65. What's the value in SASE and global backbones? With Guest Ryan Livesay of Aryaka
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Listen in today as we talk to Ryan Livesay, SVP of Solution Engineering at Arayaka. Ryan takes us on the journey as he went from aspiring goals of the PGA tour to the world of WAN and Advanced networking and to where he is now running Engineering for Aryaka globally. You’ll learn exactly what SASE is as it relates to the convergence of Security and the WAN. Ryan breaks down some crucial examples and how to approach the customers while peeling back the onion of all Aryaka has to offer. There’s so much packed into this episode, don’t miss it!
Transcript of episode can be found below.
Josh Lupresto (00:01):
Welcome to the podcast that is designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. And this is Next Level BizTech. Hey everybody, welcome back. We’re getting into some juicy stuff today. We are talking about SD-WAN Advanced Networking. We’re talking about SASE, and if you don’t know what that is don’t worry, you’re gonna learn. We’re gonna talk about that in global backbones. So, today with us to kind of explain all of this, we’ve got the SVP of Solution Engineering from Aryaka, Ryan Livesay. Ryan, welcome.
Ryan Livesay (00:38):
Thanks for having me, Josh.
Josh Lupresto (00:40):
So I, I wanna hear some background here. Hopefully you got something I can use against you as a blackmail later on. But listen, I, when we get on this part of the show, some people have had direct journeys. They know exactly what they set out and how they wanna get there and how they wanna be. Other people come from fields that are completely unrelated. We love both sides of that story. So give us the journey. We now know your title at Aryaka, but how’d you get here?
Ryan Livesay (01:04):
Great question. So came outta school with a finance degree, finance and accounting. Small school. Went to work as a, as a beam counter. So literally, Archer, Daniels, Midland, 50,000 employees globally, worldwide. And, and I figured out pretty quick. Took me a couple years, but I figured out pretty quick. I don’t know that I want to do this. And I was also a golfer in college, played four years football and golf, and, and so ended up small school D three. But nonetheless, I continued to get better and better and was hanging out with a tour player, and I decided to chase the dream. So I quit that bean counter job three years outta school, moved to Florida, passed the, the wife at that time of, what was it? Probably 5, 5, 6 years we dated. And, and she, we, we were getting married in, in six months.
Ryan Livesay (01:47):
I said, are you good with me quitting this job and moving to Florida and we’ll just live down there and, and it’s an hour, never kind of chase the dream deal. So she was supportive of it. We moved to Florida, did that for about a year and a half, and, and spent a heck of a lot more money than I made. She was working in the, in the office equipment business down there, slinging copiers. And we both wanted to be pharmaceutical reps. Went to a career fair, and they said either you go office equipment sales, or you go telecom sales. And lo and behold, I end up in the, in the wonderful world of Telecom in 2002 at Allegiance Telecom, and spent seven, eight years there with xo and then moved on to EarthLink for another seven years. And, and here I am at Aryaka today, four years later, heading their engineering group. So
Josh Lupresto (02:27):
I love it from the PGA tour to here,
Ryan Livesay (02:45):
Yeah, EAs was founded in 2010, and back then the, the business, obviously that was kind of in the pre SD-WAN era. So the, the business was, was founded by some former Cisco engineers, and they created a, a business plan to provide WAN optimization as a service. So back in that, that era, you obviously you had Riverbed providing those compression and de-duplication and caching algorithms. And Aryaka engineered these algorithms primarily in this pop based core network that’s incredibly beneficial for us today. What they did early in that era was was software defined. What today is one of our big differentiators in a, in a layer two global private backbone that we operate that takes the uncertainties of the, the internet out publicly. So we evolved over those years to SD-WAN, to now SASE. And so it’s been a journey, but a 13 year, very successful journey now eclipsing over a hundred million in annual revenues.
