structurebecause it's already it's
(18:56):
already mounted to this disk. I guess I could put more CPU in
this one server and I could scale it up that way.
So what you find yourself lockedinto is this horizontal scaling
debacle to go crap. I don't know how in the world
I'm going to scale this thing. And what if this one HP blade
server takes a crap? I'm kind of screwed.
(19:19):
So you do certainly get into this, this thematic of databases
and backup and you get into a backup and Dr. conversation and
there are a lot of great ways. And this is where I think the as
a service component comes into one.
Certainly backup and replicationbecause this is your crown
jewels, right? We talk about this a lot, but it
seems like, you know, augmenting, hey, you know what,
(19:42):
maybe we can put less. We can, I've seen this a lot in
some of these database conversations is we can say, you
know what, let's use this as theright source for the database
and let's read from many. Let's propagate and kind of
replicate that read out and let's read from many so you can
start to get a little bit of horizontal with.
And I think those are the complexities.
And I guess maybe to put a ball on this.
(20:03):
It seems like you correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems
like. The security conversation that
we have where we found who's doing security for you?
What's that focus? Well, it's this person that's
also got these nineteen other responsibilities and they're
also doing security. It seems like we we, we joked in
the beginning that, you know, this is a the, the dude in the
basement conversation, but it seems like there's kind of a
(20:25):
person because databases are really freaking hard.
So I love your your segue of who's handling it?
How is it managed? How are you scaling?
How resilient is it? Seems like that's the best
angle. Yeah.
Yeah. And as, as you got to keep track
of sprawl and sprawl means cost,even though you're able to, to
meet the demand, is it getting, are you getting a good value on
(20:46):
that? Because once that demand is
gone, are you, are you ratcheting it back down?
And those things take a lot of focus and they take a lot of
effort to make sure that cost stay in line with, with the, the
effort that you're putting into it.
So performance and cost needs tocome at some sort of price of
technology and set up and continually monitored.
(21:08):
It's, it's not easy. And This is why having that
conversation, getting that conversation started you, you
might hit a couple of golden spots there with the client.
Their ears might perk up and they might say, I didn't know
you did this service we had. A Ding Ding Ding buzzer yeah, I
love that like that's the best question to get an answer to or
the best statement to kind of hear back.
(21:30):
I think in a deal. Let's All right let's let's put
the Third Point on this let's talk about our our favorite 3
letters, IBM. So IBM workloads still cranking
still tricky. I I think the reality is, you
know, we, we were just sharing an article this morning.
(21:51):
IBM it's I, I remember it powering the, the checkout of
Kmart when I was, you know, 8 getting my childhood school
shopping put on layaway, maybe never to be seen again.
Different, different conversation.
Power series 11 just came out. And so here we are.
(22:14):
We're talking IB Ms. always. We're talking AS4 hundreds, kind
of monolithic monster that just ran and still runs.
I think what like 75,000 of themstill out there.
So you got IBM coming out with Power Series 11, that's now AI
chips. We think, Oh my gosh, this tech
is never going to die. What's your feedback, current
(22:36):
state, IBM workloads and maybe just modernizations that have
won and kind of how we've gone through some of these
conversations? It's the it's the technology
that just won't die. And I think that if a business
has something that's been fully depreciated for 20 years and
they're paying a small fortune to keep it up and running with
(22:57):
maintenance and that is good business for them, they'll be
around a much longer time as well.
When we first started this conversation, I, I mentioned IBM
in the basement because that's, that's kind of the thought that
you get when someone says they have an AS400.
It's like what, where, where dark corner of the computer room
(23:17):
is this in, because they just simply build around it.
It's, it's, it's part of the infrastructure.
They're not moving it. It's just going to stay in
place. And that's OK.
At what price is that OK? Well, it, it kind of doesn't
lend itself well to being very relevant in how, how is all of
(23:38):
these services interacting with the rest of your infrastructure?
How is it working as far as optimizing ADR failover plan,
'cause IBM's failover plan is let's have another IBM.
Well, maybe that's in the other corner of the basement, right?
And, and surprising enough, they, they are innovating.
(23:59):
IBM is still innovating. They're coming out with, with
new technologies. But I think that's part of the
bell curve where we're trying toget people that have their AS4
hundreds or trying to get them to the top.
Are you ready to re platform that into a virtual IBM
platform? And what are the benefits of
(24:19):
that? Well, let's walk through the
electrical savings that you'll have in your business.
Kidding, kidding aside, there are so many options now.
They're more now than there everwere for you to engage with
these clients about their AS 400strategy.
These things are getting old. The people that are supporting
(24:39):
them are retiring out. I don't know anybody that's
coming out of college with a computer science degree saying I
want to learn all about the IBM legacy AS400I series, right?
Their I series are staying relevant, but it's the old ones
that stay in place. So we were talking a little bit
(25:00):
earlier. I saw this ad while I was at the
gym this morning of it was a cartoon.
The guy went for the heavyweights and he's got a
really, really buff arm. He's doing all of these lifts
well. Then they focus out and it, the
cartoon is of a guy that just has one really big bicep and the
(25:20):
rest of his body is skinny. And the commercial was actually
for IBM. And I think this is a great
analogy because the AS400, theselegacy IBM platforms are that
one big muscle and it keeps the rest of your body flat, keeps
the rest of the organization flat because you're putting so
much focus into this one body part.
