1 00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:05,720 Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Business of Tech powered by two 2 00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:08,399 Speaker 1: Degrees Business. I'm your host Peter Griffin, coming to you 3 00:00:08,440 --> 00:00:12,840 Speaker 1: this week from Auckland's innovation hub, The Grid. Today we're 4 00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:17,040 Speaker 1: examining a pressing issue that resonates with tech leaders across 5 00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:21,840 Speaker 1: New Zealand and beyond. Cloud bill shock. That's the moment 6 00:00:21,880 --> 00:00:25,960 Speaker 1: when an organization migrates its applications and data to the cloud, 7 00:00:26,520 --> 00:00:29,840 Speaker 1: only to discover that the ongoing costs are much higher 8 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:35,159 Speaker 1: than expected, prompting budget headaches, tough conversations, and in some cases, 9 00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:39,040 Speaker 1: real financial pain. We know that tech companies like a 10 00:00:39,320 --> 00:00:43,040 Speaker 1: WUS and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars in New 11 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:48,720 Speaker 1: Zealand building hyperscale data centers. They're touting big productivity gains 12 00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:53,120 Speaker 1: for our businesses and government departments moving their applications and 13 00:00:53,240 --> 00:00:57,480 Speaker 1: data to the cloud. There are genuine performance improvements and 14 00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:01,160 Speaker 1: cost savings to be had in doing so, but you 15 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:04,040 Speaker 1: also need to know what you're doing because the cloud 16 00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:06,880 Speaker 1: can blow up in your face. Take, for example, a 17 00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:09,960 Speaker 1: recent case in Wellington were a user racked up an 18 00:01:09,959 --> 00:01:14,640 Speaker 1: eyewatering sixteen thousand dollars bill after experimenting with a Google 19 00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:18,480 Speaker 1: AI tool. The bill was refunded after it garnered some 20 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:23,800 Speaker 1: media coverage. Globally, there are stories of organizations, sometimes even 21 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:28,920 Speaker 1: large multinationals, suddenly facing monthly invoices running to tens of 22 00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:33,640 Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Its cloud usage scales faster than anyone anticipated. 23 00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:37,680 Speaker 1: When the Silicon Valley News website the information was leaked 24 00:01:37,720 --> 00:01:42,080 Speaker 1: some AWS documents in twenty nineteen, they showed that Apple 25 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:45,200 Speaker 1: and other companies had seen big spikes in their cloud 26 00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:48,400 Speaker 1: cost the previous year. That was put down two so 27 00:01:48,600 --> 00:01:53,640 Speaker 1: called egress fees, the costs associated with moving data out 28 00:01:53,640 --> 00:01:57,680 Speaker 1: of the AWS cloud or to a new geographical location. 29 00:01:57,840 --> 00:02:01,760 Speaker 1: It's free typically to put data in these clouds, it's 30 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:05,840 Speaker 1: expensive to get them out. Now those charges are legitimate. 31 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:10,520 Speaker 1: It costs money in network bandwidth to shift large amounts 32 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:14,520 Speaker 1: of data. This is the nature of demand based pricing 33 00:02:14,560 --> 00:02:19,200 Speaker 1: which underpins public cloud platforms. Again, it pays to know 34 00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:23,840 Speaker 1: exactly what you are doing to avoid bill shock. So 35 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:27,840 Speaker 1: joining me this week is David Reese, co CEO of 36 00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:32,880 Speaker 1: equinox It, a stalwart of New Zealand's tech services sector 37 00:02:32,919 --> 00:02:37,000 Speaker 1: who's worked with scores of Q organizations to help avoid 38 00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:41,680 Speaker 1: or fix precisely this kind of scenario. David brings a 39 00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:44,960 Speaker 1: wealth of experience and not only cloud technology, but also 40 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:50,720 Speaker 1: in helping businesses develop the right capabilities, visibility and team collaboration. 41 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:54,040 Speaker 1: They need to ensure that cloud investments deliver true value 42 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:59,240 Speaker 1: instead of nasty surprises. So this conversation is essential listening 43 00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:02,680 Speaker 1: for anyone read with cloud budgets. We're planning a migration 44 00:03:03,160 --> 00:03:06,720 Speaker 1: in the coming year. Here's the interview with Equinox. It's 45 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:19,800 Speaker 1: David Reese. David, welcome to the business of tech. How 46 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:22,000 Speaker 1: are you doing on a rainy day in Auckland. 47 00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:23,800 Speaker 2: Yeah, good, thank you Dry, thankfully. 48 00:03:23,919 --> 00:03:26,560 Speaker 3: Take us through the history of Equinox. 49 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:28,280 Speaker 1: I t it's been around for a long time, a 50 00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:32,680 Speaker 1: store really of the IT scene techiclarly in Auckland and Wellington. 51 00:03:32,880 --> 00:03:36,760 Speaker 1: You've got government clients, You've got a reasonable presence in Wellington. 52 00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:38,960 Speaker 1: But take us through the origin story of Equinox. 53 00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:41,840 Speaker 4: Yeah, Equinox has been around for thirty years, proudly in 54 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:45,280 Speaker 4: New Zealand only operated and we've literally got some of 55 00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:47,560 Speaker 4: the same clients that we did thirty years ago. And 56 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:52,360 Speaker 4: as you say, government agency, so started in Wellington and 57 00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:55,640 Speaker 4: then decided to diversify into Auckland. So I joined the 58 00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:59,800 Speaker 4: company about eight and a half years ago now where 59 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:02,840 Speaker 4: we're looking to change a little bit about how we're 60 00:04:02,880 --> 00:04:07,160 Speaker 4: approaching the Auckland market because as an organization, a team 61 00:04:07,160 --> 00:04:10,840 Speaker 4: at that point of six or seven people, we needed 62 00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:12,320 Speaker 4: to have something that we're going to be famous for. 63 00:04:12,440 --> 00:04:14,880 Speaker 4: So we said, well, look, we've been the longest in 64 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:17,839 Speaker 4: a fact that stage only devots partner for Microsoft in 65 00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:20,679 Speaker 4: New Zealand. Let's double down on that with the cloud 66 00:04:20,720 --> 00:04:23,479 Speaker 4: skills we've got and actually create ourselves a position which 67 00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:26,560 Speaker 4: is very much about driving genuine business change through the 68 00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:29,560 Speaker 4: use of cloud and DevOps technologies. And so that's what 69 00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:32,280 Speaker 4: we've been doing in Auckland, and we've been making that 70 00:04:32,320 --> 00:04:35,480 Speaker 4: conversation you know, increasingly more relevant to our Wellington clients 71 00:04:35,560 --> 00:04:36,039 Speaker 4: as well. 72 00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:39,200 Speaker 2: And so that's kind of, you know's that's our. 73 00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:42,680 Speaker 4: Niche is where those three things combine, and a key 74 00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:44,880 Speaker 4: part of what makes that successful is our push to 75 00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:47,880 Speaker 4: always focus on the people as well as the technology 76 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:50,560 Speaker 4: and obviously the business process because nothing we do as 77 00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:52,360 Speaker 4: an IT project is all a business project. 78 00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,080 Speaker 1: Yeah, and you do a lot of training as part 79 00:04:55,120 --> 00:04:57,040 Speaker 1: of that. Thousands of people have gone through your training 80 00:04:57,040 --> 00:04:59,320 Speaker 1: programs so that we sometimes forget. 81 00:04:59,400 --> 00:05:00,880 Speaker 3: I think we do criticized in New. 82 00:05:00,880 --> 00:05:06,200 Speaker 1: Zealand about perceived lack of capability to use this technology 83 00:05:06,240 --> 00:05:09,440 Speaker 1: to best effect. So training as part of that will 84 00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:12,280 Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that. But Equinox has 85 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:17,640 Speaker 1: really evolved through that whole transition a couple of major transitions, 86 00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:22,320 Speaker 1: the rise of apps, for instance, but that transition from 87 00:05:23,279 --> 00:05:28,279 Speaker 1: having your data and your applications on a server in 88 00:05:28,320 --> 00:05:29,920 Speaker 1: the basement of your building. 89 00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:31,279 Speaker 3: To the move to the cloud. 90 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:34,320 Speaker 1: And we've heard so much about that over the last 91 00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:37,880 Speaker 1: couple of years. We've had Microsoft debut it's cloud region 92 00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:41,800 Speaker 1: in New Zealand, We've got a WUS supposedly on the way, 93 00:05:41,880 --> 00:05:46,680 Speaker 1: but lots of investments in Frattil investing CDC, so literally 94 00:05:46,760 --> 00:05:49,200 Speaker 1: probably billions of dollars or one hundreds of millions at 95 00:05:49,240 --> 00:05:53,000 Speaker 1: least going into cloud. We've been told to be more productive, 96 00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:56,200 Speaker 1: we need to get to the cloud. What's your perspective 97 00:05:56,240 --> 00:05:58,840 Speaker 1: over the time you've been at Equinox, which is really 98 00:05:58,839 --> 00:06:01,520 Speaker 1: that period when it's Excel. What are some of the 99 00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:04,240 Speaker 1: trends that you've seen in terms of New Zealand companies 100 00:06:04,279 --> 00:06:05,200 Speaker 1: going on that journey. 