Josh Lupresto (03:39):
Ooh, congrats to that. Those are good numbers. And, and it’s been interesting. So you guys always have really set yourself apart, right? Through the SD-WAN era, what it started out as, what it’s evolved to, and we’re gonna get into that. But it always has been interesting, and, and it’s, I think it’s been very easy to describe how you guys are different. Your, your story is easy to understand where, hey, you know, if you’ve got global, you’ve got middle mile concerns. We have that, we have that built. Don’t go try and build it on your own. Right. It’s not cheap. We did that and we perfected it. Alright, so, so walk us through a little bit about, now we’re gonna jump into the SASE side of things. Define for us, you know, for everybody listening out there, what SASE means and, and how has that changed your journey, or how has that added to kind of the journey in the architecture at Aryaka,
Ryan Livesay (04:27):
You know, with, with SASE and how you define it. I think you can look back to at SD-WAN at its inception and, and how did people define SD-WAN 5, 6, 7 years ago? You, you’d asked that question to anybody, whether they were in an engineering role or a sales role, and that you’ve got a different definition out of it. And I think today the, the same can probably be said for SASE. So, but what in general, you, you, you, when you, when you think SASE, you, you have to think convergence and network and security with Gartner and how they’ve defined it, that one common denominator with regards to the security that you typically see is, is cloud-based security. Has, these workloads have continued to migrate to the cloud. Whether you’re in an infrastructure as a service or a SaaS consumption model, doesn’t make sense to have these legacy networks where you’re hair pinning traffic through some head ends through a data center, you know, through a firewall. And generally the answer is no. So what users have typically done is, is, or, or InfoSec groups have done, is pushed the security closer to their users around the world. So that in our simplest definition is, is what we see around SASE, is the convergence of network and specifically cloud security.
Josh Lupresto (05:30):
Love it. Where do you feel, all right, l let’s talk about competitors for a second. What do you feel, you know, for the partners listening to this, we want them to understand who you are, what you do, but we also want them to understand maybe some of the, where are you different? Where do you feel, you know, now that you got such a mature platform out there? Maybe that’s the not not leading the witness, but where do you feel you stand out here from differentiator perspective?
Ryan Livesay (05:55):
Yeah, we’ve been described by the like system Gartner analysts and other, other analysts and, and firms that we’re one of the most mature and advanced network as a service tax in the business. So again, when you look at the lineage of this 13 year history of our business there is, there is some great success stories that we’ve had you follow. We’ve, we’ve got a lot of CIOs that have literally taken aryaka to multiple places in their career. So I think when you look at the partner reputation of our business, they’ve said Aryaka is historically very, very good, but also can be very expensive. So we’ve tried to redefine who we are within that channel community, be more relevant in, in places outside of just maybe China, for example, is we were perceived as this niche player to go fix some China issues at one point to where now we’re, we’re doing a much, much better job as becoming that global land standard for, for companies.
Ryan Livesay (06:46):
So our, our difference is really, again, you don’t have to look much past the network to understand fundamentally, that is the, the biggest difference with Aryaka, this foundation that that, that our, our initial founders built on was this layer two core network. Again, taking these un uncertainty of the public internet out, the transformations that we’ve had have been incredibly successful around truly replacing MPLS. So you, you think of MPLS and why did companies keep MPLS for so long, for so many years because it worked. And as you’ve transitioned into these public based networks and looking to do more cost effective transport methods like VPN or, or SD-WAN, well, things again, change when you, when you introduce separation between workloads and, and where those users sit across the world. So Aryaka can deliver this truly end-to-end class of service capable network using cost effective internet at the edge with this middle mile.
Ryan Livesay (07:38):
That is everything you’ve had in MPLS. So, you know, we’ve got roughly a thousand customers around the world and, and not one of those customers after about a year, right? There’s always that little transitional period where we support MPLS on the front end of that, that transformation journey. But they end up cutting the cord on MPLS entirely. So in many cases, it’s been dual MPLS cores that they’ve had with multiple providers providing that diversity within internet on top of that incredibly costly. So to, to truly replace MPLS utilize that cost effective internet proxy, that traffic very close into this deterministic layer two network, it’s, it’s a, it’s an unprecedented solution out there in the marketplace.
Josh Lupresto (08:15):
Love it too. Love to see an you know, you guys have never wavered from channel friendliness. You know, I think that that has to be called out right now. You’ve got Patterson, you’ve got a great team over there leading everything out. It’s always good to see that continued investment in the channel, right? So kudos to you for, you know, you guys just doubling down on that. That obviously that means a lot to partners and a lot to us.
