Latest / Identity at the Center / #414 - Sponsor Spotlight - Evolveum
Transcript
- 0:04This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity at the
- 0:11Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim.
- 0:13Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
- 0:15Oh, not so bad yourself. Good.
- 0:18Just so everyone knows, we're having technical difficulties
- 0:21right before we have recorded, but we should be fine.
- 0:25I wanted to say, you know, we went to EIC last year.
- 0:28We got to meet a lot of super people.
- 0:30Some of those super people came from today's sponsor.
- 0:34They have a open source product which I found extremely
- 0:39interesting. I mean, I've always been a big
- 0:41open source fan. And that's what's great about
- 0:45our community, man, is the variety and the friendliness of
- 0:48people. And I'm excited, you know, we're
- 0:51going back to EIC again this year.
- 0:53We'll get to interact with people again and interact with
- 0:56this sponsor today. Yeah, we've got a Sponsor
- 1:00Spotlight episode today, and we want to thank Evolvium for
- 1:03sponsoring today. So, you know, their support
- 1:05helps make podcasts available to people around the world, and so
- 1:08we certainly appreciate it. You can learn more about them at
- 1:11EVOLE um.com/IDAC. And don't worry, I'll have links
- 1:16in our show notes so people can check that out.
- 1:19But let me go ahead and choose our guest today.
- 1:20His name is Paul Meterley or Pavel Meterley.
- 1:22Sorry, Pavel. He's the interim CPO with
- 1:25Evolvium. Welcome to identity at the
- 1:27Center, Pavel. Thank you very much.
- 1:31Yeah. So, you know, we're going to
- 1:33learn more about Evolvium today and kind of what you guys do and
- 1:37sort of the, you know, the space.
- 1:38But let's start with a little about you.
- 1:40You know, let's learn more about Pavel.
- 1:42How did you get into identity and access management?
- 1:45Is it something that you picked or did it choose you?
- 1:49OK, I would say it, it chose it chose me because I was working
- 1:56in university IT since 1991 and at the beginning of the century,
- 2:03identification cards for students and employees had to be
- 2:07issued. So the first complete registry
- 2:10of persons at the university had to be created and regularly
- 2:15synchronized with two dozen systems, source systems ensuring
- 2:21things like data quality, unique identifiers and so on and so on.
- 2:25So we had to write an in house solution that time didn't even
- 2:30knowing that it's called identity management.
- 2:34Well, I would say funnily enough, some of some parts of
- 2:39the solutions are in operation still today, but I hope that
- 2:43they will be decommissioned soon because it's, it's, it's, it's
- 2:47quite a nightmare to, to, to, to maintain 25 years old solution.
- 2:52I hear you. I mean, you know, there's,
- 2:54there's legacy tech and then there's legacy tech and, and
- 2:59universities are, are very difficult identity and access
- 3:02management environments. I mean, Jim and I have worked
- 3:04with a few different, you know, higher education, you know,
- 3:07scenarios around the world and you know, it's it's almost
- 3:11shockingly complex because you have students, you have
- 3:16teachers, you have or faculty, you've got employees, you've got
- 3:20contractors, you've got parents, you've got vendor.
- 3:23Like there's so many different like personas that are part of
- 3:28the university environment that I feel like if you can, if you
- 3:31can do IAM in a university environment like that is like
- 3:36the tip top from like a difficulty scale.
- 3:39Exactly. You are.
- 3:41You are right to the point, yeah.
- 3:44So tell us a little bit about Evolvium because I've been
- 3:46familiar at least, you know, passing distance with Evolvium
- 3:49for a few years now. And I know that there's like a
- 3:52product called Midpoint as like an open source, you know,
- 3:56identity governance solution and maybe other capabilities.
- 3:59But let's start with Evolvium. So if I'm the first time, you
- 4:03know, listening, you know, what the heck is Evolvium?
- 4:06Tell us a bit about the company. OK.
- 4:10So I would, I would, I would start when we were founded.
- 4:14Yeah. We, we are in business since
- 4:162011. So this summer it will be 15
- 4:18years. Well, me personally, I joined
- 4:21the company almost at the beginning in October that year.
