Preventing Downtime: The Power of Observability with Shiv Radhakishun

Ever wondered how observability can transform your digital landscape and safeguard against costly downtime? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Shiv Radhakishun, the Head of Channel, ANZ and Japan  at ThousandEyes, as he takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings selling cell phones to leading roles at giants like Cisco and ThousandEyes. Shiv reveals the vital role of visibility and network assurance, likening ThousandEyes to the "Google Maps of the internet," and shares how these tools can revolutionise operational efficiency and minimise disruptions.

Discover the global trend towards adopting observability tools and how they are vital in industries where every minute of downtime translates to substantial financial loss. Drawing parallels to the mission-driven work at Meraki, we discuss how leveraging technology can simplify complex network management, turning what used to be arduous, time-consuming tasks into swift and accurate resolutions. Learn from Shiv’s insights on how ThousandEyes, through its cutting-edge observability tools, offers unparalleled insights into network performance, ensuring seamless business operations.

We also dive into the future of observability, focusing on the transformative potential of AI. Shiv sheds light on the recent Cisco acquisition of Splunk and its implications for expanding digital transformation capabilities. We examine how AI is enhancing ThousandEyes' product offerings with predictive analytics, enabling businesses to foresee and mitigate potential outages. Additionally, we reflect on the significance of human connections and mentorship in the tech industry, celebrating the technological evolution from the Motorola Razr to the iPhone and emphasising the continuous journey of education and innovation in this ever-evolving field. Don't miss out on this insightful episode packed with forward-thinking ideas and practical advice.

Episode Transcript

Shiv Radhakishun (00:02):
We're using AI as the foundation for many
different product innovationscoming up.
When I say predictive right now, thousandeyes can tell you that
there is an outage.
We will soon be able to tellyou that we're predicting an
outage.
In fact, we can actually dothat today.
We can predict an outageleveraging AI Today.

Michael van Rooyen (00:17):
I have the pleasure in having a chat with
Shiv Radhakishan, who is thehead of ANZ and Japan at
Thousand Eyes of the channel.
Shiv's a fellow podcaster andmentor in relation to speaking,
public speaking and also donethe Shiv Show.
Shiv welcome.

Shiv Radhakishun (00:32):
Thank you, mbr , and I gotta say you pronounce
the last name very, very well.

Michael van Rooyen (00:36):
Oh, but maybe a bit of coaching.
No one needs to know that.
No, that's okay.
Look, I mean I've known youlong enough and everyone only
knows you, shiv, even when I Isort of was a bit intimidating,
but I appreciate you getting methrough it.
Before we get started, do youmind just telling people who are
listening a little bit aboutyour background and what led you
to your current role as,obviously, head of channels at
Thousand Islands, coveringAustralia and Japan and New
Zealand, of course.

Shiv Radhakishun (00:56):
Yeah, absolutely.
I fell into tech, like manypeople, and so about 14 years
ago I was running my ownbusiness and I was selling cell
phones in Canada, in theCaribbean.
Funny to do that in university.
That kind of got me through uniand after uni I realized that
the market is extremelysaturated.
Maybe I should look into tech.
And I fell into a job at acompany called Bell Canada,
which was an SP in Canada, apartner of Cisco as well, and I

(01:18):
worked there for six months.
It started brand new in salesand it was full cold calling.
And when I say full coldcalling, I mean I had a machine,
a device attached to the phone,automatically calling
businesses and I would have tosell them lines.
I ended up doing really well atthat and that taught me sales,
because how many rejections areyou going to get when you're
trying to sell business lines topeople?

(01:38):
So about six months in, a thirdparty walked into the room and
said hey, everyone, you're doingsuch a great job, but
unfortunately, to save money andto make sure this business is
even more profitable, we'reoutsourcing this team to India.
Wow, so if you want to keepyour job, you have to move to
India.
And I was 22 at the time anddidn't know how to challenge
them.
And they walked out of the roomand I said to myself well, this

(01:58):
is a very interesting introinto into tech.
Now, the reason I'm telling youthat story is there's a silver
lining.
Cisco was a partner of BellCanada and ended up being in the
office that day and they saw uswalking around moping and
trying to figure out what we'regoing to do with our life and
someone came to me and said hey,we know a sales team is hiring
within Cisco.
Do you want an interview?
And I said, sure, I'd love one.

(02:19):
And that was on a Tuesday.
On the Thursday I interviewedat Cisco and on the Monday,
after I started at Cisco and Iguess throughout my career at
Cisco, I've been here for about12 years now started off in
selling SMB mid-market, moved onto public sector and enterprise
, and then I did a four-yearstint at Meraki, which was
probably a great four years ofmy life and going into cloud and

(02:40):
looking at what customers werelooking for in the cloud
business.
Meraki was a very big part ofthe conversation.
And then in 2020, cisco quietlyacquired a company called
ThousandEyes and because I knewthe visibility pitch really well
.
I was very intrigued in thiscompany and what I saw
ThousandEyes as was reallyvisibility outside of the
network, where Meraki was verymuch visibility inside of the

(03:02):
network.
So, as Michael Chopper-Reed wasthe chief revenue officer at
the time, I spoke to him, wentthrough quite a few interviews
and then started off my journeyat Thousand Eyes and it's been
about two and a half years thererunning the channel in
Australia, new Zealand and quiterecently Japan and I got to say
the channel role is a greatrole.
I get to work with people likeyou, get to work with people
around different countries anddefinitely enjoying it.

