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🎙️ Reality Bytes: DEX Goes (Back) to Washington w/ Chris Sibold · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
0:05
Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
0:09
Speaker 2: Hello again, change Makers, We're back. It's the Deck Show's
0:12
Speaker 2: famous show with in a show within a show, and
0:16
Speaker 2: it's an unusual episode. It's an unprecedented episode, listeners, because
0:20
Speaker 2: just eight months ago we had today's guest on Reality
0:25
Speaker 2: by its four for the first time. Here is Chris Bold,
0:28
Speaker 2: regional director for Federal in the USA for Next Thing,
0:32
Speaker 2: And Chris, you came on the show. It was a
0:35
Speaker 2: great show. You went away again, and your entire industry
0:39
Speaker 2: went completely insane for the subsequent eight months. I mean,
0:41
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been a busiest stranger eight months. I mean,
0:44
Speaker 2: not just in the US, but there's a global news fixation.
0:48
Speaker 3: Right absolutely, yeah, No, I blame my appearance on the
0:51
Speaker 3: podcast eight months ago. I think it was what drove it.
0:55
Speaker 3: But you're absolutely right. All killing side is that it's
0:59
Speaker 3: been once in a generation, multiple once in a generation
1:02
Speaker 3: changes going on in the government in the last eight
1:05
Speaker 3: months here in particular.
1:07
Speaker 2: A cluster occurrence, you might say, And yes, we thought so,
1:12
Speaker 2: we we better have you back on and just sue
1:14
Speaker 2: it all down again, because you know, if you if
1:16
Speaker 2: you unleash something, you can sometimes use the same thing
1:18
Speaker 2: to calm it down again. But I mean, well, you've
1:21
Speaker 2: been on the inside of all this, and certainly your
1:23
Speaker 2: your your your customers and partners have been what how
1:27
Speaker 2: would you characterize twenty twenty five in the federal sector
1:31
Speaker 2: based on all those conversations you've been having, How are
1:34
Speaker 2: they characterizing it? I suppose.
1:36
Speaker 3: So it was funny that you asked this because having
1:39
Speaker 3: this conversation probably in the last two weeks with somebody
1:42
Speaker 3: and the analogy I would use and looking at it
1:45
Speaker 3: from the lens of the federal IT space and basically,
1:48
Speaker 3: how is the IT organizations within these federal agencies? How
1:51
Speaker 3: are they changing and adapting? Is is that you know,
1:55
Speaker 3: obviously in the news there's a lot of change with
1:57
Speaker 3: things like reductions in forced there's a drive for government
2:00
Speaker 3: efficiency across the entire federal government, and we're seeing massive
2:04
Speaker 3: changes in terms of headcount in some cases budget and
2:08
Speaker 3: focus on agencies in the federal government. But I would
2:12
Speaker 3: characterize it again looking at it from the lens of IT,
2:14
Speaker 3: is that if you go back to the way the
2:16
Speaker 3: pandemic really drove about ten years worth of change in
2:20
Speaker 3: digital workspace in a few years because basically every organization
2:24
Speaker 3: in the world was forced to basically figure out how
2:27
Speaker 3: to support hybrid working or remote working, and so that
2:30
Speaker 3: drove improvements or modernizations and technology, the move to collaborative
2:34
Speaker 3: tools like teams and Zoom, and that really accelerated change
2:38
Speaker 3: that was already happening, but it made ten years worth
2:40
Speaker 3: of change happened in two The last eight months looks
2:44
Speaker 3: and feels a lot similar for IT in federal as
2:47
Speaker 3: that Federal IT now is being disrupted in that similar way.
2:50
Speaker 3: Instead of the pandemic, they are now waking up to, hey,
2:54
Speaker 3: my IT organization is a third smaller or half the
2:57
Speaker 3: size it used to be, or I have a fifth
2:59
Speaker 3: the budget that I used to have, and that's causing
3:02
Speaker 3: a massive acceleration around how they do it support in
3:06
Speaker 3: general and support the mission of their agency. So, just
3:09
Speaker 3: like the pandemic said, hey, you've got no choice, you
3:11
Speaker 3: have to figure out how to do this remotely, Federal
3:14
Speaker 3: IT is now saying, great, we have no choice but
3:16
Speaker 3: to figure out how to modernize the way that we
3:19
Speaker 3: support and become proactive because we we do we know
3:23
Speaker 3: I have the resources or the facilities to be able
3:26
Speaker 3: to do it the old way that we did it.