- 4:25And we are open source enthusiasts, I would say and we
- 4:31have only one product and it's midpoint, an IGA platform as we
- 4:36call it. So that product midpoint, that
- 4:39is the part that is open source, I guess help me understand the
- 4:42difference between like Evolvium and Midpoint.
- 4:45If I wanted to go download midpoint, I could go to the
- 4:48website and just download it and read the documentation and run
- 4:51it and then Evolvium is what provides services extra on top
- 4:56of that. How does that work?
- 4:57Yeah, Yes, yes, Evolvium is, is, is the company and midpoint is
- 5:02our product. Well, the picture is, is is a
- 5:08little bit more complex because we as a company created and
- 5:15maintained the product as such and we support the product and
- 5:19we have a lot of partners, more than 50 as far as I know us all
- 5:26over the world that take the product and offer it to their
- 5:32customers and their clients. I would say so.
- 5:37So the relationship is well quite complex, but I would say
- 5:41fruitful for, for, for, for both parties because everyone does
- 5:45what they know the best. They know their environment,
- 5:51their country or their industry vertical or whatever.
- 5:56So they, they know how to run projects.
- 6:00So they, they do all those marketing, sales, whatever is
- 6:04needed, project management and so on.
- 6:07And they do the deployment and if they have any problem, any
- 6:13issue with the product as such or when they need some knowledge
- 6:16support or whatever, they ask us.
- 6:20And we so, so we are, we are not, not a big company.
- 6:26We have a little bit over 50 employees.
- 6:32And so, so we can concentrate on the product itself to evolve it,
- 6:39maintain it back, fix it, document whatever is needed.
- 6:43Well, we have some customers on our own, but the preferred model
- 6:49is is go to via our partners. So I'm always interested in how
- 6:56companies get named in the space and evolving is a pretty unique
- 6:59one. Is there a history or a back
- 7:02story there that you can tell me how the name of Volvium
- 7:04originated? Yep, for, but I don't know this
- 7:09personally because I I entered evolving just after or few
- 7:13months after. But from what I've heard, the
- 7:16goal was was to find something that would characterize us and
- 7:21at the same time would be unique worldwide because you, you, you
- 7:24have to have to guard.com domain, obviously so.
- 7:28And this uniqueness was was was not easy.
- 7:32So Radovan Semanchick, our Co founder and my good friend
- 7:36created as he puts it a short and ugly pearls Pearl script to
- 7:43to take some some names that that he deemed reasonable
- 7:46because they characterized us and combine them in some special
- 7:50ways and using prefixes, suffixes and anything else to
- 7:55look if something related is available as a domain name.
- 7:59And so so so he got a large list of strange or even ridiculous
- 8:04names, but there were some little gems hidden and one of
- 8:08them was evolved. And I like this name very much
- 8:11because is it, well, it, it looks like, like, like the name
- 8:15of element, chemical element related to evolution.
- 8:18And this describes us very well because evolution is at the
- 8:23heart of our approach to developing software and to
- 8:27deploying software. And many of us, including me,
- 8:31Radovan, Igor, are fans or very passionate about, about science
- 8:37and technology. So so this this is this fits
- 8:41very well. Pavel, what is the reason that
- 8:44many IGA projects either struggle or fail?
- 8:49Well, there may be multitude of reasons.
- 8:52Many of them come on to all substantial IT projects or even
- 8:56projects in general like you know, poor business alignment,
- 8:59not having key people on board in a inadequate scope control,
- 9:04Big Bang style of deployment, whatever.
- 9:10Well, we try to address some of these issues in our methodology
- 9:15which is published. But answering this question, I
- 9:18would like to concentrate on 2 very specific issues or problems
- 9:26that we can address in midpoint as a software product.
- 9:31And these are, these are these two.
- 9:33The first one is data quality. Some HR departments are, I would
- 9:39say well known for less than ideal data quality.
- 9:44But your IGA deployment just cannot stop because the data is
- 9:48wrong you. You have to go on, otherwise you
- 9:51would wait forever. So midpoint is prepared for this
- 9:57by allowing you to mark certain records as temporarily skipped
- 10:04from processing. So even if you have, for
- 10:07example, imagine you have 3030 thousand of of students and 5000
- 10:13of employee out 5000 employees and some fraction of those
- 10:17employee records are are just wrong.
