Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / 🎙️ Reality Bytes #59: First Episode of 2025 with Sam Gantner! 🎉

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🎙️ Reality Bytes #59: First Episode of 2025 with Sam Gantner! 🎉 · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome item change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGrath.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Let's get into it.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: Hello change Makers, and happy twenty twenty five. We hope
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: you had a wonderful, wonderful holiday season. It is, as
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: you know, the first Deck Show show within a show
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: within a show, which is very special reality by the
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: episodes where we speak to fascinating next thinkers, and we
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: know of no more fascinating and next thinker than our
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: chief product officer, Sam Gagner. Welcome back to this show. Sam,
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: lovely to have you.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Wow, what an interest. Tom, thank you for setting up
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: the expectation. It's great to be here today.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: And you know we had Tim and I recently got
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: the chance to talk to you on a webinar that
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: did extremely well about the Deck's tipping point and that
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: was a bit more of a retrospective about about twenty
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: twenty four, and I know a lot of people really
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: enjoyed it. We are going to keep our eyes focused
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: on the new year here today, but just to begin
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: sound just as a quick recap or a personal slash
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: professional note, if you know what I mean. How was
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty four pretty special?
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Right? Look, actually I don't mind we can share a
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: little bit personal stuff, right. You know, twenty twenty four
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: is one of these years that I'm going to look
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: back with a smile. Okay, many things happened, It went
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: about very quickly, but you know, with the family, we
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: decided to settle down in a place, so that was
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: great to finally find a place that we can call home.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I got back into lightweight coding, you knowing that I
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: haven't done in a while, just a little bit as
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: a hobby. But it's pretty cool. You know, you feel
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: smart again when you go back into coding, and you know,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: fun some time to do some smart. So yeah, it
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: was a great year, and you know, we can talk
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: of a professional later. There's a lot of things that happened.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: The next thing, right, There.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Are a lot of notable events in our organization and industry,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: and I think we will indeed pick up on summer those.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: But yeah, great, great to have you back. And I
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: know everybody always lines up Sam with lots of questions
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: for you, so I will hand it over to Tim
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: who has the first of those.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: So we'll put you in the hot seat. Sam. One
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: of the toughest things for me in this role after
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: being in it for so long? Is staying on top
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: of change? What EUC teams are using to manage, what
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: hurdles they're running into, what new technology is out there.
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: You play a critical role in solving those problems. So
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: how do you stay on top of technology evolution? Is
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: it tech press and media, is it analyst reports or research?
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: Or is it just intuition? How do you you and
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: the team at large understand and stay on top of
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: technology that's changing.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I can tell you. I can tell you
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: team what works for me. I guess everybody is. I
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: need to bit different, right, So personally I love books,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: but more for my you know, personal and entertainment, right,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So I love reading, but it's more in that topic.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: What I really like to do to keep up to
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: speed with what's happening in the market is actually talking
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: to people and taking notes. So I try to talk
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: to it leaders, analysts. My team were spending a lot
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of time doing research in various means, customers, other next thinkers.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, with such brilliant people in the company, And
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: you know, I think that's for us or for me
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: at least, it's one of the best way to learn
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: because not only you get the data. You get the facts,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: but you also get the interpretation of people and how
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: they're living through those facts. Right. The other thing that
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I started doing this year is to use chap JUPT
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: a little bit more. I actually I don't know if
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: you use it, but there's this new smart voice mode
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Advance one, and it's really like having a conversation with somebody. Right.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: So sometimes I would be driving the car and maybe
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I'm into traffic at a long drive and then thinking
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: about decks and thinking about at and then have a question.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It's like I want to explore something, and so I
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: was just start having a conversation with GPT, and you
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: always kind of have to be a little bit careful,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: you know, because is it hallucinating? Is it not hallucinating?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: What are the sources? But it gives you idea that
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: you know, you can you can take literal and then explore.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: So that's that's pretty cool for me.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: It actually highlights a point that Gartner made is that
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: some of the most some of the most benefit of
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: a tool like chat GPT comes to people who are
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: senior in their role because they're able to tell the
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: difference between good and bad data that comes back right
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: a junior person who hasn't been in the role very
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: long could ask chat GPT something and just take the
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: content that it gives it verbatim and not really understand
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: how to use it and if it's accurate or not.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: So I can see how it would be a really
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: good tool for you and for others that have been
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: doing things for a while totally.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: And you know, by the way, I also use it
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: for my personal interest. Right the other day, the fifteen
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: minutes conversation about how mitochondra work in human cells, nothing
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: to do with my job or something like that, but
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: it was just interesting from a scientific point of.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: View, you know, and that's cool. So we touched on
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: a little bit about Tom did earlier about changes in
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: our technology advancements that we're working on. We spent a
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: lot of time and money getting Infinity to where it
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: needed to be and migrating off of our legacy platform.