(25:42):
And I think if you can start again, having those
conversations about the new capabilities of re platforming
off AS400 while still running your legacy apps is completely
possible today with our portfolio services.
And they are going to gain so many things by moving in this
direction that they don't even know yet.
(26:05):
And those are really cool conversations to have.
Yeah, I like that. What I walked away from that is
IBM is still relevant. I I was just pulling this up
while you were chatting or whilewe were chatting it.
It's still a mega stock. It's a $280 billion market cap
as of July of 2025. And so I, I can't imagine we'd
(26:28):
have to look this up to see how much of that revenue is still
kind of stuck into that infrastructure side.
But I imagine a lot of that is, is driving that.
And it sounds like I'm still OK to skip leg day.
I feel like is what we can. Skip leg day.
Once in a while you can skip legday, but don't just work on one
arm. Don't just work on the IBM arm.
The IBM doesn't run the entire business.
(26:50):
It's a great, I mean it's a great comparison though in, in
and if you think about it in these conversations that we've
been in to your point, like we always talk about bring us in,
we'll help you, we'll find more opportunity.
We say that because it just happens expectedly and
unexpectedly, because we've seendeals where the partners and the
(27:11):
customer think nobody can help. And we think, yes, we have IBM
modernization vendors in the ecosystem.
We know how to do this, whether they want to lift and shift,
whether they just want to start with some backups to just decide
it. And lo and behold, what happens
is it gets migrated, power series stays up, somebody else
hosted and manage it. And slowly but surely they start
(27:33):
to application refactor, fire that up into some 80X86
infrastructure. So there's more MRR in that.
And then you just, it just, it'sjust a gradual growth component
from that because the organization's can't afford the
downtime because this is like, you know, it's, it's the, I
don't know, it's the aorta, I guess of the heart.
(27:54):
I mean, it's, it's the heart andit's that you can't do without
either at the end of the day. So just, there's still so many
of these out there. It's baffling to me.
Well, one of the things that thethe operators of these IBM
platforms are doing is they're experiencing decay and that the
decay of the equipment is allow is forcing them to spend more
money on it. It's forcing them to put more
(28:15):
investment of time and energy into it.
And you don't want to be with a platform that is necessarily
just decaying day after day after day.
You want to be in the other side.
You want to be with applicationswhere new versions are coming
out and new feature functionalities, capabilities,
efficiencies are coming out. So you want to be on that growth
side of things and it's just notgoing to be possible on some of
(28:35):
these older platforms until theypull the trigger, see the value
in moving and then start doing so.
And that could be, if these are not small installations, in most
cases, it could be a humongous opportunity for our TAS to get
in there and address some of these conversations.
Let's let's wrap up maybe kind of I guess final couple thoughts
(28:56):
here. So I think we've, we've weaved
in, we've woven in some questions specifically, but I
mean, just take, let's walk everybody out with a few, you
know, key questions that you still love.
Go to ones to just uncover infrastructure pain, uncover
Azure opportunities, uncover IBMopportunities, any, any kind of
(29:17):
final ones. We haven't talked about that
that you want to see people saying more or seen success
with. Going back to my original
statement, I think again, it's agreat question because if we can
challenge those that are watching this today to go in to
maybe one of their, their trusted clients and start asking
(29:38):
uncomfortable questions, I thinkthey can then learn to take that
and apply that to everybody in their, their, their database,
their customer base. And some of those things are, if
you're not a infrastructure guy,start talking about the
infrastructure. Hey, we have all of the, what,
what workloads do you have goingright now?
(29:58):
Like which ones are you struggling with?
It's a very broad question. And they may say, well, I, I
don't know what you're talking about.
Well, are you running databases?Are you running web services?
Are you running ERP? Are you running, so you can just
say workloads. What workloads are you running
right now that you, they're kindof challenging And why are they
challenging to you? Oh, you can't keep up with the
(30:19):
demand cause your infrastructureis fixed.
Oh, I can help you with that. I can't keep up because I've
been trying to hire a, a System Administrator for my team for
the last six months. Oh, I, I can help you with that.
The workload question leads to so many different things.
It could lead to security questions.
It could lead to connectivity questions.
Hey, I need bigger fatter pipes in, in my building.
(30:42):
And if you had that conversationand they start saying things,
that's great. If you don't know what they're
saying, that's OK too, because your next word should be let me
get you on the phone with one ofmy solution engineers so that we
can really capture this information and start
formulating your next steps and a plan to move forward and
(31:02):
overcome these obstacles in the business.
So I think if you could just getthe courage to ask about
workloads and let it be a natural conversation, don't sell
anything. Let's let's see what that leads
to and hopefully it leads some really good conversations
further where we get involved and we start selling more, more
services. Love it.
(31:24):
The edge is constantly moving around, right?
It used to be hub and spoke MPLSand the edge was at the center.
Then, you know, we started getting resiliency at the
branches. You've got an AI and big data
centers, all of these things. It seems like we've gone through
so many cycles, right? And there's always a good news
story, a new news story about this evolution, that evolution
(31:44):
as you think forward about this over the next, you know, I don't
know, 6-12, maybe 18 months, hard to look past that.
