Ep. 174 Azure at the Edge, IBM in the Basement, and Databases Everywhere. What are the signals to change? with Paul Croteau
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Josh Lupresto (00:01)
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus and this is Next Level Biz Tech.
Everybody welcome back. We got some hot topics for you today. We’re talking about Azure at the edge IBM in the basement and databases everywhere on with us today. We got Paul Croteau from TierPoint National Channel director. Good to see on buddy welcome.
Paul Croteau (00:32)
And always good to chat with you, Josh. Good to be back.
Josh Lupresto (00:35)
It is true. is good to be back. It’s been a little while. ⁓
Paul Croteau (00:37)
Yeah, it has. know,
I bounced around a bit, done some things, different roles, but I always love engaging with you and the entire team.
Josh Lupresto (00:44)
I love it. Let’s jump in, man. mean, let’s maybe start, it was so long ago, let’s start with your background, kind of your journey. There’s maybe some clues to it in the background for anybody watching this on video, but talk us to us about your journey, how you got here, and kind of what your role is now.
Paul Croteau (01:02)
Well, first the earth cooled. No. So, yeah, I’ve got a unique journey. ⁓ I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. ⁓ you know, I’ve been in the IT space since the early nineties. I started my career at Anderson consulting, back before it was called Accenture. that’s where I got my initial foundation in, ⁓ enterprise systems and large scale infrastructure from really cool stuff. They are supporting the sales team in Las Clinas, just north of Dallas. That
job led me to getting my MBA full time at Texas A &M in the mid 90s. Kind of the life altering phrase that the associate partner told me. I’d worked in there for two and a half years. I was a contractor there and they loved my work. I was very good at what I did. And I said, Hey Bill, you know, why haven’t you guys hired me full time? I’ve obviously proven myself two and a half years. You’ve had me around and he looked at me in the square, square in the face.
And he said, Paul, I’ll be honest with you. You’ve got a music degree. You might as well have a criminal record on your resume as far as Anderson is concerned. I mean, that took me back just a little. Now think about it. Cause in the eighties, it was all about creative thinking out of the box. We want creative liberal arts folks and music majors and artists. This is early nineties where greed is good, Gordon Gekko. And so Anderson was Anderson. And he said like, we just, it’s not going to fit our requirements. I said, well, what can I do to fix that? I love working here.
Josh Lupresto (02:10)
Yeah.
Paul Croteau (02:26)
He says, well, maybe if you got your MBA, that would certainly be something worth talking about. So I committed full-time. said, great. So, ⁓ quit Anderson. My wife quit her teaching job. We moved to college station. I was full-time student for two years. ⁓ now the timing of all this is really interesting because I got there in 94. what happened in 95 Netscape IPO in August of 95. And that’s largely what most folks consider the.com boom. And I recognized.
right away. ⁓ this is different. This is a paradigm shift, a cultural shift is going to change the world. And so while studying organizational behavior and, and, marketing, my degree was in services and marketing, ⁓ accounting, which I was horrible at. And, ⁓ I was learning HTML and expanding my, my graphic arts skills. Cause I had done some freelance work as a graphic artist. So I learned how to build web pages. My first resume during grad school was online and HTML with graphics. And so
I got my MBA, I graduated from Texas AIM in 1996 and I got a full-time job at EDS in Plano, Texas, north of Dallas as a webmaster. So now I’m diving into data center support and deploying things, cutting my hands on the rails in Iraq, rack and stack and cabling, swapping out gear, et cetera, supporting operating systems. Very, very interesting time during the dot com boom. Then I left EDS. EDS was kind of slowly adopting technology.
I was with a group within EDS called C2O, stood for Chaos to Order. We’re about a 600 person team at the time, led by Butch Winters out of San Francisco. And ⁓ after a couple of years in a row of the Global Operations Council, EDS, not really recognizing the paradigm shift, basically the entire division said, we’re out of here and we all exploded to different .com startups. I went to a company called Data Return. ⁓ They were an early innovator in what we can call the cloud today. They were the first
Microsoft hosting partner of the year that ever existed. We were really, strong in the Microsoft side. then as we were growing, I decided I, I’ve been an se for a long time. I want to go into sales where they make the big money. And so I willingly left data return to take on a data center sales role at SBC before it became a TNT right before the.com bust. going to engineering role, we all know engineers are pretty much protected, ⁓ hard to find. they do well.