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: Now that that's behind us and we're innovating on top
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: of Infinity, it's got to be more rewarding for you
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: and the team to really put that innovation on top
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: of a really great platform. As you look at twenty
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: twenty four, what was kind of the standout moments or
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: achievements that brought you the most satisfaction, whether it's product
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: or something else.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: That next thing, Yeah, there are a few things. Actually,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: one is really related to this Infinity transition because this
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: is a year where we're basically finished, right, so it's
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: more than ninety percent is going to be completely done
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: by March. And you know the moment where one of
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: our customers with seven hundred and fifty thousand end points
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: completely transitioned and we proved the platform at that scale.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I mean we knew, but in that case we really
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: saw it working. That was a huge satisfaction. Okay, we
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: made it. We made it with Infinity. That is that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: is done right. That was really cool. Another thing, it's
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: more on really the way that my team is operating.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And you know, in the past few years, about half
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: my team was focused on innovation and discovery, so discovery
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: being you know, the activity of understanding what it's worth
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: building and you know, the way that we need to
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: take the company forwards. And the other half was very
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: focused on execution excellence to complete this Infinity transition right,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and now that we're done with that, it was a
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: great opportunity for this half of the team that was
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: focusing on execution to learn and to become exceptional abround
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: doing discovery, and that was a very cool journey to
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: live with them, to work with them through that, and
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: they brought a lot of change, a lot of energy,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of enthusiasm across the folks. And then, you know,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: maybe the last thing I like to think in threes
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: obviously the I right. You know, we're spending more than
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: thirty percent of everything that we do is the I
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: based right. And it's just crazy. I mean it's crazy
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: how fast you can go. How fast is the progress
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: things that until a few years ago you're saying, Okay,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: this is going to require two years of development, we
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: need to put so many people. Now you get two
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: fresh grads and after three weeks you have it, and
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: it's like wow, so many opportunities, so many opportunities.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: Very cool.
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: Hi Sam Megan here, Hi sim So nice to have
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: you on the podcast. And it's always really so it's
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: really refreshing and kind of exciting to hear your perspective
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: on everything going on because you're really you're really obviously
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: in it on a different level. One exciting thing I
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: think for all of us this year on twenty twenty
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: four was the acquisition of Appler for next THINGK. Yeah,
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: that's like huge growth for the company, right, huge opportunity
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: and an entirely new product and new technology. So I
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: think for all of us it was a super exciting
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: step to kind of be a part of. But as
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: you are thinking about that, what are you seeing as
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: the next steps for this technology that we've required, And
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: how do you see this digital adoption space intersecting with
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: the deck space that we've created here at next week.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: When the first thing that is coming is the launch
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: into one of the integrated products, right, And this is
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: where we took all the goodness from a plearn and
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: made it part of the Infinity platform in a completely
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: similess way. And now it seems that it's just technical stuff, right,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: But in reality it's unbelievably powerful because we're basically taking
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: dub and adding Infinity on top of that, and the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: results is ten times bigger. So there are some incredibly
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: powerful signergies that are coming out of that. To give
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: you a couple of examples, right, one is engaged, So
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: in the past that was always kind of constraints within
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the realm of one application and the most fundamental aspect,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: which is driving adoption to that application. In the first place,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: you couldn't achieve it. Now with Engage, you can fix that. Right.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: You can work cross application, you can work in the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: operating system. So it's a great way to drive that
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: initial emphasis to get into that right or think about workflows.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: We have one of the most advanced automation platforms in
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: the planet. Think about if we put that in the
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: hands of all the employees to automate things. Right, we
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: have incredible synergies that we're starting to explore and I
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: think will lead to absolutely incredible value. And then you
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: also get to all the rest of the stuff out
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: of the platform, right, Alerts, dashboards, connectors, so all the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: things that are coming for free because you're inside of Infinity,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: now you can make them available to people using digital adoption.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: For instance, give you an example. You know, you can
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: baseline how much people are using the application, and if
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: you see a drop or an increase, you can get
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: an alert about that. Right, that's a relatively simple thing,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: but it's very powerful. If you're responsible for this application
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: and you need to understand what is going on, you know,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: that's a part of that. Then the other thing is
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: you were asking Meg what doesn't mean for the broader
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: deck space in the future, And I think here, when
