Ask the Experts

The transcript

Jim Heisman (00:00):

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jim Heisman and I’m the chief operating officer with Outer Edge Technology. And today is the first in a series of “ASK the Experts” experts technology series that we’re going to put on to help educate our customers and the public about current IT issues. And with me today, we have Rick Emlet, the CEO of Outer Edge and Jose Almonte, the chief information officer of Outer Edge .  Ric and Jose please tell us a little bit about your background before we get started.

Rick Emlet (00:40):

Okay, well, hi again, my name is Rick Emlet. I’m the CEO of outer edge technology. I have 35 plus years and I won’t, that’s all, I’ll just stop at 35 plus in the information technology world and Jose and I started out our edge back in 2008 and they’re doing cloud technology and platform as a service ever since.

Jose Almonte (01:06):

My name is Jose Almonte,  chief technology officer for outer edge. I am a co-founder of Outer Edge, a company  that we hold dear and that I have over 25 years of  experience specifically 10, 12 years in cloud strategies, cloud development infrastructure as a service and platform as a service.

Jim Heisman (01:29):

Great, next slide please?

Jim Heisman (01:36):

So as we’re all painfully aware  the COVID-19  pandemic has changed the way  the United States and indeed how the world does business. One of the main things we have seen is a shift from people going to the office and working in an office. And now we have a very large remote workforce.  To make that happen  many people have turned to companies like outer edge to help them deliver IT Cloud Services to their workforce. And, of course, one of the main considerations is how are we gonna do this? And so, so we’re seeing a transformation in how IT Cloud services are delivered and to do this in the most effective way, people need to develop what we’re going to call today, a cloud strategy. So I guess my first question for the either Rick or Jose is, “does a cloud strategy mean that we need to put all of our applications in the cloud? What exactly does Cloud Strategy mean?

Jose Almonte (03:00):

Cloud strategy does not necessarily mean that you put all your applications in the cloud. Typically when you start putting applications in the cloud, you have to prioritize what’s most critical to your business, and it should go hand in hand with  any type of business continuity plan you may have. In the event of a pandemic scenario or even a more localized geographical scenario like Katrina or even Sandy we all know those had a tremendous impact on business and  those that were prepared and understood which applications they needed to be able to run their business had already implemented remote cloud solutions for their respective verticals. But no,  you don’t have to put the whole thing in the cloud. Typically 99% of the cloud implementations we see are a hybrid cloud. It’s a mix between cloud, whether it be public or private or even on premise.

Jose Almonte (03:54):

And what, what do you mean by a public cloud or private cloud?  Private is, is typically an infrastructure. It could be a co-location that the company’s invested in meaning that they’ve invested in data centers or they’ve contracted with a cloud service provider that has their own data center that can host applications and fits all the business requirements within that data center. A public cloud is typically some of the big box brands like Azure or AWS or even Google cloud. , so when I refer to public cloud, it’s usually one of the big three.

Jim Heisman (04:31):

Okay. So, so when you say Azure, is that Microsoft Azure?

Jose Almonte (04:35):

Yes. It’s Microsoft Azure,  Microsoft’s cloud platform. That’s correct.

Jim Heisman (04:39):

And then AWS is that Amazon web services?

Jose Almonte (04:42):

That’s correct. AWS is an acronym for  Amazon web services.

Rick Emlet (04:45):

Okay. And Google now has offerings as well. Google Cloud is progressing pretty quickly. You go to the next slide, please. If I could just touch one point there, the new norm, so we’re talking about cloud strategies and the pandemics sort of driving this new normal. So when we say new normal a lot of that’s driven by remote work force, right? Being able to have the ability, not to show up at the office, but still be completely productive just as if you’re were working in the office. And actually that’s, that’s something that’s been around for a while at outer edge. We have a remote workforce and most companies do have some remote workforce strategy. I think what we’ve seen as a result of  this pandemic is companies that haven’t already developed a remote work strategy have to quickly adapt, adapt it, their technology to be able to work remotely. And so when we talk about cloud strategies here in a little bit, what do we really mean? , I think that you’ll see how this all comes out, because as Jose said,, we have on premise, you have public cloud and you have private cloud, when you combine one or more of these platforms you have a hybrid cloud. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later, but remote working is something that’s been around for awhile. The pandemic has just really accelerated or made companies like do something, take some type of immediate action at this point. So they’re going to be prepared prospectively , God forbid there’s another a disaster.