- 10:19So you can select them and this this this will be skipped.
- 10:23And let's continue with the others, OK, This is a software
- 10:26feature that that that directly addressed this this issue of
- 10:30data quality, OK. And the the second thing that we
- 10:36are trying to address is the question of slow application
- 10:39onboarding. Well this it is a well known
- 10:43fact there are hundreds or thousands of applications in a
- 10:47typical corporation and the statistics show that only 10 to
- 10:5130% of them is actually connected to IGA solution.
- 10:56And the reasons were very nicely mentioned in your recent episode
- 11:01to with Indus from Red Black, which was well very interesting
- 11:05by the way. And those reasons are twofold
- 11:08time and money as as Inda said that connecting an application
- 11:13can literally take weeks of effort and can cost, he said
- 11:182010 to 20 thousands of of dollars maybe depending
- 11:23obviously so and and we as a volume are trying our best to
- 11:27improve the situation here. Well, red block attack the
- 11:33problem through web user interface.
- 11:36We are going in a slightly different way using existing
- 11:39APIs like REST scheme and database access.
- 11:44But the goal is the same, to dramatically lower the time
- 11:48needed to connect the application.
- 11:50So in the era of AI, one could ask So what what what about
- 12:00cloud code or or any any agentic AI?
- 12:04What's the matter? Why, why you just cannot use use
- 12:07use use, use those things. About two or three months ago,
- 12:17my very good friend and and and working for a for our partner
- 12:22approached me and and wrote me Powell.
- 12:26So we have or we can use cloud code to generate a connector.
- 12:32Would you like to see that? Of course I would like.
- 12:35So we arranged the meeting and he asked me what system do you
- 12:42want to connect internally? We use open project.
- 12:45That's a project management tool, open source.
- 12:48And so I told him, please go ahead with open project.
- 12:52OK, He set up his cloud code and in 29 minutes while we were
- 12:59talking and discussing and looking at the screen like
- 13:05generating test test, unit test, generating application, mock up,
- 13:11compiling the code and etc etc. So after 29 minutes the cloud
- 13:16code said, OK guys, here, here we are, here is the connector.
- 13:21Nice. It was, I would say it was
- 13:24almost working. Some really minor, minor things
- 13:27to to fix it was slightly under 1500 lines of Java code and a
- 13:35couple of Maven dependencies. Well that's impressive.
- 13:39It is not conceivable one or two years before, but the major
- 13:45question is, is this safe to run in production?
- 13:48You know, you have you have, you have a jar generated by, by AI
- 13:53is it? Would you, would you give this
- 13:55to your your customer and and tell them, OK, just run this?
- 14:00Well, I wouldn't obviously. So what is needed is a review by
- 14:08someone at appropriate level of seniority regarding first of
- 14:15all, regarding the, the security of and safety of the code.
- 14:19And what, what if the interface changes?
- 14:21Well, let's regenerate the code. But again, we we need to review
- 14:27etcetera. So our approach is a little bit
- 14:30different. Instead of generating this
- 14:34level, this amount of code those those 1500 lines, we as a volume
- 14:41provide I would say pre engineered framework or better
- 14:48set frameworks. But let's say let's talk about
- 14:51REST connector framework. So we provide the framework that
- 14:56is written, I would say by hand, but obviously maybe, maybe with
- 15:01the use of AI, but but in the hands of the senior engineer
- 15:05with all the respect for security and safety and so on.
- 15:09And then we use large language models to generate just the thin
- 15:15layer above it. So our solution takes the
- 15:18documentation for a system like open project, tries to extract
- 15:22knowledge about what object classes are there, what, what
- 15:25data are there. Then in an interactive process
- 15:30communicates with the with the engineer sitting behind the
- 15:34keyboard and the screen. What object class would you like
- 15:37to to access? What operation do?
- 15:40What do you like to do? Search or create, update,
- 15:44delete, whatever. And then suggests suggests those
- 15:49this thin layer of code and you know it is much easier to review
- 15:553 lines of Groovy than 1500 lines of Java.