Josh Lupresto (04:37)
yeah.
Yeah!
Paul Croteau (04:46)
And I went to sales and then boom, dotcom bust happened. Um, that was not good timing on my part. It was an interesting time in the world for folks in technology sales. Um, but eventually that led to me being hired at rack space, uh, where I was for 15 years on and off. was there for a long time left rack space, acquired a company I went to and bought me back. Um, and that’s where I kind of got introduced into the channel. So I was an se enterprise se, um, at rack space. And then I got involved in channel about 20.
2016, 2017, eventually became their channel CTO, their channel field CTO. And so it was neat to learn about the channel and learning how the process works, the relationships, what the sellers out in channel are used to doing, how they sell, the various types of sales that there are, selling styles, relationships, et cetera. So that channel world was new to me and I love it. I’ve been involved in channel for roughly 10 years now.
And I love it. And I’ve established a reputation as a go-to resource to help folks solve problems. ⁓ I love working with partners. And today, National Channel Director at TierPoint. So all my history from as an engineer, as a salesperson, as a channel field CTO, et cetera, has really formed my current resume. I think I’m in probably the best, most logical spot right now ⁓ at TierPoint managing the relationships with my TSDs.
Um, it’s been great. I’ve got a lot of great experience and I tend to take things from a different perspective than a lot of folks. try to keep it entertaining. Obviously I speak quickly. I need to slow down. I recognize that. Um, but I try to help people sell and succeed and that comes with solving customer problems. And I think we’ll probably talk about that a little bit in this episode here.
Josh Lupresto (06:33)
Okay, I love this background, but we’re gonna get into projects, products here in just a second, but I can’t help but, know, obviously for anybody not on the video side, there’s a guitar in the background, there’s a saxophone or two in the background and some other things. What’s the, in your opinion, I see a good correlation between those in music and those in tech.
There seems to be a vested interest into both. Why? Why does someone excel? What is it about, in your perspective, right? You got a lot more experience and education here. What’s the catch?
Paul Croteau (07:02)
Yes.
Yeah, it’s a common question. And ⁓ I see tons of musicians in tech. This wall is my conversation starter wall. I have this up on purpose. It’s to break the ice with people I don’t know. And you always find folks, I was in band in high school. I play guitar. I write songs. The brain, people think right side and left side, but it’s more complicated than that. There’s front, there’s different lobes, et cetera. Music is math. It’s history. It’s language. It’s science. It’s a lot of different things. Object oriented programming.
And music are very, similar as far as how things group together, the relationships, et cetera. I think there’s just music is technical. It’s complex. Um, and, and I think people that are musically inclined easily pick up on, on technical concepts. My son was a saxophone player like me. He just graduated college a couple of weeks ago as a software developer. He’s got a job lined up starting next month. It took to him. got, he got deep into coding much better than me and it just clicked. But I think the musical brain and the programming technical side of how things are organized and communicate are very, similar.
Josh Lupresto (08:13)
I love it. All right. Okay, so let’s get into a quick primer on who TierPoint is, right? Longtime supplier of Tularis, but for anybody that’s not familiar, just give us the broad brushstrokes, who you are, where you differentiate, and then we’ll dive into a couple specific products here.
Paul Croteau (08:14)
Yeah.
That sounds great. So in a nutshell, know, TierPoint is a leading provider of hybrid IT solutions. We’re not putting you in a box. We’re the hybrid IT solution provider, which means that we’re helping companies design, deploy, manage, right scale, the right mix of public cloud, private cloud, co-location, managed services on top of that, plus some other managed services that we’ll get into. We operate in about 40, a little more than 40
US-based data centers. All of our support is US-based as well. We’re trusted by thousands of clients, several thousand clients across the mid-market and enterprise space. ⁓ But I think what makes us different, if all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, we’ve got a full toolkit. We’re not just trying to force you into a specific technology. We have a full portfolio. So we can help customers figure out where the workloads should be, where should the data be, who should be
taking care of the workloads and supporting it and running the data, et cetera. It’s about meeting clients where they are on their cloud journey. One of the ways I like to look at it, know, to your point, more of a real world cloud partner. We understand that not, know, companies are not just all in cloud or they’re not just all on-prem. They live in between. And so that’s kind of where we shine because we can do the on-prem, we can do the CODA, we can do the public cloud.
the private cloud and VMware, the hybrid solutions of cloud plus hardware plus colo, et cetera. ⁓ What makes us different, I guess, is our ability to ⁓ blend cutting edge new technologies with traditional technologies, fantastic consulting professional services. ⁓ We’re not trying to be everything to everyone. We’re trying to be the right partner, helping people and clients, businesses solve the right problems instead of just pushing.
products at them.