Jim Heisman (06:24):

Well, this may be a little bit off topic, but so let’s talk briefly about establishing a remote working at home aren’t there greater security risks now than ever.

Rick Emlet (06:37):

There is, I can speak to a couple and I know Jose probably has additional, but the biggest,  the biggest threat in remote working is really the network that the employee is on. So is it a public app access network, meaning it’s not secure and that’s typically the biggest fear, but it’s also endpoint devices. Are they using their own laptop? Are they using a company supplied device? Does the device have adequate protection such as  malware protection? Does the device have the tool set, providing security to the data and to the operating system? So that’s just a couple of things that have to be aware of if you’re working at a local cafe and you have to just be mindful you’re on a public network, as soon as you are, you are wide open to being compromised.

Jim Heisman (07:40):

Jose, did you want to add anything to that?

Jose Almonte (07:42):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, those are all great points that, that Rick brought up. Definitely the biggest risk is the network you’re coming in from. So, most companies, when they think out their cloud strategy or the remote workforce strategy,  they have to, they’re faced with challenges. How do you secure that access? , and and also, you know, your associated security protocols that users must follow,  to make sure that you have strong passwords and password management policies actually used and followed, you have to make sure you’re conscious even about your screen that you’re displaying and what, what you’re actually, what type of business you’re conducting and where, right. So all these things come into consideration. Some a lot have to do with technology, but some of are are just,  really security processes and work habits, that the end users have to be mindful of.

Jim Heisman (08:41):

And are there  tools available to help companies that are making the shift to their remote workforce?

Jose Almonte (08:48):

There are a lot of tools that are becoming pretty popular.  Everything from  remote teleconferencing like WebEx, or Zoom,  go to meeting, and  Microsoft teams has made  huge in roads in the remote work space. All these are great platforms. And then you have application driven presentation platforms like Citrix or if it’s a pure SaaS solution that it’s a SaaS offering that they’re out accessing their applications. So there are a lot of secure ways you can access  that. And of course, logging, your end point devices. And when I say device, I mean, either an iPad or a laptop you want to make sure there’s some level of a VPN  device that has multiple forms of authentication.

Jim Heisman (09:36):

Well, what’s a VPN device,

Jose Almonte (09:39):

it’s a VPN device. Similarly, as a, as a software client that resides either on your phone, tablet or laptop that enables you to create a secure connection to your applications. Right? That means when I say secure, that means that once you enter in your credentials and you’ve established a connection, any data or transactions that traverses between your laptop or iPad or phone is encrypted and secure. So in the event, that’s your added public hotspot, or even if you’re working from home, you know, that the data being traversed is encrypted and secure.

Jim Heisman (10:18):

And is VPN, is that an acronym for a virtual private network?

Jose Almonte (10:22):

It is virtual private network is the acronym for VPN.

Rick Emlet (10:27):

So there are a lot of tools as Jose mentioned, but one thing that companies can’t forget, so there are a lot of tools to help provide security, different ways to achieve connectivity. The good news is technology’s there to meet the security need. And there are a variety of solutions that you can look at. So it really comes down to what your requirements are, but something you can’t forget. And it has to be driven by the business leaders at the company. A corporate level policy and procedure for the end user or the, what I mean is the remote user, right? And so, as they mentioned, you have to be conscious of conversations you’re having, who can view your screen. You know, all those types of things are very important. So there should be some policy or procedure, a directive to the remote workforce that these are the guidelines on how to securely work remotely. It’s something that it’s not software driven. It just has to be policy driven.