Ryan Livesay (08:37):
Yeah. If it didn’t work right, we’d have to change. We’d have to, we’d have to revisit our growth strategies. But the bottom line is we’ve been embraced by some partners over the years, right? It’s not, we’re not doing business with 75, 80% of the partners out there, but the ones that have that have, have taken the time to understand thus and position us with those right fit customers, customers, it’s been a great partnership. So it allows us the ability to run a little bit leaner in terms of our, you know, what our, our, our sales engine looks like. So yeah, we’ve, we’ve built a great team. I think around Craig, he’s done an awesome job to reignite the channel programs around accelerate methodology. He’s got, in addition to specifically focusing around the throttle programs, everything has to do with foot on the gas, right? With Craig mm-hmm.
Josh Lupresto (09:25):
Love it. All right. So we’re gonna do a little bit of you know, a look back versus a look now as we, as we jump into the next couple questions. So let’s look back first, walk us back through your first journey into SD-WAN, whether that’s Aryaka, whether that’s companies before walk us through, you know, kind of what was that experience like? What, what did those, you know, what, what clicked in your mind and what did you see in this?
Ryan Livesay (09:50):
What you saw out there was, was change. Again, as we talked about, right? This, this journey to cloud, the cloud now era that we live and breathe in every day pls only networks didn’t make sense. And you, you look at the journey that these customers have been on, they’ve added internet. When they add internet, they’ve gotta add security, right? And, you know, so you’ve got this, this multi-path architecture out there of some PLS networks with some internet, and you’ve added security and what’s it, what’s next? Well, SD-WAN, right? So you, you add this box in typically out there to provide a little bit more intelligence and past selection and certain things around that nature. So that was the journey for, for much of us. So I, prior to my tenure here, I’ve been with aryaka four years now, but prior to that I was with interface security, and we were very very retail focused, right?
Ryan Livesay (10:35):
Had some large 10 plus thousand retail accounts out there. And and MPLS was, was really never you know, it was, it was never consumed by those guys because they were so price sensitive out there. But but SD-WAN was, Hey, we want, we want the intelligence of making this this right path decision. So but we had to do it very price sensitive, and we were positioning Fortinet out there, right? And, and you look at Fortinet and what they’ve done around incorporating some next generation SD-WAN features into their their, their Fort Guard U t M solutions, and it fits the box, right? Or it checks the box. It, it fits the mold for a lot of customers and what they’re looking for in their next generation SD-WAN architecture, Aryaka, you, you know, it, we’re, we’re not apples to apples to a lot of those box based players out there.
Ryan Livesay (11:20):
So and we say that it’s not a price, it’s not a price only play that we position ourselves on around this core network consumption model. We’ve adapted to be more price sensitive. We’ve incorporated a layer three architecture into our flexcore fabric that gives us a, a still better than internet performance out there with tier one ISPs in those pops to egress the traffic out, similar to some of what we see in other, other Aryaka competitors. But, so we’ve had to evolve as well. But that’s ultimately I think you, you, you have to look at, at, you know, what are the right architecture is for these customers in their journey, right? What are the price points that they’re looking to achieve? And then from there, you guys, as trusted advisors, make those, those decisions on on what’s the right, right. Technology platform for them.
Josh Lupresto (12:03):
So let’s talk about challenges in the conversation. The, you know, we like to help the partners understand, you know, one, the tech stack, what it is, what it does, what it solves for, right? And we’re getting through some of that, but what about the, when I talk to my customers, how do I get them to understand if they need this, right? So maybe walk us through challenges you’re facing in these conversations with customers. How do they look at this? Do they look at it as a product they know they need? Are they trying to get justify roi? You know, walk us through the hard parts of these conversations with customers.