Josh Lupresto (10:27)
Awesome. Okay, before we get into products, I’ve got one last question here. So you’ve had this kind of awesome, always seems like you’re at the right time of paying attention to what’s next, where things are going. So as you look back over this career path, what’s a lesson that you’ve learned either from a mistake made, a great mentor, a tough customer, and anything that kind of approaches how you, or changes how you approach things now?
Paul Croteau (10:39)
Yeah.
There’s a lot of ways to answer that. A full sales funnel solves lots of problems in the sales process, but that’s kind of an interesting answer. think focusing on business outcomes is something that not enough people do. As engineers, we want to show our technical muscle and say, look, I got this great skill set. got, know how to do this thing. I can deploy it faster and leaner and et cetera. Make this great IT solution.
But the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that technology design has to start with the business outcomes. What are we shooting for? regarding the sales funnel comment I made, sometimes sellers, the funnel’s not as full as they like. And so they get a lead or an interested client and the client says, I need this. And the seller will rush to quote that for them without asking the why. And sometimes sellers get frustrated when providers like us ask, hey, can we…
Get with your client. We want to know the why, understand the context of this decision. Because a lot of times, ⁓ sellers and providers will get into this lift and shift loop where, OK, I’m just going take what they’ve got. They’re asking for this. It’s an RFP or it’s a quote. I got to match a quote. And let’s do your mess for less somewhere else. Can you get me a better price on this stuff? And you get into this bake-off of replicating the same problems in a new environment. That’s the your less for mess.
But I think when you start focusing on the, you know, what’s driving this need, you, you asked for this connectivity. You asked, you’re adding another a hundred mailboxes or you’re adding a couple of circuits or you’re adding a new location. What’s the why behind this? Help me understand the context because most likely you’re going to find business reasons to say, Hey, there’s a lot more we can talk about. Yeah. You’re adding three office locations now and you need those circuits and you need some hardware in each location for wifi or whatever. But.
you’re growing. So what does that mean from a back office perspective? Maybe you were involved in a merger and now you’ve got redundant email systems and redundant Salesforce instances and redundant IT infrastructure that needs to be optimized and consolidated. So when you get to the why versus the get it done, here’s the quote kind of situation, ⁓ you can be far more successful as a seller, provide more value to your clients, ⁓ but you’ve got to get your partners involved earlier in the sales process.
If possible at end of the day, ⁓ we’re not just trying to win deals. We’re trying to help customers make the right decisions, get them the positive customer outcomes that will serve them now as well as the future. When you ask the why you uncover new business units and new potential ways to help the client down the road.
Josh Lupresto (13:34)
So let’s shift gears, let’s go products here. So ⁓ years ago we saw AWS come out with a product that said, you know, okay, maybe you don’t need all infrastructure in the cloud. Maybe you like our stack, but you want to put it on-prem. It’s crazy idea, but brilliant for customers where they need that equipment there, right? AWS calls this Outposts. ⁓ You guys are a big Azure shop. And so this product has come out called Azure Local, where now
You know, Microsoft seems to have a great rise ⁓ in the market just because of multiple different reasons, right? Licensing is just kind of that anchor. So talk to us about the edge of the cloud from an Azure perspective, this product called Azure Local. So you guys have a unique play with this regard to hybrid. So first of all, what is Azure Local in your words and what’s the problem that it solves?
Paul Croteau (14:28)
Sure. Short answer is Azure Local brings public cloud capabilities to the actual location where clients want it, whether it’s on their prim, could be in a COLA facility, it could actually be in a competitor data center for all that we care. We’re going to manage it for them. It’s tier points answer to a gap in the hybrid cloud space bringing Azure services, the fantastic services. It used to be called Azure Stack and then like late last year, they changed it to Azure Local. Microsoft is known to change names and words every now and then.