3:28
Speaker 3: So that's that's the analogy I would use, is that
3:30
Speaker 3: it's just cramming again, probably another ten years worth of
3:33
Speaker 3: change into the next two or three years, probably.
3:37
Speaker 2: Hundred percent unsurprisingly. I mean, is there any other way
3:40
Speaker 2: that this heightened attention has shaped these conversations that you're
3:43
Speaker 2: regularly having. Would you say, was that kind of articulated?
3:46
Speaker 3: Yeah? So this is definitely interesting? Is that? So? You know,
3:50
Speaker 3: I think, as you know, I've been talking to government
3:52
Speaker 3: for the last several years around digital employee experience, and
3:55
Speaker 3: prior to twenty twenty five, yes, there's a drive for
3:59
Speaker 3: you know, how do we drive it efficiency? But a
4:02
Speaker 3: lot of the conversation focused around how do we enhance
4:05
Speaker 3: the end user experience and drive the mission of the agency,
4:08
Speaker 3: and we do that by basically creating more happy, effective
4:11
Speaker 3: employees doing that job. But in twenty twenty five, it's
4:15
Speaker 3: much more of an existential conversation for IT operations. They're
4:19
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how to survive in this new
4:21
Speaker 3: what's the new normal? Basically, and so it is sharpened
4:25
Speaker 3: the focus. It's really all about what's my return on investment?
4:29
Speaker 3: What's that benefit of becoming proactive and how I do
4:31
Speaker 3: it support, And it's it's not that nobody cares about
4:36
Speaker 3: what the end user's experience is, but that's just again
4:39
Speaker 3: they're just trying to figure out how to survive in
4:41
Speaker 3: this new way of doing this. And I go back
4:44
Speaker 3: to a good example of a bureau that we're having
4:46
Speaker 3: a conversation with. In the last eight months, they lost
4:49
Speaker 3: a third of their IT support headcount, so their service
4:52
Speaker 3: desk is a third two thirds, excuse me, a third
4:55
Speaker 3: of what it used to be at this point. And
4:58
Speaker 3: they used to previously only do desk side support in office.
5:03
Speaker 3: So you know, if Tim had a problem, I knew
5:06
Speaker 3: where his desk was and he called me and I
5:07
Speaker 3: would go to his desk and help fix, you know,
5:10
Speaker 3: sort him out. Well, number one, they no longer have
5:13
Speaker 3: that physical location. They actually now have more of a
5:16
Speaker 3: hotel style office space that's not nearly as large as
5:20
Speaker 3: it used to be. And number two, they don't have
5:22
Speaker 3: nearly the number of support personnel. So overnight, again it's existentially,
5:26
Speaker 3: how do I continue to do is support TEA support
5:29
Speaker 3: without basically having the resources that I had eight months ago.
5:33
Speaker 3: And that's the kind of kind of conversation that we're
5:35
Speaker 3: mostly having at this point. The end user thing is
5:38
Speaker 3: is a benefit of that, but it's really about it
5:41
Speaker 3: operations at this point.
5:44
Speaker 4: So Chris, i'll offre you my welcome back to the
5:46
Speaker 4: show as well. It's been real fun, not only working
5:49
Speaker 4: with you over the last couple of years, but especially
5:52
Speaker 4: over the last six months working closely with the team
5:54
Speaker 4: traveling to different events. You and I, you know, we've
5:57
Speaker 4: talked a lot about our acceleration in this space and
6:00
Speaker 4: how close we were, so seeing where we are today
6:03
Speaker 4: is I know it's exciting for the team and it
6:05
Speaker 4: is for me too.
6:08
Speaker 3: I think the.
