Vinu Thomas - CTO at Presidio

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Vinu, the CTO at Presidio. And we discussed the differences in the last three decades of market transitions, why AI and hyperautomation will continue to revolutionize all industries, and how Presidio is using their own internal shark tank competitions to stay on top of innovation. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Vinu at 00:00:37) Hello. Hello. Hey. Good afternoon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:41) How are you, my friend?

(Vinu at 00:00:43) I'm doing great. How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Good. Are you ready to make a podcast?

(Vinu at 00:00:47) Yes. I'm looking forward to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) We're doing it. We're recording. We're just gonna hang out and talk. Is that cool?

(Vinu at 00:00:52) Fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:54) Alright. So I was reading all about your background, and I love it. Right? You've got so much experience and so many different areas. But one of the things that was actually on our mind today here at the company was go-to-market strategy. And I noticed that's one of the things that you do. You deal with go-to-market technology strategy. Now, I don't expect you to have perfect insights for us being a small, you know, we're under 15 people. But I was just curious from your perspective, at Presidio, what does a go-to-market strategy look like?

(Vinu at 00:01:31) Yeah. That's a great question, Joel. So from our perspective, go-to-market strategy is how do we actually take a lot of the technology noise that is out there? Right? And if you look at the terminologies that are being used heavily today, it's digital transformation, it's cloud, it's security, it's workforce transformation, and all of that have so much of noise and so many different vendors there. How do we actually take that and kind of create really true business outcome solutions for our customers? That's what a go-to-market strategy is. So we've got all this technology evolutions going on, all these market transitions going on. Customers have, I would say, almost an overload of information. You know, they look at social media. They look at, obviously, a lot of the vendors giving them information. And what a true service provider like a Presidio can bring to the table is kind of filter all that noise, listen to what the customer's wanting to really achieve from a business outcome, and then map that technology, the right type of technology solution to fix that business outcome. And I think that's what a true go-to-market actually means.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:42) Yeah. So as the market's moving, because you have your first product. Let's say, an earlier company, you've got your first product. You have your customer base. But then you notice the market's kind of moving, so you're just constantly in this process of understanding their needs, building and launching products. Is that how it goes?

(Vinu at 00:02:59) Yeah. So, you know, again, one of the things that we do and we pride ourselves is if you think about, let's take cloud, for example. Right? You've got Amazon Web Services. You've got Microsoft. You've got Google. You've got Alibaba. You've got Baidu. You've got a whole bunch of cloud providers. You look at security, there are over 500 different vendors for security. How does a customer actually take that information and then say, alright, what is the right solution with the right mix of vendors for my particular business outcome? And that business outcome, to your point, it keeps changing. You know, there might be a requirement to move to a hybrid cloud environment. There might be a requirement to a more multi-cloud environment. It could be a SaaS offering. It could be X as an offering. How do they actually tie all that together? And I think that's a constantly evolving thing. And the way we keep ourselves updated on that is we constantly listen to our customers. One of the best pieces of advice I got early in my career is always listen to your customer. Keep your customers really close. So we have, we've been blessed with, you know, obviously, almost close to 7,000 customers. We've got a good subset of customers that we constantly go, we talk to them about their requirements. We showcase our solution offerings, our technology product offerings, and we say, hey, here's something that we are doing with cloud or here's something we are doing with workforce transformation. They give us input and feedback. They are more than happy to be one of our early launch customers in some of these cases. So that constant evolution is truly what defines a go-to-market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:38) So right now, because of the size of our company and we're all so close, we have the team and we're starting to see, you know, who has an affinity for running these experiments and figuring these things out and then deploying them and so on. But when you get to such a large organization with so many customers, are you still doing that the entire time as the executive leader? And do you also build teams that learn how to do that? Like, how do you expand that out?

(Vinu at 00:05:08) Yeah. I usually say that I'm the dumbest guy in the room. So I've been blessed with a really strong team. We call it the Office of the CTO, and the team has really strong subject matter experts on a lot of different things. You know, we've got subject matter experts on workforce transformation. We've got subject matter experts on collaboration. So these folks, going back to your original question, we have a really strong team that is responsible. We've got subject matter experts. If you look at the Presidio organization, Joel, we've got about 1,600 engineers. That's a huge team, and we've got, you know, subject matter experts from everything from collaboration, security, cloud, managed services, you know, even some of the emerging technologies like IoT, 5G, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. So we've got a really good team, and this team constantly keeps an update on what's going on with our customers, what's going on with the market industry, and, you know, obviously talking to the Gartners and the Forresters of the world as well. So that's how we are able to craft some of these and keep constantly being able to educate our customers on these different solutions and different vendors out there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:39) Nice. Nice. And how are you spending, like, today, I know things have been changing because the world's just constantly changing. But as of today, how are you spending your time? Like, what's the one thing that you spend the most time on?