Josh Lupresto (14:55)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Croteau (14:57)
But we can run it anywhere and we are kind of the way in the channel. We’ve got very strong Azure expertise. We’re also good at AWS as well. But in a nutshell, it’s hyperconverged, that’s hard to say for me, infrastructure, we’re running on the, what’s it, Apex, AI, AIOps platform. It’s like an umbrella of AI technologies. And then you interface with it via Azure Arc, which is, I don’t like to say single pane of glass, but it’s a single platform.
We can access it plus a bunch of other stuff, and we’re really, really good at that, integrating clients’ other systems with Azure Local. It’s one of the benefits that Azure Arc gives us, that single plane of glass, that single platform placed to manage all the IT. As a managed service provider, we generally prefer to provide that management for our clients. They get the same API, the same code base, etc. But with it being local, getting lower latency, better control, more access to our support.
Now, why would ⁓ someone want to do this? Maybe they’re tired of the egress ⁓ fees coming out of cloud. There’s a big wave the past year or two of data repatriation. ⁓ People getting their stuff out of the cloud and putting it local or on the edge. And so sometimes it’s ⁓ about protecting data for ⁓ data sovereignty. Sometimes it’s copyright or PII information. There’s a famous case a couple of years ago now, I guess, of a movie studio. ⁓
A movie trailer got leaked out because it was on public cloud and someone didn’t set up the ACLs properly and it got leaked out. So if you want to control your proprietary content, a big thing in the entertainment industry, you want that stuff on-prem. Could be the same for medical data, for private research data, Department of Defense stuff. Having the cloud functionality, what is cloud? It’s the ability to add and turn off resources when you need and don’t need them. Instant scalability, paying for what you use, et cetera, but it’s on-prem or in…
know, colo versus some other facility that you can’t get to. So whether it’s about, you know, performance or compliance or cost control, it basically brings the public cloud computing capabilities to the location our clients want them, where they, or at least where we think it’s best to put them.
Josh Lupresto (17:08)
Yeah,
well, and it seems like there’s a couple other benefits here. It seems also, you know, there’s a nice local survivability benefit to this as well. You’re not having to get into this idea of capexing the infrastructure if you don’t want to. It’s all an opex. And I guess, can you, when you get into these conversations with customers and you think about, you know, we’re talking about we’re super flexible, we’re tier point, it’s hybrid, what do you need? Do you need all hyperscaler? Do you need private cloud? Do you need local?
Are you finding that you’re having to bring up, by the way, we can do this with Azure, or is it a certain segment of customers that go, this is really advantageous in manufacturing or retail? Where are you seeing that that plays the best?
Paul Croteau (17:52)
Well, the cloud functionality is the utility of compute, memory and storage, cetera. it’s getting back to the business conversation. Why are you using cloud today? What made you go there? Why do you want to leave it, et cetera? Where are your workloads? Where should they be? Why? And then let’s get them there. ⁓ It’s industry agnostic, it’s client size agnostic. ⁓ So we end up trying to steer conversation with our clients back to the why, asking five why’s if necessary.
⁓ What are you trying to accomplish? What do you want to do today? Bigger picture. What do you want to do today and what’s keeping you from doing that? You’re not doing it, well why aren’t you doing that? And that’s a whole separate conversation we can talk about as the questions to ask. ⁓ But it gets away from technology. Stop selling things and start talking business, consulting, solving problems and helping them grow and scale, et cetera.
Josh Lupresto (18:45)
Are you finding that on the Azure local thing, are you this idea that, I think there’s a lot of people that don’t even know that this exists from a customer side. Are you finding that you’re having to bring up this idea of, we could do Azure local as part of the equation as well, or are customers, are they aware of it? That’s even an option.
Paul Croteau (19:01)
Yeah, that’s going to come up during sales
calls. know, people don’t know that you can put cloud in your own place, you know? ⁓ so yeah. So when they hear that, like, I didn’t know I could do that. And that’s one of the best things you can hear during your sales calls. I didn’t know you did that. That’s, that’s, that’s a, ⁓ a buying signal. It’s a great sign that you’ve, you’ve, ⁓ it’s a challenge. If you’re familiar with a challenger sale, ⁓ it challenges their way of thinking. So yeah, we do bring it up because a of folks don’t realize, you know, it’s possible.
Josh Lupresto (19:11)
yeah.