Michael van Rooyen (03:25):
Right, look, it is amazing.
I remember seeing Thousand Eyesfor the first time myself and I
know certainly we interviewedone of your colleagues for one
of our earlier episodes and, ofcourse, timely.
We had a global outage over theweekend and, ironically, I
actually went to the ThousandEyes dashboard first when I
started hearing about it and itwas interesting to see the
mapping of what was broken.
It was phenomenal.
Just a quick lens on it ratherthan trying to deep dive, so so

(03:47):
for those who haven't heard athousand eyes or are not
familiar with them, um, do youmind just explaining why you
guys exist?
You know what problem you'retrying to solve and how
customers are really using.

Shiv Radhakishun (03:58):
Yeah, sure the way I like to put it and I've
stolen this from michael chopperreed is we're the google Maps
of the internet, and really whatwe do is we have data
collection points or as we callthem, agents around the world,
on routers, on switches, in datacenters, collecting information
and data across the internet,looking for outages, finding
outages.
We take that data and then, ofcourse, we report it back to our

(04:20):
customers.
What we also do really well isnetwork assurance, and that's
the problem that we're trying tosolve.
We offer visibility into thingsthat you normally don't control
Microsoft Azure, aws and that'sjust a small portion of what we
do.

Michael van Rooyen (04:38):
Wow, Wow.
And so what you're reallytrying to solve is observability
.
Right, and you touched upon itearlier about Meraki being very
much a network lens,infrastructure lens and that's
where the industry has come fromhistorically around.
How's my network performance?
This is network infrastructureas opposed to application.
How to find the root cause,analysis quickly and really the
end user experience is whatpeople are really looking for
today, so observabilitycontinues to become a critical

(05:02):
component.
Can you, from your travelsworking with the US, being a
leader for this region, describethe current state of
observability in the industryand where you think it is and
where we're going?

Shiv Radhakishun (05:12):
Yeah, absolutely so.
If you look at Thousand Eyes,for example, it's 10 plus years
old, but what I've noticed isobservability, or the
conversation, is very new tocustomers that we speak to,
mostly because a lot of thementality is very much yes, we
had an outage, but I'm sureit'll fix itself.
And we saw again one of thebiggest global outages I think

(05:32):
we've ever seen, yes, in ourlives, over the weekend.
People are now starting tounderstand how big of an impact
these outages have, so I thinkobservability is becoming more
and more important now.
What I will say has changed isthe COVID world that we live in
today.
75% of companies have adoptedwork from home strategies, which
means we are more dependent onopen face applications like

(05:55):
Microsoft, like AWS, like SAP,and if there is an outage in one
of these applications, it canmean a revenue loss for my
business as a customer.
Observability is becoming moreand more important now today,
especially with AI, which I'msure we're going to touch on
later, but it should be a partof a strategy for every single
customer going forward.

Michael van Rooyen (06:14):
Yes, and off that you touched on knowing
outages, knowing the root cause,analysis, that what it costs
money.
But how can customers ororganizations really leverage
these sorts of tools, monies buthow can customers or
organizations really leveragethese sorts of tools to really
improve their operations, getbetter insights?
What are you kind of seeing ona global scale?

Shiv Radhakishun (06:31):
So I like to put it this way, if you are
looking for something in thedark, you're probably going to
find it.
You're going to stub your toeon the way.

Michael van Rooyen (06:38):
That's a good point.

Shiv Radhakishun (06:39):
You might fall and it might take you a lot of
time.
So you're probably going tofind it.
But where network assurance andobservability comes in is where
we keep that light on.
You can find it right away.
If you're looking for somethingin the dark, you may fall.
You'll experience pain isreally what I'm saying.
That pain can go away if youinvest in observability.
And what we're seeing globallyis, again, more and more

(07:00):
customers, more and morecompanies really understanding
the impact that observabilityhas in their network.
And I'll tell you, mbr, and youprobably heard this as well
Sometimes we ask the questionwhat happens when you experience
an outage?
What does this mean for yourbusiness?
A lot of times the answer is Idon't know.

Michael van Rooyen (07:15):
Where.

Shiv Radhakishun (07:16):
I like to, and it's scary, right, it's a scary
realization Because in the backof their mind, what they're
trying to think of is a revenueloss.
And I always ask the questionwhat does this mean?
Most of the time, when we boilit back to a revenue number,
that's when we see companiesreally turn that light on and
say, wow, well, that one outagehas actually cost me X number of

(07:36):
productivity hours, which meansmoney.
It's lost me revenue.
I should look at observability.
Some of the major banks inAustralia that have all invested
in ThousandEyes.
Some of the largest companiesin the world Oil Gas have
invested in ThousandEyes as well.
So again, people want to keepthat light on.