6:09
Speaker 4: Way I'm looking at this is that the federal space
6:12
Speaker 4: that we're now working with is famously and maybe even
6:17
Speaker 4: paradoxically known for both efficiency and inefficiency, waste and waste reduction. Right,
6:25
Speaker 4: if you ask any American on the street about the
6:27
Speaker 4: urban legend, where in the United States can you buy
6:30
Speaker 4: a ten thousand dollars hammer, They're probably going to say
6:33
Speaker 4: a federal agency somewhere. So there couldn't be a better
6:36
Speaker 4: place for next thing to bring tremendous value than to
6:40
Speaker 4: our federal workforce. Where do you see decks and the
6:43
Speaker 4: insights that we can enable playing into the broader missions
6:47
Speaker 4: of efficient operations, data driven intelligence, and like you just
6:52
Speaker 4: pointed out, doing more with less.
6:55
Speaker 3: So you're absolutely right that you know that that kind
6:58
Speaker 3: of the those stories exist for a reason is that
7:02
Speaker 3: there's been you know, government is not necessarily always operated
7:06
Speaker 3: like a business where there's a very fine focus on
7:09
Speaker 3: return on investment and the bottom line and profitability. And
7:13
Speaker 3: obviously profitability is not a concept in government, but there
7:17
Speaker 3: is now you know, to your point, there's just a
7:19
Speaker 3: lot more focus on accountability of the investment. Am I
7:23
Speaker 3: getting a return for the money that we're spending and
7:26
Speaker 3: how we're spending it and how we're going about doing it?
7:29
Speaker 3: And so two things is that number one, and this
7:33
Speaker 3: was something that had already begun, but government has become
7:36
Speaker 3: digital and it's it's increasingly becoming more digital. Is that
7:40
Speaker 3: on the defense side, you know, there's the term, there's
7:42
Speaker 3: the digital warfighter. Is that all the processes, the ways
7:45
Speaker 3: that the US military goes and carries out its mission,
7:48
Speaker 3: it's becoming much more digital. On the civilian side of government,
7:52
Speaker 3: the exact same thing is that the way that citizens
7:55
Speaker 3: want to engage with government is more of a digital
7:57
Speaker 3: fashion again. I keep that I hate having to bring
8:01
Speaker 3: up the pandemic again. But you know, if I want
8:03
Speaker 3: to go and get my driver's license and the only
8:06
Speaker 3: option is an in person option and the office is closed,
8:09
Speaker 3: well what do I do about it? Then the government
8:12
Speaker 3: was already basically learning the lessons of the pandemic and
8:15
Speaker 3: digitizing a lot of these processes. So DEX is a
8:18
Speaker 3: natural extension is that we're already heading in that direction.
8:21
Speaker 3: How do we make digital government more efficient? But then
8:24
Speaker 3: I go back to that challenge is now there's more
8:26
Speaker 3: oversight and more interest on accountability for funding than ever before.
8:32
Speaker 3: So DEX does two things. Is DEX is the GPS
8:35
Speaker 3: that that charts, Hey, we're going to make this investment.
8:38
Speaker 3: We're going to use this technology to solve this problem
8:41
Speaker 3: in our agency. And the GPS charts the path and
8:43
Speaker 3: you want to go from A to B, here's where
8:46
Speaker 3: you need to go. It actually charts it out. But
8:48
Speaker 3: DEX is now also the referee because it's the referee
8:51
Speaker 3: in the terms of are we accountable, Like you know,
8:55
Speaker 3: we said that we'd score five points by now have
8:57
Speaker 3: we actually done that? How many points do we have?
9:00
Speaker 3: So DEX is really actually measuring the result and the impact,
9:03
Speaker 3: and again not from a profitability perspective, but from just
9:06
Speaker 3: still a return is that you know, I put this
9:08
Speaker 3: money in am I getting a capability in return? And
9:11
Speaker 3: there's really not been a good way to do that
9:14
Speaker 3: in the past. We've actually seen government organizations like the
9:18
Speaker 3: US Navy. The US Navy's actually shifted how they even
9:22
Speaker 3: do their portfolio management of their IT projects and it's
9:26
Speaker 3: called World Class Alignment Metrics or wams, and the world
9:29
Speaker 3: class alignment metrics are actually things like this like dollars
9:32
Speaker 3: saved per end user or number of minutes spent supporting
9:36
Speaker 3: an end user, and it's very practical terms. So decks
9:39
Speaker 3: can help actually measure those, but as you know, des
9:42
Speaker 3: can also help chart the best way to get to
9:44
Speaker 3: where you want to go as well.
9:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's talk about what the team has been
9:51
Speaker 4: working so hard on for a number of years, but
9:54
Speaker 4: like we talked about most recently in the last six
9:57
Speaker 4: months or so and getting to a place where we
10:00
Speaker 4: are now in process for fed ramp. So we've been
10:04
Speaker 4: asking for a long time, when will it be now?
10:07
Speaker 4: For all of your Spaceballs fans out there, it's right now,
10:11
Speaker 4: right for those who don't live and breathe in that
10:15
Speaker 4: compliance world, what does it mean?
10:19
Speaker 3: So? Yeah, I love that. That spaceball reference is that
10:22
Speaker 3: when will then be now?
10:24
Speaker 4: So you just missed it?
10:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so when is now? And so fed RAMP
10:30
Speaker 3: for those who do not know, FedRAMP is now. Actually
10:33
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three, it's the law of the land.
10:35
Speaker 3: And so before it was founded about and I think
10:38
Speaker 3: twenty eleven I believe, or twelve, and it was actually
10:41
Speaker 3: a certification in industry, certification for cloud computing technology. So basically,
10:48
Speaker 3: if a cloud computing technology and a federal agency wanted
10:51
Speaker 3: to ulize it, it was highly suggested that it be
10:54
Speaker 3: fed RAMP compliant. Fed RAMP is basically a security certification
10:58
Speaker 3: built off the missed eight hundred fifty three control families.
11:02
Speaker 3: It looks and feels a lot like ISO or SOCK
11:05
Speaker 3: Type one and Type two in terms of the types
11:07
Speaker 3: of controls and the levels of security and details it
11:10
Speaker 3: gets into. It's actually even more robust as I understand it.
11:13
Speaker 3: It's it's extremely difficult to prepare for and to harden
11:17
Speaker 3: your product and then to operate your SaaS product in
11:20
Speaker 3: a manner that is FEDERMP compliant. So it is not
11:22
Speaker 3: something that's taken lightly. It takes a lot of investment
11:25
Speaker 3: to do. It is the law of the land now.
11:28
Speaker 3: So now, as of twenty twenty three, if a federal
11:30
Speaker 3: agency wants to use a cloud product, especially a SaaS product,
11:34
Speaker 3: it must be FEDERAMP compliant. So now we're bringing the
11:38
Speaker 3: only soon to be only FEDERMP authorized dex platform to
11:42
Speaker 3: market to solve these challenges we've been discussing for the organization.
11:46
Speaker 3: The impact for federal is the number one is that
11:49
Speaker 3: they're legally compliant. It's the easy button to consume this
11:53
Speaker 3: technology versus trying to figure out how to do something.
11:55
Speaker 3: It may be more of a legacy type of deployment model. Two,
12:00
Speaker 3: all of that investment in security and operations trickles down
12:03
Speaker 3: into all of the way that next thing operates our technologies,
12:08
Speaker 3: even in the commercial sector. So it's gonna you know,
12:10
Speaker 3: kind of the rising water makes all boats rise, is
12:13
Speaker 3: that it's going to improve compliance and security for all
12:16
Speaker 3: the customers that we serve. But really the big one
12:19
Speaker 3: is again it's the easy button, is that if they're
12:21
Speaker 3: security concerns, compliance concerns, regulatory concerns. When you're FEDERAMP authorized.
12:27
Speaker 3: Those are now just a process that you've got to
12:29
Speaker 3: go through and take the box and really focuses the
12:32
Speaker 3: conversation around the capability the value that we can bring
12:36
Speaker 3: to that federal agency.