All right, let’s go to product number two here on the list. Let’s talk about database as a service. I mean, database, no secret, right? It’s at the core of everything. Everything lives and breathes in some version of a database. So the hyperscalers, there’s a lot of cloud databases out there if people want to DIY this. But first of all, just walk us through, we see this coming up a lot more in conversations and there is not very many people that do this in the channel. So you guys have such an awesome niche here.
How does the TierPoint database as a service, how does it stand out from a customer trying to do it themselves or some of these other hyperscaler options?
Paul Croteau (20:06)
The DIY thing is applicable to every facet of technology, especially in database. Database is a lifeblood. It’s today’s gold, it’s today’s oil, it’s today’s Bitcoin, whatever you want to call it. It’s today’s thing. Without data, businesses don’t exist. ⁓ so it relates to customer experience. I you go shopping at your favorite e-commerce site and they’re making recommendations based on past visits. Social media is pinging you with ads based on the words you say when you’re not even using your dang device.
Why am I getting ads for fake grass now? Cause my yard’s dead. I must’ve said that near my phone or I must’ve tweeted about it or something. ⁓ The data is gold and analyzing, protecting and monetizing that data are very, very important, but doing it yourself is difficult. A lot of times this gets to a staffing issue. Clients and businesses can’t properly staff their teams. DBAs are smart and expensive. And if you overwork them, like any person, they’re going to…
find work elsewhere. So we help customers. We step in and say, well, OK, where’s your data? What are you doing today? What database platforms is it? Is SQL? Is Oracle? it MySQL, et cetera? Let us take the grunt work away from you. Let’s handle the patching, the maintenance, the performance, the tweaking, backups, HA, the tuning. Let us focus on that stuff so your DBAs can focus on the more fun brain work of, hey, let’s analyze that data. Let’s optimize it and monetize it.
A lot of times we’ll find, we’ll be talking to clients and the conversation wasn’t originally about databases. They came to us saying, Hey, we’ve got an app latency issue. And they think maybe it’s the network, maybe it’s DNS because it’s always DNS, but it’s always DNS. ⁓ but they probably have problem with the apps. Well, Hey, we do a quick, know, proof of concept or an assessment and we realized, no, you got a problem with your database query structure, your database layout. can optimize this for you. I had no idea. So.
Josh Lupresto (21:46)
Always DNS, man.
Paul Croteau (22:02)
optimizing databases, tweaking database queries and things of that sort they didn’t think about because they’re so busy patching it and keeping up online, et cetera. They don’t have time to kind of think that way. So in the hyperscalers, you’re kind of boxed into a single cloud database option. You can’t really do a lot creatively. They perform wonderfully, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing. And it’s difficult for companies to hire the quantity of quality resources needed to get the most out of a team.
And so we can step in with a fantastic team of engineers, cloud engineers, DBAs, et cetera, and use our scale, our 24-7 abilities to come in and help clients get the most out of that data.
Josh Lupresto (22:44)
is you mentioned a couple of from a database perspective, right? As partners are out there listening and talking to customers and hearing the pain points and things they’re trying to accomplish. ⁓ Is it MySQL? Is it Oracle? Is it a bigger list? Is it five databases? Is it two databases? Just any other names you want us to know? Yeah, yeah.
Paul Croteau (23:03)
As far as what we, as what we support
SQL, Oracle, ⁓ MySQL, Postgres, and of course the cloud versions in Amazon and, ⁓ Azure as well. We’re not, we’re not in the Google space. We don’t play that space. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Josh Lupresto (23:15)
the Auroras and all of those. Awesome.
Beautiful. ⁓ Great trigger points, great pain points. ⁓ If you’re gonna give a partner, I think this is such a great, very, very unique wedge offering. What’s your favorite one, two questions? If the customer’s like, yeah, we got some infrastructure projects. And if you wanna try to see if there’s any database needs in there, what’s Paul’s favorite one or two questions to kind of expose that a little bit?
Paul Croteau (23:24)
Hmm.
Yeah.
around databases specifically? ⁓ Just asking questions, how are your apps performing? Are your clients complaining about any latency issues? Are you seeing bad data come in? Are you seeing transactions failing in the e-commerce side of the platform? ⁓ Do you have problems backing up your data? Are you properly packing up your data? Is your data secure? Are you sure? ⁓ Have you tested your backup and restore of your data? ⁓
Josh Lupresto (23:44)
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Croteau (24:12)
So it’s just asking performance questions. this is one of my things that not a lot of folks talk about. I, again, like to focus on staffing questions. How is your team staffed from a database perspective? For example, is there someone on your IT team, maybe specifically on databases, that if they left or quit or were fired, their absence or departure would wreak havoc on your internal capabilities. It would create chaos on the team because of the tribal knowledge of the things that they know. They know where the bodies are buried. They know the passwords. They know the code. ⁓
Josh Lupresto (24:21)
Yeah.