Michael van Rooyen (07:51):
Wow, it's interesting and I guess I don't
think about it because front ofmind for me is observability.
Being an organization thatmanages customer environments,
that's front of mind for us allthe time, but interesting to
hear that many customers haven'treally boiled it down to that.
And then I take the other sideof the spectrum.
When we work with OT customers,they are very clear in knowing
exactly what production downtimecosts them.
Absolutely, and I'm happy youtouched on that.

(08:13):
People like oil and gas arelooking at observability because
I originally think people wereseeing Thousand Eyes as a real
corporate enterprise typeproduct.
But I know the way it can bedeployed and utilized.
If I think about our OTbusiness and helping customers
with that OT story, how it canplay a role in that space, oh,
absolutely.

Shiv Radhakishun (08:30):
I mean, we do really well with energy
companies, oil and gas companies, and the reason why is, if one
minute of downtime is notaccepted, of course Not accepted
at all- and that can meanmillions of dollars of revenue
loss, and a lot of thesecompanies rely on Thousand Eyes
to make sure that if there is anoutage they can act very
quickly.
And it's actually a matter ofwhen there is an outage.
There will always be outages,and we know that.

(08:51):
But how do you react quickly?
And that's where Thousand Eyescomes in.

Michael van Rooyen (08:55):
Yeah, I think what it really helps with
and I've seen this before is howto use the tool to do that root
cause analysis, how to get in awar room.
I really like your thing aboutfinding things in the dark.
What Thousand Eyes really givesyou is not just a flashlight
right or the torch in Australiaaround the room, but it kind of
be the bright light that shinesthe whole room to expose exactly

(09:16):
where the issue is, straightaway.

Shiv Radhakishun (09:17):
Exactly.
You've just taken my analogyand made it better.
This is what NBR does.
I love it.
I love it.

Michael van Rooyen (09:22):
Very good, very good.
It's a bit like that story ofthe specialist being called in
to get a nuclear power plant upand running again and this is
probably another Thousand Eyesanalogy and he walks around,
walks around and has a look andbasically it's a hammer out of
his toolkit and just hits aparticular sensor and the whole
plant comes alive again.
And the plant operator gets thebill and wonders why the bill

(09:44):
was so expensive and and and thebreakdown of the bill was, you
know, call out a hundred dollars, but to know exactly where to
hit the hammer was you know 20grand.
So there you go, there you goit's funny.

Shiv Radhakishun (09:52):
you mention that right and and a lot of the
the companies that we speak totalk about the resourcing where
they've been experiencing anissue for 10 to 12 months.
The amount of money spent onthose resources to go and fix
the issue that hasn't been fixedis a lot of money and again we
can turn that torch on.
So I said, flashlight Canadian,we can turn that torch on and

(10:13):
help you find that issue rightaway.
And if I can steal a page outof Meraki's book and this is why
I love the Meraki business butthe mission statement from
Meraki is how do we give ourcustomers time back in the day
to do things they love?
And I actually find ThousandEyes doing that very well.
We want to give you time backin the day to go do things, not
run a network.
How do we give you time back togo spend with your family, go

(10:36):
kick the ball with your kids?

Michael van Rooyen (10:38):
That's kind of where the technology is going
and that's what we can helpcompanies help companies do yeah
, if I think about that in thecontext of even an outage again
or a failure you'd normally doagain, war room scenario, that's
days of work trying to look atall different tools, making
assumptions but having a conciseviewpoint, being able to a
troubleshooter and also point itout to where the fault is right

(10:59):
, not blaming fault but justhelping diagnose, whereas always
we still have this networkversus cyber, versus application
stack discussion and this isreally a holistic view, right.

Shiv Radhakishun (11:08):
Absolutely.
I mean, I've been in many warrooms.
I'm sure you have as well.

Michael van Rooyen (11:11):
They're not fun.

Shiv Radhakishun (11:12):
Tensions are high, of course.
Of course, everyone's blamingeveryone, usually the network,
which is why one of our taglinesis go ahead, blame the network.
We're so confident we can showyou that it's not the network.
In fact, the large outage thatwe saw on Friday, who was blamed
first?
The network was actually blamedfirst, of course, and then
right away, I saw on LinkedIn alot of comments saying, whew,
the network had a break thisweekend.

(11:32):
But the network is usuallypointed at at first.
So what we do is I actuallycall it Thousand Eyes, the war
room eliminator.
We don't need the war roomanymore.
Now we can confidently tell youthe data is showing this
problem.
Let's go fix it and give youback time in your day to go home
and spend time with your family.

Michael van Rooyen (11:49):
It's funny.
You say spend time away withthe family.
I was actually on leave onFriday and I was actually
wearing the Thousand Eyes shirt,all right, and I've got a photo
of me sitting there looking atmy iPad to see what was going on
and I'm actually wearing theshirt.
I have a more wife took a photoof that, so it's ironic.
I'd love to see that.
I'd love to see that.
I'll get it sent to you.

Shiv Radhakishun (12:09):
Funny enough, I wear that shirt.
I live here in Sydney.
I'd be wearing that shirttaking the train into work or
walking on the street.
People would actually stop meand say, hey, where did you get
that shirt?
What is this?
And I would quickly pitch themThousand Eyes.
But it is a popular shirt.
And it's funny because not justpartners who we speak to, but
customers as well, the networkis always blamed Always and
historically.