What are the trends that you're most excited to kind of pay
attention to or that you're watching for?
Going back to the Bell curve response I gave earlier, I feel
like a lot of a lot more of our,these companies that we work
with are a little bit higher up on the Bell Curve now.
(32:06):
They understand that the technology is here to stay.
They know that their peers are implementing these technologies
and that could be anything from infrastructure as a service to
database as a service to moving to containerization, right?
These things have been proven out and each use case is based
is a good fit for each business.The AI conversation is still in
(32:28):
full effect. I think this adoption of AI is
starting to get a little bit more reasonable and people are
starting to understand the capabilities and how it can
address their business. So instead of going in there and
trying to sell them or tell themall of the different
capabilities, we're starting to get a lot more responsive
inquiries saying, hey, I want mybusiness to implement AI and do
(32:51):
this. I'd like to use this on my
infrastructure so that it can dynamically scale and it
monitors this. I want it in my security so it
can monitor and it can respond in this fashion.
On the data center side, we're still getting these big power
requirements for those that havelearned enough but know how to
monetize it and like to build itthemselves.
(33:12):
So it's really hitting all of the the facets of the business.
I don't want AI to be necessarily the Oval overarching
conversation, but it's hard to not realize that during this
process. We're getting got a little
visitor today. We're getting this as more
(33:33):
common conversation. It is not as controversial as it
was before. Businesses are seeing a real
return on this. They're seeing a real savings on
this when they implement it correctly.
And RT as are starting to have alot of these conversations just
in general where we're getting pulled in and is leading to
(33:54):
opportunity after opportunity. So I'm most excited about that
because it includes every facet of a company and it's not just
isolated to CX. So it's not isolated to
connectivity, right? It's a overarching conversation.
Love it. I love it.
It's a good place to wrap it. My friend.
Mr. Kowalski, thanks for lots oflots of Nuggets in here.
(34:17):
Thanks for coming back on and doing this again, man.
Yeah. You're welcome.
If anybody has any questions about this or anything going
forward, feel free to reach out to me.
If you've got Josh's contact information, he'll put you in
touch. Awesome.
All right, everybody, that wrapsus up for today.
As always, wherever you're listening to us from Spotify,
Apple, remember when these drop on Wednesdays, do subscribe so
you can get these as soon as they pop out.
(34:38):
But that wraps us up for today. This has been Azure at the edge,
IBM in the basement, and databases everywhere.
Mike Kowalski, solution architect, data center and cloud
at Polaris. Your host, Josh La Presto, SVP
of engineering at Solaris Next level Biztech has been a
production of Tolaris Studio 19.Please visit tolaris.com For
more information.
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Presto, SPP
of sales Engineering at Telaris and this is next Level Biztech.
Hey everybody, welcome back. We got a new track for you here.
A lot, a lot of things to cover today.
(00:23):
We're talking about Azure at theedge, IBM in the basement and
databases and how we kind of move through some of these
changes on back with us returning guests, Mr. Mike
Kowalski, Solution architect, data center and cloud at
Teleris. Mike, welcome back on Buddy.
Yeah. What's going on, Josh?
Thanks for having. Me.
Well, you didn't screw it up last time, so we thought we'd
have you back on Give the peoplegive the people what they want.
(00:47):
And who better to talk about allthis good stuff, man?
Data center, cloud, Azure, IBM, dude, let's we got a lot.
Let's jump in. Yeah, let's do it.
So you, you started out here just for a little bit of color
and background in this kind of regionalized engineering role.
You've morphed into this real data center and cloud solution
(01:09):
architect and that's, that's a full time thing.
What you, you kind of had, I mean, walk us through a little
bit of your background, but what's sparked this, this focus
around data center and cloud andhow do you stay tight with, you
know, all these solutions, Azuredatabase, IBM, you know, where
do you, how do you lock it all in?
It's an ever changing market andit's an ever changing
(01:30):
technology. So you just have to kind of keep
up with it. I always tell people when they
get into the business, we we geta lot of new TAS that come into
the space. I say you're never more than 6
to 8 months behind. Just get caught up as fast as
you can and then you're going tobe an expert in no time
particular. For me, I really like being in
this data center space because Istarted off in a physical world.
(01:52):
I started off in an old school world of where the only
computers that were 64 bit were very expensive workstations.
They were Silicon Graphics, theywere HP, they were Sun
Microsystems. And of course IBM X86 didn't
catch on to the 64 bit bug until, you know, Linux came out
(02:13):
and started becoming a little bit more powerful.
So me being in the role that I'min now, it's very comfortable
for me to talk about this historical data, this legacy
technology, because some of it is still applicable to today's
marketplace, right? They still need a place to put
it, house it, cool it. Back then it was just regular
servers or big IBM's or big Sun boxes.
(02:36):
Now they're highly condensed, very powerful, ultra high
density type of deployments. But there's still a fair amount
of companies out there that are running this technology and
they're also trying to figure out how can I take advantage of
modern technology. So this role at Telaris
especially allows me to be very nimble, cover a lot of different
(02:59):
types of use cases, cover a lot of different types of ground,
and it keeps me young, keeps me going.
I'm kind of like the IBM in the basement sometimes, right?