(Vinu at 00:07:52) Again, a lot of time in front of our customers, and I'll explain why. So if you really break this apart, and we are now, we've got the global pandemic and, obviously, things like that. But even right before the global pandemic hit, I actually consider this as the third decade of market transition. So we went from the first decade, which is more of a client-server decade where everything was centralized. You had users, applications, data, all centralized within the data center. Users were all within a building and an office location. That was kind of the 2000 to 2008, 2009 time frame. And then you had the financial crisis, and then you get into the second decade, which is, you know, users were still centralized. You had some remote office users, but, predominantly, most of the people used to go to work at a particular location. And then apps and data were getting a little bit more distributed because you had the onset of cloud. So applications were being created outside and data was being created outside, but, predominantly, users were still on-prem, for lack of better words. What has happened is this third decade, especially accelerated now due to COVID, is the fact that you've now moved to this third decade where users, applications, and data are all over the place. You have users working from home. You have users working in an office. You have applications in the cloud. You have applications on-prem. You have applications with a SaaS provider. You have data being created at home. You have data being created in an office, in a public cloud, personal cloud. So we're actually entering into what I would call as this third decade of edge and hybrid cloud architecture. It's users, applications, data being completely distributed. It's a really exciting time because, you know, when you look at, obviously, there's a lot of stuff going on with the global pandemic. But from a technology perspective, what we've seen is whenever you have these market inflections, it leads to new innovations. There's always going to be the next Amazon, the next Nutanix, the next Rubrik, you know, the next Palo Alto Networks. There's always going to be that new innovative vendor that comes in. So these days, that's what I'm really focused on, is I'm listening to our customers of what they are going through in terms of their priorities. They want to be, you know, more secure. You know, they are nervous because now you've got a whole section of people working from home. You've got essentially a mix of corporate traffic that actually intermingles with somebody watching Netflix at home with your kids playing video games. And people are worried. They're like, hey, look, we've got all this traffic mixing up at home that is then getting into the corporate network. How do we actually secure that? How do we prioritize corporate traffic, like a Zoom traffic over somebody watching Netflix or somebody playing a video game? How do we do that to secure and prioritize traffic? Most customers I talk to, they're like, look, we are not bringing our workforce back entirely. There's always gonna be that 20 to 30% that are now going to work from home because we've shown that this model works. So there's a part of that saying, okay, how do we actually cut costs and reduce office infrastructure space? Then there's the customers who want to see how they can take automation to a whole new level. You know, things like robotic process automation because they realize that they have to do more with less. And when you have to do more with less, now you're talking about robots and manual processes being done by humans are actually being now taken over by, you know, bots and robots that can actually automate a lot of these tasks. So there's a lot of these new, what I would call it, and I just shared kind of three things with you, but in my mind, there's a lot more. And there's this whole requirement about six to 10 different requirements that are coming up because of the market transitions, because of the global pandemic. And what our customers are telling us is we've got all these business requirements that we know can be solved by technology, and Presidio, come in and help us solve these problems with technology. You know, so that's a great opportunity in my mind for us, for our team to really innovate, and that's what I'm spending a lot more of my time right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:22) Yeah. Well, shout out to the company. Very, very bright person. I'm excited to talk to you about so many different things. So the next 10 years you were just describing as these items or are sort of lining up to help predict this next decade. Right? So have you figured out, are you hypothesizing and scheming over there, like, coming up with ideas about, like, what that next Palo Alto Networks is, like, where that ball is moving so you guys can be there? Or do you think it's just a bunch of these small items that you mentioned and just executing on those well will get you to where you want to be?

(Vinu at 00:13:03) I think it's a combination. I honestly believe that we as a company have to look at the market and then decide, okay, what are some of the exciting vendors that are coming out there? And look at what is the next Palo Alto, look at what is the next Amazon. That's part of the process. But there's a lot of these small things that we could be doing right now as well. Helping our customers solve this work-from-home issues, working on things like robotic process automation, helping customers automate some of the stuff. So it's a combination of both. There are obviously some really exciting vendors that are out there on the robotic process automation front. UiPath is a great new vendor that's coming out that we are really getting close to. Amazon Web Services has always been on the bleeding edge. They are coming out with a lot of innovation. There's a lot of companies on the 5G spectrum that we're paying a lot of attention to. So there's a lot of these small companies that are kind of what I would call as real adjacencies to what we do today that we can pay attention to. And then obviously we've got our eyes on the next big unicorn out there that is going to be creating something, but it's too early right now in the cycle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:24) Oh, so you've identified, you're unicorn hunting. You've identified one. It's just too early to call it?

(Vinu at 00:14:30) I think it's too early to say it. I also don't know if some of those things that they are proposing is going to take on market traction, for lack of better words. So I do see them eventually progressing and getting that critical mass, but I think it's too early right now to say, okay. These are the ones that are going to make a huge impact. Like, UiPath is one that I would say, yes. Absolutely. That is one that is going to be out there, be really relevant because they check a lot of these boxes, Joel. They check the box about doing a lot of automation. They check the box about cost savings for customers. They check the box of being able to really make a difference for customers to be able to provide a unique experience to their customers. So I think that's a hallmark example.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:23) So how do your customers find you? Like, what's the most common path?

(Vinu at 00:15:33) Yeah. It's a great question. I think, you know, we've got 400 client execs or relationship people on the street. So these are our actual account execs and our client execs that work with our clients. So they've got existing relationships that they bring to the market.

(Vinu at 00:15:49) So we've got about 400 focused client execs that work with our clients. We also get brought in a lot by our vendor partners like a Cisco, like a Palo Alto, like an Amazon Web Services. When they get an inbound call from their customer, they say, "Hey, let me bring you to Presidio." And then we also have our own marketing and demand gen activity as the third leg of this tool that allows us to go in and do a lot more marketing and demand. And this is one of the examples of what we're doing right now is an example of getting the word out on who Presidio is and what can Presidio do.

(Vinu at 00:16:29) And then finally, we do work with the Gartners and the Forresters of the world, trying to see how we can get on their recommended list or their Magic Quadrant or on the Forrester Wave so that we are more visible to the outside world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:44) Nice. Yeah. Because that marketing piece, that visibility piece is absolutely critical. Yeah. That's why we try to, when we do the guest planning and all of that for the show, we look for very interesting people that are at companies that we like and their culture and who they are and what they're trying to do in the world so that we can help amplify the word as much as possible.

