Many companies just iterate on an existing architecture instead of asking themselves in a greenfield scenario, how should we change? How should we modernize? Right? Let’s not assume that we are bound by any certain framework. Let’s take a step back. Let’s talk to different leaders within the organization, and let’s define the outcome that we’re looking for before determining what we need right this moment Really? And work backwards. Welcome to another episode of Unraveling IT: Expert Tech Talks. My name is Nate Troyer, and with me today is Garrett Wiesenberg. Garrett, how you doing? Doing well. So today we’re gonna be talking about an interesting topic that has to do with company’s infrastructure, where they’re going with that infrastructure, what they’ve currently been doing, and how maybe there might need to be some sort of a reset. So Garrett, can you walk us through, like, how we inherited this problem of having infrastructure, but essentially just deciding we’re gonna put it somewhere else and calling it modernized? Yeah. I think a lot of organizations have just continually built upon an existing infrastructure or architecture that they’ve had, you know, the, the entirety that they’ve been at that that organization. Many companies just continue to reiterate or, I mean, iterate on an existing architecture instead of taking a step back during these refresh time periods where, you know, they may be adding new equipment, new servers, new infrastructure of any kind. And instead of asking themselves, you know, in a greenfield scenario, what what should we do? How should we change? How should we modernize? They’ve simply just added on to existing infrastructure or replaced what they’ve had rather than taking advantage of, you know, newer architectures or really leveraging some of these SaaS based applications that they already have. Okay. Well, I mean, you said a lot of stuff there. So let’s, let’s start off with the first thing. Yep. A refresh. What is that? Yeah. A refresh Practically. A, a refresh is just kind of exactly what it sounds like. It’s purchasing new equipment to replace existing equipment that might be outdated, might be undersized, might be underpowered for whatever the, the outcomes are that you’re looking for. Okay. So in reality, that’s like, you know, maybe nine or ten years ago, I bought servers, I bought some storage, I bought some networking gear, you know, and that is underpinning my organization. Right? Correct. Every piece of equipment that you purchase, every piece of electronic equipment that you purchase is going to have some sort of lifespan, some sort of warranty or support contract associated. Typically, we see organizations replacing hardware about every three to five years depending on their specific cycles. And so many organizations go through, you know, these, these refresh cycles pretty often. What do what do those look like? Like, from let’s say from the director of IT standpoint, what, what usually kicks that off? Who do they talk to? What does that process kinda look like? So the organization is typically going to set their own cycle, and it’s mainly going to depend upon either the outcomes that the organization is looking to achieve or budgetary restraints, concerns, or just the way they handle their, their budget in general. You know, how long do we want to depreciate the hardware over, you know, x amount of years? Do outcomes usually come into that conversation or is sometimes They, they can. Yeah. I, I think it’s, I think it’s a healthy mix of both. I mean, as organizations evolve, as the needs of the business change, the existing hardware you have may not support the outcomes that, you know, the business is looking to, achieve in any given time period. And so while you may be purchasing hardware and depreciating it over five years, if in year three you decide, well, we want to do something completely different. As a business, that may require new hardware, which means you’re then going to have to rebudget or reallocate funds that weren’t initially allocated. So you’re kind of building a framework and saying, there’s a phenomenon where for some reason, the tech in these refresh cycles, you know, is being influenced to not necessarily change, but just to move and calling it modernization. Calling it Yeah. Okay. So if I’m like a CFO and I go to my director and I say, hey, one of the things that I want at the end of the day is I, I just want this to be accessible anywhere. Like, I don’t wanna have to be in the building to get my files. What is the director who has had this, let’s say, older hardware, older infrastructure mindset, what do they usually do when they hear that? Do they move their servers just into the cloud and say, well, now it’s accessible anywhere? I mean, oftentimes, that that’s, that’s a result that can come from those sorts of conversations. Additionally, another option is that the director of IT can view that as a threat to their, their job