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: you look into that, maybe there's an opportunity to also
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: verticalize adopt a little bit. So if you think about that,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: until today, everything that we did in decks was very
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: much industry agnostic. So the way that a manufacturing company
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: consumes deck or the way that the financial institution consumed decks. Yeah,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: the apps they change a little bit. Some of the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: things are slightly different, but ninety five percent is kind
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: of the same because it faces somewhat the same challenges.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Right when you think about adopt is actually pretty different though,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: because adopt for HR might be very different from adopt
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: for a consulting company or adopt for software developers, because
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the need for this diferent populations are different. Right, Developers
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: the only thing that they care about is maximizing the
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: time that they spend coding consultants, you know, maybe they
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: need to prepare for this very important meeting and they
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: want to make sure that everything is perfect before that,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: because you know, they cannot miss that. In a CHR,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: maybe things like onboarding become more important. Tour understanding what
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: is the future of the physical and virtual workplace and
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: how to manage all of that. So I think we
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: have this opportunity to get a little bit more vertical,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: which is going to open a lot of opportunities, and
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: apart from that, is also extremely interesting from an exploratory
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: topic if you want.
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I totally agree. That makes you feel very
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: like curious to explore all the different ways that you
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: could apply that. It's very Yeah, that's an intriguing idea.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: Another intriguing idea you presented was on stage at Experience
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: where you and Page are delivered a really exciting and
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: cool key now for those of us that are in
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: the audience, and one of the new ideas you guys
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: introduced was the concept of zero tickets being actually a reality.
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: Could you share some of the highlights of this journey
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: to zero tickets as you guys see it, and the
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: timeline that you might vision for it.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I I think you nailed the key order
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: journey right. It's a journey towards their ticket and it's
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: going to take some time. We need to we need
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: to acknowledge that. For me, it's composed by three main
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: activities that we can grow at the same time, the
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: first one is proactive, and you know that's, by the way,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the reason why most companies go for a ex solution.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: By being proactive and by addressing the fundamental health of
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: your environment, that's something in the long term is going
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: to dramatically de christ tickets. You know, making sure that
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: in tune is up and running, making sure that your
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: security tools are are okay, making sure that things are
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: up to date. Those are fundamental things, right, and if
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: you don't do that, you don't see a ticket right away,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: you don't see an incident right away, but down the
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: line is going to lead to problems two three months
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: on the line, right, and you know about that. So
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: the first aspect is automating this foundational state that is
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: always healthy, always up and running, to make sure that
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: you can guarantee that. So that's the first line of
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: the science. The second one is at a certain point, unfortunately,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: something bad is going to happen, right And at that point,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: as an employee myself, what I want is just to
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: you open up, very smart assistant, describe my problem, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: get the solution delivered to me in twenty million seconds.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I had a problem the other day with zoom. I mean,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: my sound wasn't working anymore, and I just typed in
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: our prototype, fixed the sound and it restarted the audio
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: driver in macOS and did a couple of things and
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: the problem was gone. And it was great because I
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: didn't have to reboot the whole machine. And the reason
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: for that is not that reboot is a big problem.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I knew that it would have solved the problem, but
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: it would have taken me a few minutes, and I
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: wasn't meeting. I didn't have the time to reboot and
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: lose all my documents and this kind of things. So
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: this immediate seales service support that is very smart, very actionable,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: at least for a certain category of problems, is absolutely great.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And then the last part is how do we completely
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: automate the most complex things, the ones that at the
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: end of the day, do require a ticket, do require
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: a service desk. And this is you know, this autopilot
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: project that we're launching today. By the way, it's available
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: right now in technical preview. We're deploying it across the board,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: so if everybody is interested, they can just reach out.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: And you know, this is gonna go step by step.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: We're gonna start by automating tasks within the service desk,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: by providing a diagnosis of the problem, and by providing
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: a recommend that the resolution plan to get with the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: automation that goes with that on the line, we can
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: completely automate this processes in what we call the autonomous mode.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So it's very very exciting. Look my prediction, do you
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: want the prediction? You want me to share numbers? Absolutely,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I can try, because I was thinking about that, and
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: my objective would be to say in twenty twenty five
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: we get rid of fifty percent of the tickets in
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: twenty six seventy five and by twenty seven, word ninety
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: percent plus nice. How does that feel? Sounds good?