(12:29):
Before Thousand Eyes, we wouldspend time in this war room
where the network would be atthe forefront and all they would
be doing is defending.
So we're not actually trying tofind the problem, we're
defending ourselves.
We don't need to do thatanymore with thousand eyes, with
observability as a whole,because we're now opening doors
to things that you normallydon't control.

Michael van Rooyen (12:48):
And it's more than that.
Right, it's not to mix the twotogether, but it's not just
necessarily provinginfrastructure is working.
It's actually about the userexperience, right?
So how do we make sure the userexperience is well, because it
does more than just say it's notthe network.
It actually shows where latencyis, where all these variables
are from a tech point, and Ithink about again the value it
brings, the time it reduces, theway people can associate the

(13:09):
cost reduction.
But probably what I want to askyou was what are you seeing the
biggest challenges customersare having or organizing when
they're trying to implementobservability, and how do you
guys help them navigate thoseobstacles?
Resourcing.

Shiv Radhakishun (13:21):
If I can boil it down to one word it's
resourcing and customers arebusy.
Everybody is tasked to do morewith less.
The economy isn't the best thatit has been over the years.
What we're seeing is thatcustomers are struggling with
resourcing.
This is where managed servicescan come in, and I know Oro is
doing some great things aroundmanaged services.
And just to give you a quickstat that I read off of Gartner

(13:43):
earlier, the managed serviceexpectation in Australia by 2026
will be $44.5 billion, and thatto me screams a lot right.
It's screaming that customersneed help and they're open to it
.
The challenge that I see isdefinitely, definitely
resourcing, and I'll give you anexample.
We spoke to a customer a fewdays ago where they were

(14:04):
experiencing an issue.
They had no idea if it was anetwork or not for 12 months and
it was the resourcing that theywere spending to fix this issue
.
Every month was on the balancesheet, so they just knew that
they had to spend money to tryto find the issue.
We offer them a trial.
Within 24 hours, they found theissue and they called us and
said thank you so much.
And we looked at that and wemade a joke and said well, you

(14:25):
can take that off your balancesheet.
I think, from a resourcingperspective, a lot of customers
that I'm finding don't want tomanage the network themselves
anymore.
They want some help.
They also want to make surethat they're keeping the SPs
honest.
They want to make sure thatthey have a trusted advisor and
a partner that is manning thenetwork and they also want to
know that if there is an issueand when an outage occurs, that

(14:46):
this managed service partner isjumping onto it.

Michael van Rooyen (14:49):
Yes, that's a great perspective because,
you're right, I've seendeployments where customers you
get caught with too much redtape trying to get it approved.
Now there's plenty of ways youcan deploy the technology, but
the resourcing is definitely onethat I'd agree with you, and
certainly the outsourcing of thenetwork is becoming a common
feature today right, I'm apodcaster, so I naturally have

(15:11):
questions for you as well.

Shiv Radhakishun (15:12):
Sure, go ahead .
I'm going to shoot the samequestion back to you.
What sort of challenge do yousee when you speak to your
customers?

Michael van Rooyen (15:19):
Well, exactly that.
Probably two areas.
First of all, definitelygetting the resources available.
The intent is there, thecustomers want to see it, they
see the value, they see thedemonstration.
Across all technologies, athousand noises are standout.
But then when it comes to, andin the industry, we use this
word POC for a proof of conceptand I don't think it's a proof

(15:43):
of value, which I get, but forme it's really a proof of
capability and a proof ofcompetence.
I think are the two areas thatI really like to use the POC
word for.

Shiv Radhakishun (15:47):
I'm going to steal that from you Sure Take
all the credit as well, noproblem, no problem, put it out
there.

Michael van Rooyen (15:50):
But I think that's a differentiator.
But definitely in getting themto commit and then do it, and
then normally depending on thecustomer's appetite, how
motivated they are to see theoutcome, but also the red tape
it can always be the killer,right About.
The intent is there, they wantto see the value out of it, they
invest in the time.
Then you've got the opposite,which is how do we keep a pace
with them?
I do see a blend You're 100%right where people are wanting

(16:13):
to now outsource the network asa paid service.
People that don't use yourmobile never think about
building the network.
You never run your own LTEnetwork, you just buy it from a
carrier.
And I think, with the NBN andall these improvements in our
connectivity, people are justwanting to outsource that right,
even from a security point ofview.
Why should it be that differentto just a utility right?
You don't worry about how youbuild electricity network, you

(16:39):
just use it right.
So so, if I think about thedeployment of observability, if
I think about the broadercontext of digital
transformation, are you seeingcustomers use it as one of the
tools in their tool bag fordigital transformation, or is it
always a post transformation uhaspect that they take?

Shiv Radhakishun (16:51):
so good, really good, question.
I think we're seeing a bit ofboth and historically, as I
mentioned, observability is kindof new to customers.
But we're now starting to seeobservability be a part of the
original digital transformationproject and I guess my comment
to customers and companieslistening to this podcast is
really look to try to invest incompanies that work with others.