101 00:06:05,360 --> 00:06:07,960 Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, I think and definitely those that were first going, 102 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:11,119 Speaker 4: and I used to say to clients, it's not really 103 00:06:11,120 --> 00:06:13,120 Speaker 4: so much that that much had been released to the cloud, 104 00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:15,360 Speaker 4: but a lot had escaped. So there was a lot 105 00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:17,720 Speaker 4: that wasn't really done with a lot of strategic thinking 106 00:06:18,080 --> 00:06:18,560 Speaker 4: in place. 107 00:06:18,880 --> 00:06:20,359 Speaker 2: But you know that they got in and. 108 00:06:20,360 --> 00:06:22,640 Speaker 4: They started using and they started doing, which was great. 109 00:06:22,960 --> 00:06:25,320 Speaker 4: Most organizations we talk to now are in the cloud, 110 00:06:25,360 --> 00:06:27,960 Speaker 4: but they are suffering some of those problems at the 111 00:06:27,960 --> 00:06:30,480 Speaker 4: fact that they know they kind of evolved into it 112 00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:34,320 Speaker 4: rather than necessarily having it being initially a strategic objective, 113 00:06:34,360 --> 00:06:36,480 Speaker 4: and now that it is strategic, there's a little bit 114 00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:40,479 Speaker 4: of unpicking that needs to get done. And so we 115 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:43,000 Speaker 4: often come in and find organizations needing to kind of 116 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:46,479 Speaker 4: reimagine what they're doing in the cloud and set it 117 00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:49,200 Speaker 4: up better for them for now, but also for the 118 00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:51,680 Speaker 4: future as well, and take away some of that you know, 119 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:54,719 Speaker 4: tech jargon of technical debt, some of the things that 120 00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:57,080 Speaker 4: we did that maybe were you okay at the time, 121 00:06:57,120 --> 00:06:58,719 Speaker 4: but now we look at them and say, actually, that 122 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:01,800 Speaker 4: wasn't our best work. We need to reimagine that and 123 00:07:01,839 --> 00:07:03,599 Speaker 4: redeploy it for something that's going to last us for 124 00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:07,440 Speaker 4: the next three to five years. Obviously, not much in 125 00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:10,600 Speaker 4: tech lasts three to five years, but those foundational layers 126 00:07:10,600 --> 00:07:13,840 Speaker 4: and a real understanding about what an organization is trying 127 00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:18,360 Speaker 4: to achieve, those do stay a lot more static, and 128 00:07:18,400 --> 00:07:21,000 Speaker 4: so having that stuff really understood and the foundations set 129 00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:23,440 Speaker 4: up for what the business is and should be famous 130 00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:24,400 Speaker 4: for is really important. 131 00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:28,880 Speaker 1: Technically, it's really important obviously what cloud platforms you move 132 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:33,160 Speaker 1: to have the capacity to host that apps. Your apps 133 00:07:33,200 --> 00:07:37,120 Speaker 1: might have to be adapted or rewritten for cloud environments, 134 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:39,840 Speaker 1: so there's that aspect of it, and the so called 135 00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:41,240 Speaker 1: DevOps is. 136 00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:43,800 Speaker 3: Central to that. 137 00:07:44,200 --> 00:07:46,560 Speaker 1: At the same time, we've got this transition, and I 138 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:48,960 Speaker 1: know talking to people in government departments, this is really 139 00:07:49,400 --> 00:07:50,160 Speaker 1: important for them. 140 00:07:50,200 --> 00:07:51,320 Speaker 3: From a budget point of view. 141 00:07:51,360 --> 00:07:55,520 Speaker 1: You're going from a sort of a capital expenditure environment 142 00:07:55,520 --> 00:08:00,320 Speaker 1: where you're spending a lot of money on hardware that 143 00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:03,920 Speaker 1: is transitioning to more of an operational experidence your model 144 00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:07,840 Speaker 1: where you're paying literally subscriptions or contracts to aws, Microsoft, 145 00:08:07,920 --> 00:08:14,400 Speaker 1: Google and others every month. So it's a real challenge 146 00:08:14,400 --> 00:08:15,280 Speaker 1: to get your head around it. 147 00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:15,880 Speaker 3: I guess for. 148 00:08:17,840 --> 00:08:19,760 Speaker 1: People who are trying to predict this is how much 149 00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:22,400 Speaker 1: capacity we're going to need to serve new Zealand citizens 150 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:27,120 Speaker 1: or business customers. How much is this actually going to cost? 151 00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:30,520 Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think there's massive power in that change 152 00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:33,559 Speaker 4: to an operational expense rather than the need to buy hardware, right. 153 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:36,560 Speaker 2: I mean, in the bad old days, you'd go, oh. 154 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:40,400 Speaker 4: We need to deploy one new business application that's now 155 00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:42,800 Speaker 4: pushed us above the capacity of what we've got our 156 00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:45,080 Speaker 4: data center. Now we need to buy and you serve, 157 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:46,760 Speaker 4: and then we need to buy new storage. You're talking 158 00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:49,520 Speaker 4: about stuff being shipped over in a worst case scenario 159 00:08:49,640 --> 00:08:51,719 Speaker 4: and you've got maybe a two month lag before you 160 00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:55,280 Speaker 4: can put one new thing in, whereas now the cloud, 161 00:08:55,280 --> 00:08:57,240 Speaker 4: of course is the exact opposite. You want something, you 162 00:08:57,240 --> 00:08:59,480 Speaker 4: can spin it up in minutes, so there's a huge 163 00:08:59,480 --> 00:09:01,960 Speaker 4: amount of fleet stability to it. But of course you know, 164 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:04,280 Speaker 4: you can depreciate that hardware and you can treat it 165 00:09:04,280 --> 00:09:06,280 Speaker 4: the way you're used to treating assets. And a lot 166 00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:09,040 Speaker 4: of organizations that are set up really capital heavy in 167 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:12,280 Speaker 4: the way they do their financing, it's a shift that 168 00:09:12,360 --> 00:09:14,200 Speaker 4: needs to get made in their thinking to be able 169 00:09:14,240 --> 00:09:17,880 Speaker 4: to really get the power out of cloud. And I think, 170 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:19,640 Speaker 4: as you kind of mentioned, there was a lot of 171 00:09:19,640 --> 00:09:22,840 Speaker 4: stuff in their own data center. You know, the great 172 00:09:22,880 --> 00:09:26,439 Speaker 4: thing about KIWIS is our number eight wire mentality. Sometimes 173 00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:29,319 Speaker 4: the risk about QWIS is our number eight wire mentality, 174 00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:32,920 Speaker 4: where you have business critical systems running on a PC 175 00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:36,679 Speaker 4: under someone's desk, or you've got, you know, some assets 176 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:39,040 Speaker 4: that are really being sweated a lot longer than they 177 00:09:39,040 --> 00:09:41,480 Speaker 4: should be, a lot longer than their manufacturers would recommend. 178 00:09:42,360 --> 00:09:44,520 Speaker 4: And that stuff, of course always seems like a great 179 00:09:44,559 --> 00:09:47,280 Speaker 4: idea until something goes wrong, and I think there's that 180 00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:50,720 Speaker 4: insurance policy that you can get by having that stuff, 181 00:09:50,760 --> 00:09:53,720 Speaker 4: having that kind of raw infrastructure looked after by the 182 00:09:53,720 --> 00:09:57,439 Speaker 4: cloud providers, and obviously you know, you do have other 183 00:09:57,480 --> 00:09:59,480 Speaker 4: options with data center hosting and that sort of thing 184 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:02,840 Speaker 4: as well. They generally don't give you, you know, generally 185 00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:06,080 Speaker 4: what I call weapons grades, security and privacy and scalability, 186 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:08,760 Speaker 4: which you do get out of the hypervisors like your 187 00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:11,200 Speaker 4: Microsoft's and AWS and Googles look by. 188 00:10:11,160 --> 00:10:14,040 Speaker 1: And which I think the track record has been pretty 189 00:10:14,040 --> 00:10:17,079 Speaker 1: solid in New Zealand in terms of reliability off the cloud. 190 00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:19,800 Speaker 1: You know, they're configured in ways we do have natural 191 00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:25,040 Speaker 1: disasters in our country, but they typically have three points 192 00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:27,880 Speaker 1: of presents at least in different regions of a city 193 00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:32,040 Speaker 1: or sometimes in Hamilton and Auckland, for instance. So the 194 00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:34,920 Speaker 1: model seems to have proven itself. What I am hearing 195 00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,440 Speaker 1: though from businesses, I'm really keen to get your insights 196 00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:41,680 Speaker 1: into this is a bit of alarm. When companies do 197 00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:44,960 Speaker 1: get to the cloud at the ongoing costs are often 198 00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:48,880 Speaker 1: higher than they anticipated, so called bill shock. And this 199 00:10:49,040 --> 00:10:51,040 Speaker 1: is not a New Zealand saying there are companies all 200 00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:54,719 Speaker 1: over the world that we've heard stories about that are 201 00:10:54,720 --> 00:10:57,880 Speaker 1: literally paying tens of millions of dollars in cloud costs 202 00:10:57,960 --> 00:11:01,040 Speaker 1: and freaking out about it. Then, of course we're going 203 00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:05,439 Speaker 1: to talk specifically about artificial intelligence, where you have these 204 00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:09,240 Speaker 1: data centers full of GPUs that are doing really sophisticated 205 00:11:09,320 --> 00:11:13,800 Speaker 1: AI staff. But you know the capacity required and the 206 00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:16,959 Speaker 1: resources are significant, so you've got to pay for that. 207 00:11:17,520 --> 00:11:20,800 Speaker 1: But let's talk us through about what you've seen in 208 00:11:20,880 --> 00:11:24,480 Speaker 1: terms of customers. Maybe you having to come into help 209 00:11:24,520 --> 00:11:29,400 Speaker 1: customers optimize that spend and in some cases sort of 210 00:11:29,480 --> 00:11:31,240 Speaker 1: rescue them from a situation. 