I I got to get myself to the gymat 4:30 every morning so I can
keep up with these young technologies, right?
It's, you know, and it's, it's funny to, it's funny to, if you
think about kind of how full circle this has come.
And we talk about this a lot in in the team chat.
(03:22):
You know, it's part of just the broader cloud team of, OK, we
all started out in some capacity.
Many of us have have mounted, you know, servers in a data
center, been in the data center space.
And then, you know, the big run,the hyper scalers, you know,
10-15 years ago, a lot of that coming back and being hybrid and
hybrid. And now, now we're talking about
looking at the next NVIDIA and the next Blackwell chip.
(03:42):
And these guys are trying to stuff and everybody's trying to
stuff 100K dub. You're hearing 34500K dub into a
cab. It's about making the data
center as efficient as possible.So it's just, I guess what's
just changing is just how peopleare paying for it and where
they're paying for it and who wants to own what, but not at
the core. There's still so many
similarities though, right? There are there are a lot of
(04:03):
similarities. I think there's a lot more as a
service today. Whereas before you're kind of
locked in to buy your own hardware, host your own
hardware, manage your own hardware.
And really the MSP market hasn'treally, really didn't show
itself. And if they did, it was really,
really big expensive companies that would come in and start
doing some of this management for you.
Then we moved on to now cloud service providers, which are
(04:25):
also Ms. PS. So you kind of get that
flexibility of maybe I want to own my own, maybe I don't want
to own all of it. And so we can start walking
through that pathway to what's the strategy of best, what's
best for your business. So maybe walk us through that
just a tiny little more before we kind of get into some of
these these three topics that wementioned.
(04:47):
Walk us through in your role, how do you help partners and
maybe what's what do you feel sets us apart, how you're
approaching some of these data centers and cloud conversations
and how you're guiding partners from I don't know what I have to
the close deal. I'm a use a terrible analogy.
I use it from time to time basedon my audience.
So I'm just, you know, bear withme on this.
(05:10):
I've been through one marriage, but before I got to that
marriage I had to do a lot of dating and I was always focused
on how I could do a better job at making them happy.
Go through little bit later on in life, technology evolves, we
get a little bit wiser and now when I re entered the dating
pool, I'm thinking how can I make them a better person?
(05:33):
How can I contribute to their life?
How can I not just sit here and talk about me all the time?
How can I talk about them? How can I address their needs,
their concerns? Because if if if I just sit
there and go through that process, kind of psychological
process, you build a little bit deeper relationship, you build
it's a little less offensive when people are just going in
(05:55):
and blowing up. Hey, we sell this technology.
It's the best since sliced bread.
Let me tell you why I apply thatto what I do here, because we
don't just sell one service or one technology.
These businesses want to be heard, they want to be
understood and they want to be taken care of.
So if we go in there and just talk about ourselves the entire
time, they're going to get turned off and they're not going
(06:18):
to see that connection. If we go in there and ask them
some questions and have them gettalking about their baby and how
their baby needs some help and how we will care for their baby,
we're going to get a lot further.
And so we build these relationships that once we kind
of break the ice and we start connecting on a level that's
(06:40):
past selling, I always like to say I don't, I don't sell
anything. I'm here to inform, educate, and
most importantly, listen. Get them talking about what they
think is the problem and they'regoing to say things that
ultimately lead to other opportunities and other problems
that we can solve and other services that we can sell.
So take your time, build that relationship.
(07:03):
Don't be the guy that just goes in there or gal that goes in
there and just trying to sell. Just connect with the person and
have the technology conversationsecond.
Love it, love it. We'll do hilarious relationship
advice after dark if we if we run on cloud topics.
I love the it's a lot of parallels though.
(07:23):
I mean, it is. It is a very psychological sales
process. We've we've all been, I think,
riddled back in the day with theengineers that come into the
conversations that that are justthere to tell the customers, no,
you're dumb and this is the wrong way to do it.
Like nobody wants to be talked to like that in life, let alone
in a business conversation. So I love the, I love the
(07:44):
thought process. Let's talk about, let's talk
about an example here as we leadinto a moment in the time, a
moment in time maybe where there's a deployment or a
customer pivot or just something, something that
happened out in the deal or in the field that maybe just
reshaped how you approached the design or how you approached how
you were helping on that opportunity.
(08:06):
Working on a a new client, building that rapport, building
that relationship took a little bit of time and they told us
what they wanted to tell us. But when they first, when they
then started to trust us, they started telling us a little bit
more and a little bit more. And that led to the ultimate
design and the win for this particular client.
(08:26):
And what it is, is they run political websites.
They are a safe haven for political people to host their
environments and as you can imagine some of those may be
controversial and maybe some of them aren't well liked and maybe
some of them will draw the wrongattention.
So they wanted to build a safe and secure environment to host
(08:47):
these different websites. They were doing it within a
multi tenant managed environmentthat is not unsecure, but they
didn't have a good grasp of their costs.
They didn't have a good grasp ofwho their neighbor was.
They didn't have all of these different pieces that lined up.
When I offered to them to do a dedicated private environment,
(09:10):
they were kind of a little bit hands off because they didn't
want to do this themselves. They didn't want to do anything
except for run their software platform and advocate for these
different political websites. When we came in there with one
of our infrastructure as a service suppliers and they
provided A dedicated physical environment that is in their own
(09:31):
cage, that is in their own data center.