Jim Heisman (11:34):

Getting back to the slide that that’s in front of us titled “doing more with less”, have you noticed, any of your customers  trying to scale back,  or stop projects or otherwise curb spending? What have you noticed in the marketplace?

Rick Emlet (11:52):

Well, every customer wants to do more with less. I can tell you that that’s sort of, I had a laugh a little bit there and we do see that, but I think with this pandemic, this really brings it into focus. And as you see on this slide this from CFOs, one thing that you can realize with just something like remote workforce is a reduction in office space facilities. When I say facilities, it’s not just floor space, it’s electricity, it’s a square foot, it’s all of that combined. So,  we do hear all the time from our customers.  We want to do more and spend less, that’s a constant, I would be shocked if any CFO didn’t have that viewpoint, but this pandemic has certainly accelerated that and brought cost control into more focus. Next slide please.

Jim Heisman (13:01):

So, we touched on this earlier, I asked what is a cloud strategy. Does that mean that you’re going to put all your applications in the cloud? And we heard that the answer to that is no. And it’s my understanding that what there would be, would be a mix of on premise and public and private cloud. So, so how do you determine which applications should go to the cloud? What should stay on prem? And is there any methodology to developing the cloud strategy?

Rick Emlet (13:36):

I’ll take the first shot at it from a higher level. , it really starts it has to be driven from the C level the, leaders of the company. And,  so you really have to look at business processes,  your tolerance to risk your application mix. What can, and can’t be put in the cloud. Jose mentioned earlier, he said, SaaS software as a service, that’s a fully subscribed or subscription based way to use an application. There’s other ways to do it as well. So it really has to be driven at the corporate level. And there are a lot of things that are involved in understanding what goes into a cloud strategy and it’s not going to fit every company. Every company is going to have its own policy, procedure, and different tolerances to risk and a different application mix. So each customer’s unique and everything has to be looked at from an overall business process or policy. And that’s really where to start, as far as you don’t even get to the application layer yet, you’re, you’re starting at the, at the highest level. Then you get more into the technologies that maybe Jose can talk about.

Jose Almonte (15:04):

The C level must determine what makes sense for the business with that application that makes one big driver, why an application would stay on prem or even,  not leave the States is regulatory through their specific data requirements for certain industries that may require the data to stay within United States, right. And it cannot traverse  certain areas. , in addition to that there may be strict requirements regards to personnel, who can touch the data. So a lot of driving factors that are, are typically regulatory or technological. There’s very little that you cannot put in the cloud unless the application specifically States that it has to be on premise and that’s few and far between, but most likely a high number of applications can either be delivered in a SaaS format or in a traditional client server format in the cloud. Typically what, what drives it to remain on premise is , something specific to the industry or regulatory concerns.

Rick Emlet (16:18):

Sometimes it’s just investment as well. I mean,  a lot of companies have a huge investment in the computer technology. So they have their own data centers with raised floors and a huge investment, which is typically depreciated over time because it’s a capital expenditure. And to just decide one day that that all goes out, the window doesn’t happen in a day because if not, if you did, you could see that the, the loss of investment that would happen rather quickly, some of those cloud strategies are going to look at a, the overall view and then look at a plan migration, what makes sense to go to cloud technology? What makes sense to stay on premise and so as they said, a lot of on-premise today is typically driven by compliance and regulatory issues or legacy systems that the company might have.

Jim Heisman (17:14):

And when you’re looking to, to build a cloud strategy, would you recommend  that someone looked to multiple public providers like putting some apps into  Microsoft Azure or some apps in Amazon web services? Or should they go into the same public cloud or how do you advise your clients?