Ryan Livesay (12:35):
We probably in, you know, growing up in the, in the telecom era that we have, we probably haven’t done a great job at at really digging and probing into the application stack. And I think that’s ultimately the, the best advice that I can give today and the whole discovery process is really understanding these application flows. And from there you’re designing the right network architecture to support those, the right security posture to protect those applications. And I think that’s ultimately, again, as, as, as partners, as, as these trusted advisors of these clients, they’re looking for us to, to really understand their network and to understand their network. You need to understand the application flows. And when you understand those application flows and the pains associated with those application flows, now you’re building the right solution to fix those problems. So,
Josh Lupresto (13:22):
So you do you find it’s just then a okay, tell me about the application. How is it performing? Walk us through, you know, maybe you’re getting to that, what some of that uncover uncovered peel back stuff goes.
Ryan Livesay (13:33):
It is, right? And you know, again, this, so many of these applications, you know, when you look at, at, at SAPs, at Oracle instances, have they migrated these into the cloud? If they haven’t, how many tenants do they have? Where do these sit in terms of data centers? How close are these two the workers around potentially the world, you know? And the more you introduce, and as I mentioned, the separation between where that workload resides and where the user sits, typically, the more challenge there’s going to be, you’re introducing hot potato. If you’re building in, if you’re, you’re routing that type of application flow on an internet based architecture. You see hot potato out there, right? Where one carrier passes that traffic, do it, do a trace route and watch how these, these packets are handed off from one carrier to another. And when you’re doing so, you’re increasing latency, which those spikes in latency cause jitter, those jitter, the, the jitter brakes application flows.
Ryan Livesay (14:21):
So we really try to understand the application flows, right? Where that, where that tendency exists for the application, where the users reside. And from there we’re engineering the solution around how we’re, we’re fixing it. I’ll give you a a good example. We’ve got a customer, a prospect that we’re nearing the finish line on today. They’ve got a legacy Cisco call manager architecture, and they, they literally have to build a static route in their CloudGenix platform that that prohibits that I p t fell over into the public side, right? Because of, of where that call manager sits and, and that user. So they have to hard code that route to stay MPLS, regardless of what the intelligence and that sdwan platform says, Hey, we want, we think this is a better path. It, it doesn’t function right over the public side. So those are instances where we’ve engineered a combination of these SD-WAN treatments on our edge in addition to this layer two core to be able to honor those diffs serve tags no different than you have in an MPLS network for 15, 20 years. So understanding those problems around the applications and the challenges that they’ve got, that’s when ultimately I think you, you’ve, you’ve figured out, you’ve cracked the code on really what the best solution is to engineer for them.
Josh Lupresto (15:30):
And, and are you seeing, you know, with, with what you guys have evolved to from a convergence of, you know, when meets security and, and kind of ties all that together. Is it any vertical? Is there any certain types? You know, if I’m, if I’m a partner listening to this and I haven’t tackled a lot of business with you guys, and I want to jump in, where would you steer me? Or, or if I’ve got a hundred customers in my base and they’re all different verticals and sizes, what would you steer me to?
Ryan Livesay (15:55):
For us, you know, we look at our customer base right around the segments, and, and we’ve done a good job to really understand that and, and, and then focus our, our prospecting that, that whole b d r effort for us to control the platform, not just rely on a partner to say, bring us this opportunity, right? But hey, what can we do to go and drive activity within this specific right fit vertical for us? And then we end up introducing, we’ve got BDR specific to the channel. We’re handing some of these opportunities off to our partners. So, but we’ve done a really good job at stratify that and manufacturing, semiconductor biotech, pharma transportation, logistics, these types of industries for us are absolutely really, really good fits. And the reason why they’re really, really good fits is, again, typically they’re going to be globally distributed across the world.
Ryan Livesay (16:43):
So for us, you know, you look at the internet in the us right? Like I said, we’ve introduced this very cost effective solution in the US and and R L three flexcore solution is really real. I mean, it’s almost box based type of pricing for with, with a still middle mile that’s far better than the internet, but the internet does it break here in the us we we’re fortunate to have pretty darn good infrastructure here to where VPN can be feasible over the internet, go introduce global routes, and, and things are, are very, very different in, in how that internet’s gonna perform compared to a hundred milliseconds coast to coast, or less than a hundred milliseconds coast to coast here in the us. So those globally distributed enterprises for us, they’re, they’re slam dunk, right? Fits when you have a transformational cio. If you have somebody that’s just, that’s not in their driving chain, that’s not innovating, it’s, it’s not, you know, that’s just gonna do the status quo stuff. They’re never gonna embrace aryaka because we’re so different in that respect. So, but that’s really, those are the, you know, there’s five, six verticals that we just, we have tremendous amount of success in.