It really kind of flipped the switch in them saying we'll have
full control over the hypervisor.
We can plug in anything that we want to into that hypervisor.
We can manage it any way that wewant.
We can open or close any of the capabilities that we want to our
users. And by the way, it was 35% less
(09:55):
than they're paying on their regular bill.
They got really excited. What they didn't get excited
about was it has a finite capability.
Now we overbuilt it just a little bit to account for some
of that growth, but they're saying, hey, during a political
storm, if this thing takes off and gets really busy and we
don't want to be cramped and, and stuck into this.
(10:15):
So we built into a hybrid model.They have that dedicated
footprint that has a dedicated cost.
And then if they're needing morecapacity, they're making more
money. They're they're they feel free
about, OK, let's bring in other resources.
So dynamically it grows. It grows into not only AVM Ware
based hypervisor, but it also conversed into any of the other
(10:37):
AWS Azure types because then it's unlimited.
And once they had that safety net and their investors saw,
hey, if something goes viral on our site, we're not going to
get, we're not going to get shutdown from a capacity standpoint.
We sold it. The installation went great.
They're up and running. It's been a fantastic
opportunity to kind of showcase what Hybrid can do for you.
(11:01):
Let's let's move into then let'stalk a little bit about this
whole Azure Local thing. So let's jump into a couple of
these topics. So Azure Local had a few
different names throughout the years, right?
Microsoft, like others, loves tochange these names.
So you know, it is this for anybody that's not familiar,
it's this platform that allows you to say, OK, I've got my
Azure portal. I can command and control from
(11:22):
the cloud however I want to do it.
But I want to take that infrastructure that is used in a
Microsoft data center and drop it on Prem for XYZ whatever
reasons, right? But still control it to your
point like you mentioned before and in the other example.
So where do you see that? Like where do you see that
really shine or maybe any story where that was that solved for?
Is it a latency thing? Is it a compliance thing?
(11:44):
Is it a data thing? I mean, walk us through where
that fits. What's all the above really?
It's all of the above and it's also the Broadcom thing.
Hey, I don't want to drop another VM Ware based node into
my environment because I don't want to pay Broadcom the money.
I'm not getting the support, I'mnot getting the value out of it.
And I think Azure has been a very it they took a little time
(12:06):
to catch up to AWS, but now they're there at parity and
they're doing some very cool things.
And I think Azure local is one of them.
Hey, I I have deployments withinthe Azure clouds in regions
where I don't want to have data centers in regions where I don't
want where I don't have people, But I'm an established business
and I have Co location and I or I have a dedicated facility that
(12:26):
I host my own equipment and I want to be done with hyper VI
want to be done with Broadcom and VM Ware.
Let's let's federate all of thisinto one mesh where I can
control where my pops are, because maybe my application is
latency sensitive and it's just not good enough to be in a
(12:48):
region within a hyper hyper scaler.
I actually need it in Topeka, KSand that's where I'm going to
build it and I need one in Cleveland, OH, and that's where
I'm going to build it. And so it really gives them that
capability of sniper like strategy of addressing where
their their trouble markets are and where they need to perform
(13:09):
the best. And you're right, it has gone
through some iterations and it'sgoing to continually go through
iterations, but hopefully for the better, hopefully it draws
down price performance goes up, usability goes up, accessibility
to some of the bolt on applications goes up, right.
It's just going to be an evolving thing.
Let's shift gears then. Let's talk about, I think one of
(13:30):
the hardest things in tech to doin databases.
And so, you know, I got, I got excited.
I think we all got excited when we had a supplier to pop into
the ecosystem that said, you guys know we do database as a
service, right? And I think we're at that point,
we were so preconditioned to go,people barely touch anything
beyond infrastructure. Nobody wants the application at
(13:51):
the time. Nobody wanted the database at
the time, you know, so we started seeing things like patch
management for security and stuff come in.
That was amazing. So here comes database as a
service. I think we don't we don't we
haven't seen people conditioned for years to be talking about
this in the same way that they have about other things.
So before we get into maybe likejust some of the complexities of
(14:14):
why databases are so hard, I cancome back to that.
But how do we how do we just help partners help the Tasmania
enunciate this play more? How would you how would you
guide them to uncover these and just talk about this a little
more? Yeah.
And I really like this question,Josh, because there's a theme
here. You're used to doing something
(14:34):
in this space. If you're, if you're a telephony
person, then you're used to talking about UC and then you
got a little bit crazy, started talking about CC and now we're
talking about CX. If you're a circuit person,
you're, you're slinging circuitsand that that's still a great
business. It's the lifeblood of any
infrastructure. But then you start talking
(14:54):
about, oh, what are you doing for redundancy and what are you
doing for diversity and what areyou doing for failover?
What are you doing? And then they start having the
SD Wan conversation. They start having these sassy
conversations, right. So it's an evolution of getting
comfortable enough to ask that one more question and be
unafraid to see where it goes. If you've moved from telephony
(15:16):
and circuits and you're startingto talk about infrastructure and
you're start talking about data centers, get a little bit more
comfortable and start asking about workloads.