Paul Croteau (24:42)
Are there any staffing concerns? Do you think you’re properly staffed to handle your current and future data state? Would you be able to handle a spike in interest? What if someone mentioned your product and it went viral? Could your database handle that? ⁓ What if someone did a TikTok or an Instagram post and suddenly they want to buy a lot of your stuff? You have the capacity. Do you know? Are you sure? Is it secure? Are you sure? ⁓ So just creating some kind of uncertainty, asking, you have the people? Do have the skills? Do you think you can scale? Are you sure? Really?
So that’s kind of the approach I like to take.
Josh Lupresto (25:14)
I like that. I databases really are a, mean, scaling compute, ⁓ you know, horizontally is tricky, vertical is tricky. I databases are a science within a science from a scale perspective. I mean, that is a, that’s a PhD within its own. And I love your point of who does that for you? ⁓ Timmy over here. Does it just Timmy? Well, what does Timmy take vacations? Does Timmy, you know,
Paul Croteau (25:41)
Yeah. And Timmy is really a
VMware expert that just did the database stuff because we didn’t have anybody, you know, that gets into the whole concept. mean, around staffing, I said this all the time, but I think it bears repeating. If you have a mission critical business function that has to be up 24 seven, it’s part of your business. you’re a global economy, your e-commerce site has to be up 24 seven. If you’re in the medical industry and know, 911 services or medical monitoring or, or video or security monitoring that can’t not be on it has to be.
Josh Lupresto (25:44)
Yeah. Cause he, yeah. ⁓
Paul Croteau (26:09)
Always on, um, for every single technology that you want covered 24 seven, one person is not going to cut it. Two people on your staff is not going to cut it. need six. Why do you need six? Paul first, second, third shift, Monday through Friday, first, second, third shift on the weekends. That’s six. Now you should have a seventh because people get sick. They go on vacation, they go to clients, they have training, et cetera. So ideally seven and a lot of, I’ve been saying this thing for literally for 10 years, a lot of
clients, especially in the smaller space, will say, no, we got Timmy. He’s got a smartphone. We can reach you anytime. Well, Timmy’s going to want to go to the baseball game with his kid on Saturday. And how did this happen when they happened, not when you want them to happen? So Timmy needs a backup. Maybe Timmy’s got Sally, but maybe Sally’s got something going on that weekend because it was her weekend to do XYZ. ⁓ You don’t have six folks. And that’s just the database side, for example. But you need networking, operating systems, cybersecurity.
Public cloud, all these, before you know it, six times six is 36. That’s the math right there. You need a full staff of IT folks to properly support every facet of your business. And that just isn’t possible for many, if not most, businesses out there. That’s why you leverage a company like a TierPoint. It has the 24-7 staffing, the 24-7 monitoring, where folks can come in and provide the expertise when you need it, not just when you can deliver it.
Josh Lupresto (27:31)
Let’s go final product here. Did a little bit of research on this before. So we’re going to talk about IBM. You think, oh my gosh, it’s 2025. How are we talking about IBM? What’s the talk track there? I titled this section, The Forgotten Giant. And so I looked at this and I found two kind of varying answers on this. On the low side, there’s 50,000 AS400s still in use. On the high side, 80 to 100,000.
Paul Croteau (27:36)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Josh Lupresto (27:59)
AS400s still in use. So we know clearly in 2025, IBM workloads, they’re still everywhere, but it’s just not a conversation that comes up a lot. But when it does, I mean, walk us through, in your opinion, what’s the state of IBM and the enterprise and where do you guys play here helping modernize and maintain?
Paul Croteau (28:00)
Yeah.
Well, as the saying has been for decades, no one ever got fired for hiring IBM. Um, they are legendary for a reason. Um, you can set tens of thousands of them out there, close to a hundred thousands. And they’re incredibly important information systems across financial, you know, banking, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and travel. Um, it’s incredibly, it’s a vital component. It’s a national treasure. Um, and they’re still in place because they run, they don’t break. They’re very, very robust.