(17:13):
What I mean by that is and if Ican use thousands as an example
we integrate with so manydifferent companies.
We integrate with Splunk, weintegrate with Zendesk, we
integrate with Microsoft, withSlack, with SAP, and what that
really means is we're openingdoors for you, for digital
transformation, because the wayI see digital transformation is,
you are trying to make yourexisting network better.
If I can simplify it for thenon-technical folks like me, we

(17:35):
are trying to make our existingnetwork work better and increase
the processes and help theprocesses in that company.
If you invest into companiesthat open doors to working with
others, then you're doing justthat.
To me, it's a night and dayapproach, if I can go back to
the analogy of being in the dark.
You will not see things if yourdigital transformation is
one-sided.

(17:55):
When you open up your mind andyou open up the doors.
You're going to be seeing a lotof different things, and you
can do that with integrations,and ThousandEyes does that
really well with APIs, and manyother observability companies do
that as well.

Michael van Rooyen (18:05):
Yeah, the Splunk thing has happened.
Yes, we can talk a little bitmore about that.
I know there was a wait and seefor quite a while.
There was quite a bit ofdiscussion.
I watched the Cisco Live Vegasupdate and there was a lot of
talk about observability toSplunk and some of the new
innovations.
And then I think about AI.
Obviously, everyone's talkingabout AI and machine learning

(18:26):
being integrated.
From what I read into yourobservability tools, can you
touch on a bit about that?
What's the future, what you cantalk about today, of course,
and how that's going to reallyenhance this portfolio?
Definitely so what you can talkabout today, of course, and how
that's going to really enhancethis portfolio, definitely.

Shiv Radhakishun (18:38):
So I'll be honest to say that we always
integrated with Splunk, ofcourse, from the very beginning.
Thousandeyes always integratedwith Splunk.
When we heard of rumors ofCisco acquiring Splunk last year
, we all got very excited andthen it kind of got quiet.
I remember it happened for afew months and then all of a
sudden we heard that theacquisition is going through.
So from a ThousandEyesperspective, this opens up the

(18:59):
door and I actually think ithelps with the digital
transformation for ThousandEyesas well.
So we can now go to Splunkcustomers that haven't really
heard of network visibility ornetwork assurance and speak to
them about it, just as much asSplunk can now go to
ThousandEyes customers and talkto them about observability as a
whole.
So, as you know, appdynamics isrolling into Splunk.
That's very public.

(19:19):
From a ThousandEyes perspective.
What Cisco has decided to do iskeep ThousandEyes on the
network side, which is what wedo very, very well, but we feed
in to Splunk through APIs.
So it's not changing what we do, but it will be opening more
doors for our customers goingforward Right right.

Michael van Rooyen (19:37):
And then I think about the Splunk engine,
the AI, more integration withMeraki, more embedded into the
actual hardware that you guysare delivering at Cisco as a
whole, Correct Agents more Ithink Jonathan was talking about
it on stage about the globalarea network how do we monitor
and manage the global areanetwork, which is just a
different lens, right?
How do we add all this data toit?

(20:01):
And then we think aboutsecurity.
I think there's a lot of usecases that Thousand Eyes hasn't
been used for yet in thesecurity space.
How do we use it for breachdetection?
What looks odd, right?
There's so many differentvariables, yeah.

Shiv Radhakishun (20:08):
And I think with digital transformation as
well.
If you look at Thousand Eyes,we are integrated with Meraki,
as you know.
On the MX, we're integratedwith collaboration.
We work with the data centerteam, we work with the security
team on Zero Trust and CiscoAnyConnect, Cisco Secure Access.
Now we are embedded into everysingle business unit within
Cisco.
Going back to digitaltransformation and network

(20:29):
assurance, it is a must forcustomers.
Now it's Splunk.
I call it observability onsteroids.
So we cannot wait to see whatthe future has in store, and
it's all happening right now,which is very exciting for us.

Michael van Rooyen (20:41):
It's great If I then pivot a bit out of the
organization.
I'm sitting here in one of yourrooms and I see the word hybrid
workspace on one of yourscreens.
Here Can you talk a bit aboutobviously off the back of COVID
people working remotely.
We see that.
An interesting conversation Ihad just the other day with a
workspace specialist, kind ofthe 33% is where they're seeing
people in the office.
That's kind of a number they'reseeing in the ANZ region.

(21:04):
What role is observabilityholistically playing in that and
how customers are reallybenefiting from that work
anywhere.
Scenario.

Shiv Radhakishun (21:10):
Yeah, absolutely so.
As I mentioned before, 75% ofcompanies have tagged on to
remote working.
In fact, a large number ofthose customers aren't even
returning to the office.
From an observabilityperspective, how do these
observability companies offervisibility and observability?
To understand what employeesare going through and
understanding the employeeexperience?
We wanna make sure that if theyjump onto a WebEx or a Zoom or

(21:33):
a Google Meet, that they havethe best experience possible.
As if I can boil it back toThousand Eyes, we have something
called the Endpoint Agent wherewe deploy an agent on your
laptop.
We can make sure that youunderstand your Wi-Fi or CPU,
make sure that we understandyour employee experience.
That alone, that product hasgrown from 13% to almost 40 plus
percent since COVID.
So you would have heard of thegreat resignation a year or two

(21:55):
ago and arguably it's stillhappening at the moment.
What a lot of companies and Inoticed this when I spoke to
customers is.
The employee experience waskind of pushed to the side
because they wanted to make surethe network was working.
They would also complain thatemployees are leaving their
company and I would always askwell, what sort of experience is
your employee having?
Have you spoken to them?
Are they having a goodexperience hopping onto the
network from home?