(Vinu at 00:17:12) Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's a really interesting time. I think one of the things that we found as we were going into this global pandemic was the companies that had already leveraged technology, that were already ahead of the digital transformation curve, did really well. You know, they were ready to take in their home users.

(Vinu at 00:17:38) They were ready with people to work from home. And so they were more cloud ready so that they could actually provide all those applications and services right from cloud to their home users. So I think those customers were really ready. And what I'm seeing right now is a lot of customers who probably were not that advanced in technology or using technology are now coming to us and saying, "Alright, let's accelerate some of these innovations and some of these technology transitions because of the pandemic." So I think the pandemic, in my opinion, has actually shortened or accelerated some of these technology transitions and kind of brought the timeline from three to five years to probably six to nine months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:23) Yeah. And it makes sense with how humans work because people typically hate changes in routine, and they like the same behavior patterns, which I'm sure evolutionarily is useful. But when you get that flexibility, that mental flexibility that things are changing, it's easier to introduce new things and then you can get results and then you can take that energy and put it back in. So it would make sense to build some change momentum during a time where we are forced changes for other reasons.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) Because it's like everyone's sort of malleable.

(Vinu at 00:19:03) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:05) So alright. For you as a person, let's get human here. Like, what do you like to geek out about?

(Vinu at 00:19:12) What do I like to geek out about? So I'm a big, I read a lot of books, obviously. But one of the things that really gets me excited is not just the technology side of it, but I'm also a firm believer in trying to think about how the technology actually impacts the human experience. That's an area that I think, a perfect example is artificial intelligence and hyper-automation as they call it, which is great.

(Vinu at 00:19:39) But in the sense of, okay, how is that actually impacting people? How is it actually impacting employees? Because if you really sort of think about it, there's obviously that concern of are we trying to eliminate jobs? And the way I look at it is we're not really trying to eliminate jobs. I think what we're trying to do is we're trying to move people, upskill them a little bit.

(Vinu at 00:20:00) So that's a very interesting topic that I've been focusing a lot on right now. A lot of people who are not in the technology field really don't understand the power of where we are as it relates to artificial intelligence and hyper-automation, machine learning. There's the human to machine interaction. There's then the machine to machine interaction, which if you really sort of think about it is getting more and more prevalent right now. Like, why do people buy a Tesla? It's not because they've got the best engine. It's a software-defined guy. That's what it is at the end of the day. And that experience is great. And if you test through what Tesla, and if you look at what the autopilot and even the self-driving capability can do, it is really, really scary.

(Vinu at 00:20:49) Right? And AI is far more accurate, and it doesn't take on the human biases. So I think that's a really interesting field that I'm geeking out right now to answer your question. So I think AI, machine learning, and what the impact is on the human experience is something that is really, really keeping me up at night just on the education front of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:16) Yeah. A lot of the new Model Ys started showing up in the past two weeks in my location. Yep. And it's just they all have their temporary tags, like they were just delivered and everyone's out driving them. And I haven't pulled the trigger yet. Like, I keep saying it. I'm gonna get the Tesla. I'm gonna get the Tesla, but I don't know exactly what it is. Well, the first part of it was I didn't know if I was okay with the idea of spending like $85,000 on a vehicle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:46) Just because I'm finance, I like to see a lot of money in my retirement account. Yep. Yep. You know, more than a car. But at the same time, then I'm like, every time I'm at the gas station, I'm like, uh. So I feel like I'm gonna pull the trigger. The Model Ys look pretty cool. Do you have one?

(Vinu at 00:22:03) No. I don't. I don't. I did test drive one, and it was an experience to say the least. So I actually wanted to test drive it just to see the difference because if you think about it, there's a lot of automation coming in regular gas-powered cars.

(Vinu at 00:22:20) Right? If you think about it, every car today has the integration with Apple Play. It's got the blind spot detector. It's got lane deviation, whatever you want to call it. So I wanted to really see what Tesla was all about. But it's an experience when you step into that car and you're able to see the amount of technology and the amount of intelligence that that car is able to do. It's a completely new experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:48) Oh, yeah. Yeah. So a couple of my business partners had them, and then I went and test drove the X last year. And you just get excited like a little kid when you're driving. Everything, there's so many things it can do. It's amazing. I can't, one of my excuses for considering the purchase is I just want more money to go to this because every time Elon Musk gets money, he just creates something cooler and newer that pushes humanity forward. So let's give him more money.

(Vinu at 00:23:20) Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that's a great conversation. Right? I mean, if you think about some of the impacts that AI and machine learning and some of this software-defined stuff is coming out, it's really incredible. It's really incredible, and it's really able to take us to that whole new level of that experience. Right? I mean, we talk a lot about stuff that's AI and all that stuff. But even in human interaction and how AI is able to, first of all, Presidio has a very large contact center business.

(Vinu at 00:23:59) What that means is we actually help customers build contact centers and call centers so that they can communicate with their customer. And the amount of AI and artificial intelligence and machine learning coming into that function with natural language processing. So we are able to detect just in human to human interaction. You call and the agent picks up the phone and very quickly using natural language processing, Joel, you're able to find out what the mood is of the caller who just called. Is he angry?