Workloads is the overcompassing word of, hey, I'm running this
application, I'm running this database, I'm serving these
clients, right? That is, that is a workload and
part of that is a database. There are very few things that
(15:41):
are common within environments around every business, but
database is probably in 90 to 99% of all of the applications
that are being run by your clients.
Extending them the ability to help offset some of the skill
set required to stay in front ofthat is yeah, it's pretty hard
(16:03):
to do as an employer. They might have their dedicated
team or dedicated person for database, but it is a person or
it's a team, right? It's expensive.
They take vacations, they take 4O1K.
And I'm not advocating to get rid of these folks, not at all.
What I'm saying is maybe you're a business that can't afford to
have this type of infrastructure, but you're
paying for it. Move it as a service.
(16:26):
Get in a company that can do those types of services for you.
So you get that 24/7 reliability.
You get the ever scaling knowledge base of a business
trying to stay competitive in the marketplace by offering the
latest and the greatest in database technologies.
And as you move it to a service,you can customize it.
(16:49):
You can get yourself aligned with the supplier that best fits
your business size, your budget,your requirements and that will
stay consistent throughout your business.
And then your your the TAS out there.
If things change within the business and you need to scale
up from SMB to enterprise, they will either keep you in
alignment with the right supplier or they will go find
(17:09):
you that supplier that will seamlessly transition your
business as it grows from one step to the next.
So get comfortable with having an application conversation in a
database is more likely to get you a response of, yes, I use a
database. Well, how are you supporting
that today? Is it a drain on your resources?
Are you getting a good value outof the investment that you're
(17:31):
making now with that? Or do you feel like you could do
a little bit better? I love that.
Yeah. I I want to keep expanding on
that. I think you, to your point, like
you try to build an application today and you make it about 5
minutes and then you realize, yeah, I can't store the stuff in
the browser. I need a database in some
(17:52):
capacity, whether you're going cloud, whether you're in a data
center, whether you're whatever you're doing, I think you could
probably start this conversationby saying, hey, do you like
debris there? Oh my gosh, I do too.
Let's talk about your database because you probably have one
that's about the same reality toyour point.
And I think we're just to give people a little more color where
(18:13):
databases get really hard is scaling them right.
You can in infrastructure, if I need more compute cycles to
process an incoming request to, you know, do whatever my
application needs to do, I can just throw more and auto scale
that up. And I can scale that
horizontally pretty easily. But then when it comes to a
(18:35):
database, you think about the complexity of database, I can't,
I can read a lot, but I can onlywrite once.
So what do I do then? Well, I just have this one
server and I'm speaking from experience of we struggled
through this. I have this one server.
Well, I guess I could add more RAM to this one server because I
can't change the table structurebecause it's already it's
(18:56):
already mounted to this disk. I guess I could put more CPU in
this one server and I could scale it up that way.
So what you find yourself lockedinto is this horizontal scaling
debacle to go crap. I don't know how in the world
I'm going to scale this thing. And what if this one HP blade
server takes a crap? I'm kind of screwed.
(19:19):
So you do certainly get into this, this thematic of databases
and backup and you get into a backup and Dr. conversation and
there are a lot of great ways. And this is where I think the as
a service component comes into one.
Certainly backup and replicationbecause this is your crown
jewels, right? We talk about this a lot, but it
seems like, you know, augmenting, hey, you know what,
(19:42):
maybe we can put less. We can, I've seen this a lot in
some of these database conversations is we can say, you
know what, let's use this as theright source for the database
and let's read from many. Let's propagate and kind of
replicate that read out and let's read from many so you can
start to get a little bit of horizontal with.
And I think those are the complexities.
And I guess maybe to put a ball on this.
(20:03):
It seems like you correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems
like. The security conversation that
we have where we found who's doing security for you?
What's that focus? Well, it's this person that's
also got these nineteen other responsibilities and they're
also doing security. It seems like we we, we joked in
the beginning that, you know, this is a the, the dude in the
basement conversation, but it seems like there's kind of a
(20:25):
person because databases are really freaking hard.
So I love your your segue of who's handling it?
How is it managed? How are you scaling?
How resilient is it? Seems like that's the best
angle. Yeah.
Yeah. And as, as you got to keep track
of sprawl and sprawl means cost,even though you're able to, to
meet the demand, is it getting, are you getting a good value on
(20:46):
that? Because once that demand is
gone, are you, are you ratcheting it back down?
And those things take a lot of focus and they take a lot of
effort to make sure that cost stay in line with, with the, the
effort that you're putting into it.
So performance and cost needs tocome at some sort of price of
technology and set up and continually monitored.
(21:08):
It's, it's not easy. And This is why having that
conversation, getting that conversation started you, you
might hit a couple of golden spots there with the client.
Their ears might perk up and they might say, I didn't know
you did this service we had. A Ding Ding Ding buzzer yeah, I
love that like that's the best question to get an answer to or
the best statement to kind of hear back.
(21:30):
I think in a deal. Let's All right let's let's put
the Third Point on this let's talk about our our favorite 3
letters, IBM. So IBM workloads still cranking
still tricky. I I think the reality is, you
know, we, we were just sharing an article this morning.
(21:51):
IBM it's I, I remember it powering the, the checkout of
Kmart when I was, you know, 8 getting my childhood school
shopping put on layaway, maybe never to be seen again.