Josh Lupresto (17:46):
Love it. Okay. one, one thing before we get to, I, I wanna go through a more recent example, right? Somebody that you saw a massive transformation into, we’ll get to that. But is, is there anything you want to call out right, from a specific integrations or anywhere that you excel at maybe open up a little bit of vi visibility to kind of what’s in the stack, what you can integrate with? Maybe just walk people through just a couple pieces of, oh, well, we’d love to integrate with this technology, or we have some of this core architecture in the background. Anything you wanna call out just to make people aware in case they’re not aware of what’s behind the scenes a little bit?
Ryan Livesay (18:20):
Sure. Absolutely. No, great question. Again, I hammered, you know, kind of the whole network piece of it. So for us that’s, you know, that’s where it starts. That foundation is the foundation and this physical pop based architecture to, to be able to participate in Equinix, fabric provision, express routes and direct connects and all that. Make it really clean and easy at the network layer. That’s one thing. Security, we haven’t really talked about security. So this whole SASE journey, what, what’s unique and different about Aryaka and, and, and twofold. One, we have this best breed approach plus this unified SASE solution. So we’re fully committed to developing all of our own IP around, you know, and you’ve seen the SEC cloud acquisition and that that that German team that we’ve acquired to help us develop this security stack and, and unify it into what is that core DNA of Aryaka making these security decisions literally in the same stack, so doesn’t require that hair pin, but we’ve also productized and supported this best of breed approach.
Ryan Livesay (19:14):
So partnerships with the likes of Checkpoint to be able to fully commercialize their solutions, both for Harmony Connect, which is the cloud side plus quantum edge, which is virtualizing their, their next gen firewall on our INAP stack. If that type of security posture makes sense for companies, we’re capable of doing that. If you’re a Palo shop today, we’ve got full IOP certification to be able to support a virtual machine Palo on the aaps and, and actually even manage that. We’ve got expertise inhouse to be able to provide us with co-management access to your Panorama instance. Let us take some of that responsibility off your plate. So these are the, you don’t see that often, right? Where there’s a combination of best of breed and will work completely with those cloud architectures like Zscaler, Symantec will be able to tunnel securely off our boxes into those cloud platforms plus Palo and Checkpoint that I mentioned, in addition to then this, this committed journey that we’re on to develop these best in class security solutions with our own ip. So that ultimately, I think is a big differentiator versus forcing you to say, here, you have to consume, if you want us, you have to consume our security stack.
Josh Lupresto (20:19):
Love it. And that is the value of SASE and a global backbone. Awesome stuff. Okay. All right, wrap us as we get to the last couple parts here. Walk us through a, a kind of transformational example. You know, you brought up a really good point, right? A transformational CIO absolutely makes the difference in helping people see how to take a company into the future. But walk us through an example, something that you got pulled into. Did it look like once you got in there, what it was originally described to you as what kind of tech stack did they have or what kind of problems did they have? And then what did you put in place and how did it fix it all?
Ryan Livesay (20:54):
When you, when I say transformational, right? And, and the contrary can be probably an operational CO, but that transformational c i o when we get in there and start doing discovery again, you guys are, are often the sound boards for, for these opportunities and whether we’re right fit. So some of this is very well qualified by the time it ever hits our plate in, in a, in a qualified lead. So but that, that transformational c i o what he what what questions we’re gonna ask is, is where you’re at in, in your, in your journey to cloud and, and understand their what’s the end state really ultimately look like for them? And when we hear we’re done, we’re done with MPLS, right? We’re gonna cut the cord on that. And we get through our story. We, we have literally 30 minutes to just do a high level overview of Aryaka and talk through those differentiators.