(Vinu at 00:24:32) Is he agitated? And even before the guy gets on the call, guy or girl gets on the call, using voice biometrics, you're able to quickly identify who this person is. You're able to identify who this person is. You're able to understand the mood. You're able to quickly go through and scan and see how many times this person has called. And during the entire interaction, these small little agents keep popping up and telling the agent, the actual human agent, what to say, "Hey, slow down your language. Maybe repeat it again. I don't think the user understood." And one of the things that really struck me was it's also able to help you resolve the conflict. It's able to say, "Hey, by the way, this guy is calling because he's really irritated about the $25 baggage fee."

(Vinu at 00:25:19) And if you just refund the $25 baggage fee, I think the call is gonna end. It's able to give you that AI information. And exactly in that fashion, the agent says, "Mr. So-and-so, would you like us to refund your $25 baggage fee?" And boom, you could see a change in his voice and the call has ended much more quickly. So it's a very, very interesting time if you really think about what technology can do to help your customers. Even during COVID, we actually were working with a lot of city and state agencies standing up these massive call centers so that they can work with their customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:03) So do you think, earlier we were talking about eliminating jobs and I look at it as we're creating efficiency in a system that will ultimately lead to, I can't see it not leading to a utopia type deal because once you have, if you look really far ahead in the future, let's say that you have robots that can do all the menial tasks. Right? And those are automated. And they have robots that can make those robots from actually mining the robot materials to complete manufacture end to end to end. It's just systems that are running.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:38) And then everything is automated. Right? Then it kind of just frees up humans to have human pursuits. Mhmm. And so when I think about it, I'm like, I don't really know that this is eliminating jobs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:54) I mean, it technically is automating jobs, but that doesn't, I don't really know how to reconcile that in my head. What are your thoughts on that?

(Vinu at 00:27:02) Yeah. That's a great question. So I look at it and say automation has always been around. Right? If you go back in time to the industrial revolution, that was automation.

(Vinu at 00:27:12) Right? And if you sit and think about it because at the end of the day, when I look at humans, you actually have the ability to do two things. You have the physical ability and then you have the intelligence ability. So the industrial revolution in my mind was automating a lot of the physical tasks that we were doing. That's what machines did. They came in and, you know, used to do a lot of manual labor, and those manual labor got automated by machines. That was the industrial revolution. I think this revolution is more about automating some of those intelligence aspects of it. But to your point, it's not going to automate completely the intelligence that humans have. I think it's going to automate a lot of the intelligence we use to do manual tasks, some mundane processes and repeatable tasks, which is what I think the robots are going to do.

(Vinu at 00:28:02) I don't see that utopian world where robots automate robots and there's gonna be robots interacting with robots, but I do believe that humans still have to be there in terms of mentioning at least what the robots need to do, in programming the robots and things like that. The expectation that we would be completely away from the process and have the robots completely take over, that's a utopian thing. I do agree that freeing ourselves from the menial tasks and allowing us to focus on some of our human pursuits is what is going to happen because we are now, we've automated our physical tasks and we've also automated some of those manual things that we needed to do as well. So I think that's a good place to be eventually. But if you are a person that is working today on some of those menial tasks or some of those mundane processes, you have to upskill yourself.

(Vinu at 00:29:05) You have to learn new things. You have to constantly innovate. But that's the case with any job that you do. If you do not keep constantly evolving and innovating, then you're going to find yourself out of a job. One of the things that I tell my team is, if there's a way to automate your job, learn how to do it.

(Vinu at 00:29:26) And that's something that my, the engineers in the organization have always heard me say is, if there's a way to automate your job, learn how to do it. Because that's going to serve you better. And if you keep resisting change and you keep resisting automation, you're going to find yourself in the minority. So one of the things that we do at Presidio, for example, is we do our own Shark Tank contest. And the idea is to encourage innovation to them and get our engineers and our solutions architects and our project managers and the entire team to actually find ways to automate their job, find ways to get better efficiency, and to help our customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:05) Do you get Mark Cuban to come?

(Vinu at 00:30:10) We don't get Mark Cuban to come.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:11) Who gets to do it? Are you on the board? Are you getting?

(Vinu at 00:30:17) I am on the board. Yes. I am on the board. So is our CEO, our COO. So it's a well-thought-out thing. We get an average of 25 to 30 entries, and we choose the last five to actually make it to the Shark Tank finals where I sit and so does my CEO and our COO.

(Vinu at 00:30:36) And we all sit and we go through it. And it's a fantastic, we've been doing this for the last four to five years and it's just been a fantastic innovation for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:47) Are you hard on them? Like, is it really like the Shark Tank?

(Vinu at 00:30:51) We are. We are. I mean, look. At the end of the day, this is something that a lot of Shark Tank finalists find really interesting because we look at it and say, alright, there's a technology component to it. Right? Is, hey, I'm gonna give you points on using Python or using some of those newer programming languages in doing what you did. But at the end of the day, I also am looking at it and saying, okay, how does that actually benefit a customer?

(Vinu at 00:31:19) Customer obsession is forefront of everything that we do at Presidio. So you've got a great tool, but it doesn't really solve a problem. That's a science project. That's not going to be something that really goes up.

(Vinu at 00:31:32) So what we found over the years is we found that there are projects that were really given a lot of high marks as it entered into the finals, and there was a lot of thought that this is going to be the top tool, and then it turns out that it's number three or number four because it did not really solve a customer problem. It was really cool from a technology perspective, but it's meaningless if it doesn't really address a business problem or have a business outcome that would directly address a customer's requirement. So that is another thing that we've instituted is not only are we hard on them necessarily from a technology perspective, but does it actually solve a business problem?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:17) No. That's very intelligent. I was actually just talking about that the other day. Like, how do you train your team to understand the business value, the value of the results? And then how can you prioritize your pipeline of whether it's new features or whatever it may be to be connected to revenue and customer value?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:40) Because these are tough questions where there's no clear training manual that I've come across. If someone's come across it, send it to me. But there's no clear training manual on how to actually do this. It's something that you can pick up. It's contagious if you're in the right group. If you're in good company with good culture, it's there. But I haven't seen training on it.

(Vinu at 00:33:02) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:03) Yeah. What was the last project that won? Can you share or no? Is it internal and private?

(Vinu at 00:33:09) Yeah. There's some internal, internal private stuff. But I'll give you an example of one of the projects that was great, was a great innovation. We actually had a challenge internally of trying to find the right type of talent and the right people with the right type of skills within the organization. When you're our size, not that we are super large, but, you know, we've got 1,600 engineers. They've got their own passions and talent and skills. And we wanted to find a way to actually, A, keep that updated. B, how do we, if I'm a person sitting in the West Coast and I need a resource or I need an engineer, how do I easily find that engineer? Because when you have 1,600 engineers, you don't really have a central repository of where you have everything stored. And even if you did, they really did not have a real search mechanism for that. And so one of the innovations that we found was, somebody came up with this, actually three individuals came up with this Google Maps kind of interface that you could just type in and say, "Alright, this is what I'm looking for." And it's able to show you who this engineer is, where he lives, what's his skill sets, what's his certifications, and it's able to match a demand or a supply and a demand. And it, all in a very simple Google-like interface. And that's going to be now used internally at Presidio.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:39) Did they use static code analysis of, like, GitHub, so they could tell what type of languages and features people are familiar with?

(Vinu at 00:34:47) Absolutely. Absolutely. It ties into our certification database. It ties into our skills matrix database. But the front end was really innovative that you could just, it was trying to get natural language processing. So, "Hey, I need a such and such," just like how you type on Google because you didn't have to be, so that was a really nice innovation that we are now going to try and see how we can roll out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:12) Oh, you're, are you gonna spin that out as, like, a product other people can buy?

(Vinu at 00:35:16) That might be something that we will be looking at in the future. But this is something right now internally to say, "Hey, this is something that solves our problem." But that was the exact question when we showed some of our sales teams. That was the exact question that they asked us is, "Hey, can you roll this out?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:33) Oh, it's so cool. I love that. That's a really good, really good idea. Yep. Alright. So what did they get? You couldn't tell me exactly who won, but the winners, what do they get? Do they get to, like, form their own team and a budget to execute? Like, what what's the reward for winning?

(Vinu at 00:35:50) So, as part of this, you know, when they, it has to be a working prototype. And once they show us the working prototype, one of the questions that we have as a follow-up, and especially if they win, and even if they don't win, we take it very seriously, the 20 to 30 submissions that we get. It goes through a bunch of panels, and the panelists are told to take those innovations. Even if they don't move to the next round, if there's a way to solve a customer problem, let's take that and use it. But the winning team essentially gets funding, visibility in the organization saying, "Hey, this is something that we do." And they are able to form teams, and we are able to allow them to go and innovate and actually build on that project. So one of the projects that was the winner two years ago is something that was a script. Script. It was actually an automation, not a script. It was an automated tool that we use when our customers, our managed services customers come to us and say, "We've got a problem." This automated tool is able to actually find out what the problem is and is able to respond to problems much quicker than humans do. It's able to understand what the problem is and it's able to integrate with our ServiceNow tool, and it's able to tell you, "Alright, Mr. Customer, we get the problem. Try these solutions first, but you also got an agent waiting to get engaged with you." So it's kind of a bot that works. And two years ago when it won, it was a prototype, and now we've got that completely up and running in our managed services team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:24) Yeah. That is a technology pattern that has come about in the past two years where the bots will offer you some sort of resources while you wait for an agent or before they hand you off to an agent. Everybody kind of does it a little bit differently. Some better than others, but, you know, I like that. If they were doing it two years ago, then you've got some really bright people that are ahead of the curve.

(Vinu at 00:37:46) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:46) So how did, how did you get, oh, sorry.

(Vinu at 00:37:48) Go ahead. Go ahead.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:50) I was gonna completely change the topic. So if you... Oh, okay. I just want to know about, like, how you got started in tech. I saw that you have some background in physics, but were you young when you knew you loved technology? Was it in college, after school? Like, when did you really fall in love with technology?

(Vinu at 00:38:08) Yeah. So when I was growing up in high school, technology was, yeah, it was a passion. I was really good in math and science and stuff like that. But I was not in any form or shape really looking to pursue a career in technology. I was actually wanting to become a doctor. And due to a couple of things, twist of fate, whatever you want to call it, I ended up pursuing a physics degree which exposed me to a lot of the technology side of things and then immediately did. From there, I went to do my engineering in computers and electronics, which completely transformed what I thought about technology. But coming out of engineering, you know, there was, it was during the .com or actually the Y2K boom, if I think about it now, is during the more of the Y2K side of things. And a lot of people really pursued, you know, those Y2K type projects. And I actually decided that, you know, well, the crowd seems to be going towards that direction. I might as well go towards the other direction. And I had the opportunity to really build and be part of India's first Internet service provider, which kind of really got me exposed to networking and security. And that was kind of my first foray into the world of technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:26) And then you were hooked.

(Vinu at 00:39:28) And I also from there on, I could see the power of networking back then. If you think about the early 2000s or late nineties was a real great spot to be because, you know, the Internet was really starting to come up. You know, companies like Cisco was really slowly starting to become really prevalent. I think at 2001 or 2000, Cisco was the most valuable company. So we were, you know, I was really hooked onto Cisco. I was really hooked onto networking, different things. The fact that you could actually sit here and connect something thousands of miles away and be able to make it work was something that was really fascinating. Obviously, things like email, then the WWW, the World Wide Web, and the ability for you to get those information just was, you know, the potential back then, if somebody were to tell you the amount of innovation that could come in the last ten years, you know, in terms of being able to access any information you need from anywhere in the world using any device. The fact that you could rent out servers and compute space and storage out on the web with Amazon Web Services or Azure. Just mind-boggling in terms of how much technology was going there. So as a fresh engineering graduate in the late nineties, you know, this was in the early 2000s. This was something that really fascinated me, and I got hooked onto technology. And then ever since then, it's always been, I look at technology and say, "Alright, this is something that is now all pervasive." It used to be that technology was, Joel, if you think about it, it was a business enabler. Right? It used to help your business. It was, "Hey, I could do printing. I could do emails. I could do voice." But in the late 2010s or in the second decade of innovation, technology truly became not only a business enabler, but actually a business driver. Right? Now you've got CIOs who are not looking at enabling business. You're actually, and CIOs are now being asked to drive business, create new revenue streams using technology, like using mobile apps and innovating. So it's been a fantastic ride if you think about how technology was, you know, "Hey, can you help us get an email system up and running?" to now saying, "Can you use technology to drive a completely new business line of revenue and a new line of business, you know, make us competitive, get us attracting those millennial customers that are coming out?" That's new. That's what digital transformation is all about. And I think it's a fascinating ride. And I think technology, especially with what we are thinking, what we're looking at with AI, machine learning, hyper-automation, I think it's got a long way to go, and it's really exciting to be in this business.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:21) Yeah. That's why I put the go-to-market strategy up at the front of the interview because I always want to make that, like, I want to raise awareness for that. If you have this ability as an executive and you're in the C-suite, you understanding how value is created and transferred and destroyed and all of that, understanding that and the customer makes you so much more valuable. Yeah. It makes you infinitely more valuable than someone who's just really good at organizing engineers, which is who I was for a long time. I was just good at organizing engineers together and that was great. But then I saw this other thing. Like, if you have the power to generate revenue, you can do anything you want. And that's, you know, the foray into, like, entrepreneurship. And so kind of blending all of those things. When I saw that you had go-to-market strategy experience, like, okay, I want to figure out what it looks like from your level. But I do have a question for you. So I want you to think back to when you were at that first ISP, when you were in your first experience job and the your peers, the people around you. And I'm just curious. You've obviously gotten very far in your career. And so one of my things I'm always interested in is, you know, what makes people who get really far different or unique? Like, what is it about them that help them get farther? My first question is, the peers that you worked with, do you, like, have you stayed in contact with any of them, or anything like that?

(Vinu at 00:43:51) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I'm still in touch with a good portion of them. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:57) Were they all pretty much successful? Was it, like, just a good bunch?

(Vinu at 00:44:01) I think they were all pretty successful. I think the peer group that formed at that ISP, keep in mind that they all decided to choose a path that was not well, you know, well thought about. Right? Because everybody went to that, solved the Y2K problem, and here is a bunch of people that were taking a completely different turn. And I think, you know, many of them have moved forward and have been successful in whatever they do. But I look at that and I remember being, a lot of people told me, "Hey, you crazy not getting onto this Y2K boom." Because everybody was trying to do COBOL programming back in the day, and here I am trying to connect and network different things in a secure fashion, by the way. And we are trying to talk about, you know, working with Cisco and everybody is like, "Who's that?" And meanwhile, everybody's talking about IBM and Y2K and mainframes and all that kind of stuff. So it was a different turn, and it was not a very popular decision back in the day. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:04) And so, like, what are some of the things that, like, you look back on and, I mean, clearly, you have some self-awareness. Right? That's, like, it's just part of what you have to have at the level you're at. And so I'm just curious, like, what are some of the strengths that you have?

(Vinu at 00:45:21) Well, thank you for saying that. I think the first thing I would tell you is, always surrounding yourself with really smart people. Like, I told you this, and I honestly mean it. I always consider myself to be the dumbest person in the room. And...

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:35) Not today, my friend.

(Vinu at 00:45:38) No. I still, I still, I still believe that, honestly. The other thing is, as part of that, when you feel that way, you always have the absolute interest to learn. And you always have the interest to learn and be hungry. And, you know, one of my favorite leaders has always been Steve Jobs. And, you know, his quote, you know, "Be hungry, be humble," is always something that's in the back of my mind. I think always this willingness to learn is absolutely critical. Surrounding yourself with really bright people and being able to go and find the brightest talent. And the one thing that I'm very, very particular about is to find people who are smarter than me that I can bring onto the team. This is pointless to bring somebody who's not smart or who's going to tell you exactly what you want to hear. You always want to be surrounded by people that are better than you, have a lot more intelligence, and can teach you something, and you want to enable them. You want to go and hire the best talent to tell you what to do, not for you to tell them what to do. So that's been a key part of what I've always believed in is to be that humble, be hungry, always be willing to learn new stuff, be willing to get out of that comfort zone because that's another thing that I've seen. A lot of people get very comfortable where they are and not really change. And I think there's that inertia that always comes in at some point where you're really comfortable with what you do and you really stop learning, and that's when you stop growing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:18) Preach. Yes. A hundred percent. I actually, no, I love that you mentioned Steve Jobs. I actually got to do an interview and get to know pretty well, like, his leadership coach who's still alive, John Mattone. And it was, it was so interesting. We had, like, some candid discussions about it, but, you know, you watch a movie about somebody and use their products and you hear them and then getting to talk to people that, like, actually coach them and get different perspectives. It's just, it's so interesting how movies and media and everything works versus reality. But, yeah, those items that you mentioned, absolutely critical. Things that I hear, like, very common patterns amongst the people who, you know, may, I want to go to the top. And I find that I'm always, like, a little bit shy about it too. Like, I'm always a little bit shy about referring to, like, the 1%. But in my mind, that internal voice in my mind, I wake up, it's 5:30 in the morning, I'm out there grinding, and while everyone else, all my other competitors are sleeping, right, and dreaming, I'm out, I'm out there building the future. But I definitely like the style and the way that you think.

(Vinu at 00:48:37) But thank you. Thank you. And then like I said, it's the team. It's absolutely the team. When you surround yourself with really smart people, I think it makes it much easier.

(Vinu at 00:48:48) It's not gonna make you really comfortable, which is the whole point of surrounding yourself with really good people. And then, you know, reading and learning, Joel, is absolutely key. It's absolutely key. There's a lot of information out there. I think we are almost at the point of information overload, so there's nothing like picking up a real good book and doing your own analysis and things like that.

(Vinu at 00:49:16) So, yeah, it's absolutely fascinating time right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:21) You also mentioned earlier being humble. And I didn't wanna interrupt you because I was like, oh, I wanna talk about that. But one of the things that I've learned about that is it's interesting because what it does is it sets you up for less pressure. Right? Like, if you go around and you're the king with all the answers and this, that, and the other, this persona or this ego kinda takes on momentum of its own.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:51) But if you're constantly surrounded by smart people and you're questioning your own ideas and thinking critically and being open that, hey, I'm gonna facilitate this conversation and I don't necessarily have all the answers. That's always that, like, that just it's like a better tactic. It's almost like the first tactic was I have all the answers and, like, just complete confidence and, like, bravado. And then we realized that, like, everyone will sort of look up to you and then it just becomes too much because you can't be everywhere. You can't solve everyone's problems and you can't have all the answers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:28) So this strategy of just being humble and being self aware, it's something that I've specifically seen rise up over the past twenty years, and I like the macro direction in which we're headed, like, as a society, as a people.

(Vinu at 00:50:46) Yeah. But yeah, just one thing though I would kind of steer you towards is there's people who look at it as a strategy. And I think that's fine, but I honestly also believe that there are people who truly mean it too. Right? That's important. You can't just look at it as a strategy and say, I'm just gonna say it. You have to truly mean it. And that's another part of that equation as well. And by the way, when we keep talking about the fact that you have to surround yourself with really smart people, there are occasions where you are the one who have to take a decision.

(Vinu at 00:51:25) I mean, technology is one where there's just so much stuff that you could do. The perfect example is my emerging solutions business unit. The emerging solutions business unit is that bunch of folks up in the crow's nest looking at where we need to be headed. What are some of the trends that are coming up? They might come to me with a whole bunch of stuff where we need to make initiatives and investments in.

(Vinu at 00:51:51) And they might have compelling arguments, but at the end of the day, that is up to you as a leader to make those decisions on where you want to pivot and where you wanna make those investments. You might be surrounded by really strong people who have really strong opinion about stuff, but at the end of the day, that decision comes to you to make to say, okay, is this something that we wanna make investment in? So I bring that up because I think it's really important that you be humble, but you also have to be in a position to make really unpopular decisions. Because at the end of the day, you are surrounded by really strong people with strong opinions and really intelligent and bright people who have a lot of the right ideas and they have the right intentions.

(Vinu at 00:52:37) But at some point, you have to trust your own gut instinct to say, alright, this is not something that I wanna go and make an investment in. And it could be a very unpopular decision.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:47) Yeah. And that's when knowing yourself and, like I mentioned earlier, self awareness. Like, knowing yourself is very important. And then also having principles to mix in. Because after I read that book, Principles, a few years ago by Ray Dalio, I was just like, this is such a great framework for thinking about things.

(Vinu at 00:53:06) You might be able to see that book. Yes. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:09) Yeah. I got mine back here too.

(Vinu at 00:53:11) Yes. That's right there. So it's one of my favorite books too. It's a great book.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:14) Isn't it good? I follow him on LinkedIn too. He'll post one. Now I wanna make sure because it's fifty seven after here that you have a hard stop at two. So,

(Vinu at 00:53:24) I can go a little bit. I think the meeting might be 02:50, but I can go a little bit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:29) Okay. Yeah. So we were talking about unpopular decisions, being able to make those, having a strength of knowing yourself, being useful. But when you mentioned humble, first of all, I loved it because you saw a different side of it that I didn't see that there may be a person who is just saying they're humble. Let's give some insight or shed some light on let's say that there's a person out there who isn't humble, but they're trying to make this change because they want to experiment with this act of being humble.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:03) Maybe they're just kinda, you know, saying it. How could they actually work on that, like, in a real way?

(Vinu at 00:54:12) One of the things that I look at when I'm faced with this is, does this person really walk the talk? Right? Is the humility really there? And what I've seen is I look at what they have actually done in their life, and it's a very easy telltale. You would be able to find that out really quickly because usually, if you're really not meaning it, if you're not really walking the talk, your success rate is highly questionable. Secondly, the people that you surround yourself with are not people who are going to be ready to take a bullet for you, for lack of better words. They're not gonna have that level of loyalty because it comes out really quickly, Joel. If you're truly not the person that you are and you're just putting on a show, it's gonna come up. So my advice to those people is to really think about and be really truthful to yourself.