(22:15):
No idea.
And this is where the endpointagent comes in, and we have some
customers at the moment thatreally understand that without
their employees doing their joband feeling productive, they
will not be resourceful.
Therefore, revenue will take ahit if that's the case.

Michael van Rooyen (22:30):
Yeah, fair enough.
If I think about your globalfootprint and I want to see if I
can try and tease out an ideahere or thought, but
sustainability is a big topicand I want to just cover kind of
current topics that arefloating around the industry.
Sustainability is becoming abig priority for organizations.
Are you seeing customers thatare looking at observability in
a way to look at solutions thatprovide more sustainable IT

(22:53):
practices?
That is a great question.

Shiv Radhakishun (22:55):
There's a few things on that.
The most important part tothink about is accurate data
gives you the ability to actfast and when customers act fast
they don't have a lack ofresourcing or the loss of
resourcing, which helps with thesustainability piece.
I also read ThousandEyes isworking on helping companies
reduce power on switching,making sure that, let's say,

(23:15):
packet loads go through a verylow energy source, making sure
that they're keeping up with thesustainability piece.
So ThousandEyes is helping withthat and I'm sure other
observability companies aredoing that as well.

Michael van Rooyen (23:24):
Yep, yep, fair enough too.
And if I just turn a little bitaway from the ThousandEyes
observability and look at yourhistory and working as a leader
in the organization, what arethe qualities you believe are
essential for driving innovationin technology, but also in this
field of observability?

Shiv Radhakishun (23:41):
So I love this question.
My answer might be a bitdifferent than what you're
looking for, but the biggestquality that I think companies
need to have and leaders need tohave is the ability to accept
culture change.
I love this analogy because I'ma new father and someone said
to me that observability isreally learning, understanding
and having the ability to callyour baby ugly.

(24:02):
And I love that because babiesare super cute my baby's very
cute, eight-month-old but Ilaughed.
I laughed a lot, but I saidwhat that is.
That is actually very true.
A lot of times when we speak tocompanies around observability,
we Sometimes get some peoplethat think that we are calling
their baby ugly or their ideavery bad.
That's not our intent.
Our intent is to actuallyexpose the issues that you're

(24:25):
facing so you can clean up andhave a better resourceful
company.
When we talk about openingdoors and putting the light on,
when you accept thatobservability can actually help
you rather than stop you.
You could do a lot more quickerand I'll give you another
example.
We spoke to a large SP lastyear.
We helped them deploy ThousandEyes internally and we found a

(24:45):
lot of issues and some folks onthe team got extremely angry at
us and said hey, get out wedon't want you here and how we
turn that conversation is.
Well, what we've done is wehaven't exposed you.
What we've done is show you howyou can fix these issues to
better serve your customers.
Some folks don't understandthat.
It is a culture change.
It's very different than whatyou've been doing for the past

(25:06):
20 years in IT, observability isnew and it is here to help.

Michael van Rooyen (25:11):
Yeah, and are you seeing some of the
success stories you've got fromsome customers?

Shiv Radhakishun (25:16):
that has actually helped them drive
continuous improvement andinnovation in organization using
the data that's now availableto them absolutely, absolutely
and, and, to be honest, all ittakes is one champion and we can
go very, very far and help alot of companies out.

Michael van Rooyen (25:28):
So, yes, yeah, do you get that?
Do you get those moments wherecustomers are ringing you're
saying, oh, I can't believe whatyou've provided for me, you
know, do you get?
Customers are like blown away.
Absolutely.
Culture change, innovationchange Absolutely.

Shiv Radhakishun (25:39):
Absolutely, we have again.
So I spoke about a customerthat we spoke to recently that
had that issue for 12 months andwe got to take it off the
balance sheet.
That same customer called andsaid can we get those?
Go ahead, blame the networkt-shirts.
We sent them 15 t-shirts totheir office, nice, and we call
it the aha moment, as you wouldknow right.
So when we show an issue thatthey have been looking for for

(25:59):
months and months, we see it intheir eyes, nbr, and we love
this, and I'm sure you see itwhen you speak to your customers
.
The aha moment is the bestfeeling.

Michael van Rooye (26:19):
No-transcript .
What advice, from once you domeet, would you give emerging
leaders in the tech industry whowant to look into the space,
want to be part of the industrybut really take to this
observability and intelligencespace?

Shiv Radhakishun (26:33):
Yeah, that is a very good question.
I guess a few things.
Number one be prepared tochallenge the status quo.
You have to ensure that youknow that people are going to
come and attack you.
I was going to say, and youneed to be prepared for that.
So that would be advice numberone.
Number two the time to start isnow.
So we are in an era of AI,we're in an era of things
completely changing.
We are in the observability era.