- 15:59So I would say regarding slow application onboarding, this is
- 16:04what what we do. And this is only the technical
- 16:07level. There are then levels like like
- 16:11I would say connecting the application at the data level,
- 16:15classification, correlation, data mappings and so on.
- 16:18So that's another thing that we all also try to solve.
- 16:24Well, you've got a couple, you know, big ticket items there
- 16:26between data quality and the connection landscape.
- 16:28I mean, those are typically like the big problems, you know, that
- 16:31we see, especially when rolling out identity governance.
- 16:35What are some other interesting features that people should be
- 16:39aware of when it comes to midpoint?
- 16:43OK, well, well, I would say the the killer non functional
- 16:52feature is the is that it is open source.
- 16:55But let's take that aside for a while and let's let's talk about
- 16:58the functionality. When I was thinking what, what
- 17:04because this this question occurs from time to time.
- 17:07So I would I would, I would like to to point out maybe 2
- 17:14interesting features. One is 1 is what we call
- 17:17simulation. It's about predicting what will
- 17:21happen if something is executed, either using current
- 17:25configuration or some changes in configuration.
- 17:28I will give you an example. Imagine that you are connecting
- 17:32a target LDAP directory to your IGA.
- 17:36Yeah. So you have users in IGA and you
- 17:40have existing users in LDAP and you created some map, some data
- 17:46mappings in good faith that for example e-mail address here is,
- 17:50is is connected to mail attribute there and so on and so
- 17:54on. So transformation may be
- 17:56whatever is needed. And now you are preparing for,
- 17:59for the, for the step that you will run the reconciliation, you
- 18:04will take the data from IGA and push it onto the LDAP.
- 18:09And you can imagine that you feel maybe a little bit uneasy.
- 18:13And there are basically two options. 1 is that you are brave
- 18:17enough and you just hit the button.
- 18:19Yes, do it. And you may, you may, you may,
- 18:26you may come into a situation that 10% of my users cannot
- 18:34login. Why the distinguished name has
- 18:37changed for example, or whatever, whatever.
- 18:41You, you just didn't know that there is a different naming
- 18:45convention or whatever. The data are just different from
- 18:49what you expected. Yeah.
- 18:51And the other other option is you could, you could set up
- 18:58testing LDAP as a copy of your production one and run the first
- 19:05reconciliation not against the real LDAP, but against the
- 19:09testing or the staging or whatever you call it.
- 19:12Yeah. And then you, for example, could
- 19:15compare either you can change, you can take some change log and
- 19:20see what changes were done there, ideally 0, or you can do
- 19:25some comparison between the test Ldub after reconciliation and
- 19:29your real Ldub. No.
- 19:31And midpoint comes with a special feature that we call
- 19:35simulation that you could run the simulated reconciliation.
- 19:39Yeah. So so the reconciliation runs,
- 19:41but instead of executing the changes on Ldub, it just writes
- 19:45them into special log. I would say it's like audit log
- 19:48but but but not real audit lock. And then you can view it and ask
- 19:54questions or display buttons or tiles like number of accounts
- 19:59changed, number of accounts renamed, edit, delete it and so
- 20:03on. And you can even see individual
- 20:05changes that would happen if the reconciliation would be run.
- 20:09So and you can use this feature for not only for connecting
- 20:13systems as such, but for almost any configuration changes you
- 20:17can create a change. In your configuration, but mark
- 20:21the change as proposed. So it is it is in the system,
- 20:25but it is ignored by all those production activities.
- 20:30You can use that in special activities, you name simulation.
- 20:35So you you can for example run the complete recomputation of
- 20:40all your users in simulation mode, take those change into
- 20:44account and again see what would happen.
- 20:47OK, so I think this is this is quite, quite useful because it's
- 20:52it's allows you to to go with more bravery than you know.
- 20:59There's nothing wrong with a little bravery and making sure
- 21:01we're not looking off the the Cliff before, you know, we
- 21:04before we leave. That simulation is pretty
- 21:07unique. I don't know if I've seen too
- 21:08many, you know, other players in this kind of space have that
- 21:11ability to say, OK, what if usually I say like a what if
- 21:15analysis would be like a segregation of duties, you know,
- 21:18type scenario or something like that.
- 21:20But that's a pretty, that's a pretty cool feature.
- 21:23I'm curious like from a architecture standpoint, how is
- 21:28how does midpoint work? Is this, is this an executable I
- 21:31download and run? Is this something I run in the
- 21:34cloud? Like tell me a little bit about
- 21:35the architecture. OK, it is traditional Java
- 21:42application, you know, we withstood all those fancy, you
- 21:48know, waves of hype, hype technologies like ESBSOA, micro
- 21:55services, whatever and we just didn't need that and we don't
- 22:00need them now. So midpoint is a very simple,
- 22:05well, simply it is about 2 million lines of code, but it is
- 22:10a Java application. So you can run it however you
- 22:14need. You can put it into cloud, you
- 22:17can put it onto Kubernetes, for example.
- 22:19You can run that on, on, on any hardware capable of running
- 22:24Java, even even Raspberry Pi, for example.
- 22:27So you can do whatever, whatever you you need.
- 22:31So this is from the architectural point of view or
- 22:34from deployment point of view, Yeah, but internally.
- 22:46I'm quite, I'm quite proud of of of, of the architecture, to be
- 22:50honest, because from architectural point of view,
- 22:53like like data types used or or or data structure structures or
- 22:58even features that we use in midpoint, those are extremely
- 23:02stable. So we we didn't have to rewrite
- 23:06those parts significantly, only some, I would say regular code
- 23:12improvements. But from the architectural point
- 23:15of view, these are some limited set of basic objects, some basic
- 23:19mechanisms like archetypes, mappings, policy, rules and
- 23:25whatever. And the value metadata at this
- 23:29is. This is also, I would say,
- 23:31interesting part of the architecture and you and you can
- 23:36come match and combine those to create very, very, very
- 23:41interesting features. What are some of the challenges
- 23:44of maintaining a code base like that?
- 23:46You mentioned it's a Java app. You've got, you know, millions
- 23:49of lines of code. And you know, I have to imagine
- 23:52like there is a lot that goes in to maintain that because you're
- 23:56maintaining an open source product, right?
- 23:58There's people all around the world that depend on this to
- 24:01work. So tell me a little bit about
- 24:02some of those challenges. OK, it is quite challenging to
- 24:07be honest. You, you, you have, you have to
- 24:11do proper engineering because you, you are building something
- 24:15that has to last. We, we just cannot imagine that
- 24:19for example, we just could throw all that away and and hire 100
- 24:26engineers and rewrite that from from scratch.
- 24:29So what do you do? You must do looking well one to
- 24:33five years ahead. So you have to have the best
- 24:38software developers available. I must I must say that hiring
- 24:42into our team is a bit challenging.
- 24:44We cannot just take anyone who applies.
- 24:48But at the same time the the work is then never boring.
- 24:52It is challenging but but never boring.
- 24:57The security is crucial. I would say the enormous
- 25:01flexibility of the solution can lead to unexpected interactions.
- 25:05And so we have to be very careful here and invest a lot of
- 25:11resources into making sure the product is secure and safe.
- 25:16So Pavel, what are the, what's the main impact of the product
- 25:21being open source and what is the differences, what's the main
- 25:26differences between open source and closed source?
- 25:31Well, I would maybe, maybe I would say better about the
- 25:36benefits that comes with being open source.
- 25:40Yeah. And that the benefits are for
- 25:43both our customers or users, so to say.
- 25:46And us, when speaking about customers or users, the main
- 25:51benefit is the transparency. And so for example, you have the
- 25:58source code, you can run a wholly independent audit for,
- 26:04for example, for security and the penetration testing, not
- 26:08only black box, but white box penetration testing whenever you
- 26:13want in, in whatever way you want this to, to, to do.
- 26:17Yeah. So so you, you, you can, you can
- 26:20do everything with with the code to make sure that, yes, this
- 26:23fits our purposes even from, from security point of view.
- 26:27Of course we as a volume do some of these tests as well and even
- 26:33more are planned, but the customers do not need to rely on
- 26:37us to do this. So this is I would say the first
- 26:40great benefit. And the second one is, you know,
- 26:46it is always talked about the vendor locking.
- 26:51I would say in in this world, the vendor locking is virtually
- 26:54non existent. Why?
- 26:56Because imagine that one day evolving, if volume ceases to
- 27:00exist, just disappears. What what, what, what, what
- 27:04would be what would what would be the effect?
- 27:07Well, the code is still there, no change.
- 27:10All the design documents are there again, no change.
- 27:13The people like for example, my team are there as well.
- 27:17Probably even the company is is no longer there.
- 27:20The people are there and and many other people throughout the
- 27:24world that more or less can work with the code are again still
- 27:29there. So so there is no problem, no
- 27:32barrier, legal nor more technical to take over the
- 27:35support and future maintenance of the product.
- 27:38It probably won't be easy, but definitely possible.
- 27:43So this one and well, the freedom of deployment, yes, you,
- 27:48you can, you can take the product and deploy it on
- 27:51whatever hardware, software platform you, you need, you, you
- 27:55want of of course not everything is supported, but without some
- 28:00limits you, you can do that. So for example, you are not
- 28:04bound to the cloud. There is well, what, what if the
- 28:07cloud doesn't work as as expected within a year or two or
- 28:12whatever? No, no, no one knows.
- 28:14So it is reasonable to use it, but to have an exit strategy.
- 28:17So I would say this is this is quite, quite a nice fit.
- 28:21And what is also very nice for for for our users as well As for
- 28:26us is the community. You know, the feeling that you
- 28:31are not me and you, but you know, we are, we are a
- 28:34community. And this is I would say
- 28:38personally very fantastic feeling.
- 28:42You know, for example, mailing list.
- 28:44Yeah, so, so we are discussing some somebody has a problem and
- 28:48writes the mailing list and either somebody from from
- 28:52evolving. But it is much nicer if somebody
- 28:56from from partner or even from from a user that we even didn't
- 29:00know that uses midpoint answers and helps them and so on.
- 29:05So, so people are are connected or, or for example, take, take
- 29:10bug, bug reports or or support tickets.
- 29:13Yeah, it is. It is so nice when when when
- 29:19your user which you know personally submit the ticket and
- 29:25provides also the analysis there that I think the root cause is
- 29:30da da, da, da, da, da and look at the line 1234 in this class
- 29:35and even even what what's what's what's even nicer is is if if
- 29:41they did they prepare, for example, pull request.
- 29:43So you just you just look at the pull request.
- 29:47This is this is OK. Is there a test?
- 29:49Yes, there is a test. OK, just merge and, and we are
- 29:52done. So it, it saves an effort.
- 29:55But, but for me personally, what, what, what it brings is
- 29:59some feeling of cooperation. You know that you have somebody
- 30:03who understands your work and, and, and cooperates with you,
- 30:07even if he's from a different company.
- 30:10So this I, I, I would say hello to Hiroyuki, hello to Martin and
- 30:16to any other other my friends that, that, that cooperate, even
- 30:21if not employees of evolving. So and Speaking of community,
- 30:27what, what is, what is, what is very important for us.
- 30:32And I would like to, to stress it out that we started to
- 30:36organize regular midpoint community meetups.
- 30:39It was the first was two years ago and in Copenhagen and the
- 30:47then it was in Bratislava. And this year in May we will
- 30:52have, we will hold a midpoint community meet up in May in
- 30:57Prague in Czech Republic. So all our users, friends,
- 31:03partners or anyone who is interested in midpoint, please
- 31:07register and go to Prague and then visit us.
- 31:10And Jeff and Jeff, you are also welcome.
- 31:14We would, we would be, I would be very glad to meet you
- 31:16personally. I.
- 31:17Have never been at Prague, but I would be happy to go to Prague.
- 31:20I'll go anywhere at least once. Pobble and the, you know, the,
- 31:25the community is such an important aspect of things.
- 31:27I mean, it's almost kind of like this podcast would be nothing
- 31:30without the community. And you know, I mentioned I had,
- 31:34you know, awareness of midpoint and Evolvium from years back.