Rick Emlet (17:40):

Well, yeah, I mean, honestly, they’re, they’re both really good offerings and I would say most companies today have some level of a cloud footprint, a public cloud footprint, typically in Amazon web services, Microsoft, Azure, and Google, as I mentioned, is coming on. , you would look at that. I don’t think there’s any advantage to have it in multiple ones. I would look to leverage if you already have an existing footprint look to leveraging more services and there typically those companies Microsoft Azure and AWS or amazon web services are geared, the more services you purchase from them, the more goodies they’ll give you or better discounts they’ll give you. So it’s really looking at the how cost effective it is to do. And is there enough there already where you can get deep discounts,

Jim Heisman (18:41):

then what do you find to be the biggest challenges faced by a company then in developing a cloud strategy?

Rick Emlet (18:51):

I just think getting the buy in from upper level management and all departments, cause there’s, you know, you really do need to take a look, at everything. So not just your existing computer infrastructure it’s really business policy practice systems that you’re going to retire,  new projects that are coming on board, you really have to take a holistic view of the entire organization where it is today and where you think it might go tomorrow. And that all informs the cloud strategy.

Jose Almonte (19:31):

I absolutely agree, Rick and I, at least for our customer base, I’d say over 90% it was definitely a top down approach in, strategic vision, that’s executive level management that believes in going to the cloud. , and without that definitely presents some issues, you know, it can’t really only be about the technology. It has to be a definitely a top down approach.

Rick Emlet (19:57):

yeah, I could say almost every one of our customers it has been driven at a very high level within the company to the choice to move to cloud technologies. You go to the next slide please.

Jim Heisman (20:18):

So why do I need a cloud strategy? What are the main benefits I can expect to realize as a customer by moving  into a hybrid cloud as part of  a cloud strategy?

Jose Almonte (20:38):

Sure. , definitely the big benefits what we found with a lot of our customers is,  really speed to market, right, where they wanted to go to cloud. , if you didn’t want to be held up with capital expenditures in that procurement process, but they needed to have a solution in place pretty quickly, and also be looking longer term, be able to have it scale quickly and having a lot of flexibility in their design and at the same time being cost effective. And when I say cost effective it really if not all public and private is based on usage, right? So, so true usage. So you’re not wasting any compute network or any type of technology you’re actually utilizing what you need as opposed to what you want. , and, and, you know, and of course it fulfills a lot of , regulatory requirements , to their investors like backup and disaster recovery. , I can’t tell you how many check boxes are checked off once customers have moved their solutions to the cloud especially when it pertains to their business continuity plans and their disaster recovery plans.

Rick Emlet (21:58):

if I could make a point, if I could just jump in and make a point it’s not just speed to market, but just as an example typically the larger the organization, and if they have a procurement group as soon as you label, you have a group that just does procurement that they’re good people and they’re looking to get the best deal that they can. But so we have a couple customers that just to get through the procurement process, to just procure the servers and the memory and the disk and everything, you need to create a, an environment for the application. That process itself could take weeks or months, that’s just to procure the equipment. Then once the equipment comes in, then the IT team needs to rack and stack it, put it in the computer room, get it plugged in, get it configured, get it going so you could see it.

Rick Emlet (22:59):

It could be a rather long period of time from the date that the project’s approved. You have the funding let’s go hits procurement. From that point before you can actually get started on the project, it could be months or longer, depending on how the procurement process goes, typically in a cloud based solution. And so, as they said, you only pay for what you’re using. , but we could take that same scenario with our typical builds and installs. Once we have agreed upon requirements from the customer, we have the technical specifications for the application that’s going to be running in that environment. Our typical build process from beginning to end is two to three weeks, and that’s  versus two to six months. So you could see it really does enhance speed to market.

Jim Heisman (23:54):

Let me ask you about the, the backup, recovery and the disaster recovery benefits. , how does a cloud strategy or a hybrid cloud for an enterprise enhance their backup and disaster recovery capability?