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: You heard it here first.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: Everyone feels a little low town if I'm being honestly.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Well, Tim, you're the one coming from the industry. So
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: by twenty seven is to low.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: We need to Tim's tickets down.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: That we eighty percent reduction in about a year and
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: a half with no automation.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: You need to be more anxious. All right, I'm going
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: to read the numbers.
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: We can beat that high. Sam Dner speaking, so, speaking
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: of experience and the automations in place, the buzz around
• 17:07
  Speaker 6: Flow was incredible. What's the focus for Flow in the
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: coming year and where do you see its biggest impact?
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, well maybe I'll start with the second part. The
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: biggest impact. The biggest impact is that Flow removes automatic
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: manual steps, completely removes manual steps, right, and that's really
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: the value at the end. It's very simple to articulate,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: which is pretty cool. Now the focus, there is a
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: lot of things that we're working on. First of all,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: we just want to make it simply better. So we're
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: working on a bigger library so that you're going to
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: have more remediations coming out of the box being suggested
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: proactively based on the environment that people. We're are the
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: more functions within flow, those are the blocks that we
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: call tinklets, where basically you can connect to experimental systems
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: or things like that. We're working on tinklet to have
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: could inside of flow, So that's for advance scenarios. We're
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: going to work on GENI based generational flows. And the
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: other thing that we're working on is a ton of
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: additional connectors because as people set up the foundations in
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: the core ecosystem, then you start to see opportunities around
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: other applications. That are part of it and beyond and
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: you want to be able to very easily connect to that.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And then now that this is all in place, I
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: think the focus for companies were really going to be
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: around operationalizing that you know, they did the obvious things,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: and now by brainstorming and by looking opportunities, we're finding
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: things that are unbelievably relevant and exciting. I just give
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: an example. I was talking to a customer the other
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: day and they have two thousand desktop applications that they
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: need to somewhat get into under control for their employees.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Two thousand desktop aps, And blew my mind because I
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: thought that nobody does paps anymore, But in reality they're
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: all over the place. It's still something that's important. And
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the problem with that is vulnerabilities. So they do security
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: scans and they find a ton of vulnerabilities around that
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: that they need to remediate. But then how do you
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: fix it so you can up grade application? But are
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: you even entitled in the upgrade because sometimes you don't
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: have the right license, And so we're looking at flaw.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Who's going to consume the results of the vulnerability scans
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: it's going to validate ive application is still being used
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: not only installed, but is it actually used. It's going
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: to check with the employees if there is an alternative
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: by starting a conversation, and then if it's not needed,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: it's just going to remove it. Problem gone. If it's
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: still needed, is going to correlate that with software asset management,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: understand if there is an entitlement and then provide a recommendation.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And with that we can get rid of seventy five
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: percent of the very tedious, complex and error pro manual
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: work that is behind that. And that's an amazing use case.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: And when you dig a little bit, when you just
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: have a conversation with people and you start asking, okay,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: what are the manual things that you do that are paid,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: you find there are hundreds of use cases like that.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So imagine the potential that we have with that.