211 00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:31,520 Speaker 3: That's really bad. 212 00:11:31,720 --> 00:11:31,920 Speaker 2: Yeah. 213 00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:34,360 Speaker 4: Look, obviously, I mean there are some high profile cases 214 00:11:34,400 --> 00:11:36,160 Speaker 4: of cloud costs really going feral. 215 00:11:36,559 --> 00:11:38,640 Speaker 2: We haven't experienced any of those ourselves. 216 00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:42,160 Speaker 4: And our clients haven't, but there has definitely been a 217 00:11:42,160 --> 00:11:47,760 Speaker 4: lot of much higher spend than was expected, and I think, 218 00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:50,360 Speaker 4: you know, the recent economic situation has caused a lot 219 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:52,640 Speaker 4: of organizations to actually take a look at their spending 220 00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:55,160 Speaker 4: quite closely, and often it's been the first time that 221 00:11:55,200 --> 00:11:58,160 Speaker 4: a huge amount of detail has been applied to cloud 222 00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:00,400 Speaker 4: costs because they've realized that actually, some of the cloud 223 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:02,000 Speaker 4: pricing models. 224 00:12:01,679 --> 00:12:03,959 Speaker 2: Appear very opaque, they appear. 225 00:12:03,840 --> 00:12:07,240 Speaker 4: Very confusing, and it can be very difficult to kind 226 00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:10,040 Speaker 4: of unpick them and figure out what is costing you 227 00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:12,680 Speaker 4: the money in the cloud environment if it's not set 228 00:12:12,760 --> 00:12:14,600 Speaker 4: up well to begin with, which kind of takes us 229 00:12:14,600 --> 00:12:17,760 Speaker 4: back to that point I made before about things evolving 230 00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:21,160 Speaker 4: over time without the appropriate guardrails and controls in place, 231 00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:24,640 Speaker 4: without the appropriate visibility means that you end up with 232 00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:27,240 Speaker 4: a bit of a spaghetti mess to work through. So 233 00:12:28,320 --> 00:12:30,520 Speaker 4: when you kind of see those problems at the headline 234 00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:33,160 Speaker 4: level of cost and you know you need to manage 235 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:36,000 Speaker 4: that cost down and you only just realize that you've 236 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:39,160 Speaker 4: got a cost problem from the headline, that's when things 237 00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:42,959 Speaker 4: do get pretty challenging, and organizations like ours, you know, 238 00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:46,640 Speaker 4: come in and help our clients to identify and their 239 00:12:46,679 --> 00:12:50,320 Speaker 4: manage that cost better. But you know what we much 240 00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:52,800 Speaker 4: prefer to do as be involved at the start of 241 00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:56,560 Speaker 4: a thing or be involved in helping an organization to 242 00:12:57,440 --> 00:12:59,400 Speaker 4: really look at how they could be using cloud better 243 00:12:59,440 --> 00:13:02,200 Speaker 4: to get business value and have those conversations about what 244 00:13:02,280 --> 00:13:04,960 Speaker 4: will be coming in the coming months and years and 245 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:08,440 Speaker 4: set them up well with everything. And obviously a big 246 00:13:08,520 --> 00:13:11,920 Speaker 4: part of that is having appropriate visibility and control around 247 00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:12,640 Speaker 4: things like cost. 248 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:16,320 Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know from looking at what Equinox does 249 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:20,040 Speaker 1: talked about the training, it is really about about people 250 00:13:20,080 --> 00:13:21,240 Speaker 1: and this is. 251 00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:22,960 Speaker 3: Where it projects usually go wrong. 252 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:26,160 Speaker 1: The technology might be world class and have the ability 253 00:13:26,200 --> 00:13:28,560 Speaker 1: to do what you want to do, whether it's you know, 254 00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:31,400 Speaker 1: selling tickets on a New Zealand or a banking system 255 00:13:31,559 --> 00:13:35,199 Speaker 1: or whatever, it's the people within the organization and often 256 00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:38,520 Speaker 1: that where it falls down is the culture and it 257 00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:42,200 Speaker 1: not gelling with the business or the actual business culture 258 00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:45,520 Speaker 1: the people who are responsible for driving the business forward. 259 00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:47,679 Speaker 3: What are some of the red. 260 00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:50,160 Speaker 1: Flags you see when you go into an organization that 261 00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:54,000 Speaker 1: might be struggling a little bit with its cloud spend. 262 00:13:54,480 --> 00:13:56,480 Speaker 1: Some of the things you see we go oh that 263 00:13:56,800 --> 00:13:59,920 Speaker 1: instantly needs addressing that's where the core of your problem is. 264 00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:03,280 Speaker 4: Look, it really is interesting how much an organization culture 265 00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:07,600 Speaker 4: can permeate into the way that systems get built, managed 266 00:14:07,760 --> 00:14:08,479 Speaker 4: and operated. 267 00:14:08,559 --> 00:14:11,840 Speaker 2: So anytime that you do see teams within. 268 00:14:11,679 --> 00:14:13,840 Speaker 4: The IT team not getting on very well, as you 269 00:14:13,880 --> 00:14:17,040 Speaker 4: say that that very traditional disconnect between the IT and 270 00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:20,840 Speaker 4: the business, those will usually play out in an IT 271 00:14:21,080 --> 00:14:23,680 Speaker 4: environment that is not set up the way it's best 272 00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:24,280 Speaker 4: for the business. 273 00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:25,480 Speaker 2: You end up with. 274 00:14:27,080 --> 00:14:29,800 Speaker 4: A lot of people within the area of control optimizing 275 00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:33,200 Speaker 4: for their own team or optimizing for their own business unit, 276 00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:36,440 Speaker 4: their own budget. Whereas really because of the fact that 277 00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:39,120 Speaker 4: a lot of what you have in cloud covers everything 278 00:14:39,160 --> 00:14:41,280 Speaker 4: you do, but then you've got little bits that you 279 00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:43,920 Speaker 4: need to be specialist for certain areas, you need to 280 00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:46,680 Speaker 4: have that approach of optimizing for the whole and that's 281 00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:48,760 Speaker 4: how you get by far the best value out of 282 00:14:48,760 --> 00:14:51,800 Speaker 4: the cloud and you manage to keep your overall costs down. 283 00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:56,440 Speaker 4: The other interesting thing in IT is I guess looking 284 00:14:56,440 --> 00:14:59,400 Speaker 4: at cost and cost right, and so total cost of 285 00:14:59,440 --> 00:15:03,760 Speaker 4: ownership being what you genuinely influenced with cloud headline cost 286 00:15:03,840 --> 00:15:06,560 Speaker 4: not necessarily and in fact, if you're comparing your server 287 00:15:06,640 --> 00:15:08,600 Speaker 4: that you've got under your desk to a serve you 288 00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:12,200 Speaker 4: have hosted in weapons great infrastructure in Azure or Google 289 00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:13,000 Speaker 4: or a US. 290 00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:15,680 Speaker 2: Obviously you're not going to get. 291 00:15:16,160 --> 00:15:19,360 Speaker 4: The same cost comparison there, But what you are going 292 00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:21,120 Speaker 4: to get is insurance from risk, and you are going 293 00:15:21,160 --> 00:15:23,960 Speaker 4: to get reliability and resilience and inability to recover from 294 00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:26,920 Speaker 4: a failure. So you have to know how to attach 295 00:15:26,920 --> 00:15:29,280 Speaker 4: a value to those things to actually get that view 296 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:32,560 Speaker 4: of that total cost. There's a great little analogy online 297 00:15:32,600 --> 00:15:35,720 Speaker 4: of pizza as a service that kind of talks about 298 00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:38,480 Speaker 4: the different cloud models and likens them to a pizza 299 00:15:38,520 --> 00:15:39,320 Speaker 4: delivery business. 300 00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:41,160 Speaker 2: At one end, you've. 301 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,200 Speaker 4: Got someone making all the pizza and all the ingredients 302 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:45,840 Speaker 4: and putting it together for you and cooking it and 303 00:15:45,880 --> 00:15:47,880 Speaker 4: delivering it and putting it on your table. And at 304 00:15:47,920 --> 00:15:50,160 Speaker 4: the other end, you're making your own dough and you're 305 00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:52,160 Speaker 4: putting all the ingredients on, you're making your own pizza. 