(Vinu at 00:55:19) And you actually say you don't know something, you should actually say you don't know something. And one of the things that I found to be really awkward is this kind of notion that if you say you don't know something, it's looked upon or it's frowned upon. There's nobody who knows everything. And I think we gotta be really clear there. And so there are times when I don't know. I just don't know. And it's okay to say you don't know and not pretend that, you know, not really put a show that you don't know. It's fine. It's okay to not know. It's okay to make mistakes.

(Vinu at 00:55:59) And I think that's a bigger part of the learning process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:04) Yeah. I really do agree. You know what? Things that humble me with knowledge, you know, when I get to go out and go into the mountains and look at the sky at night, right, with how big it is. That's one of those things or watching, like, the Cosmos series. But even getting to talk with all of these different leaders, like, yesterday or earlier this week, I was talking with this guy who has explained to me on a detailed level about, like, how Internet traffic works, more so than I had learned previously because I realized that I have this tiny little sliver of experience when developing applications, and it really has to do with, like, understanding design, UI, business logic, and that's, like, its own thing. You know? I'm not, like, down close to the metal or doing, you know, all these there's so many areas to have expertise in. It's just absolutely overwhelming, but it's also beautiful because we're at a time in life now where we can just start piecing these things together to create value in the marketplace. And for me, I have found that I gravitate towards the things I enjoy most in life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:15) And for me, that's watching the growth of a team. I mean, it's I have two kids. They're under the age of four, but I have two kids and, like, watching them grow and learn new things, I get a similar it's different, but similar feeling of, like, watching my team grow and progress. So I really enjoy that. I enjoy good conversations. And so I've really been working on understanding myself and then structuring my life to where I'm doing the things that really get me going, that really excite me because I feel like rather than trying to find purpose, right, or rather than trying to, like, discover these things, it's like, let's just understand where I'm at today and structure my life so that I'm excited about what I'm doing and where I'm going and that's kind of where I'm at right now with philosophy of self development for Joel.

(Vinu at 00:58:13) Yeah. That's awesome. That's fantastic. Do you travel a lot too, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:19) Yep. So, like, last year, I did 50 plus cities. So usually, I'd be like, oh, you're awesome, and this is a fantastic conversation. I'm gonna come out and see I'll be out there in a couple months or something. But since the COVID stuff, I haven't been traveling that much. Do you get to travel a lot?

(Vinu at 00:58:36) I do. I do. One of the things that, obviously, I have family back in India that I go and visit. But we also try and hit one new country every year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:47) Oh, nice.

(Vinu at 00:58:47) And I've always believed that traveling just completely changes your perspective and changes a lot about who you are, which is, again, going back to the whole, you know, be humble conversation. That's another part of it is when you travel, you really get to understand who you are. You understand what the world is like. And you kind of you begin to see how insignificant you are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:13) And it's beautiful because once you accept that or understand that you can say, okay, what's the one small thing I'm gonna chip away at? And what's like the one little mark I'm going to leave here? It makes you spend your time wisely. And I like what you said too traveling that there was something the first time I got off a plane and I was like by myself in a new city I had never been to. There's this unique feel about it, but then you're out of your comfort zone and then you get comfortable and then you go to a country where you get off the plane and you don't know the language and you can't read the signs. Like the first when I stepped off the plane in Sweden, I was like, oh, I didn't think about this.

(Vinu at 00:59:57) I had

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:57) to take, like, two trains and a taxi to get to my hotel. But it's just that explorer, that adventurousness in there.

(Vinu at 01:00:06) Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:09) How do we wrap this up? Because we got a few minutes. We told people about Presidio. They can go to presidio.com. They're interested in learning more about you do cloud security, digital infrastructure, stuff like that. Right?

(Vinu at 01:00:24) Yeah. So, again, you know, we pride ourselves as being that kind of a true life cycle and managed services provider for everything digital transformation, specifically around workforce transformation, you know, digital infrastructure, modernizing infrastructure, cloud, right, as we call it, which means we believe there's a right type of cloud for every type of workload or use case, and then, finally, security, which we kinda wrap everything up with. So we are really we believe strongly in the fact that we think we have a really good solution set. We've got some really good ideas around how we're helping our customers solve some of these business challenges and business problems. And, you know, again, we've got 1,600 engineers, so we've got a very strong engineering focus and a lot of talent in house that can help our customers really solve true business problems.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:23) That's exciting. This has been great. And I want you to know, like, from me to you, whatever you need, whether it's personal, professional, anything I could ever help you with, you're like, oh, maybe Joel knows somebody or could help. I genuinely mean that I'm here if you need anything at all.

(Vinu at 01:01:37) It's the same way around. So thank you, and congrats on a great business. It looks like it's a fantastic I had an opportunity to listen to a few of the podcasts. So congrats on what you're building.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:50) Thank you. Any feedback, positive or negative, from the episodes?

(Vinu at 01:01:54) It's great. It's a it's a I would say it's a unique format. And, you know, when my marketing team approached me about this as well, I thought this was really unique because, you know, we have a lot of podcasts, and you have a really a lot of the celebrity speakers. But, you know, sometimes you wanna really get into the weeds and really talk to people who are building new things. And I think this is a great this is a great platform.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:20) Well, you have an open invitation whenever you'd like to come back on. We can hang out, talk about life, technology, whatever you'd like. Okay?

(Vinu at 01:02:27) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:28) Have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you.

(Vinu at 01:02:30) Absolutely. Thank you so much, Joel. Bye.

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:34) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.