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: There's plenty. And the more you dig into the use
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: cases and operationalization aspect of things, the more you see
• 20:22
  Speaker 6: that there's the little bricks that are there, but you
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: need to focus bigger on the journey and how we
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: take them through the journey to actually get them to
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: be more successful. Again. At Experience, You and Pedro also
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: previewed the VDI experience. Can you share the timeline or
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: for its rollout and what excites you the most about
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: this product in particular.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the timeline is right now, we're running out as
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: we speak. Is available to everybody. The technical probuit is
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: almost finished, so it's available very soon in general availability.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: If anybody is interested, they can just reach out and
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: and we can work together. What is exciting me about
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: this is that we're finally in a solution for a
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: population that was neglected until today in some ways. And
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about the VDI specialists. You know, they're getting
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: blamed from everything. As soon as there is a problem
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: that it touches the VIDI space. People go straight with
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: the specialist and they tell them you have a problem
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: with VIDI. It doesn't matter if it's the network of
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: your think client, it doesn't matter, if this is application,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if it's you know, the weather that
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: is behaving badly outside. They're gonna get blamed because VIDI
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: is complex and nobody has the ability to troubleshoo and
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: understand what is going on. And so these people they
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: get so much stuff that is in coming and they
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: need to analyze all of that. And this instidious and
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: this complex and it takes time, and so finally we
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: have a solution for them with something that in a
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: second they can understand where the problem is located. And
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: maybe it's just that the person that is connecting to
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: the environment as a bad WiFi, But finally they're gonna
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: be able to point that out in one second and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: to do something about that. Right, And sometimes it is
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: going to be very complex with the eye problems related
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: to the environment and the capacity and a look in
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: storm that is that is creating problems across different users
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: accessing the same harder and physical resources, and they're gonna
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: be able to troubleshoot that too, so they're gonna be
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: able to see this global view. So I think at
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the end, it's really the ability of helping these people
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: that until today they were operating in a very complex
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and almost blind scenarios having to do you know, manual
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: correlation across different sources of truth and you know, trying
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: to figure out what's going on. All of that is over,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 22:58
  Speaker 7: I will along with all these really exciting new products.
• 23:02
  Speaker 7: A recurring topic in our DEXT discussions recently has been
• 23:06
  Speaker 7: its potential to be embraced and valued by non IT
• 23:09
  Speaker 7: teams like HR. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 23:13
  Speaker 7: Do you see HR or other teams playing a large
• 23:16
  Speaker 7: role in deex ed option?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Actually, I want to tell you a little story.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago visiting some
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: customers and I had the opportunity of spending a couple
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: of hours in this fantastic organization. And there's something special
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: there because HR and I T merged together, so they're
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the same team, and it's incredible. It was the most
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: enlightening things that I've seen in a while. It's incredible
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: because first of all, you get people that are unbelievably
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: complimentary to each other. So you take people from HR
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: with a very human centric background, right, and then you
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: get people from a TEA that have a very engineering
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: centric background, and when you put them together, you discover
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: something that is extremely powerful because they complement each other
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: and they certainly they as a team, they gain the
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: ability to solve problems in a much deeper way and
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: different way with respect to you know, what maybe they
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: could be able to do separately. Now I understand, you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: probably that's not the future for all companies right, But
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I think if we look at that, there is really
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: good reason to think about bringing a HR and a
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: TEA closer together, even if they remain separate teams. The
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: other aspect around that when you start to look into
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: those things is that when you look at the metrics
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: that we collect, eighty percent of them are very relevant
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: to helping HR for instance. You know, it hires a
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: lot of problems like how do you design the workplace
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: of the future with people working from home a certain
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: percentage of the time. Maybe you have a common day
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: at the office so you have peaks of people at
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: the office, or you need to think about that capacity.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: You need to structure your conference room, you need to
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: structure the workplace. And if you don't have data around
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: what are the habits of people to consume that workplace,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: then it gets very hard right for them to do that. Well,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: think about employee on boarding. When you hire somebody, the
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: onboarding journey is probably the most important thing that you
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: can imagine. So if you can optimize the first two
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: to three weeks for people, you know, they get to
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: the office, they get a device, they get a look in,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: they get the right applications, everything works they get introduced
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to the right people to create their network. You can
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: save months to get to the point where people are
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: actually able to contribute. You can also avoid a lot
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: of frost traation because when that doesn't work as a
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: new employee, you could feel lost very very quickly, right
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: and you could feel neglected by the company. So imagine
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: how you can you can optimize that. Or we think
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: about another aspect today that I think is going to
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: be very relevant for our lives, which is with all
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: of these AI coming in, how do we manage our
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: relationship with the with the I. How do we manage
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: enabling people to understand how to use the I when
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: AI is appropriate? What do they need to be careful
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: about the I? And different persons and different population are
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: going to have very different needs around that, right, So
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: some of the metrics that we collect will help a
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: HR to understand this and maybe to provide or to
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: help it address some of this consideration. What do we
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: provide to whoman in which way? And how do we
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: enable these people? So there is a lot of things
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: that we can think about this space. It's something that
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: we're exploring with some very forward looking customers. When it
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: comes to that, but I'm very exciting about the opportunity of,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, being able to help
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: employees even more compared to what we're doing today.