306 00:15:52,160 --> 00:15:54,160 Speaker 4: And I think it's really useful to kind of think 307 00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:56,320 Speaker 4: of that in terms of that layering that actually comes 308 00:15:56,360 --> 00:16:00,200 Speaker 4: into the cost for managing it, and unless you are 309 00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:03,520 Speaker 4: really clear about how you strip out some of that cost, 310 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:07,240 Speaker 4: and usually that's just about putting an ento higher, higher 311 00:16:07,280 --> 00:16:10,600 Speaker 4: value tasks. That's when you can start doing a clear 312 00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:12,480 Speaker 4: comparison between cloud and on prem. 313 00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:17,120 Speaker 1: A lot of this is about human behavior and human nature. 314 00:16:17,520 --> 00:16:19,760 Speaker 1: I guess the trickiest thing is when you go into 315 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:23,560 Speaker 1: an organization and you just see a dysfunctional relationship there 316 00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:26,800 Speaker 1: between maybe the CIO or the IT team and what 317 00:16:26,880 --> 00:16:29,960 Speaker 1: the product owners are, the people who are driving the 318 00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:32,080 Speaker 1: business forward bringing. 319 00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:32,760 Speaker 3: In the revenue. 320 00:16:33,240 --> 00:16:36,480 Speaker 1: So do you sometimes literally sort of have to almost 321 00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:38,160 Speaker 1: be like therapists to them, get them all in a 322 00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:39,880 Speaker 1: room and sort of say, look, you all need to 323 00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:40,960 Speaker 1: get on the same team. 324 00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:41,880 Speaker 3: How do you approach that? 325 00:16:42,160 --> 00:16:43,120 Speaker 2: Yeah, very much. 326 00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:46,000 Speaker 4: Sometimes it feels like we've got the customers on the 327 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:48,280 Speaker 4: couch when we're talking them through things, and look and 328 00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:50,720 Speaker 4: we understand both sides of that equation. So we can 329 00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:54,560 Speaker 4: be genuinely empathetic with the situation that people are. And 330 00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:57,120 Speaker 4: it's one of those usual things, right. People don't come 331 00:16:57,160 --> 00:16:58,680 Speaker 4: to work think they're going to do a bad job. 332 00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:00,840 Speaker 4: People come to work with the confines of the role 333 00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:02,320 Speaker 4: that they are in, wanting to do the best that 334 00:17:02,360 --> 00:17:05,720 Speaker 4: they can do. And so we've got some of these 335 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:08,720 Speaker 4: tensions or conflicts. Is not ever really down to the people. 336 00:17:08,800 --> 00:17:10,679 Speaker 4: It's down to the position that they are in and 337 00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:12,800 Speaker 4: maybe a lack of understanding about how they could do 338 00:17:12,840 --> 00:17:13,639 Speaker 4: things better together. 339 00:17:14,160 --> 00:17:15,879 Speaker 2: But some of those traditional. 340 00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:19,639 Speaker 4: Dysfunctions are You've got a product team or project teams 341 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:22,040 Speaker 4: going and creating a whole bunch of things, and they 342 00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:24,959 Speaker 4: don't have within their remits, sometimes not even within their 343 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:27,919 Speaker 4: business case, what the genuine long term cost to operate 344 00:17:27,920 --> 00:17:30,359 Speaker 4: the thing is going to be, and so they don't 345 00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:32,480 Speaker 4: worry about that because that's not something that they're tasked with. 346 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:35,960 Speaker 4: There's not a KPI around them understanding that stuff, and 347 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:38,360 Speaker 4: so they throw it over the fence to the operations teams, 348 00:17:38,440 --> 00:17:41,879 Speaker 4: and their role is purely about keeping things reliable and 349 00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:45,680 Speaker 4: performant and ready when people need them. And they've now 350 00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:49,240 Speaker 4: effectively adopted a large amount of costs that they wouldn't 351 00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:50,240 Speaker 4: assigned up for if they. 352 00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:50,920 Speaker 2: Had the choice. 353 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:54,240 Speaker 4: So neither of those two functions has done the wrong thing. 354 00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:58,200 Speaker 4: One has been tasked with driving business value, getting more customers, 355 00:17:58,280 --> 00:18:02,000 Speaker 4: making efficiency done it and the business elements. The other 356 00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:04,800 Speaker 4: team is tasked with keeping the costs down, keeping things 357 00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:07,520 Speaker 4: reliable and going, and they're doing that as best they can, 358 00:18:07,760 --> 00:18:10,679 Speaker 4: and it's just about making those two groups of people 359 00:18:10,960 --> 00:18:13,320 Speaker 4: able to have a good conversation and make sure that 360 00:18:14,280 --> 00:18:16,760 Speaker 4: what is delivered as something that achieves both of those objectives. 361 00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:19,359 Speaker 1: And I think we've got to a point with the 362 00:18:19,359 --> 00:18:23,399 Speaker 1: cloud now where you can estimate, you know, if you 363 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,800 Speaker 1: actually understand where your business is going and how it's growing, 364 00:18:26,880 --> 00:18:29,360 Speaker 1: or how new products are going to impact on your 365 00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:31,480 Speaker 1: digital footprint and all that sort of thing, you can 366 00:18:31,520 --> 00:18:35,680 Speaker 1: sort of you can estimate your costs over the coming 367 00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:39,480 Speaker 1: years relatively accurately, and there are volume discounts and things 368 00:18:39,520 --> 00:18:44,480 Speaker 1: to minimize your cost the vendors are offering that are 369 00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:47,719 Speaker 1: they good enough at giving you enough visibility into your 370 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:50,840 Speaker 1: costs and giving you enough understanding? Are there enough tools 371 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:56,000 Speaker 1: and dashboards and methods of actually understanding what you're paying? 372 00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:58,720 Speaker 4: A couple of answers that I guess one. I mean, 373 00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:00,640 Speaker 4: the tools are great. The problem with all these things 374 00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:02,560 Speaker 4: is not the technology. There are tools that will do 375 00:19:02,600 --> 00:19:04,280 Speaker 4: it if you use them well and if you've got 376 00:19:04,280 --> 00:19:06,480 Speaker 4: your cloud set up well to use them right. And 377 00:19:06,520 --> 00:19:10,000 Speaker 4: again that's that technical debt thing where it can be 378 00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:12,120 Speaker 4: quite hard for a lot of organizations to see why 379 00:19:12,160 --> 00:19:15,399 Speaker 4: they should invest in going through and retrofitting some of 380 00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:18,800 Speaker 4: the better practices and better visibility metrics and that sort 381 00:19:18,800 --> 00:19:23,040 Speaker 4: of thing into some of their projects that they completed 382 00:19:23,080 --> 00:19:24,879 Speaker 4: and they'll put down and the team that used to 383 00:19:24,920 --> 00:19:27,119 Speaker 4: work on those isn't there anymore. It's quite hard to 384 00:19:27,160 --> 00:19:31,040 Speaker 4: get people to refocus on the old stuff because it's 385 00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:33,239 Speaker 4: not the exciting, new, sexy things and need to get 386 00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:37,959 Speaker 4: out the door. So there's that element to it in 387 00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:40,520 Speaker 4: terms of the tools are there but not necessarily being used. 388 00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:44,680 Speaker 4: But the other element to it is just those tools 389 00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:47,760 Speaker 4: and just the accountability for cost. 390 00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:49,120 Speaker 2: And the even. 391 00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:52,960 Speaker 4: The responsibility and desire to look at it often sits 392 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:56,159 Speaker 4: within the team and the I T team only, and 393 00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:00,359 Speaker 4: so that information that they have isn't perm added to 394 00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:02,160 Speaker 4: the rest of the business and they are only able 395 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:04,080 Speaker 4: to make the decisions that they can within their kind 396 00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:08,160 Speaker 4: of scope and knowledge, if that greater level of visibility 397 00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:12,000 Speaker 4: around cost and performance and what resources are there, how 398 00:20:12,040 --> 00:20:15,399 Speaker 4: they're being used, and ultimately what the conversion rate is 399 00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:20,119 Speaker 4: between some services and a cloud provider and a number 400 00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:21,919 Speaker 4: of new clients to get in the door, or the 401 00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:24,600 Speaker 4: increase in cross sell and upsell because of an ability 402 00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:27,040 Speaker 4: to get a new and exciting service out to the 403 00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:29,159 Speaker 4: customer until you can kind of draw a line in 404 00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:33,399 Speaker 4: your budget between the business value metrics and the baseline 405 00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:37,000 Speaker 4: costs of the infrastructure and the people and the partners 406 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:39,800 Speaker 4: that you need to support that infrastructure, which again needs 407 00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:42,639 Speaker 4: to be optimized and made best for cloud. Until you 408 00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:44,600 Speaker 4: can get that kind of steel thread, it's really really 409 00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:46,520 Speaker 4: hard to optimize for value. 410 00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:49,600 Speaker 2: So the tools are there, it's the cultures. 411 00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:51,359 Speaker 4: That aren't quite there at the moment. It's the processes 412 00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:54,840 Speaker 4: that aren't there in the guardrails. Everything from the light 413 00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:57,679 Speaker 4: bulb going off for someone imagining an idea to the 414 00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:00,280 Speaker 4: end of the life cycle of of. 415 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:01,000 Speaker 2: An IT system. 416 00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:04,240 Speaker 1: And you know, this is really sort of complex, especially 417 00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:07,000 Speaker 1: if you're a business. We've got a lot of digital 418 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,960 Speaker 1: first businesses and ual software businesses like zero that have 419 00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:16,280 Speaker 1: done really well at exporting internationally. So for them, big 420 00:21:16,359 --> 00:21:19,480 Speaker 1: chunk of their cost is literally development as well as 421 00:21:19,560 --> 00:21:24,480 Speaker 1: hosting millions of transactions. 422 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:26,520 Speaker 3: Every day across their servers. So this is really important. 423 00:21:26,520 --> 00:21:29,400 Speaker 1: It's actually led to the rise of a whole discipline, 424 00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:32,000 Speaker 1: the phinnops discipline, which you guys are very active in 425 00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:32,400 Speaker 1: as well. 426 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:34,520 Speaker 3: Talk us through how that works. 427 00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:36,040 Speaker 4: And it's interesting you bring up the case of the 428 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,080 Speaker 4: software created because I think a lot of the tools 429 00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:40,639 Speaker 4: and a lot of the practices that you know the 430 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:43,760 Speaker 4: right thing to do if all of your business and 431 00:21:43,800 --> 00:21:47,480 Speaker 4: therefore a large percentage of your cost is that it infrastructure. 432 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:49,679 Speaker 4: Obviously it gets a good amount of attention, but for 433 00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,439 Speaker 4: businesses where the main thing they do is retail, it 434 00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:56,080 Speaker 4: just so happens. They need IT systems to make those happen, 435 00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,040 Speaker 4: it's a lot harder to I guess, get the priority 436 00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:02,640 Speaker 4: around some of these things. And look, and that's WHEREOPS 437 00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:07,320 Speaker 4: or cloud cost optimization really does come in, and it 438 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:11,400 Speaker 4: is about creating a group of people who are able 439 00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:16,560 Speaker 4: to collaborate on maximizing business value out of technology. Actually 440 00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:19,680 Speaker 4: it is not just cloud's kind of in some ways 441 00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:21,600 Speaker 4: a bit easier. You've got some more levers you can 442 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,679 Speaker 4: pull to make it so that your costs better value 443 00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,720 Speaker 4: the better match the value that you get. But you 444 00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:31,240 Speaker 4: can still do that stuff on traditional tools as well. 445 00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:35,720 Speaker 4: So the approach TOOPS is very much one that, yes, 446 00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:39,600 Speaker 4: there's some technology enablement that needs to get done. There 447 00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:42,679 Speaker 4: are some tools that you can put in place, there 448 00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:45,560 Speaker 4: are some different technical practices that you could use, but 449 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:48,920 Speaker 4: the line share of it is actually around the business process, 450 00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:53,560 Speaker 4: around business casing, around forecasting, and about turning some of 451 00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:57,680 Speaker 4: those again what look to be maybe over complex pricing 452 00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:01,160 Speaker 4: models compared to the old way work for you rather 453 00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:02,240 Speaker 4: than work against you. 454 00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:04,560 Speaker 2: So I think there's a huge. 455 00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,560 Speaker 4: Amount of power that can be gained from a cost 456 00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:10,960 Speaker 4: benefit point of view if you embrace the way cloud works. 457 00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:13,480 Speaker 2: But that means a lot of change. 458 00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:16,199 Speaker 4: That means change for the people, change for the skills 459 00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,280 Speaker 4: that people have, and changed the processes that the organizations have. 460 00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:23,320 Speaker 1: I've interviewed some companies that have done incredibly well. I'm 461 00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:27,520 Speaker 1: thinking of a company like Volpower Health recently sold to 462 00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:31,000 Speaker 1: a Korean medical company for three hundred million dollars. Founded 463 00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:34,160 Speaker 1: in Wellington, Ralph heinem who we had on the podcast 464 00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:35,040 Speaker 1: about a month ago. 465 00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:37,679 Speaker 3: Incredibly successful, very. 466 00:23:37,560 --> 00:23:41,119 Speaker 1: Much built on as you're on the Microsoft platform and 467 00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:43,440 Speaker 1: as a result of that was able to leverage all 468 00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:46,280 Speaker 1: the tools, the AI sort of tools. So there is 469 00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:50,119 Speaker 1: incredible power, as you say, if you really understand and 470 00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:54,639 Speaker 1: sort of a cloud centric organization, it can really pay off. 471 00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:58,360 Speaker 1: I mentioned AI. So that's the next phase. We're going 472 00:23:58,359 --> 00:24:00,960 Speaker 1: through a lot of hype around it. Out of social intelligence, 473 00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:04,800 Speaker 1: the right of AI agents, and again, you know a 474 00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:08,560 Speaker 1: lot of companies are going, wow, okay, I want to 475 00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,840 Speaker 1: spin up agents and allow my customers to use agents, 476 00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,200 Speaker 1: and there are platforms to make that easy to do. 477 00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:19,160 Speaker 3: But there's a lot of consumption based business models emerging. 478 00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,600 Speaker 1: And for New Zealand companies that are trying to build 479 00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:24,960 Speaker 1: and use their own agents, I guess getting their head 480 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:28,800 Speaker 1: around what are the ongoing implications costs wise of that 481 00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:30,720 Speaker 1: is a real challenge. 482 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:34,320 Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, and it is technically complex the way things 483 00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,280 Speaker 4: are priced at the moment. Some are comparatively simple. But 484 00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,680 Speaker 4: the second you want to get more than you kind 485 00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:43,560 Speaker 4: of get from the consumer and consumer like versions of 486 00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,480 Speaker 4: the AI tools, the second you want to start pumping 487 00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,480 Speaker 4: your business darter into them and getting some genuine insights 488 00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:51,480 Speaker 4: that you can use, and you want to start using 489 00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:55,159 Speaker 4: AI to optimize workflows that you have and automate those. 490 00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,280 Speaker 4: That's when you start getting into the territory of some 491 00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,840 Speaker 4: of those reasons you need to deploy that are going 492 00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:02,280 Speaker 4: to you. 493 00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:05,600 Speaker 2: Know, potentially massively expand without letting you know first. 