security. And, again, that director will then perpetuate the continual cycle of of keeping things on prem because they believe that if it’s on prem, it’s easier to show their value. It’s easier to sell the value, you know, of their, their services when in all reality, you know, the executives that we work with day in and day out are just looking for ways to cut costs Mhmm. And for uptime and, reliability to improve. And anytime you have systems on premise, oftentimes the risks or the downtimes are, are increased because you’re dealing with power. I imagine the, the cost probably goes up to, to make sure they don’t go down as much. Yeah. You you’ve got So you have to build. You have to bring your own infrastructure. You’ve got more hardware. You’ve got more power. You have, you know, just you have to cool the room. I mean, there there’s soft costs and then there’s hard costs that are associated with, you know, hosting your own infrastructure essentially. And so what we often see is that clients, in an attempt to try to modernize, they oftentimes are quick to react without necessarily architecting out the solution that would best suit them both in the interim, but as well as the, the future of what the organization is, is going to look like. And, and what I don’t hear you saying is that you should go, like, full on into cloud. No. I mean, that’s not going to be the right scenario for every client. I mean, I think there’s certainly a time and place to, to go full cloud depending again on, on business outcomes or objectives. But typically going full cloud often will yield higher recurring costs than just purchasing the, the hardware outright. So I, I think it’s a hybrid approach is typically what’s best for, for most organizations that we work with. And it’s really just about leveraging the cloud where you can or where it makes sense, and then keeping what you need to on prem. So, you know, a, a great example of that, for instance, would be file shares. 90% of the organizations we work with are on Microsoft. Microsoft, with the licensing that purchase typically provides SharePoint or OneDrive as an additional feature within that license that you’re not paying extra for, it’s just included. And that gets rid of like the file server. Yeah. Why, why host, why host a lot of your own files on prem when you can now host those files in the cloud, have them accessible from anywhere, and quite frankly, secure them more effectively in more of a zero trust type framework than the, you know, on prem file shares of old that rely more on the castle and moat sort of security framework. So you used a term earlier on that I think we should kind of dive into. You used the term greenfield. What does that mean? I’m sure there’s a, a professional definition somewhere or Oxford At this point, I’m too afraid to ask. No. I mean, what I mean? I’m sure, I’m sure there’s an Oxford dictionary definition somewhere for it, but I view it as, you know, you’re, you’re walking out to build a home. You have this green open field where you can build your home or do whatever you want with this property. What is your ideal state? And, you know, just kind of thinking through what do I want to do with this brand new environment that I have. Okay. So you’re, you’re essentially being able to start fresh. Yep. You’re, you’re at least you’re viewing it, it that way. You could have hardware already, but you’re like, okay, what, what would it look like if we started fresh, if we had all this data and we essentially put it in the right buckets, put it in the right places to be able to access it and make it work for the business. Yeah. Let’s not make assumptions. Right? Let’s not assume that we are bound by any certain framework, any certain architecture. Let’s take a step back. Let’s talk to business units. Let’s talk to different leaders within the organization. Let’s understand where we’re at, where we’re trying to go, and let’s define the outcome that we’re looking for before determining what we need right this moment and work backwards. It sounds like that that type of planning probably happens for an enterprise. Mhmm. But for mid market, why do you think that that doesn’t really happen that often? That that level of planning doesn’t really happen. I think there’s a slew of reasons why it it doesn’t occur, and and those reasons range from, you know, just knowledge about what is possible or can be possible. Because, again, many mid market companies may not have an IT team or an IT leader. IT oftentimes in those size of organizations will fall to finance or they’ll fall to an IT generalist who may be skilled enough to keep the lights on, but not skilled enough to know every possibility of what can exist. Either because he has to actually do the work. Exactly. And and it’s no fault of their own. I mean, you know, if you don’t know, you don’t know, and that’s okay. Outside of that, it it could just be concerns around budgets. It could be concerns around job security. You know, there’s probably five, ten other reasons that exist why these changes don’t occur. But at the end might not be and in the mind of somebody sitting in, like, the the CEO position, the CFO, I mean, they’re they’re tasked with making money. Yeah. And the sometimes it’s hard to see technology as helping you make money when you’re at that level. Right? And oftentimes, it may require some upfront pain or expenses to then save money in the long term. Right? So I’m a firm believer that a little bit of pain now relieves a lot of frustration later on. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to rip the band aid off and a lot of organizations are afraid of the risk of altering their strategy because, you know, we have this, it works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it Yeah. Kind of mentality. And while that’s not necessarily We have Bill. We have Johnny. We have Susie. They have a workflow. It seems to work, you know, and and Yeah. It’s repeatable. Seems fine to me. And we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about, you know, optimizing, you know, staffing, spending, strategizing. And, you know, this is really a slightly different topic where we’re we’re trying to just say, let’s really take a step back and make sure that the environment we have is the environment that we need. Mhmm. Because I I think every environment’s gonna need hardware. Every environment needs some degree of hardware on premise. I mean, are those organizations that are a hundred percent remote, don’t have physical locations. Obviously, that’s not the the client that we’re talking about today. When you and I went and and just conversations with some of the people who had bought the the solutions of, I would say, the twenty teens, right, which was a lot of redundant hardware, specifically in the server section, maybe not a lot of redundant networking. The thing that they all said was, yeah, these these servers never went down. Yeah. So, I mean, that was a lot of cost. Yeah. You know, I mean, and yeah, I get it. You know, if you, if you don’t want something to go down or are you very risk averse, then you you’re willing to pay that. But the reality was you didn’t need that. What actually went down more often was the internet. Yeah. Well, and I was actually talking and working with an organization this past weekend who their primary switching at their main office went down and was completely dead. It was seven to ten years old, out of warranty, out of support. There was really nothing that we could do. Seven to ten years sounds like a really good run. I mean, it it gave it they I mean, they definitely used it to its fullest potential. Right. But they went down. Mhmm. And, you know, initially, we thought it was Internet, but the Internet was essentially coming in through the switches. The switches died. We needed to replace them. And, you know, the organization was really just focused on getting back up and running. Mhmm. They didn’t care if it was pretty. They didn’t care if the hardware was, you know, professional grade. They were willing to go to Best Buy and just buy something to get back up and running because they wanted their staff to be in the office because of the collaborative nature and the benefits that that brings. And so, you know, I think with this sort of rearchitecture comes a, you know, reprioritization as well because five, ten years ago, pre COVID, it was really in the office. Everybody was in the office working. And today, it’s more of a hybrid sort of approach where there are a lot of organizations that are in office, but more and more, we’re accessing resources from everywhere and anywhere. So it’s what resources make sense to keep on prem and what resources can we leverage in the cloud. Do you see do you see the conversations that you’re having when you’re actually doing these planning? Because you’re involved in lots lots of these planning discussions. Do you see a reevaluation of what’s critical as well? Because in the in the yesteryear conversations, it was like, oh, you know, we we have thirty virtual machines. They’re all critical because they’re all gonna share this, you know, dual host environment. Sorry if that’s a term we haven’t really discussed, but, yeah, redundant environment. So everything was treated as needing to be on all the time. Yeah. Have you seen those reevaluations? Yes. Absolutely. I mean, I can’t tell you how many either directors, business leaders of of any kind, CFO, COO, CEO, have just looked at me and said, yeah. I don’t care if that goes down. All I care about is x, y, and z. And x, and z today is not x, y, and z from five years ago because COVID taught us all that we can live without certain aspects. Now, again, some organizations, there’s absolutely gonna be critical infrastructure. We’re certainly not stating that. I mean, banks have critical applications that need to run, and a lot of them are still hosted on prem. Hospitals need, you