The issue is that in the rush to modernize, got to go to the cloud and got to virtualize and got to do AI. Well, these IBM workloads, they get left behind not because they’re irrelevant. They are very relevant, but it’s because they’re very specialized, they’re complex, and they’re not really well understood by the younger generation of cloud native architects. mean, back in the day, I’m old enough to be involved in the year 2K, the Y2K problem, where it was going to end and,
January 1 to 2000, people were on call. We had to call COBOL programmers out of retirement back then to be around to take a look at code. Well, here we are 25 years later, literally, and IBM is still a thing. COBOL is still a thing. AS400 is still a thing. ⁓ It’s very, very relevant. Folks just don’t mess with it because it works. ⁓ But there are problems. For example, Power 8 series IBM servers are very pervasive in society. They went end of support.
end of last year, if not earlier. Meaning no more patches, no more support from IBM, and that’s Power 8. Power 9 replaced it. Power 9 goes end of support in January of next year. So another eight months or so from now or less. That means Power 10’s coming out, and there’s a roadmap for Power 11 through 13, et cetera. ⁓ Moving those workloads, at some point you have to say, Power 8s are not being patched anymore. They are now cyber threats. People can get to them, and these are such mission critical systems, literally,
life and death at times, ⁓ they have to be migrated. And we’ve got the capabilities of assessing what you’ve got, figuring out where should those workloads be. If it’s something as simple as migrating a power rate to a power 10, swapping it out, procuring the hardware, moving the data and workloads there and done, that’s a simple, peasy. Or where’s your workload today? Let’s think about a redundant system. Let’s figure out where your production should be. It’s on-prem now. I’ll tell you what, why don’t we put that production workload in
a tier point data center in our redundant networking and power connectivity and all the staffing, et cetera. We can run a DR site, a smaller footprint back at your location, all new hardware. We’re going to manage the failover, the DR replication, et cetera. Now you’ve got a truly redundant system on modern hardware. You’re good to go. Or let’s just do the whole thing. Put it in our data center. Or let’s put it in a private cloud. We can do a private IBM cloud in one of our facilities as well. So it’s multi-tenant, lowering your costs, still secure.
So all the options that folks have today in public cloud for their applications apply in the IBM space. But like you said, Josh, no one’s talking about it in the channel. And while the deals pay great and they’re usually very large, once you get that locked in, the i86, the x86 stuff comes in. All the other workloads, you did this so well. We got a bunch of Microsoft stuff. Or we have this public cloud stuff. Can you help us with that? And man, talk about a sticky data. What’s it called? ⁓
Data gravity situation. You get the IBM data under contract, show your clients that you know how to support that stuff. They trust you with that. That data brings in like the sun. All these are the planets of other databases, the public cloud and VMware. All these are the workloads that we can assist with. So not a lot of folks in the channel are talking about it. We’ve got content we can deliver. Folks, help your sellers out there. Really have those conversations. And the important thing is as a seller, you don’t need to know a thing about this. You’re asking the business questions. Hey, are you guys…
Josh Lupresto (31:46)
To the gravity, yeah.
Paul Croteau (32:15)
You currently using IBM systems in your business today? You by chance running Power 8 or Power 9? ⁓ man, you are. I know that these are going out of the end of support soon. Not my area of expertise, but I’ve got a great partner that I think we should have a 15 minute conversation with to say, here’s what’s happening, here’s the potential risks, here are your options. Same conversation we’ve been having the past year about VMware. What are your options? Re-license, put it somewhere, re-platform, we can do that. Separate topic. But IBM, no one’s talking about it in channel.
Josh Lupresto (32:37)
Yeah.
Paul Croteau (32:45)
We want to help clients protect those very expensive investments that legacy gear modernize it and then integrate it with all the other cool stuff they’re working on.
Josh Lupresto (32:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, and what I like about this is that not every tech stack is the same, when somebody, or not every OEM story is the same, but when you come into this channel and you say, have IBM expertise and support, you just can’t fake that. Like you can’t, you have to be so freaking really good at that. And I’ve seen that with you guys. Like some of the funnest deals that we’ve done with you guys have been some wild IBM stuff. And so love.
Paul Croteau (33:10)
Nope.
