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Transcript is auto-generated.
[01:00:21:23 – 01:01:11:03]
Josh Lupresto
Coming to you today just for a quick wrap on 2025, you know, it’s it’s hard to believe that we are almost at 200 episodes on this channel to think about how much content is out there, you know, thinking about where we came from a couple years ago, not really sure where to take this, not really sure, you know, what it would become. But I think it’s been it’s been awesome to get feedback from you. And, you know, just start to mix it up a little bit. You know, as we started out this channel, everything has been part of a three-part series. For those of you that that are maybe new to the channel, you know, it’s, it’s, let’s pick a topic that’s interesting that our advisors care about. And let’s, let’s do a Telarus perspective on it. Maybe we bring in an advanced solutions leader, maybe we bring in an engineer, an architect, and then we bring in, for the next episode, it’s a vendor and kind of their technology, and we deep dive to that.
[01:01:12:04 – 01:02:18:20]
Josh Lupresto
And then third, it’s always been an advisor, right? So sort of really hear that, as you kind of go in and say, I want to dabble in that technology. I’m a little comfortable in it, but I’d like a better picture of it. That’s what that three-part series is really intended to, to help you do. And so we think it, we think it does that. We also realized that we needed to mix it up a little bit. While that format works, and that’s kind of the core of the podcast, we’ve started to mix it up. As you’ve seen, we’ve done some, some different sales and selling techniques and strategies. We’ve had, you know, folks on from suppliers. We had Chris White on, you know, not too long ago, obviously. And, you know, he’s a great, just trains differently, teaches you some different tactics. And so he brought some cool things to one of our previous episodes. And then, you know, we had our first billionaire on the podcast. If there’s a, if there’s a B in your, in your, in your value, clearly, you’ve done something right that we can all learn from, and learn some of your tips and tricks. And so Rob Hale came on the podcast. How did he, how did he get it? How did he ramp it up? How did he lose it all? And how did he get it all back again? And so he had some awesome things to learn.
[01:02:20:03 – 01:03:18:17]
Josh Lupresto
As we look back deeper into 2025, we talked about some key supplier acquisitions, right? We saw NICE, we saw Cognegee. That was a big one. We saw what that means. We talked about things that I never thought we would be talking about when I first started doing this. We’re talking about quantum computing. And Sumerra came on and talked to us about that, you know, what that is, where we’re at, where we’re going, to give you content and context as vendors and technology come into this portfolio, we need to be ready. We need to understand it. We need to know what it means. And we need to just kind of, kind of quell the FUD, but also understand foundationally where it’s at, where it’s going. Because I think if, if the last couple years have taught us anything, it’s a matter of this stuff moves quick. And with AI and all these other technologies behind the scenes, the foundational models, sometimes these things come faster than we’d expect. So we’re here to help you be prepared for that, both for the vendor tech and of course, just these, these interesting talk tracks that our folks try to bring to the table to help you out with that.
[01:03:20:02 – 01:03:32:18]
Josh Lupresto
Other things, obviously, different cloud things. We did some recaps on some big key events. We talked infrastructure migrations. We talked different CX platforms and, and, and, you know, tips and tricks and things like that.
[01:03:34:07 – 01:03:58:03]
Josh Lupresto
Advanced networking, you know, just lots of different things. We try to really mix it up and we dabble to make sure that we go around the circle and, and hit all these different areas of technology because, you know, we know each of you, each advisor is just at a different space and wants to learn how to cross-sell or maybe up-sell and do a different account for a different thing. And so hopefully something that we have done has hit one of you in a different way. And it’s always, too.
[01:03:59:07 – 01:04:05:11]
Josh Lupresto
You know, if there’s more things that you want to hear that we are not talking about, please, the door is always open, reach out to me and let us know those.
[01:04:06:13 – 01:05:14:23]
Josh Lupresto
You know, some interesting stats that I think are cool that I tend to take a while to, till I look at and I go back and look and go, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that. You know, hitting over 15,000 streams and a 600% increase from, you know, viewership over the previous year has been, has been wild to hear. And so that’s exciting. That makes us really want to change it up, like we did with Inside the Wind. Feedback from you was, Hey, help us go a little bit deeper into some of these examples. And so you got to see, you know, some of our advanced solutions leaders, you got to see some of the architects, the engineers just go deep into a deal. And so we’re starting to mix that up on the channel for you as well, just to give you different content and really go a layer deeper, a layer deeper, a layer deeper. So it’s been an exciting 2025. I think I, you know, I’ll try to bring this home with where we’ve seen AI go so far this year and maybe what we might expect next year. So it’s, it’s been interesting. You know, I listened to a lot of other podcasts and a lot of other thought leadership and things like that.
[01:05:16:02 – 01:05:17:17]
Josh Lupresto
And sure, AI is maturing.
[01:05:18:17 – 01:05:45:10]
Josh Lupresto
The dust is settling a little bit. And really, these guys are figuring out how does my product fit into the market and solve the most problems. And that’s what your customers are going through. They’re trying to solve those problems as well. And I think 2025 has taught us that they still need help. This is more complicated than anything they’ve ever done. And so it’s been exciting to see you all get into these conversations, these consulting engagements, these product engagements.
[01:05:46:14 – 01:06:43:07]
Josh Lupresto
And, you know, look behind the scenes, seeing Google, you know, maybe, maybe was a laggard a little bit, was worried about cannibalizing their search practice, see what Google did, and seeing how they’ve come a long way with Gemini, you know, seeing Sergey Brin come out of retirement and be back at the helm, programming the foundational model for Google tells you how important this is and tells you how, how locked in these guys are. And it’ll be interesting to see, obviously, you know, Nvidia as a leader, Blackwell came out, that’s, you know, the big, most modernized, most recent GPU architecture in their chips. But that’s a big lift. You know, it’s a big architecture change for people that might have been using an old Nvidia set of GPUs. Now they need to move to this new model. So I think watching all of the other manufacturers adjacent to, you know, when people have to make a chip change like that, and an architecture change takes a little bit. It’s not, it’s not just pull a server out and plug a new server in, there’s a lot of things that you got to do there.
[01:06:44:11 – 01:06:53:18]
Josh Lupresto
And you know, seeing Grok and others get to 100,000 GPUs in a cluster, what does that push to in 2026? Who knows? Is it 200,000? What does that get us?
[01:06:54:18 – 01:07:02:19]
Josh Lupresto
I think it’s going to get us faster models, better technology, you’re starting to see things like that come out of Google with, you know, the love the name on this nano banana.
[01:07:04:04 – 01:07:11:07]
Josh Lupresto
You’re going to see specialization, maybe you’re going to see some small language models, open AI, doing a lot of partnerships, a lot of unique things.
[01:07:12:16 – 01:08:49:01]
Josh Lupresto
All of this, we watch this from afar to help understand how that how that manifests into the vendor portfolio, into the talk tracks, so that we can help bring you that type of content to help develop your ongoing customer conversations, whether it be about AI, as a wedge in because it’s hot, and it’s exciting, and people need help, or it plays into a different topic. So, you know, I don’t know what’s funner, you know, seeing, seeing the news of Sergei come out of retirement, or having to triple check my newsfeed, seeing that Philip Rivers is trotting out to play at 44 after five years of retirement. Both are exciting. So I’m excited to see where both of those go into 2026, who knows. So that’s all I’ve got for you. We’re going to play a couple of those key, just a few little clips relevant. I think some of those, if you want to go back, certainly go back and watch a couple of those key episodes. But hey, we hope you had a Merry Christmas. We hope you have a happy, healthy, safe New Year. And we’re always, we’re here for you. However we can help you, better content on the channel, more things you need from our engineers, our architects, just let us know. We want to be there as a resource for you to help you look as expansive and as armed as you need coming into those. So whether you’re going to catch us at an event in 2026, we’re always here for you, same time, same bat channel, every Wednesday when these drop. So stay tuned. We’ve got some really exciting things and I mean really exciting things coming for you in 2026.
[01:08:49:01 – 01:08:49:23]
(Whoosh)
[01:08:49:23 – 01:08:50:14]
Josh Lupresto
Chris White,
[01:08:50:14 – 01:09:59:23]
Chris White
he, he is a motivational speaker and public speaker. And he used to be a basketball performance coach. And he worked with one of the most elite high schools here in the DC area, to map a high school for a number of years. And then started working with press, and he worked with a lot of people. And that was hard for him to do. And he socio- shin vigor, you’re going to spend years working, honestly. And. To get over that to work for it. And in the first day of the day, I had a hard time. And they said, Chris, why did I have a higher exposure, like four hours? To the extent where you mentioned Kobe Bryant, he actually had the opportunity to work with Kobe Bryant. He said, Chris, the first day he was actually on my show he, he said, the first time that I meet Kobe, Brian, I sat through one of his practices with, with, with his skills coach. And he said, Chris, I watched him over and over and over, layups, passes, divots, nothing but fundamentals. He said after the practice, he and I had a meeting, and one of the first things I said to him is, “Coby, you’re the best player in the world. Why are you so focused on fundamentals?” And he said, “Coby looked at me with that million dollar smile, and he said, “I’m the best player in the world because I never get tired of working on the fundamentals.”
And that’s it. It’s all about the fundamentals. Boom.
[01:10:05:19 – 01:10:08:09]
Josh Lupresto
We got Billy Houghton from GlobalNet Connect.
[01:10:08:09 – 01:10:25:05]
Billy Houghton
outside of just being able to sit at the table, from a credibility perspective, the likelihood that that other organization says, you know what, we’ve got that same risk. And we’ve been telling our exec team, we’re so concerned about that, you know, the TLS 1.0.
How do you get past this hurdle? We’re concerned about it. And so a lot of times those issues that folks are solving, the rest of the markets got the same problem. And that’s the part that I’ve seen is a lot of these hurdles are market wide. They are not the only group trying to solve this. And that’s the piece that I love the opportunity to have, you know, plurality of counsel helps advance progress. And the more wise leaders you can put in your rooms and think through different ways to approach problem solving, it only advances organizational success. So I odds are, Josh, that new group that you’re talking to, they’re probably battling the same
[01:11:09:06 – 01:11:13:16]
Josh Lupresto
Sumera Riaz, Telarus Solution Architect over
[01:11:13:16 – 01:12:45:03]
Sumera Riaz
a half years ago, when I was see so, so I stumble into quantum almost by accident. So at the time, my company was going through a minor event. And we have the best defenses in place, we had over 15 million and security spend every year, we have the best of sweep, we have the best of breed. And after the cleanup of this event, I just kind of pause and took a moment reflected across my entire digital landscape. But one question kept gnawing at me is, if today’s top shelf defenses are already strained, what happens when tomorrow arrives faster than we can expect? So I started digging into quantum at that time. At first, it felt like science fiction, I was listening to Willow, Google’s Willow pitch and query and others and they were talking about the multiverse and all the different probabilities and that quantum computes. So at first, of course, it felt like science fiction particles in two places at once computers that think in probabilities instead of absolutes. But then it hit me that this is a this isn’t about physics alone. It’s about trust. It’s about risk and opportunity colliding all at the same time. So the task for me wasn’t to understand physics, it was leadership, translating the future into decisions that we’re making today, and then teach others so leaders can prepare, protect and grow in the quantum era. So and that’s kind of what set me on this path, not chasing hype, but helping others see that quantum isn’t just a feature of computing, it’s a feature of
[01:12:46:04 – 01:12:48:19]
Josh Lupresto
Adam Burke, VP of Sales at Quest.
[01:12:48:19 – 01:12:55:05]
Adam Burke
our industry, is a lot of the partner, a lot of the customers are waiting to get pitched.
And they’re, and they’re, and they’re, and they’re, and they’re part of their negotiation strategy on that side of the table is, is to kind of mask the intent of what, of what and why they need what they’re doing. Because they, because sometimes they think they can get a better price if, if you kind of keep the person guessing.
Whereas if you’re in, you know, there are bad actors out there who try to take advantage of situations and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of FUD in the IT space. So we’re dealing with an industry that’s kind of brought up a certain behavior. If you can, if you can, if you can build that trust and lower those defense shields from the customer, and they can tell you what they’re really challenged with and what their outcome they’re really looking for, then it’s amazing how much time is saved on creation of the scope and creation of the service level agreements and documenting who’s responsible for what and creating that win-win scenario. we, we tend to qualify very, very hard there because that’s what we’re trying to understand. Can we get to that conversation with the customer? And part of that qualification process is understanding, Hey, is this person going to tell me what they’re really trying to do? Or are they, you know, going to kind of play, you know, some, some Machiavellian, you know, court games and try to, try to, you know, execute the 48 laws of power to get their best purchase on a hardware refresh. Right? I don’t have the energy for that. And then there’s so many opportunities out there for partners that you can play that game if you want to, or you can kind of step back and, and, and wait for the pain train, which inevitably is going to come to all everybody. And you can step in and help them at that point. So it is a, it is a little bit of a dance. I think what your, what your technology advisors can really do is ask, ask the question as, as far as why are you doing this? Similar, similar to like what happens if you don’t do anything. Right? Why, why are you, why are you looking at a SASE solution? Right? Why are you, why are you talking about ZTNA? Why, why are you, why are you looking for microsegmentation? Why are you, why are you doing data loss prevention? And if it’s the canned, like, you know, CIO monthly, you know, article that was published by the vendor and they read off the bullet points as far as what Gartner says is why they should do something. Okay. But if they’re, if they’re, no, this just happened. And we saw this as an issue and we want to, we want to protect against these things. Okay, cool. We’re getting closer to the, we’re getting closer to the, the business outcome.
[01:15:51:16 – 01:15:53:07]
Josh Lupresto
we got Ron Colbert
[01:15:53:07 – 01:16:34:11]
Ron Colbert
Microsoft is the king of repackaging a product and sort of, they have these major enhancements, and they’ll almost re-release the same product. They went through it with LCS into OCS into link into teams, and they went through it with terminals. They went through it with terminal server into RDS. And today we have what started out as Azure Arc became Azure Stack HCI became Azure local. It’s some derivative of Hyper-V coupled with Azure. But it’s this really, really neat alternative today to running Broadcom, you know, where a client might be dealing with some of the challenges that have come from Broadcom. If they need to run low latency workloads, you know, manufacturing is an easy example to share where you might have a workload that has to be on premise within a facility that’s driving, you know, machinery or equipment and those, you know, sub five millisecond workload needs or whatever, whatever crazy fast connections are required is one thing. One of the projects that we recently did was to help a client figure out a path to upgrade their domain version. So they had these old custom applications on the plant floor that had to continue, but they’re running on Windows Server 2003. And their domain version is 2008 R2 and you can’t, it’s like a boat anchor, you can’t, you can’t escape it. And so what what we came up with was, can we put Azure local on premise, and then create a bubble domain around that micro segment into it, which would really isolate that that old server off of the the enterprise network and give them a path to upgrade the the domain version. And, and in doing so, we, we were able to give them a hardware refresh, we were able to solve this, this, this domain issue and allow them to, to enhance their security posture
[01:18:16:00 – 01:18:21:13]
Josh Lupresto
we’ve got the Senior Director of Security, Technology and Strategy for Akamai, Tony Lauro
[01:18:21:13 – 01:18:34:21]
Tony Lauro
years, I’ve had people say who’s Akamai’s biggest competitor, and I would say complacency, right? It’s basically thinking, I’m doing enough already, this is not a problem, why would they attack me, that kind of situation, right? I think the first example of how AI is being used by threat actors would be AI based bots, right? So the idea that attackers can use bots to run automated scripts to do things that they want to do, didn’t really become as difficult of a problem to handle until most of the requests on the internet were API driven. So API’s are if you have a, you know, your favorite black mirror device, when you hold it up to your face, that’s sending an API call back to authentication service back to any app that’s updating, it’s all API calls. In fact, almost every call out from an LLM calling to different model repositories, etc, is an API call. And API’s are used because they’re lightweight and they’re built for automation. What else would attackers love to do is use AI to interact with this automation, we’re already expecting it. So identifying and having efficacy of how you identify what an AI bot is trying to do against an API that’s already expecting to see automated requests is a very interesting, it’s almost like a change in scope, a dichotomy of, you know, threat actor techniques and defender responses,
[01:19:59:09 – 01:20:04:11]
Josh Lupresto
Mr. Rob Hale, CEO and founder of Granite. Rob, welcome on, man.
[01:20:04:11 – 01:20:13:05]
Rob Hale
February 4th of 2002 sold at auction March 15th 2002 and we started granted June 3rd of 2002 and
By the way, I would have started faster. But this as you guys know in this business, it’s a regulated business. And so you needed state and federal approvals to be in the business. But we started granted and and our industry said that the only way you could create value was to control the customer, which was to build a switch based architecture where the customer ran through your apparatus and I’m telling you the truth. That’s what we were intending to do at the beginning of granted. I’m telling you, that’s what we were doing. And we did wholesale with Verizon. Just because the only way we could get in the game was to do wholesale. And so we did wholesale with Verizon and and Walmart and Walgreens said, Hey, listen, if you If you want to beta test the idea of consolidating and discounting our phone lines in the Boston stores. Go ahead. We did it a month or two later so far so good. Let’s consolidate and discount the phone lines in our new England stores. So far so good. Let’s consolidate and discount the phone lines throughout the Northeast. Then almost to the same day they brought us to Bentonville in Chicago and they said, Hey, this this consolidation.
This is good for us. We’re going to do this for the rest of the country. We may or may not do this with you, but we are going to do this for the rest of the country. So by the time the wheels touch home, we I got to make a decision. Are we going to do you know now our industry in Wall Street said the only way to create value is to control the customer with which was for the switch based solution. But we thought, well, the number one and the number five retailer think there’s a need for essentially national consolidation, you know, the aggregation model.
Which by the way, in 2002 didn’t exist. And so we created aggregation and and we get lots of awards for entrepreneur of the year. We’ve created 2000 American jobs. We got a lot of cool things that happen at Granite. And people say, how’d you get that awesome idea? The truth is we didn’t have that awesome idea.
The big customers