Jose Almonte (24:13):

Well, one of the big check boxes is, is in most audit reports is where’s your data reside and you immediately can check it. You know, it’s off site and most, if not all cloud solutions, you should also be looking at replication. I mean, it doesn’t just exist at one site. It’s all securely replicated to another location for DR purposes. So from that respect, you know, it’s almost an immediate checkbox that you fulfilled moving your data securely off premises, right? So in the event you had a geographical or even a regional disaster like Katrina , or Sandy or even a global pandemic, you can tell your investors or your auditors or any compliance regulatory process that our data is secured and offsite. So in the event of a disaster, in the event of a geographical , situation like Katrina or Sandy or a pandemic, which we’re into right now immediately our, our tier one or our critical personnel can conduct business.

Rick Emlet (25:29):

It also impacts your old school disaster recovery solutions. , you used to have, you would pay a fee to an organization where you would supply the data in the event of a disaster, your data and applicant be equipment enough. They would be there for you to actually build your environment back out , and they would also provide office space for your critical personnel. So if you’re a thousand person organization and you identified 100 people that are absolutely critical to be at work the next day. So your company can continue to move forward. Those old fashion DR solutions would also provide the office space. So to sort of tie back to an earlier point to what the pandemic is, it’s really, yeah. Put the light on is the ability to work remotely. So that type of solution for DR Jose mentioned all those things were important, but the pieces for your old classic disaster recovery, in other words, separate office space isn’t necessarily needed in most instances.

Jose Almonte (26:56):

Well, there are, you know in the event of geographical in the old fashioned model it would be  very much a Herculean event, right? So unlike in the cloud, if you design it correctly and you meet your business continuity requirements you can be up in some cases, if you have a five minutes solution, literally within minutes , again, not to say you can’t accomplish that with the old model, but, you know, there is a huge capital investment typically that has to be made , and, and with cloud solutions, a lot of the tools are readily available and also based on usage, right? So you have a lot more, I see more flexibility with the cloud solution, not just to be able to back up and store securely store your data, but also cost-effectively recover.

Rick Emlet (27:51):

I think just a personal observation that a lot of companies don’t really truly have a business continuity or more importantly, a disaster recovery plan. It’s something that is in their mind, they understand it that it would be important to their company in the event of a disaster, but it’s sort of it’s if it’s not broken yet, don’t fix it kind of mentality. And so like Jose said, there are solutions today where the amount of data that you could potentially lose is reduced to seconds the amount of time that you would potentially be down, even in a geographic disaster could be minutes where your backup in a different area. So available via network those all come with different price tags. So those solutions are available, but there are solutions that from that point backwards, they get they’re not as expensive.

Rick Emlet (28:58):

So typically if you can get a person to start thinking or considering disaster recovery, again, it comes down to the company trying to make the decision.  What is that breaking point? How much data am I willing to lose? How long am I willing for the systems to be unavailable? And it’s usually a starting point. I say, how much data you’re willing to lose and they always say, zero. Of course, we expect that answer. How much time, how much time are you willing to be down? Meaning the services are available in half an hour. So that’s always a starting point, but typically when you start to look at price tags, those attitudes change. So it’s really comes down to the company to formulate those requirements and then make it fit from a budget standpoint.

Jim Heisman (29:50):

And these recovery requirements that you’re talking about, I’ve heard the term RPO and RTO bandied about in connection with the disaster recovery solutions , Jose, could you, could you tell me what RPO and RTO mean?

Jose Almonte (30:09):

Sure. , I’ll take this. , the acronym  RPO is for recovery point objective the acronym for RTO is recovery time Objective. A lot of those sometimes are, are, are confused, but at a very high level the RPO is really deployed where you’re willing to recover your data. So if I back up my data every night, I’m willing to accept that in the event of a disaster, that’s the point of recovery. So whenever the last time I backed up my data is the point where I’m recovering , and that may change. It’s. Some customers might want to be a little bit more aggressive than just once a day. , and we have some customers that have a more aggressive RPO because of it. Typically that’s driven by a business requirement, not necessarily technology and the RTO is recovery time, objective, meaning how fast can you get the system back up and running.