Different, different conversation.
Power series 11 just came out. And so here we are.
(22:14):
We're talking IB Ms. always. We're talking AS4 hundreds, kind
of monolithic monster that just ran and still runs.
I think what like 75,000 of themstill out there.
So you got IBM coming out with Power Series 11, that's now AI
chips. We think, Oh my gosh, this tech
is never going to die. What's your feedback, current
(22:36):
state, IBM workloads and maybe just modernizations that have
won and kind of how we've gone through some of these
conversations? It's the it's the technology
that just won't die. And I think that if a business
has something that's been fully depreciated for 20 years and
they're paying a small fortune to keep it up and running with
(22:57):
maintenance and that is good business for them, they'll be
around a much longer time as well.
When we first started this conversation, I, I mentioned IBM
in the basement because that's, that's kind of the thought that
you get when someone says they have an AS400.
It's like what, where, where dark corner of the computer room
(23:17):
is this in, because they just simply build around it.
It's, it's, it's part of the infrastructure.
They're not moving it. It's just going to stay in
place. And that's OK.
At what price is that OK? Well, it, it kind of doesn't
lend itself well to being very relevant in how, how is all of
(23:38):
these services interacting with the rest of your infrastructure?
How is it working as far as optimizing ADR failover plan,
'cause IBM's failover plan is let's have another IBM.
Well, maybe that's in the other corner of the basement, right?
And, and surprising enough, they, they are innovating.
(23:59):
IBM is still innovating. They're coming out with, with
new technologies. But I think that's part of the
bell curve where we're trying toget people that have their AS4
hundreds or trying to get them to the top.
Are you ready to re platform that into a virtual IBM
platform? And what are the benefits of
(24:19):
that? Well, let's walk through the
electrical savings that you'll have in your business.
Kidding, kidding aside, there are so many options now.
They're more now than there everwere for you to engage with
these clients about their AS 400strategy.
These things are getting old. The people that are supporting
(24:39):
them are retiring out. I don't know anybody that's
coming out of college with a computer science degree saying I
want to learn all about the IBM legacy AS400I series, right?
Their I series are staying relevant, but it's the old ones
that stay in place. So we were talking a little bit
(25:00):
earlier. I saw this ad while I was at the
gym this morning of it was a cartoon.
The guy went for the heavyweights and he's got a
really, really buff arm. He's doing all of these lifts
well. Then they focus out and it, the
cartoon is of a guy that just has one really big bicep and the
(25:20):
rest of his body is skinny. And the commercial was actually
for IBM. And I think this is a great
analogy because the AS400, theselegacy IBM platforms are that
one big muscle and it keeps the rest of your body flat, keeps
the rest of the organization flat because you're putting so
much focus into this one body part.
(25:42):
And I think if you can start again, having those
conversations about the new capabilities of re platforming
off AS400 while still running your legacy apps is completely
possible today with our portfolio services.
And they are going to gain so many things by moving in this
direction that they don't even know yet.
(26:05):
And those are really cool conversations to have.
Yeah, I like that. What I walked away from that is
IBM is still relevant. I I was just pulling this up
while you were chatting or whilewe were chatting it.
It's still a mega stock. It's a $280 billion market cap
as of July of 2025. And so I, I can't imagine we'd
(26:28):
have to look this up to see how much of that revenue is still
kind of stuck into that infrastructure side.
But I imagine a lot of that is, is driving that.
And it sounds like I'm still OK to skip leg day.
I feel like is what we can. Skip leg day.
Once in a while you can skip legday, but don't just work on one
arm. Don't just work on the IBM arm.
The IBM doesn't run the entire business.
(26:50):
It's a great, I mean it's a great comparison though in, in
and if you think about it in these conversations that we've
been in to your point, like we always talk about bring us in,
we'll help you, we'll find more opportunity.
We say that because it just happens expectedly and
unexpectedly, because we've seendeals where the partners and the
(27:11):
customer think nobody can help. And we think, yes, we have IBM
modernization vendors in the ecosystem.
We know how to do this, whether they want to lift and shift,
whether they just want to start with some backups to just decide
it. And lo and behold, what happens
is it gets migrated, power series stays up, somebody else
hosted and manage it. And slowly but surely they start
(27:33):
to application refactor, fire that up into some 80X86
infrastructure. So there's more MRR in that.
And then you just, it just, it'sjust a gradual growth component
from that because the organization's can't afford the
downtime because this is like, you know, it's, it's the, I
don't know, it's the aorta, I guess of the heart.
(27:54):
I mean, it's, it's the heart andit's that you can't do without
either at the end of the day. So just, there's still so many
of these out there. It's baffling to me.
Well, one of the things that thethe operators of these IBM
platforms are doing is they're experiencing decay and that the
decay of the equipment is allow is forcing them to spend more
money on it. It's forcing them to put more
(28:15):
investment of time and energy into it.
And you don't want to be with a platform that is necessarily
just decaying day after day after day.
You want to be in the other side.
You want to be with applicationswhere new versions are coming
out and new feature functionalities, capabilities,
efficiencies are coming out. So you want to be on that growth
side of things and it's just notgoing to be possible on some of
(28:35):
these older platforms until theypull the trigger, see the value
in moving and then start doing so.
And that could be, if these are not small installations, in most
cases, it could be a humongous opportunity for our TAS to get
in there and address some of these conversations.
Let's let's wrap up maybe kind of I guess final couple thoughts
(28:56):
here. So I think we've, we've weaved
in, we've woven in some questions specifically, but I
mean, just take, let's walk everybody out with a few, you
know, key questions that you still love.
Go to ones to just uncover infrastructure pain, uncover
Azure opportunities, uncover IBMopportunities, any, any kind of
(29:17):
final ones. We haven't talked about that
that you want to see people saying more or seen success
with. Going back to my original
statement, I think again, it's agreat question because if we can
challenge those that are watching this today to go in to
maybe one of their, their trusted clients and start asking
(29:38):
uncomfortable questions, I thinkthey can then learn to take that
and apply that to everybody in their, their, their database,
their customer base. And some of those things are, if
you're not a infrastructure guy,start talking about the
infrastructure. Hey, we have all of the, what,
what workloads do you have goingright now?
(29:58):
Like which ones are you struggling with?
It's a very broad question. And they may say, well, I, I
don't know what you're talking about.
Well, are you running databases?Are you running web services?
Are you running ERP? Are you running, so you can just
say workloads. What workloads are you running
right now that you, they're kindof challenging And why are they
challenging to you? Oh, you can't keep up with the
(30:19):
demand cause your infrastructureis fixed.
Oh, I can help you with that. I can't keep up because I've
been trying to hire a, a System Administrator for my team for
the last six months. Oh, I, I can help you with that.
The workload question leads to so many different things.
It could lead to security questions.
It could lead to connectivity questions.
Hey, I need bigger fatter pipes in, in my building.
(30:42):
And if you had that conversationand they start saying things,
that's great. If you don't know what they're
saying, that's OK too, because your next word should be let me
get you on the phone with one ofmy solution engineers so that we
can really capture this information and start
formulating your next steps and a plan to move forward and
(31:02):
overcome these obstacles in the business.
So I think if you could just getthe courage to ask about
workloads and let it be a natural conversation, don't sell
anything. Let's let's see what that leads
to and hopefully it leads some really good conversations
further where we get involved and we start selling more, more
services. Love it.
(31:24):
The edge is constantly moving around, right?
It used to be hub and spoke MPLSand the edge was at the center.
Then, you know, we started getting resiliency at the
branches. You've got an AI and big data
centers, all of these things. It seems like we've gone through
so many cycles, right? And there's always a good news
story, a new news story about this evolution, that evolution
(31:44):
as you think forward about this over the next, you know, I don't
know, 6-12, maybe 18 months, hard to look past that.
What are the trends that you're most excited to kind of pay
attention to or that you're watching for?
Going back to the Bell curve response I gave earlier, I feel
like a lot of a lot more of our,these companies that we work
with are a little bit higher up on the Bell Curve now.
(32:06):
They understand that the technology is here to stay.
They know that their peers are implementing these technologies
and that could be anything from infrastructure as a service to
database as a service to moving to containerization, right?
These things have been proven out and each use case is based
is a good fit for each business.The AI conversation is still in
(32:28):
full effect. I think this adoption of AI is
starting to get a little bit more reasonable and people are
starting to understand the capabilities and how it can
address their business. So instead of going in there and
trying to sell them or tell themall of the different
capabilities, we're starting to get a lot more responsive
inquiries saying, hey, I want mybusiness to implement AI and do
(32:51):
this. I'd like to use this on my
infrastructure so that it can dynamically scale and it
monitors this. I want it in my security so it
can monitor and it can respond in this fashion.
On the data center side, we're still getting these big power
requirements for those that havelearned enough but know how to
monetize it and like to build itthemselves.
(33:12):
So it's really hitting all of the the facets of the business.
I don't want AI to be necessarily the Oval overarching
conversation, but it's hard to not realize that during this
process. We're getting got a little
visitor today. We're getting this as more
(33:33):
common conversation. It is not as controversial as it
was before. Businesses are seeing a real
return on this. They're seeing a real savings on
this when they implement it correctly.
And RT as are starting to have alot of these conversations just
in general where we're getting pulled in and is leading to
(33:54):
opportunity after opportunity. So I'm most excited about that
because it includes every facet of a company and it's not just
isolated to CX. So it's not isolated to
connectivity, right? It's a overarching conversation.
Love it. I love it.
It's a good place to wrap it. My friend.
Mr. Kowalski, thanks for lots oflots of Nuggets in here.
(34:17):
Thanks for coming back on and doing this again, man.
Yeah. You're welcome.
If anybody has any questions about this or anything going
forward, feel free to reach out to me.
If you've got Josh's contact information, he'll put you in
touch. Awesome.
All right, everybody, that wrapsus up for today.
As always, wherever you're listening to us from Spotify,
Apple, remember when these drop on Wednesdays, do subscribe so
you can get these as soon as they pop out.
(34:38):
But that wraps us up for today. This has been Azure at the edge,
IBM in the basement, and databases everywhere.
Mike Kowalski, solution architect, data center and cloud
at Polaris. Your host, Josh La Presto, SVP
of engineering at Solaris Next level Biztech has been a
production of Tolaris Studio 19.Please visit tolaris.com For
more information.
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