494 00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,840 Speaker 4: There are some services that I would argue probably should 495 00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,560 Speaker 4: be opt in rather than opt out, but by default 496 00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:14,600 Speaker 4: they turn on because the vendors think that you obviously 497 00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:18,080 Speaker 4: want all the AI power you could possibly ever get, therefore, 498 00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:23,240 Speaker 4: best make it easy to consume. But I think the 499 00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:25,120 Speaker 4: other problem that we are seeing because of the fact 500 00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,680 Speaker 4: there is such a groundswell of interest around AI, is 501 00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,160 Speaker 4: that a lot of people are going into it and 502 00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,160 Speaker 4: feeling almost a bit of desperation to be doing it 503 00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:37,600 Speaker 4: and to be seen to be doing it, and maybe 504 00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,480 Speaker 4: not putting in some of the business discipline that you 505 00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,040 Speaker 4: can still do even with this fast moving stuff. So, 506 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,280 Speaker 4: you know, we like to think of having a living 507 00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:47,600 Speaker 4: business case, so you don't need to go all the 508 00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,160 Speaker 4: way down the path of completing a business case before 509 00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:52,200 Speaker 4: you do anything. You don't need to analyze everything before 510 00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:55,000 Speaker 4: you start doing anything. But what you should be doing 511 00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:58,200 Speaker 4: is factoring in what you believe the tangible business value 512 00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,600 Speaker 4: you're going to get out of your experiment is from 513 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,280 Speaker 4: the get go, and it's part of the experiment is learning, oh, no, 514 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:05,639 Speaker 4: our costs are going to be slightly higher than we 515 00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:07,840 Speaker 4: thought they were going to be, or actually the value 516 00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:09,320 Speaker 4: that we thought we were going to get isn't But 517 00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:10,760 Speaker 4: now that I look at it, we're going to get. 518 00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:11,800 Speaker 2: A different piece of value. 519 00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,960 Speaker 4: So until you do tie the genuine business outcomes into 520 00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,480 Speaker 4: the business outcomes and the business costs into what you're 521 00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:22,480 Speaker 4: doing within AI. There are definitely risks and costs going 522 00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,159 Speaker 4: well north of what a good business decision would indicate 523 00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:26,600 Speaker 4: they should. 524 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,640 Speaker 3: If you're in a team or an individual in a mid. 525 00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:33,960 Speaker 1: Size or organization that's responsible for finops and for Equinox's 526 00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,760 Speaker 1: team as well, increasingly, you've got to have pretty good 527 00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:40,199 Speaker 1: AI expertise in those teams to actually understand what the 528 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,919 Speaker 1: cost implications of the company rolling out AI actually are. 529 00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,160 Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, and looking there are some traditional sort of 530 00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:51,000 Speaker 4: high risk workloads for finops. Those are the ones that 531 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:54,240 Speaker 4: we do focus on, you know, AI obviously, and given 532 00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,240 Speaker 4: that it's emergent and the pricing models are emergent and 533 00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:00,720 Speaker 4: they're changing regularly, it's to read a key ones to 534 00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:02,080 Speaker 4: make sure that is understood. 535 00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:03,600 Speaker 2: And big data is. 536 00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,800 Speaker 4: The other one of the other major workloads that would 537 00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:09,480 Speaker 4: often you know, as you allow things to get into 538 00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,280 Speaker 4: the hands of citizen developers and people can start creating 539 00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:15,080 Speaker 4: their own data sources or merging data sources and then 540 00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:18,520 Speaker 4: extrapolating from that to get more value, it can be 541 00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,160 Speaker 4: quite hard to kind of put constraints on those things. 542 00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:23,800 Speaker 4: When the old world again, you'd have a sequel server 543 00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:25,120 Speaker 4: that the IT team would look after. 544 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,080 Speaker 2: If that started hitting capacity. 545 00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:30,439 Speaker 4: Well you slow down and you can't do things today 546 00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:33,679 Speaker 4: of course without. 547 00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:33,840 Speaker 2: Some controls in place. 548 00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,719 Speaker 4: You know, the cloud based big data solutions will scale 549 00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:38,959 Speaker 4: infinitely because you know, they want you to buy more 550 00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,640 Speaker 4: of their products, but also because they assume that what 551 00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:44,679 Speaker 4: you're doing is valuable. So it is the onus is 552 00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,359 Speaker 4: on the organization to put those limits in place on 553 00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,399 Speaker 4: you know, the maximum expected value that's going to be 554 00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,320 Speaker 4: gotten from something and not just allow endless consumption. 555 00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,120 Speaker 1: Yeah, and one thing I do hear a lot oft 556 00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:58,400 Speaker 1: and I think this speaks to the fact that we've 557 00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,520 Speaker 1: been a little bit behind in getting our data house 558 00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,000 Speaker 1: in order. In New Zealand is where the big bills 559 00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:09,760 Speaker 1: rack up is constantly shuttling data between different silos because 560 00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,800 Speaker 1: you need to bring all of that data in free use, 561 00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:14,840 Speaker 1: and you haven't done the groundwork to put all that 562 00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,399 Speaker 1: place in one area. You know, we've heard of data 563 00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,440 Speaker 1: lakes and lake houses and all these terms to describe that. 564 00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,240 Speaker 1: But there's been this massive push in the industry get 565 00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:26,440 Speaker 1: your data in one place so we can query that 566 00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,120 Speaker 1: and you're not having to shell it around and rack 567 00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:30,159 Speaker 1: up cloud builds. 568 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:32,560 Speaker 4: Absolutely, and that was one of the earliest kind of 569 00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:36,840 Speaker 4: bill shock instances really was when organizations read the fine 570 00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:39,160 Speaker 4: print and realize that you get charged to take data 571 00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,720 Speaker 4: out of the cloud platforms. So the second you kind 572 00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:43,680 Speaker 4: of half pregnant in cloud, that's kind of where your 573 00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,960 Speaker 4: cost problems really kick in because you've got some stuff 574 00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,640 Speaker 4: on premise, you move some things into cloud, but you 575 00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:51,800 Speaker 4: never move enough into the cloud that you can turn 576 00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:53,840 Speaker 4: off what you've got on site, So you're actually double 577 00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:56,920 Speaker 4: paying fear infrastructure at that point, in fact sometimes more 578 00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:58,560 Speaker 4: because you go, well, we need to be secure, so 579 00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:01,520 Speaker 4: we'll put security things both on site and also in 580 00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,800 Speaker 4: the cloud. And oh, now actually we've got these two 581 00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:06,479 Speaker 4: systems need to talk to each other. We're better make 582 00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:08,680 Speaker 4: our network more expensive to cater for it, and then 583 00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:12,000 Speaker 4: of course more expensive times ten because the cloud vendors 584 00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,680 Speaker 4: are charging you for the way out as well. So 585 00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:19,480 Speaker 4: definitely that half pregnant approach is really problematic, and AI 586 00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,680 Speaker 4: is only adding to that. And I think where we see, 587 00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,000 Speaker 4: you know, I think you need to be careful about 588 00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:27,320 Speaker 4: where you experiment on AI. 589 00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,440 Speaker 2: So AI is going to. 590 00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:32,720 Speaker 4: Be pervasive across every piece of software that you use today. Therefore, 591 00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,200 Speaker 4: if the vendor of that software is going to be 592 00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,040 Speaker 4: building their own AI capability, should look at whether you're 593 00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:41,160 Speaker 4: better to wait for them to do it. Because they 594 00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:43,120 Speaker 4: will build it, they will package into they're pricing, there 595 00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,520 Speaker 4: won't be those unknowns. Rather than going, oh, we need 596 00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,640 Speaker 4: to build something that's completely unique to us, and that 597 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,160 Speaker 4: involves extracting a whole bunch of data, standing up a 598 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:56,440 Speaker 4: whole bunch of compute resource yourself, doing a lot that's 599 00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:58,040 Speaker 4: going to cost you a lot of money to then 600 00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,080 Speaker 4: in six months find that actually that you know, unique 601 00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:03,200 Speaker 4: thing that you built is actually now available as part 602 00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:05,600 Speaker 4: of the product. And we have seen some of those 603 00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:10,280 Speaker 4: examples or organizations have spun up something AI that really, 604 00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:12,920 Speaker 4: you know, it will be table stakes at some stage 605 00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:13,600 Speaker 4: in the coming. 