Jose Almonte (31:09):

, and that’s typically also driven by a business requirement where most companies and most CIOs and CTOs and CEOs understand how long can they be without the system. And how quickly do they have to get, say a mail system back up and running, or a particular business line application back, or how, how long can they do without the systems. And that usually drives how quickly do you need, or how aggressive they need the RTO to be. So, and again, everything was driven by price, right?  to Rick’s earlier point initially customers want RTO and RPO values near zero. , and we have no problem designing that, but typically when they see the price tag associated with it they reassess what the real business need is for their RPO and, and they realize their business may not require an initial. , the initial ask was more of a, a want rather than a need.

Jim Heisman (32:15):

Okay. That’s very helpful. Thank you. Could we go to the next slide please? And then when we, we touched on this earlier today, so I know now as an enterprise, I’ve got to change my business model and practices. Where do I start? How do I develop a cloud strategy,

Jose Almonte (32:48):

Sure, sure. No worries. , typically, you know, you wanna start with , definitely understanding the roles and mission statement behind why you want to go with the cloud you need to understand everything that you currently have on premise and understanding why you want to put this particular application in the cloud and what requirements that is fulfilling. Once you get the appropriate buy-in typically we’ve like we stated earlier, the highest success rates of building a cloud strategy has started at the C level. , and  once you get that team and the roles and responsibilities clearly defined then you have more of a steering committee, then you have a good start there. , you decide, you decide why are we going — did a business line or what business requirement is this fulfilling? And, and do we have the appropriate buy in at that point?

Jose Almonte (33:49):

And what are we abandoning or decommissioning that’s currently on premise to make that happen?. So, yeah, well, what a lot of customers find if they start from that point typically their cloud strategy is pretty sound. They have to have a mission statement or a cloud first approach to putting their applications in the cloud and that usually kind of waterfalls to the to the lower levels. And and it becomes a complete buy in as an organization. If it starts at that level, all the considerations, everything from a regulatory, security and compliance requirements standpoint are typically flushed out. , at that point, the technologists can come in and start designing a solution that makes the best sense in light of these variables. Not every solution fits every company.

Rick Emlet (34:49):

I should point out something that, because we do a lot of work in life sciences and biopharma. So some concerns that we get from potential customers they they’re, they feel the need that they need to bring certain applications on premise, meaning running a server in their office because of regulatory considerations. In other words, can this system be validated if it’s in the public cloud, my goodness, how could it possibly be validated? And actually it can be validated and it is being validated today. We have quite a few, we’re naturally managing several environments for customers in the cloud and they’re fully validated. So and they, and these large public clouds, these box places have come a long way on validated regulatory systems, validated clouds and validated environments. So that’s one reason I think a lot of people out there say, well, we just have to have it in house because we need a validated system. And the truth is the cloud offerings can be validated just like you would validate it in house.

Jose Almonte (36:15):

No, that’s a great point, but you know, it’s, it’s, you know, especially in life sciences  and biopharma when we started onboarding bio biotech firms several years ago the big ask was, well, how do we validate a system in the cloud? And you know, we’d have to help bridge those concerns by sitting where literally we were just literally just moving your environment to another area. We just have to make sure all the check boxes are there meaning that, can it be validated? How is it going to be validated? You know what does that process look like and kind of navigate through those waters and a hundred percent of our customers that are in that vertical found through direct experience that, Hey, you know, this absolutely can be validated in the cloud. It’s just understanding what that process is, understanding what the challenges are and being able to make sure that regardless of the cloud flavor, it can meet those, meet those challenges. And now it’s more of a, you know, why not put it in the cloud, right? That’s narrative has shifted a little bit which is great.