(26:54):
At the moment, I wouldn't tellanyone to jump right in and go
to every single one of yourcustomers and say, hey, we have
observability, pick one andstart small.
Why I say start small and pickone customer is because I want
that person to experience thataha moment with that one
customer, and that will keepthem going.
And again, if anybody needshelp, I'm always here.
They can reach out to me.

(27:14):
Obviously, you look at what'shappening in the industry.
There's so many observabilitycompanies at the moment that are
doing some really great things.
There is endless education outthere as well.

Michael van Rooyen (27:24):
Yeah, yeah, and I know you're also extending
that footprint into a productyou acquired, sam knows, into
devices.
You know you're thinking aboutmobility experience, but this is
very centric to devices,networks et cetera.
But I think about the end userexperience from a mobility point
of view Absolutely.
But I think about the end userexperience from a mobility point
of view Absolutely.
That's a great angle as well.

Shiv Radhakishun (27:42):
Oh, we spoke to someone and of course I won't
mention the company, but theyare looking to only do that, so
they only want to look at themobility piece, and this is
public.
It was launched at Cisco Live,so I can say it.
But very soon, and with thehelp of Sam knows, we will have
endpoint agents on iPhones,Google phones, Samsung phones,
so Android as well as iPadsgoing into even cars.

(28:05):
So, with the help of Cisco IoT,we're looking at putting
endpoint agents into cars tounderstand what's happening
there.
Really really cool stuff.
But we spoke to a company thatis looking to only do mobile
device management, or mobiledevices endpoint agents, and
that ties into their MDMstrategy as well.
So great great time to jump intothis sort of industry.

Michael van Rooyen (28:25):
Yeah, the value I don't think has been
fully appreciated yet, right.

Shiv Radhakishun (28:29):
And do you know the average loss of revenue
per minute?
It's about $5,600.
If there is an outage, anddepending on, obviously, which
company, 5600 bucks is theaverage that we see in terms of
loss.
So again, until they experiencethis, usually they won't see
how important this is andlooking forward from what you
can speak about.

Michael van Rooyen (28:49):
Obviously, everything we talked about today
is public knowledge.
You know, we've seen it's inthe market, or go and go and
look online.
You'll find some of the stuff,but, uh, what you can talk about
, or maybe just your thoughtsfrom the space you spend time in
what are the future directions,innovations you anticipate will
shape, observability in thelandscape, or what's coming that
we may not know about today?

Shiv Radhakishun (29:07):
ai ai ai is coming in hot mvr as the kids
say, don't don't sleep on ai.
Ai is driving a lot of theproduct innovation at the house
and I'm sure it's driving a lotof product innovation at
observability companies.
In general, we are being morepredictive.
Ai allows us to analyze data indifferent ways, summarize it
differently for customers, andwe're using AI as the foundation

(29:30):
for many different productinnovations coming up in the
future.
When I say predictive, right now, thousandeyes can tell you that
there is an outage.
We will soon be able to tellyou that we're predicting an
outage.
In fact, we can actually dothat today.
We can predict an outage, andif you change from WAN link one
to WAN link two, your experienceand productivity will increase
by this much percentage.

Michael van Rooyen (29:50):
That's cool.

Shiv Radhakishun (29:51):
That's something that Thousand Eyes can
do today leveraging AI, and itwill always need the human touch
, and I'm big on that.
Everything I do outside of workis very big on the human touch,
and I'm big on that.
Everything I do outside of workis very big on human touch and
interactions and communication.
You would have heard manypeople say that our jobs will be
taken over by AI, and I don'tthink it's true.
But our jobs will be taken overby people that understand AI
and that are utilizing AI.

(30:11):
So advice to that person thatwants to get into the industry
educate yourself around AI,because it's not going anywhere.

Michael van Rooyen (30:19):
I interviewed a few seasons ago
your former cto, kevin block andyou know would have dealt with
kevin no doubt over the yearsand uh, him and I talking about
exactly that.
Uh, if I think about, it'salmost a year ago that we had
this discussion and we'retalking about prompt engineering
, how to use ai effectively.

Shiv Radhakishun (30:33):
The point that we were touching on was about
how english is now the newprogramming language, right yep,
it's, it's really interestingand and heath and Heath Russell,
my partner in crime here atThousand Eyes, absolute genius,
and he's an AI scholar.
He just understands it, hestudies it and he was showing me
a report that we can pull forThousand Eyes the other day and
we can pull it in any language.
We can make it extremely simple, we can make it very detailed

(30:54):
and I think for people that wantto enter into the business, ai
will actually help them walkinto doors of customers and say
here's a report on an outagethat you just experienced.
If it's a very technical person, we're going to make this
report 12 pages.
If it's not, we're going tomake an executive summary of two
pages.
So very exciting.

Michael van Rooyen (31:12):
Very, very Coming to the near the end of
our chat here, I just want totake a moment to ask you if you
reflect on your career, and Ithink about all the way from
Bell Labs selling carriage allthe way to now monitoring
carriage, ironically so that'salmost full life cycle.
What have been some of the mostrewarding experiences that
you've seen or that you've beenthrough, but also what continues
to motivate you, and you'recorrect great, great question.