Josh Lupresto (33:22)
Love the questions, love the setup. ⁓ Yeah, that’s as hard as anything. And I don’t know, maybe that stuff’s just gonna be around forever. It’s crazy.
Paul Croteau (33:29)
Yeah. At the of the day,
it’s about helping clients get to better outcomes, solve problems, optimize. Talking about databases, we had a situation where we had a sales opportunity with a large financial services firm. They were in one of our competitors, Private Clouds, and they were depending on them for DBA services. They were having problems with reporting, problems with performance.
and they had a process that was taking like 44 to 48 hours to do, despite their attempts on their own and through their service provider to fix it. We came in and brought in our own perspective, our own engineering team, and we kind of re-architected the database. I talked about query structure and things of that sort. It took that 44 to 48 hour process and turned it initially into an 18 hour process, so greater than 50 % improvement.
got the deal obviously and have shortened that work much, much shorter even then. have these conversations, find ways to optimize the client’s situation. And at the end of the day, the positive customer outcomes I keep on saying is about speeding up the processes, making things more cost effective and time is money. So a 48 hour project, now an 18 hour project that frees up the resources to go elsewhere at optimizing your business. It’s all about having those
business conversation. What’s the why? What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to do? How do we get you there?
Josh Lupresto (34:57)
I love it. I guess final thoughts here. Let’s get our crystal balls out. Let’s talk about whatever it is we want to talk about. mean, you think about, we’re talking about here, the Edge with Azure Local. We’re talking about databases. I mean, all this kind of bleeds into the AI story. So I guess as you think about this with AI and Edge and compliance, all these kind of continue to evolve. mean,
Paul Croteau (35:03)
Shit.
Yeah.
Josh Lupresto (35:24)
What’s on the roadmap for you guys and how do you kind of see some of these offerings evolve and how do you want advisors to consider all of this?
Paul Croteau (35:31)
Yeah, I’ll do a roadmap first. We’ve got announced some really cool cyber security services in the next couple of months. I can’t talk about it much detail, but it’s something that we’re addressing and we’re rolling out soon. definitely, Josh, will be in the privy and the knowledge on that stuff when it rolls out for sure, given your background and expertise. So that’s a specific roadmap thing. in general, organizations these days are trying to figure out how to mitigate risk, how to balance that innovation with risk. There’s peer pressure.
15 years ago was cloud peer pressure. You got to go to the cloud. Got it. Why? Because everyone else is. Well, that’s great. Now got to deploy AI. Why? Because everyone else is. No, that’s not why you deploy these things. You got to figure out what the technology is out there today. How does it apply to your business? Can it be done safely, securely, cost effectively, et cetera? ⁓ So right now in the age of AI and the changing of data center and co-location is roaring right now and Nvidia is doing crazy things. ⁓ We want to help businesses.
modernize but not technically, help them modernize strategically, help them figure out what technologies are out there ⁓ and then how to best apply them, whether that’s putting the workloads in Azure Local near or closer to where they should be, whether that’s getting them off their legacy IBM and putting them onto more modern IBM technology, whether it’s optimizing their databases, et cetera. ⁓ So what’s next? You don’t have to be able to predict the future. You just have to ask the questions.
that reveal where your client is heading. Business questions, not tech questions. They may dip into technology, and if they do, sellers out there, and they start going in places you might not be familiar, say, hey, not my area of expertise, but I got a guy, I got a gal. We can definitely cover all these things you’re talking about. Let’s schedule a quick 15 or 30 minute conversation with my partner to dig deep on that, but let’s get back to your big picture business conversations. We’re, at the end of the day, we’re helping clients anticipate and prepare for what’s next, and that continues to change almost every day.
Josh Lupresto (37:29)
go. It’s a good place to wrap it. ⁓ Awesome stuff, man. Paul, appreciate you coming back on. of knowledge. Lots of good stuff today.
Paul Croteau (37:35)
Yeah. I’m
trying Josh. I appreciate the invite. look forward to doing this again sometime.
Josh Lupresto (37:40)
I love it. All right, everybody. That wraps us up for today. As always, Spotify, Apple, wherever you’re coming, make sure that you’re following and subscribing so that you can get these every Wednesday when they come out. until next time, that wraps us up for today. This has been Azure at the Edge, IBM in the basement and databases everywhere. Paul Croteau National Channel Director at TierPoint. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus