How to Remove Paperwork Clutter and Store Documents in the Cloud

We look at the cloud, we think – well, this should be really easy. And spin up some servers and get some things running, and that part might be easy. But then it’s the understanding of how do we secure it, how do we maintain it long-term, how do we make sure that we don’t spend more money than we have to? Yeah, welcome to another of Unraveling IT. My name is Nate Troyer, and I have as a special guest, Brian Harmison. We’re gonna be talking today about, unraveling the idea and concept of a managed cloud provider, hybrid cloud, and a little bit of the myths that we heard along the way. This is Brian, he’s the CEO of our company. But what’s your background? I’ve done a lot. My background’s in in software development. That’s what I wanted to do from the time I was, probably in junior high. I knew I wanted to use computers, and a lot of that had to do with, I didn’t like to do the same thing – still don’t – over and over again. So I’m a big automation person in general and- So you’re lazy. Programming is the pursuit of laziness. I enjoy working hard on things that are not repetitive. And most of what we encounter in the technology space, there can be a better way. And so I spent my career early on, on tiger teams, on rapid prototype teams that built special- What is a tiger team? I’ve heard that before. You’ve told me what it is, I think, once a long time ago. What is a tiger team? It’s a team that gets assigned to a project to operate a little bit outside the boundaries of normal process, which is also why it fits me pretty well, but really with the goal of an outcome in a rapid amount of time. So usually, if you need a tiger team, the project or program is at a critical point that is typically schedule or capability-driven. So it’s about can we get in, really focus on- Why are they not hitting their heir milestones and things like that? It more, go in and hit the milestones. So it is the team that comes in to get it back on track and likely then leave after a short period of time. So… it’s pretty fun. It seems pretty fun. I mean, I think- You don’t make a lot of friends. I’m sure you don’t. But I think at one point in time when, you had assigned me to a tiger team, what we were doing was looking for redundancy and, just trying to remove a lot of white noise that was happening. And we see that even today in a lot of the, in a lot of the companies that we help and manage is that they have technologies that are redundant. And it might be because, somebody’s more comfortable with one over the other, or they have technologies that do not integrate with one another because they wanted- they wanted best in class. So in order to do that, they had to get multiple different solutions, and that seems more like a nightmare to administrate. I mean, I think it kinda leads us- Costs more long-term. Yeah. And I think it kinda leads us into, you know, like, the cloud too, because Microsoft’s cloud has a ton of features that you can bring to bear on really many different problems. Yeah. But who do you go to to manage that? Right? Well, and I think like a lot of things, these look really, really good. The marketing materials make it seem really easy. And when you get down to it, it requires a level of expertise, whether it’s the cloud or on-prem, that a lot of people don’t have because they don’t do it all the time. And, so that’s- I think we we look at the cloud, we think, well, this should be really easy. And spin up some servers and get some things running. And that part might be easy, but then it’s the understanding of how do we secure it, how do we maintain it long term, and how do we make sure that we don’t spend more money than we have to? Right. I think that… how long ago did the cloud repatriation actually start? Maybe we should go into what it actually is. The cloud repatriation is people who are early adopters to the cloud figuring out that, wow, this is really expensive. Yeah. And then starting to move some of those pieces back. Not all of them. But when did that really, like, start? I think it started pretty early. We still see people who walk, you know, walk in our door or talk to us for the first time and say, I’m gonna move everything to the cloud. Mhmm. And the first thing we ask is, well, why? Why? Why do you wanna do that? And, a lot of folks moved to the cloud because it’s what they thought was expected of them. It’s what they heard everybody was doing, and they jumped on the bandwagon and moved things to the cloud and and realized they didn’t truly understand the expense, the complexity, or if it would really serve their business and the way they operate their business in the best way possible. So a lot of times, a new IT person comes in, new technology leadership, and they say, wow. We have all this stuff on-prem or in this private data center. It should go to public cloud, which we would consider Azure or AWS. And we need to move it there, and they would start that process. They stay for, you know, their average of eighteen months or so. They move on. The next person comes in and says, why do we spend so much with Azure or AWS? And, we could save all this money if we moved to private data center, bought a rack, had it in-house. Maybe it’s performance concerns because it’s a really network-heavy application. They don’t have very good internet connection. There’s just a lot of things that weren’t considered in the blind – we’ve gotta move to the cloud because that’s what everybody’s doing – that we saw people, you know, a couple years ago that that were ready to move back on-prem or had started the process to the cloud and decided to roll that back. So there needs to be a strategy. It can’t just all – I mean, so what in that strategy, what would you identify as things that need to be on-prem or things that need to be in the cloud? How would you go about that? It’s not