Ryan Livesay (21:41):
You see these light bulbs go on. And again, my four years that I’ve been here, I can literally it’s probably gonna take my hands and toes to count the times with VPs? Even the, the CIO levels that have said, had no idea anything like this existed, John. And and it’s not that we know we’re gonna win that business at that point, right? But we’ve, we’ve got a, we’ve got a, a, a deal we’ve gotta fish on. And, and it takes, you know, months and months of journey to secure that business. But, but ultimately that that commitment to cutting the cord on MPLS is, is, is first and foremost. And then also understanding again, what’s that security posture look like? So it’s not often that day one, we’re in there with InfoSec, but InfoSec nonetheless, it’s always gonna have a seat at the table nowadays.
Ryan Livesay (22:24):
So, you know, are they, are they one, one organization? Ultimately you have a CIO and a CISO in many cases, but they have truly unified and, and are now sitting and collaborating more than probably ever before because of this convergence that we see out there. And again, on this journey to cloud, where, where do we want these security decisions to be made at? So for us, the, the real world example that I can give you is, is, you know, there was a, an awesome success story of a cio. Actually he was VP of emra, but he was with a global manufacturing company, about 110 sites. And they were, not only were they still in acquisition mode, but they were also in divestiture mode. So you have this, this company that’s growing, but also selling at same time, right? These strategic assets that may or may not make sense with, with the direction that they’re on, but he was committed a hundred percent to transforming the MPLS network.
Ryan Livesay (23:12):
And they were, they already had some internet circuits out there. They mentioned, you know, I mentioned the, the the firewalls and the, the SD-WAN appliances that weren’t working, that they knew were not the right platform for the in-state, that they wanted to go to security all over the place, literally all over the place. From Sonic Walls to some WatchGuards here, to some Forex here, to some ASAs here to, it was an absolute mess. And the solution that we engineered in there was, again, this middle mile core network solution. It, it’s very easy to consume with site licenses and core subscription. We give these guys the flexibility to move subscription around across the world where they, where they want to. We obviously tied into that infrastructure as a service model, building express route, and direct connect into their AWS and Azure instances. And and then security.
Ryan Livesay (23:56):
We standardized. We, we ended up establishing a consistent security policy virtualizing a checkpoint architecture for them as NextGen security today. We built VPN licenses for every one of those. Now, incredibly relevant hybrid workers, right? As we know that user application experience, whether you’re sitting in an office or or, or often your home environment somewhere, they’re looking for it to basically build that consistent experience. So we had to build a VPN architecture. We do that over our private layer two core network, and then you also wanna make those securities decisions for browsers on corporate issued devices. So building in that secure web gateway is part of the architecture that was the end state. And I think it’s important to note that that is often what you see today. It’s this combination. It’s not a hundred percent cloud security, and it doesn’t have to be bold. Yeah, it can be a combination of cloud security, plus you still want to take a, a complete north, south, east, west preventative call, you know, measure on, on how you’re protecting those branch architectures. It doesn’t have to be bolt. And I think that’s an important note to make.
Josh Lupresto (24:55):
Good, great stuff. It’s really good visibility into it. All right, so, so as we wrap this up here let’s, let’s say now I’m a partner. I’m stoked. I want to go sell this. I’ve got customers in my base, they’re global, they’re backbone. I I think you led into some of this already in a, in a really good way about peeling back the onion on application performance. Any other final questions that you would give partners who maybe haven’t ventured into this? Maybe they’re in cx, maybe they’re in cloud infrastructure sales, maybe they’re somewhere different. They’re not comfortable selling this yet. Obviously they know they’ve got our engineering team and your engineering team to kind of help them. But what’s the question said or what would you tell the partners of how to approach their customers with this talk track?
Ryan Livesay (25:38):
Great question. And, and that example that I just gave the VP of enf, r a is now promoted to senior vice president that was 110 sites. He’s now senior vice president and of a company that’s 500 sites. And his solution, I mentioned earlier, we’ve had these CIOs that have taken this architecture with him everywhere. The senior VP of infra is literally on a rinse and repeat schedule with that same transformation execution that he just made on that, on that company. And, and he’s pulling us along with him. So you know, for these partners that haven’t sold this thing again, if you’d like to, to ever speak with a partner that has, and you know, I’m gonna put y’all, put you on the phone with somebody that literally overnight has and will take this SD-WAN, this Aryaka SD-WAN solution anywhere with them in their career.