• 27:13
  Speaker 7: Yes, absolutely, I'm also super excited about those opportunities, and
• 27:17
  Speaker 7: recently spoke to a customer who's trying to do exactly
• 27:20
  Speaker 7: what you're describing right, using our product to really understand
• 27:24
  Speaker 7: and plan for the adoption of AI, which I think
• 27:29
  Speaker 7: is incredibly exciting. And you've mentioned AI now a few
• 27:32
  Speaker 7: times in terms of how you use it, in terms
• 27:35
  Speaker 7: of how you think it'll really speed things up for
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: a lot of people. I'm wondering if you can talk
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: to us a little bit more about how you think
• 27:42
  Speaker 7: emerging technologies in general, but AI specifically will potentially play
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: a role in both making very sophisticated software like errors
• 27:51
  Speaker 7: more accessible to wider audiences, or otherwise transform the different
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: roles that adopt and drive digital employee experience.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think one of the fundamental things about AI
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: is that it allows software to become intent driven rather
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: than being procedure driven. An example, right, whenever you start
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: to use a new yeah, whenever you start to use
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: a new application in a traditional way, you need to
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: understand the design philosophy of this application. You need to
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: understand a few fundamental concepts of this application, right. I mean,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: anybody who tried the Excel for the first time, they
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: open it up and say, what is this thing? It's
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: super complex? Right, Okay, you have cells and formulas and
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: then you use the equals sign and you do all
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: of these things to get to what you need at
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: the end. And that takes a considerable level of cognitive effort,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: and especially for complex applications, you know, you end up
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: in a situation where people maybe use five percent of
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the functionality of this application just because it's very hard
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: unless you're spending all your day there to understand everything, right,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and so they're not really taking advantage of these apps. Now,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: what it brings, if it's implemented correctly, is that it
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: transformed the needs to understand this concept into something that
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: is much much simpler, because then the user that is
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: accessing this application can just say what is the outcome
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: that they want and then Jenny, I that's the transformation. Right.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: It knows how to use the application to achieve this outcome,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: and it just provides the outcome. So if you take
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: the example in next thing. You know, we're investing heavily
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: into assist. And if I want to understand how many
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: people are experiencing crashes of Outlook in Paris, I can
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: just write that, tell me how many people have crushes
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: of outlook. I don't need to go and understand that.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: I need to do an investigation. And you know, add
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: the columns as easy as we made that in the UITs.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: It's not that complex, but we can completely remove that
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: cognitive step that people have to take. And so this
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: means that for me, AI can play a role of
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: democratizing access to things that are otherwise too complex for people,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: and so they will open up many, many opportunities for
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: us as people to do more compared to today. Now
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: that comes with risks, it comes with many changes. I mean,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: what we're living is probably going to be bigger than
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution, right, so we need to face that
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: as a society because I think there are many consequences
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: of that.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Wow, what a convo so far. You know, anybody listening
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: to the show, they can go to the show notes,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: they can download last year's Amazing Forest and New Waverput
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: or Waverput and Gardner's Magic Quadrant for themselves free of charge.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: And you know, there was a great wave of pride
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: about both reports in the organ at next think this year,
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: of course, or last year, I should say, based in
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: no small part by our positioning on the on the
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: graphs and the quadrants themselves. You know, we were we
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: were standout leaders in both studies. And I'm interested. I mean,
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: it's it's not a poison chaltice at all, but it
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: is it brings pressure. Right if you make such an
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: if you make such an impact on these studies, if
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: you make such an impact on this market, there's a
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: pressure that we all feel that we want to maintain
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that extend it, sustain it. What is the secret in
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: your view, to doing so, to to keeping this momentum
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: going and solidifying our leadership in the space.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: You know, in some ways maybe the key ingredient here
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: is that not focusing on that at all in the
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: first place. Sure, so, I think the reason why we
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: got there is not because we focus on that as
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: a goal, but rather because we focused on building the
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: best possible products for our custos, right, And it was
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: a somewhat relentless pursuit of generating outcomes and never being
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: satisfied with the level of value that we create for
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: the customers. Right, they're always asking yourselves, Okay, how can
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: we generate more? How can we be more relevant? How
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: can we help them more? And keep thinking about that,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: And you know, I think in a great product manager
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: is somebody that is fundamentally unsatisfied in life, which is
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit the person you can think about that,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: but you need that right because if you're too happy,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: then you know you're gonna stop innovating. So I think
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: that's how we got there, and I think that's what
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: we need to do. We need to continue to do that.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: We need to continue to work closely with these incredible
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: thought leaders that have taken us so far and continue
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: to imagine what is it that they go, I need
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: two three years from now, rather than you know, what
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: is just coming in front of us, and then putting
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: the right focus, taking the right risks, putting the right
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: emphasis on making sure that we invest those things and
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe some of them are not going to
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: pan out and we're going to abandon them, But it's
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: only by taking those risks and you know, doing those
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: activities that you take the conversation forwards. As an industry.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Contentment can breed complacency for sure, for sure. So it
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: is January of the New Years. We'll be asking all
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: our guests this Tim and I for a few weeks
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: to go cold. We wrap up with some predictions. Please,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: what workplace trends do you anticipate in twenty twenty five?