606 00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:17,000 Speaker 1: Months, particularly because you know, I sort of here, particularly 607 00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:20,400 Speaker 1: from vendors like IBM, are saying, oh, the future is 608 00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:21,120 Speaker 1: hybrid cloud. 609 00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:25,880 Speaker 3: It seems logical to put everything with one vendor. 610 00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,360 Speaker 1: You're going to you're going to get a better overall 611 00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:31,000 Speaker 1: price the more business you have with one vendor. But 612 00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:33,800 Speaker 1: it's not as simple as that there are some people 613 00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:38,400 Speaker 1: still have stuff on their premises. There are others who 614 00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:42,200 Speaker 1: will have multiple cloud instances. They might have something on 615 00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:45,080 Speaker 1: as you're on something on IBM's cloud because they want 616 00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:46,160 Speaker 1: to use Watson. 617 00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:47,560 Speaker 3: Or something like that. 618 00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:49,680 Speaker 1: So the reality is a little bit messier, I guess 619 00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,160 Speaker 1: is hybrid cloud really what is sort of has emerged 620 00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:54,400 Speaker 1: as a new norm and new Zealand. 621 00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:56,720 Speaker 4: I mean hybrid cloud, especially if you include on premise 622 00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:01,280 Speaker 4: in that. Yes, that's the default for a lot of organism. Again, 623 00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,360 Speaker 4: there's maybe not in some cases not enough intentionality about 624 00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:09,040 Speaker 4: how it's been done. And I think there's a couple 625 00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:12,440 Speaker 4: of different things. Is taking the best out of a 626 00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,480 Speaker 4: cloud provider right and realizing the particular solution that you 627 00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:17,400 Speaker 4: need that's going to have a lot of business value 628 00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:21,160 Speaker 4: is best to live it out of aws where most 629 00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:23,360 Speaker 4: of the other stuff you've got is an azure that 630 00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:28,000 Speaker 4: to my mind, is a useful model. That's an approach 631 00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:31,840 Speaker 4: that works. Instead saying oh, we've got you know, we 632 00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:33,960 Speaker 4: need to have a data lake, Oh let's have another 633 00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:36,200 Speaker 4: data lake and another provider, or saying oh we need 634 00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:38,400 Speaker 4: to have our virtual machines in one place, it's have 635 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:40,479 Speaker 4: a whole bunch of virtual machines in another cloud provider. 636 00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:42,000 Speaker 2: That makes a lot less sense to me. 637 00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:45,520 Speaker 1: And is it getting more competitive as more capacity comes 638 00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:48,400 Speaker 1: into the market and more players are offering the so 639 00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,760 Speaker 1: called hyperscale clouds. Are you seeing a good competitive tension 640 00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:56,160 Speaker 1: out there between all of these big multinationals a little? 641 00:31:56,320 --> 00:31:58,480 Speaker 4: I mean, it's interesting in New Zealand because we've traditionally 642 00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,520 Speaker 4: been so heavily into the micro Soft ecosystem for everything, 643 00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:05,240 Speaker 4: and so when AWS came into New Zealand, they absolutely 644 00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:08,200 Speaker 4: you beat Microsoft to the punch around that timeframe, and 645 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:12,240 Speaker 4: so the cloud volume for a WS increased very very quickly. 646 00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:14,200 Speaker 4: In Microsoft, I think it's still probably playing catch up. 647 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,520 Speaker 4: So I think the interesting thing for New Zealand is 648 00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,720 Speaker 4: that now Microsoft has caught up. From a feature's point 649 00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,560 Speaker 4: of view, it kind of is the path of least 650 00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:30,200 Speaker 4: resistance for most organizations to move into Asia, so government right, 651 00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,120 Speaker 4: well exactly, yeah, yeah, And therefore it becomes you know, 652 00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:38,440 Speaker 4: niche positions are taken by other players. But I guess 653 00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:42,360 Speaker 4: you know, with organizations that are in a brown fields environment. Again, 654 00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:44,360 Speaker 4: it's kind of it's the difference between the volparers of 655 00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,280 Speaker 4: the world and an organization that's been running for you know, 656 00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:49,120 Speaker 4: twenty five years, and they've got a whole bunch of 657 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:51,880 Speaker 4: legacy and data centers and that sort of thing. In 658 00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,080 Speaker 4: a brown field's environment, it's very very hard to go 659 00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:57,760 Speaker 4: pure into one thing or another. It's very hard for 660 00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,840 Speaker 4: organizations to turn off those last things that sitting on 661 00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:01,479 Speaker 4: their sites. 662 00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:02,680 Speaker 2: It's very hard to. 663 00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:04,920 Speaker 4: Say no, no, we're not going to pack aws for 664 00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:05,880 Speaker 4: something and Google for. 665 00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:07,960 Speaker 2: Something else, or Microsoft for something else. 666 00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:11,320 Speaker 4: But it's just about I think, being really clear where 667 00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,800 Speaker 4: some of those costs and complexity drivers. 668 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:13,880 Speaker 2: Are going to be. 669 00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:17,560 Speaker 4: That mean that what looks like a ten percent better 670 00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:21,400 Speaker 4: solution functionality wise in a second cloud might be double 671 00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:24,160 Speaker 4: the cost compared to having it in something that an 672 00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:25,240 Speaker 4: environment you already have. 673 00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,080 Speaker 1: Yeah, So what is your advice to those sorts of 674 00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:32,360 Speaker 1: brown fields organizations that they might be in the cloud 675 00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,320 Speaker 1: and becoming a bit more aligned at the ongoing cost 676 00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,280 Speaker 1: of what they're doing, or they may be on that 677 00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,040 Speaker 1: journey and about to do a migration. What are the 678 00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:43,240 Speaker 1: sort of things that you sit down and talk to 679 00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,040 Speaker 1: these sorts of organizations about what are the principles or 680 00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,240 Speaker 1: the fundamentals they need to consider. 681 00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,600 Speaker 4: Well, look, amend does all start with a business case, right, 682 00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:53,239 Speaker 4: and it's going to be really very clear on what 683 00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:56,240 Speaker 4: the outcomes are that are trying to be achieved, and 684 00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,800 Speaker 4: it has to be a very conscious decision, and one 685 00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:02,360 Speaker 4: is made with a real understanding of the total cost, 686 00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:04,680 Speaker 4: not of the. 687 00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:05,560 Speaker 2: Cost of servers. 