Ryan Livesay (26:30):
We have had that reputation of white glove best in class customer experience and partner experience for so many years. And, and that hasn’t wavered in terms of our commitment to to, to execution. So we’re, we’re fortunate to have a, an executive leadership team that is willing to make whatever investments that, that are necessary in, in our customer experience. So at the end of the day, you have to, you have to trust the ability for our solutions to perform for your customers and, and support their transformation agendas at the end of the day to reach that instate. That’s, that’s critical for everybody to get to. And, and that’s really where we shine. Don’t have to look much past Gartner peer insights. You know, we don’t fit perfectly well into WAN edge, right? Because again, there’s so much of this intelligence that sits in the core for us, Gartner is basically said, yeah, you guys don’t fit in this little SD-WAN box, right?
Ryan Livesay (27:24):
Because there’s so much more here that we can’t take into consideration. Cause we’re evaluating only this edge based architecture. But look at us in, in peer insights, peer insights is, is literally that’s what the customers are saying, not what the analysts are saying. It’s what the customers are saying. And for the last three years running across every region, Europe, Asia, and the us, we’ve won these voices of the customer awards and we’re not paying any customer to write reviews on Aryaka. So there’s a true white glove fanatical approach to execution across that lifecycle journey from literally day one project management provisioning to what does this look like at the end state for these customers and how they’re consuming us. So, love it, love it. Give us a chance.
Josh Lupresto (28:04):
Find global, find multinational, ask about the application, and you will probably find an Aryaka opportunity. Love it. Okay, Ryan, final thoughts. Get your crystal ball out. Let’s look out 12 months, 18 months. Do we choose option? No, let’s call it door A. Do we choose door A, which is listen to everything that you just told us in the last 30 minutes and go do that. Or do we choose door B, which is, do all of that and consider what you think might be changing in the next 12 to 18 months. Any, any thoughts on Ryan’s crystal ball? Does anything change tech stack, customer stack? What do you think? Your humble opinion
Ryan Livesay (28:46):
Again, it’s with what we saw in the pandemic digital transformation accelerated probably where we thought it might be five years from now, right? But so that 18 month window, we’re gonna continue to see that accelerated digital transformation. And by digital transformation, again, really just we look at what’s happening with this shift in the application and the applications from some data center to the cloud. I think what’s an interesting point to make though is, is we might even see a call back, right? And by that I mean consumption on this infrastructure side. While it was really sexy on paper for a lot of companies, because of that transitional shift from capital expenditures and how you manage and operate data centers to this operational work, we’ve seen customers that have have called back saying, we’re we’re gonna have to go dump $2 million back into these data centers because it’s gotten completely outta control with how much consumption we’ve got on this cloud platform.
Ryan Livesay (29:46):
So CFOs are looking to to, to CIOs to change and, and you know, and, and IT execs are basically saying, well, well, we’re gonna have to go back to where we were. Well then that’s just a model that’s gonna be more, more extendable to us in, in how we’re consuming. So as much as we know that journey to cloud probably won’t slow, particularly around the SaaS adoption things, I think the infrastructure will begin to, to settle a bit. So with that is things going to are, will, will, will we continue to see the security more in the cloud? It is my belief and opinion, yes. I think that it’s going to make sense around CASB solutions, right? Around secure web gateway architectures for these workers, whether they’re in an office or in their home. So I don’t think, I think the cloud security piece and SASE adoption will continue to accelerate, but I think on the infrastructure side, we’re gonna continue to see a shift probably a little bit back, particularly where the spins have just accelerated to a point that it’s a problem. So that’s my my opinion of where we’re
Josh Lupresto (30:47):
Love it. All right. And we’re gonna leave it at that. Ryan, you dropped a lot of knowledge on this. I’m gonna have to go back and listen to this a couple times. This is good stuff. Appreciate you coming on, man.
Ryan Livesay (30:56):
You bet. Thanks for having me, Josh. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for the partnerships.
Josh Lupresto (31:00):
Hey, you bet. All right, everybody wraps us up for today. We got Ryan Livesay, SVP of Solution Engineering, aka I’m your host, Josh, Lupresto SVP of engineering at Telarus. This is Next Level BizTech. Till next time.