Rick Emlet (37:23):

There are a lot of advantages of going to the cloud.  I don’t know if it’s a disadvantage or not something people always are worried about, do I lose control of everything? And the answer is no, I’m actually in public clouds, the offerings they’re they’re simply really supplying the the hardware and the underlying operating systems and any other tools you want to buy tech that you need in that environment, but they don’t manage it. So I think there’s a lot of people that there’s like, Oh, I just go to Microsoft Azure or Amazon web services. And I just click a button and next thing, you know, boom, a servers built. It is, it does get built, but that’s all it is. There’s no applications installed. It’s not configured to  the requirements that you need. , so there’s still a  whole management component. Obviously that’s something outer edge does and specializes in. But my point is, there are a lot of people know think, well oh boy, if I put it out there, it just click a button and it works — it simply doesn’t work that way. You still have to manage it, maintain it and support it. So and again, another sidebar, but something important to point out for your biotech customers and, or your life sciences customers who need a regulated cloud and, or a validated cloud.

Jim Heisman (39:00)

When you’re putting a validated cloud solution into a public cloud, do you need to have a physical separation or can you have a, a logical separation and still have a virtual environment that satisfies regulatory requirements?

Jose Almonte (39:16):

, definitely you can absolutely have a virtual environment that satisfies regulatory requirements as long as you can prove the logical separation is secure, right. And it can be defined and presented that more than satisfies a validated, validated cloud , physical separation is really an old school mindset that says that it’s not valid, but through our experiences and trials, as long as we can provide the evidence that details, the essence of the virtual machine, that’s logically separated, and it’s still that same machine quarter of the quarter. And that evidence could be provided, it’s remained unchanged through pure audits and that more than satisfies along those requirements it doesn’t necessarily have to ever be a physical separation because to be quite honest , we live in a virtual world.  Companies are moving to virtual platforms. , if they’re not in virtual platform they’re more in the minority as opposed to the majority. Now, if you spoke to me 10 years ago it would be a much different narrative. But  logical separation is really what, what drives a lot of the technology at least from an infrastructure perspective.

Jim Heisman (40:43):

Could you briefly describe what virtualization is?

Jose Almonte (40:48):

Sure. , virtualization is really , it’s, it’s easy to get confused what that actually means. , you always have a physical layer, you always have a physical layer of servers, meaning hardware , physical CPU, physical memory. So you actually have a physical, you can actually touch it, see it, build it out. , on top of that, there’s another layer which is called the virtualization layer. What that is, it provides actually another operating system. Okay. And what that does is give you the flexibility to run virtual machines on top of that layer. Right? Think of that virtualization layer as a buffer between the hardware and the actual servers you’re running. So if I have one physical server, I could run as many as a dozen virtual machines on top of them. And it could be of a different flavor of different types of offerings between Microsoft and Linux and so forth, depending on what the business requires. What are some of the benefits? Virtualization increases the environment’s uptime exponentially for business solutions being delivered to end users, meaning that it’s minimized downtime. That’s clearly additional resiliency, but also has created flexibility for disaster recovery solutions and also general availability of the solution. , so that’s been a pretty huge milestone in technology.

Jim Heisman (42:29):

That’s very helpful. Thank you guys. , can we go into the next slide please? Unless you have something else you want to add here?

Rick Emlet (42:37):

Nope.

Jose Almonte (42:39):

Okay.

Jim Heisman (42:39):

So I think that that’s going to wrap us up for today’s presentation. We want to thank everybody that joined us today and hope that you’ve learned something. If you want to talk to us and learn more, here’s our contact information, please reach out to us. And one of our technology experts would be glad to walk you through and help your enterprise to fulfill its business goals.

Rick Emlet (43:05):

And if you have any, any questions at all about what we spoke about today, again, please reach out. And there’s a lot of content on our website, including background about who we are and what we do. We’d love to hear from you.