Shiv Radhakishun (31:34):
what motivates me and my best experiences over
the past 14 years in tech havebeen the people that I've met
along the way and remember Imentioned at the beginning I
years in tech have been thepeople that I've met along the
way and remember I mentioned atthe beginning I jumped into tech
.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I just knew that I had to pickup a phone and try to sell stuff
.
And, through the years, thementors that I've had at Cisco,
the people that I've met alongthe way that motivates me to

(31:54):
keep going.
And right now I'm lucky to worksurrounded by absolute geniuses
that keep me on my toes, thatkeep me educating myself.
I get to meet people like you,mbr, who are you're spreading
this love, you're spreading thiseducation to people, which is
amazing, and to me that'smotivating and I love that
you're doing this and I reallyhope you continue doing it.

Michael van Rooyen (32:15):
So I hope that answers the question
Absolutely.
It's a great dimension.
Rob, You're right.
Everyone talks about thetechnical aspects or a
particular angle, but the peopleaspect is never going to go
away and I appreciate that.
That's a great dimension.
As we wrap up, have you got akey takeaway or message you want
to leave with some of thelisteners regarding
observability, futureobservability and the importance
in the industry Two?

Shiv Radhakishun (32:35):
Number one it's very easy to step into
observability.
So, again, if anyone needs help, they can contact me, they can
contact Oro.
Just give it a shot.
We offer free trials.
Number two, which is probablythe biggest piece of advice, is
it is not a matter of if youhave an outage, it is a matter
of when yes.
And I'll leave it at that.

Michael van Rooyen (32:57):
Yeah, it's very similar to the cyber ring.
It's going to happen at somepoint.

Shiv Radhakishun (33:00):
Right, it's going to happen, it's going to
happen and we've had companiescall us back to say, hey, thank
you for coming in last month.
We weren't interested then, butwe are damn interested now
after our outage on Wednesdaylast week.
Can you help us out?
Absolutely so.
Sometimes it will take thatoutage, but we don't want it to
get there.
We don't know what that meansin terms of loss of revenue.
We don't know how much timeyou're going to be spending in

(33:21):
war rooms.
We don't want it to go there.
So if you look at networkassurance or as I saw I heard
someone call it last week-network insurance.

Michael van Rooyen (33:32):
We want people to step in and start
small.
And then the last one, whichcan be pretty broad, and I like
to ask this of each guest istell me about the most
significant technology change orshift that you've been involved
with or seen in your career.

Shiv Radhakishun (33:44):
Yeah, mvr, I think we're in it now, so the
first one was probably MPLS toSD-WAN a few years ago.

Michael van Rooyen (33:49):
Good point, that was big.

Shiv Radhakishun (33:51):
And we saw a lot of major SPs reduce pricing
on MPLS to combat.
But being at Meraki at thatpoint was great because we got
to see in real time how thishelped companies, how much money
it saved them.
Now, with AI, I think we're ina shift.
At the moment, the IT industryis changing, which is why, again
, advice to everyone is go andeducate yourself on AI.

(34:12):
Ai won't take your job, butpeople that know how to use and
understand AI will.
What about you?
Mvr?

Michael van Rooyen (34:17):
For me, that's a good question.
I would also think it's similar.
N what about you?
Mvr?
For me, that's a good question.
I would also think it's similar.
Nbn, MPLS, the rollout of NBNfor Australia I'm talking about
Australia holistically, but Ithink the shift to SD-WAN really
revolutionized it and beingable to get that bandwidth and
capability I've been a digitalplumber at heart for many, many
years obviously cover cyber aswell, but I think the way we're
able to provide connectivityholistically now and the way

(34:38):
we're able to provideconnectivity holistically now
and I think about low-opensatellite and all that's all
part of that same category.
I think the network is still atthe core and heart of
everything.
That was definitely a big shift.
I think the other one everyonetalked about AI and definitely
we haven't seen the outcome ofthat.
I think for me, the iPhone andthe capability of this device in
your hand if I think about thepower, the performance, the

(35:04):
services you can deliver onprobably the two biggest shifts.
It is obviously got some evilparts to it that people know
about, but very, very good, uh,in many ways.
So I think, definitelyconnectivity connectivity
properly performing properly andand I think, a device that can
do everything in your pocket isprobably the two, two large ones
for me, that's actually.

Shiv Radhakishun (35:13):
I totally forgot that one.
Funny enough, because I used tosell cell phones, as I
mentioned, and for me thebiggest was when we went from
motorola razors.
You remember that?

Michael van Rooyen (35:21):
oh, yes, I had one of them the tron, the
tron phone.

Shiv Radhakishun (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, exactly so we went from motorola
razor and then we heard aboutblackberry yes everybody was
going crazy over the blackberryand I was always sticking to my
razor.
I'm like, I'm keeping this.
And then, of course, we shifted.
We were with blackberry andthen iphone came out and then
completely took over the market.
But yeah, definitely that's.

Michael van Rooyen (35:42):
That's a really good point yeah, shiv
look, appreciate the time today.
Uh, always great to chat andcatch up.

Shiv Radhakishun (35:47):
Thanks again thank you, mvr, and then, before
we cut again, thank you fordoing what you do, thank you for
spreading the education and I'mlooking forward to listening to
many more.
Thank you very much have a goodday.