as simple as, this should be on-prem or it shouldn’t. It comes down to the business values and how it operates. We work with a lot of manufacturing companies. And for them, the speed at which they’re able to keep up with scheduling and running their business and generating revenue really matters. And the ability to operate that business regardless of if a backhoe down the road or, you know, a farmer cuts a fiber line, and now they’re unable to access their scheduling. And so those business values are what should really drive where that lives. The idea of, well, what if we get hit by a tornado and our servers get wiped out and I mean, in that case, you’re – if you’re a manufacturing company, you’re probably not running the business anyway. You’re rebuilding. But there’s so many good cloud backup and cloud failover options that are low cost that allow for great business continuity, that the move to the cloud just to move to the cloud so we don’t have to buy servers again is one that, you know, Microsoft and AWS have done a great job of convincing technology leaders that’s the best thing to do. But it’s a bit of – a it’s a bit of a sales job, not the reality of what actually needs to happen. Hardware’s not getting more expensive for the compute power either. So keeping those things on-prem is still a very viable option. Yeah. I think the myth that we’ve run into is, oh, yeah. We can move everything to just, operational expenditure. No problem, like getting a Netflix account. Right? When really it’s somewhere between the two. You’re gonna have some capital expenditure. You’re gonna have some operational expenditure. But I think what you’re highlighting is the questions that you should begin with when you’re going through this process or this exercise is, they aren’t technical questions. They’re business-related questions. And another big driver that we see for that is, you know, if you’re thinking that we need to move to the cloud, start with what are we using, and could it be hosted by someone else? So if there’s a software-as-a-service, a SaaS option, for the applications that you’re using, we would typically advise, well, let’s see what it would take to move you to those so that you aren’t having to buy and maintain operating systems anymore and run those applications. S omebody else is doing that. And you’re truly using that as a service. And then talk about what belongs here. Usually, that amounts to file shares, which we love to see move to SharePoint OneDrive, which paves the way for using Copilot and AI in the future. So there’s a path there, but it does start with this business conversation. What applications are you using? Why are you using them? What’s your road map with those? And how does that affect this move to the cloud or not? What we would say, though, is that, you know, a lift-and-shift to the cloud is almost always the wrong answer. Lift-and-shift being, I’m gonna take exactly what’s running on-prem and I’m gonna put it in the cloud. That is going to lead to high cost and likely performance issues. Yep. I think it’s a giant headache too. But okay, so- now, if I’m a little bit more advanced, I’ve already moved to M365. But, as an example, I’ve got my exchange up there. I’ve got, you know – I’ve dipped my toe into Intune, I’ve got my data there. How do I get my money’s worth out of these services? Since I’ve decided I’m not gonna host my servers up there, but I’m gonna adopt services, which is what we would, you know, want people to do. Well, how can I how can I utilize all of my licensing that I purchased to its fullest extent? Well, you know, Nate, that really is where we come in as a partner to help make sure that the complexities as well as the features of the licensing are being fully used, and that you have the right license level. And Microsoft changes it all the time. That’s not ending. Oh, no, you can always pay them more money. They will always take more of your money. And they’re gonna continue to look for ways to drive recurring revenue. Right. It’s not a bad thing. It’s business. It’s not. And leveraging what you’re paying for is really what’s going to separate those who, you know, end up using that as a competitive advantage versus those that just pay money and don’t get to realize a lot of those benefits. So a managed service provider, you know, much like a cloud option is, you know, someone that that you look at to outsource a specialization or maintenance and support of something to. Mhmm. So we as a managed service provider, I think most people think of IT. Yep. Which then typically equates to, you know, laptops and printers and that kind of thing, which is – it is not our specialty. We certainly do those things like other IT managed service providers. But for us, we look at a managed service as the outsourcing of a discipline, and those disciplines could range, across different types of technology. And, you know, even an accounting firm can be a managed service provider in that they’re providing accounting services in this outsourced model. Are we gonna provide accounting services at some point? No, we’re not. Oh, man. I know a lot of accountants. Yeah. A lot of MSPs get started – IT managed service providers actually get started out of accounting firms. That is true. I experienced that. It’s because the business models are very similar. Mhmm. The technology discipline goes along well with accounting. And, what we typically see is as those practices mature, there’s a natural divide in that because the growth can only go so far on the technology side when accountants are running the technology space. Accountants tend to be risk-averse and- You’re really trying to put that in a good light, aren’t you? I think it’s just the reality. If you look at the technology-focused managed service providers that started with accounting firms, very, very few of them are still actually part of those accounting