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: And have there any trends you think are underrated or
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: indeed over hyped out there at the moment you might
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: want to add a comment on. You can take any
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: aspect of that question or all of them together as
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: you like.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, someone, somehow I was expecting that question, right.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: Nothing if not predictable, thank you.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: So here it comes the three predictions of SAM for
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. So let's think about that. First one
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: I think might seem obvious, but massive shift towards executing
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: on automation. I think in the past, you know, we
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: set up the infrastructures, we set up the tools, we
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: started you know, getting used to the idea that we
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: need to automate everything. Now all of that is in
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: place for many companies, right, So the emphasis now and
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: the focus is going to be to go from from
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: ten percent automation to sixty percent automation, so to dramatically
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: bring that up at least I hope to see that
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: for sure. You know, it's something that we're encouraging our customers,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: but we're also looking internally in our own efficiency, in
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: our own processes. It's it's a very relevant topic for
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: a software company. So that's first. On the second one,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I think we're getting through the AI disillusionment moment. It
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: was very hyped, right, and now we're realizing that, okay,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: but across all of that hype, what does really change
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and really worries the value? And now we're getting to
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: the point where the actual value is starting to emerge.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: So you know, it's at the same time disillusionment but
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: getting also the first concrete results, very very tangible that
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: are coming out that are going to come out with
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: the I at least for those who made the right investments,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: right and you know, maybe the people that are luck
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: in behind, they're going to start to realize that they
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: need to invest a little bit more in that topic
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: because it's going to start to create a competitive differentiator
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: for many companies. And then I think the third is
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: and it's maybe a bit separate, but I see a
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: shift towards better security. You know, zero trust, but also
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you know things like getting rid of passwords, having a
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: few more controls in place, also because of the dangers
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: coming from an eye. Right. So until today, think about
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: the whole document sharing thing, most of the security of
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: document sharing and confidentiality was given to the fact that
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: it's kind of security by obscurity, right, people could access it,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: but it's it's such a mess of documents everywhere for
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: everybody that you know, nobody really needs the time. Now
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: AI is indexing everything, right, so we need to be
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: much more diligent on who do we disclose with whom
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: when and so on and so forth, because anything that
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: is written down could be indexed by eye and shared
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: very broadly if we don't have the right security controls
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: in place. So I think it's going to be very
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: important to focus on that to guarantee that we don't
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: have big problems coming down the way. So that's it.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Those are those are three top predictions. What do you
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: think they're going to come true?
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: I think they're excellent predictions and and a fascinating discussion.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: A wonderful way to kick off the deck show for
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty five sounds like it's going to be a
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: very exciting year for the digital workplace, for the digital
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: employee experience space, and no doubt for Next Think and
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: of course the Deck Show as well. So thank you
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: so much Sam for joining us once again listeners. As
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: I mentioned, you can download those Forester or Gartner reports
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: if you haven't seen them next in the show notes,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: and I will also put a link to the chat
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: that Tim and I had with Sam if you want
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: to hear some more of his thoughts on what the
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Deck's tipping point that took place last year. Sam, thank
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: you so much.
• 37:41
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• 37:44
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• 37:58
  Speaker 1: improve your digital employee experience it head over to next
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Until next time,