- 31:38And I see midpoint mentioned quite a bit on Reddit.
- 31:42So on like identity access management, identity management
- 31:45subreddits, Midpoint comes up quite a bit.
- 31:47And you know, there is, I think something unique obviously
- 31:50around when you have a large community of developers and
- 31:53people who are interested in seeing the product not only
- 31:56work, but get better over time and continue to enhance and meet
- 32:01needs and things like that. I do I, you know, I don't, I
- 32:04don't think we should undersell that.
- 32:05Like, you know, I think there is, you know, space for all
- 32:07kinds of software in the world. But the open source community,
- 32:10there's yeah, there's this, there's this picture on the
- 32:12Internet of like how the Internet works and like it's all
- 32:15these different shapes. And then at the very bottom,
- 32:18like this corner, that kind of little open source tool, right,
- 32:21that community builds and maintains and somehow like the
- 32:25entire Internet works because of it.
- 32:27I know, I know, I know this picture.
- 32:28I like it very much, yes. Well, we're almost out of time,
- 32:32but I do want to ask a very important question because I
- 32:35know you're into nature and you know, and other things.
- 32:40And So what I want to understand is whether you are a mountain
- 32:43person or an ocean person, would you, where would you rather, you
- 32:48know, set up shop and and sort of live and and habitate?
- 32:55Thank you very much for this question.
- 32:57Yes, I'm definitely a mountain person.
- 33:01I, I love mountains and fortunately for for us in
- 33:04Slovakia, we have we have a, we have a lot of beautiful
- 33:08mountains. So there are places that are
- 33:13honestly, I was like heaven on earth and, and yes, so, so I
- 33:18love mountains. I, I live currently my, my
- 33:23nearest mountains are 30 kilometers away, but that's not,
- 33:27not so not so far. So yes.
- 33:30That's a good bike ride or walk if you're Ventress or if you're
- 33:34like me, more of a drive to get there.
- 33:37I want to save my energy for being in the mountains and, and
- 33:40walking around. I don't want to be like tired
- 33:42and like not be able to enjoy it.
- 33:44So So when I when you say mountains define mountain like
- 33:49what are we talking about from a altitude or a height
- 33:52perspective? OK, OK.
- 33:55Well the majority of mountains, mountains in Slovakia are from
- 34:00from 1000 to 2000. The highest peak is 2655.
- 34:09I don't, I don't remember exactly, but something like that
- 34:12we have. We have a well known mountain
- 34:16range called High Tatras, very visited and so on.
- 34:21But other mountains in Slovakia are also awesome.
- 34:25But the range is as I said. So when you say like 2600,
- 34:30you're referring to meters? Meters.
- 34:32Yeah, yes. OK.
- 34:33And so I have to do math for my American brain.
- 34:36That's about 80. 500. Feet, yeah, that's pretty good.
- 34:40I I live in the mountains of western North Carolina in the US
- 34:45for me, am I? So I'm currently at 2500 feet,
- 34:49so much smaller. About a quarter 500, OK.
- 34:53Yeah, about 1/4 of that of that, you know, comparison.
- 34:59But I'm the same way. I am more of a a mountains
- 35:02person. I like to look at the ocean, but
- 35:06I do not want to be in the ocean, if that makes sense.
- 35:09The same the same for me. Jim, are you a mountain person
- 35:14or an ocean? Person So I'm sorry with what
- 35:18you just said there. If I take that question and I
- 35:22take a technical viewpoint of it, ocean being the water could
- 35:27be like a rocky beach or something or I don't know a
- 35:31boat. There's no way I would do that.
- 35:34But if you're talking like a beach, I'm a beach person over a
- 35:38mountain person. So I know I kind of figured
- 35:40that's what you meant. But if it came down to like,
- 35:44hey, like the beaches in Maine or Nova Scotia that are all
- 35:48rocky, that doesn't interest me at all.
- 35:51I'd rather be in the mountainside.
- 35:53I'm almost 5050 between them. So I live in the Black Hills of
- 35:57South Dakota. They call them hills.