688 00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:09,640 Speaker 4: And if it's only going to be done with a 689 00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:14,759 Speaker 4: top line cost, then you know, cloud might not be 690 00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:16,400 Speaker 4: the right solution. It might not be able to be 691 00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,520 Speaker 4: justified for doing so. But for an organization that has 692 00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:23,759 Speaker 4: stuff that is in legacy land and can't be moved 693 00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,799 Speaker 4: into the cloud, I think you need to realize that 694 00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:28,920 Speaker 4: at some point you're going to have to make that change. 695 00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,000 Speaker 4: And it's kind of one of those you know, the 696 00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:32,600 Speaker 4: best time to do it was ten years. 697 00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:33,759 Speaker 2: Ago, next best time is now. 698 00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:37,520 Speaker 4: If you can't modernize your system so they can run 699 00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:41,400 Speaker 4: in today's infrastructure, then you are going to hold the 700 00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:43,120 Speaker 4: business back. It's going to be an anchor that is 701 00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,120 Speaker 4: going to be stopping the business in a whole bunch 702 00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:48,720 Speaker 4: of ways. Because the second everything is powered by AI 703 00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:51,719 Speaker 4: and whatever the next set of new technologies are, and 704 00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:55,080 Speaker 4: the next you know, exciting ways of engaging staff and 705 00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,600 Speaker 4: engaging customers if you can't take advantage of those, you 706 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,640 Speaker 4: can lose competitive advantage anything that touches consumer. For example, 707 00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:06,520 Speaker 4: you know, before too long, if your services don't show 708 00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,759 Speaker 4: up on an AI search and AI query, you will 709 00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:12,840 Speaker 4: cease to exist. You will be invisible to everybody because 710 00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:14,840 Speaker 4: the number of eyeballs are going to be going to 711 00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,360 Speaker 4: websites to look at things is going to rapidly decline 712 00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,840 Speaker 4: is AI takes over and replaces search. So you know, 713 00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:23,799 Speaker 4: if you've got an old legacy system that you could 714 00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:27,160 Speaker 4: never plug meaningfully into AI, you can't take advantage of 715 00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:28,440 Speaker 4: cloud's ability to scale. 716 00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:30,279 Speaker 2: You need to look at how you can. 717 00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,320 Speaker 4: You know, even if it is a multi year program 718 00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,600 Speaker 4: to modernize and move away from that application, then that 719 00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:41,000 Speaker 4: should be absolutely on the table for consideration. And it's 720 00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:43,600 Speaker 4: just about looking at the things that you need to 721 00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,200 Speaker 4: be doing, looking at the things that are genuinely business 722 00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:52,040 Speaker 4: value generating invest in those, modernize those, get them to 723 00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,120 Speaker 4: where they need to be. And other things where you 724 00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:57,200 Speaker 4: know you've built something, or you're using something that maybe 725 00:35:57,200 --> 00:35:59,640 Speaker 4: could be done another way by assas products or something 726 00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:01,120 Speaker 4: that you could consume off the shelf. 727 00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:03,720 Speaker 2: Any of those kinds of movies you can make the better. 728 00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,200 Speaker 1: So it sounds like it's you know, it's not something 729 00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,719 Speaker 1: that's going to be pigeonholed in the IT department of 730 00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,200 Speaker 1: a New Zealand business. This is something that the CEO, 731 00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:16,200 Speaker 1: you know, the top executives need to have real clear 732 00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:18,440 Speaker 1: visibility into and understanding of. 733 00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:19,360 Speaker 2: Absolutely. 734 00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:23,640 Speaker 4: I mean, I think the days of a business strategy 735 00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:25,520 Speaker 4: being handed to the I T team to then form 736 00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:29,040 Speaker 4: an IT plan, you know, is very backward. I think 737 00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:33,880 Speaker 4: if you look at your traditional smack influences of social mobility, 738 00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:38,880 Speaker 4: analytics in cloud, if technology and technology innovation and disruption 739 00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:42,319 Speaker 4: isn't factored into business strategy, then you know, there aren't 740 00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:46,000 Speaker 4: very many industries where you know, that's a viable strategy anymore. 741 00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:48,560 Speaker 4: I think you need to be taken into account the 742 00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,200 Speaker 4: massive changes they're going to make for consumer buying habits 743 00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,759 Speaker 4: and B to B buying habits, and just the ability 744 00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:59,120 Speaker 4: to genuinely compete in whatever an organization does is going 745 00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:02,600 Speaker 4: to be increasing reliant on good use of technology, so 746 00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,160 Speaker 4: it has to be baked into every level of the 747 00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:06,520 Speaker 4: organization from the boad doown. 748 00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,719 Speaker 1: That wraps up another episode of the Business of Tech 749 00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,960 Speaker 1: My thanks to David Reese from equinox It for sharing 750 00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:24,080 Speaker 1: practical wisdom on tackling cloud bill shock, including why the 751 00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:27,800 Speaker 1: hardest problems guess what are more often found in company 752 00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:31,640 Speaker 1: culture and processes than in the technology itself. 753 00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:32,520 Speaker 3: Look. 754 00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,160 Speaker 1: I've been writing about the cloud for years, and every 755 00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,360 Speaker 1: time I cover the tech company's claims of the benefits 756 00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,960 Speaker 1: of migrating to the cloud, which are legit, I usually 757 00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:45,279 Speaker 1: get one or two readers contacting me to say, Basically, 758 00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:48,200 Speaker 1: it may look that way, but the costs really do 759 00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,279 Speaker 1: escalate over time, and it's actually more cost effective in 760 00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,000 Speaker 1: many cases to maintain your own infrastructure, which is an 761 00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:58,759 Speaker 1: approach that's sort of gone out of fashion. I've heard 762 00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:02,160 Speaker 1: stories of companies leave the cloud due to costs. The 763 00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:05,520 Speaker 1: company thirty seven Signals is a very high profile case 764 00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:09,200 Speaker 1: internationally of that. I link to the CEO's blog post 765 00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:13,440 Speaker 1: on how the company moved onto its own hosted hardware 766 00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,479 Speaker 1: to cut its three million dollar a year cloud bill. 767 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:20,560 Speaker 1: The cloud's true value can be unlocked, but only when 768 00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:25,960 Speaker 1: business leaders, it and finance teams work together with transparency, 769 00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:29,680 Speaker 1: shared goals, and the right guard rails long before the 770 00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:34,160 Speaker 1: invoices start to arrive. Whether you're scaling up AI or 771 00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:38,000 Speaker 1: just managing day to day cloud operations. A strategic and 772 00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,640 Speaker 1: collaborative approach will protect you from those nasty surprises and 773 00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:45,520 Speaker 1: help ensure your investment actually pays off. Equinox is doing 774 00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:47,160 Speaker 1: a lot of work in this area. I recently helped 775 00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,920 Speaker 1: them write a white paper on this whole topic of 776 00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,399 Speaker 1: cloud cost optimization. I'll link to it in the show 777 00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,839 Speaker 1: notes at Businessdesk dot co dot nz. You'll find them 778 00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,239 Speaker 1: there and my weekly tech reading list. Just go the 779 00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,640 Speaker 1: podcast section. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, 780 00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,280 Speaker 1: don't forget to subscribe and share it with your colleagues 781 00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:10,440 Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Peter Griffin. 782 00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:13,000 Speaker 1: See you next time on the Business of Tech.