firms. Bean counters and nerds are kinda cut from the same cloth. They are, but they tend to not work well together long-term. Yeah. So us as a managed service provider, really should be that technical expert on those things, and that requires an investment from us to make sure that we’re on top of that licensing and also that we provide oversight as those things get moved to the cloud. Because even as servers and services get moved to the cloud, the care and feeding of those, the security of those, still requires someone to be watching it. And that’s one of the things that we run into a lot is – I’m gonna move it to the cloud and, you know – Oh, yeah. – be done. That they’re treating moving their services to the cloud like we would think of as adopting a SaaS version of those services. Yeah. And software-as-a-service is very different than, I’ve moved my services to the cloud. Yeah. So, that is a myth that we kind of run into, which is, you know, I’ve moved all my stuff up there. It’s their problem to take… They’re gonna fully secure this, and that’s their problem. Amazon or Microsoft cares about the security of my services or servers- running in their public cloud. And the reality is that they don’t. They are okay- They care about it to a point, because they cannot be right alongside your name with some sort of big security breach. But they don’t- but the governance of your data- They’re not gonna enforce any of that. Right. And it’s very easy to leave security vulnerabilities. Yep. And struggle with the management of those things as well. Yep. And then that’s where we come in. You know? We can we provide the thought leadership and implementation around security for that. And I think it ties back to kind of a bigger topic around, you know, us as managed service providers and others, the right way for us to view our clients and the technical folks that that we work with at those clients is that, you know, we can partner with them on things that they don’t get to do that often, that we get to do all the time. And that’s the right kind of partnership for a managed service provider. And I’ll go back to the accounting topic. Very few businesses that use some kind of outside accounting – we’re a great example of that, we use firms to help us with audit and tax. That does not replace our need for a finance team. Just like a managed service provider doesn’t replace the need for an IT team within an organization. Right. Exactly. Now, I kinda wanna switch gears here to another myth that I actually run into a lot because I’m dealing with, I’d say, manufacturing and construction companies who typically, you know, take their time to, adopt new technologies. They’re sometimes I will get the response that, well, if the cloud’s so insecure, I’ll just keep it all on-prem. I’ll just, you know, I wanna bring all this in-house. I wanna do it all in-house. You know, what’s the response to that? Because to me, it sounds like – it really does sound like I’m gonna say, like, the early ’30s, ’40s time period where people are like, I’m not putting my money in a bank. I’m putting it underneath my mattress. Yeah. Okay. So, like, your mattress is more secure. Yeah. The right solution to security isn’t location of the data. Okay, yeah. It really isn’t. It is how do we treat that data? How do we protect it? It’s having, you know, DLP policies in place and understanding what do we do to prevent data loss within our business. And that’s a business and strategy decision. Yep. As in, it’s really- what we’re talking about is risk. Yes. It’s why Microsoft’s zero trust, knowledge base starts with this needs to be adopted at the C-suite first, and here is how you gain adoption of this. Really, the technology that you use after that should just be, taken and gone, okay. Does this conform to zero trust, the framework that we’ve adopted? So it’s like it’s not a technical conversation at all. It has to do with risk. It does. And DLP is just a small part of that. Things like user awareness training, things like MFA, they actually are a cultural business issue. Mhmm. That relate to the risk and health of the business that have to be believed in and adopted by the executive team. It’s a cultural decision. Yeah. And the cloud, on-prem, is really a delivery mechanism. Right. It has very little to do with how secure it is or isn’t. Yeah. And I think- I think it looks different for every company. Right? I mean, there there’s a framework to be had in there. I mean, you could- it’s not gonna be wildly different, but there are some, specific things that could change because of how you do business, you know? So, I appreciate you coming, Brian. These are some great insights. Yeah. Yeah, it was great talking about the cloud, and I just kinda leave you with this message, which is- Don’t leave me with anything. I don’t… care. If you don’t have a year besides a person or two. Right? This is a- this is a big issue. No single person is going to be the expert. If we go to talk about the cloud versus on-prem, we’re gonna bring a team. And we’re gonna talk about that. So if you’re listening to this and thinking, you’re only getting one voice in the direction that your technology, and your data, and your security is going, look for a partner, whether it’s us or somebody else. Don’t go it alone. Those partners can come alongside you and expand the way you view the technology landscape. And that’s really important these days. It is too big of a world for a generalist. Now that we’re recording, I don’t really want to talk. I don’t want to talk either. I want to leave. Are you really going to tell the Internet that you have a new job? I mean, I haven’t updated LinkedIn yet, but- Do you need to go get your pit viper glasses? Yes. I should. I should have had those. To do it? Of course, then you wouldn’t be able to read your notes. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. They are very dark.