- 35:59And they're, they're not mountains, like even the
- 36:02Appalachian range that you live in, Jeff.
- 36:05And certainly my 7500 feet, it's probably like 1500 feet.
- 36:12They're they're noticeable. I mean, I grew up in an area
- 36:15that was like an urban area and it was pretty flat.
- 36:18So I do enjoy the other thing they do here is this used to be
- 36:24like a gold mining area. And so there's a lot of like old
- 36:28gold mining roads and they open them up that you can ride.
- 36:32They call like side by sides or utility vehicles through these
- 36:35roads. And they were like super rough.
- 36:37Like you couldn't drive a car, but you can if you have a souped
- 36:40up Jeep, you can ride them through there and people do that
- 36:44stuff is a lot of fun. I mean, I used to like hiking,
- 36:48but not as much as I like driving things through
- 36:53mountains. But I'm definitely, I think a
- 36:56beach person. Like if you give me a sandy
- 36:58beach and a cocktail, like now we're talking, man, that's a
- 37:02vacation to me. But there's sand at the beach
- 37:05and I just sand gets everywhere. Thank you everywhere.
- 37:09You know, I, I always I've actually never been on a I'm
- 37:14sorry I was on like one Caribbean vacation, but I
- 37:16actually went to Cancun. Some of those.
- 37:18Most people probably don't count that, but I.
- 37:21Count it. That's what I've done.
- 37:23I'm going to start doing them more, but I think I'm going to
- 37:26be more of a pool person. I think I'll be at the pool and
- 37:29like being one of those endless pools where you look at the
- 37:31beach. But Denise is a straight up
- 37:33beach person, so I know I'm going to be at the beach.
- 37:38I just, I don't want to be in the water.
- 37:40I it's been decades since I've last swam.
- 37:44There's monsters in the ocean. Not interested.
- 37:47Not at all. Definitely monsters.
- 37:49They're sharks and Now's AI, the sharks can be like 25 feet long
- 37:53and it's scary stuff, man. Yeah, no kidding.
- 37:58At some point, probably stub your toe on a data center
- 38:00somewhere underwater. True enough all.
- 38:04Right, let's go ahead and get this wrap up.
- 38:06Pavel, thank you so much for joining us.
- 38:08You know, definitely, you know, hopefully, you know, people will
- 38:11be aware more of evolving. And I think it's, you know, one
- 38:14of those things that people need to be taking a look at.
- 38:15It's another option out there for people to evaluate, enjoy,
- 38:19try. It's one of those things like,
- 38:21Hey, try it out, download it. So, you know, see what you
- 38:24think, you know, put it to the test, you know, maybe even
- 38:26contribute, you know, to the community and and you know, help
- 38:29with either bugs or features and things like that.
- 38:32Definitely yes, exactly that. Way.
- 38:34So I'll have links in our show notes for people to connect with
- 38:37you, Pablo, on LinkedIn if they want to.
- 38:38I'll also have a link to evolvium.com/I DAC, that is
- 38:42EVOLBE um.com/I DAC for people to check out and better
- 38:49understand kind of what Evolvium does and learn more about
- 38:51midpoint and things like that. Let's see what else you can
- 38:54connect with. Jim and I, of course, you know,
- 38:56on LinkedIn as well. Send us, you know, feedback,
- 38:58ideas for shows, ideas for sponsors.
- 39:00Thanks again to Evolving him for sponsoring this episode.
- 39:03You know, it's sponsors like you, Pavel, that helped make
- 39:06this episode and others available, you know, to people
- 39:09around the world. So we definitely appreciate that
- 39:12and find us on the web, idacpodcast.com.
- 39:15Like, subscribe, share with other like minded people who are
- 39:19curious about identity or security, you know, whether you
- 39:21like them or whether you don't like them, send it to them
- 39:24because you hate our voices. That works fine too, as long as
- 39:26people are listening. So we'll go out and leave it
- 39:29there for this week. Thanks everybody for watching
- 39:31and are listening and we'll talk with you all in the next one.
- 39:36You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
- 39:39We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
- 39:43review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
- 39:47website at identity@thecenter.com.
- 39:51See you next time on Identity at the Center.