know, critical services to, you know, stay online twenty four Manufacturing and Manufacturing. Drawings. There’s going to be Yeah. Drawings. You know, those organizations where there are critical items. But file shares, no longer critical. Active directory, if it goes down for a while, okay. Yes. Why do you well, that’s a great why do you think people are still so tied to active directory? Because I I get that all the time. Like, we have active directory. Like, we don’t have to have active directory. You don’t have to rely on it that much. Why do you think there’s still I think it stems from a lack of knowledge. Okay. And just understanding Familiarity? Yeah. Familiarity. And what, you know, ENTRE can really do for an organization. Okay. You know, practically, what are these what are these planning meetings really look like? It begins with defining the outcome. Mhmm. So what are we trying to achieve? What is the end state or future state goal of the organization as a whole? And then trying to understand where IT needs to get to to really support the the final outcome. So once you have the outcome, you can work backwards from that to really figure out, okay. What do we need to do over the next three to five years to achieve this outcome or whatever that timeline is? I mean, I guess that’s a good point. Making my own points. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll say all my points are good too. Yeah. You know, that’s that’s something that during the outcome definition phase, timeline is imperative. Are we trying to achieve this outcome tomorrow? Are we trying to achieve it in six months, one year, three years, five years, ten years? Really creating that road map or that holistic plan. And then from there, we can work backwards to determine what do we need to do in what time frame to achieve that outcome and, you know, within the time frame that we’re trying to achieve it. So it sounds like you need knowledgeable people that can essentially get the information, bring it in about how the company operates, what the desired outcomes are, and then what’s available in the space to then bring to bear on each one of the each one of the outcomes. Correct? Yeah. You need business leaders and stakeholders across the entire organization. So one guy can’t make this decision? No. It should. He certainly can’t hand it to a generalist. It is not solely up to an IT director. I mean, it might be up to a CIO, right, or CTO type role. Right. Because obviously, they’re an executive level, like Right. To make the strategic decision. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But even then, the CIO is being informed by whatever the CEO is is mandating or the vision that they’re casting. Mhmm. It’s not just solely on them. It’s gotta take buy in across the entire organization for it to be successful. And from the top down? Correct. Okay. Alright. So so, Garrett, what’s your message to infrastructure leaders in twenty twenty five? Don’t continue to perpetuate the same cycles that you have been for the past ten years expecting the same outcomes that we’ve been, you know, achieving over the past ten years. So take a step back. The the world has changed. Things are not the same. Hardware has become more and more commoditized. Mhmm. You know, we are selling less and less Cisco type hardware Mhmm. Just because the degree of complexity Mhmm. Has decreased. It’s got a steep well, it’s got a steep learning curve. Cisco does. It’s steep learning curve. It’s a steep cost. And the feature set that it used to provide Mhmm. Well, yeah, there are still some features that are very valuable that other vendors just may not be there yet. Yep. You can get ninety percent of the same features from a, you know, piece of equipment that’s seventy five percent less expensive? Well, for enterprises and things like that, it’s a great product. It’s like the gold standard. But if you’re a mid market organization that ultimately only needs to peer with Azure, there’s a lot of other products that can get it done for fractions of the price. As you begin to leverage more and more of the cloud, you no longer need as many sophisticated resources on prem or sophisticated pieces of equipment on prem. All you really need is an Internet connection and a firewall Mhmm. To, you know, provide your your staff with some level of protection. Right. So as the times change, we need to evolve with the market trends. So put so put time into planning. Right? Yeah. Put time into planning, put time into strategizing, and don’t go it alone. I cannot stress that enough. Understand where your organization is heading. Understand the outcomes that you are trying to achieve, not only today, but into the future, and then begin to plan backwards from there as you are compiling your budgets for the next fiscal year. Great. Well, thanks, Garrett. I appreciate you being here. Appreciate you giving us your time and your thoughts. Yeah. Happy to be here. Yeah. That’s it.