12:39
Speaker 4: So when I hear Federal, my brain normally just goes
12:43
Speaker 4: right to DoD. But Federal is so much bigger than
12:46
Speaker 4: Department of Defense. But even just in a couple of
12:49
Speaker 4: those segments, right Air Force, I think we talked about
12:55
Speaker 4: eight hundred thousand people in devices, Army one point two million.
12:59
Speaker 4: As an IT person, I can't imagine managing environments that
13:04
Speaker 4: big and even just deciding where to start. Where does
13:08
Speaker 4: this huge cohort start first? Right, we're hardened for compliance,
13:13
Speaker 4: but what what in your view, what specific problems or
13:16
Speaker 4: inefficiencies do you feel that inefficiency solves right out of
13:20
Speaker 4: the gate now that it's tailored for Federal?
13:23
Speaker 3: Well, so so with Infinity and INFINITY is you know,
13:26
Speaker 3: the leading decks platform here to allow organizations to see, diagnose,
13:31
Speaker 3: and fix issues that impact user experience at scale. So
13:34
Speaker 3: it's it's this best in class capability that the government
13:37
Speaker 3: will now get be able to access and use within
13:41
Speaker 3: their environments. And so the the what I call kind
13:44
Speaker 3: of the meat and potatoes capabilities of decks of being
13:48
Speaker 3: able to you know, move in that reactive model. Somebody
13:52
Speaker 3: does take time out of their job, calls in with
13:54
Speaker 3: a ticket, we can much more quickly figure out what
13:56
Speaker 3: is the problem, what's the issue, how many people are
13:59
Speaker 3: affected other than the person calling, and then use automations
14:02
Speaker 3: to solve those problems at scale. But with Infinity in particular.
14:06
Speaker 3: The other really two interesting things that I see is
14:09
Speaker 3: that it's all of the AI and machine learning that's
14:11
Speaker 3: built into that suggestion. So as you know, you know,
14:14
Speaker 3: as we've become proactive, you know, we don't want to
14:17
Speaker 3: gather data for data's sake. We want it to be actionable,
14:20
Speaker 3: and we want to actually have recommendations of hey, you know,
14:22
Speaker 3: everybody in an organization might be using a version of
14:25
Speaker 3: a software that it's less stable than another version that's
14:29
Speaker 3: known to be much better, much more performant, and gathering
14:33
Speaker 3: that data and insight and an actual manager manage a
14:37
Speaker 3: way for an organization like the Army that's gotten millions
14:40
Speaker 3: of end users to be able to figure out, hey,
14:42
Speaker 3: this is the problem we have, and AI is telling
14:45
Speaker 3: us that if we fix that problem, it's going to
14:48
Speaker 3: have the most amount of kind of positivity for our
14:51
Speaker 3: end users than another one. It really helps rack and
14:54
Speaker 3: stack the way and the investment and the things that
14:57
Speaker 3: they're doing tactically, and then even more strategic and kind
15:00
Speaker 3: of projects that they invest in. Prior to that, we've seen,
15:05
Speaker 3: just like everybody else, tho's IT organizations really had to
15:08
Speaker 3: take a best guess. And I go back to the
15:11
Speaker 3: one that you know, we talked about a few years
15:13
Speaker 3: ago is that the hashtag fixed our computers with the
15:15
Speaker 3: US Air Force, and that was a poor performance issue
15:19
Speaker 3: that got escalated out into the world. It was a
15:22
Speaker 3: Twitter rant buy and employee and the initial solution was, oh, well,
15:26
Speaker 3: we're just going to spend more money on endpoint hardware,
15:29
Speaker 3: We're going to refresh it. Well, when they got in
15:31
Speaker 3: there and actually got the metrics and understood that, well, sure,
15:35
Speaker 3: maybe in hardware was causing some of the issue, but
15:38
Speaker 3: the majority of the issue was actually other areas with
15:41
Speaker 3: the network and applications that were loaded on the device.
15:44
Speaker 3: And that's the kind of capability we can provide them
15:47
Speaker 3: now at scale, is that let's get to the root
15:49
Speaker 3: cause so you can figure out how to better spend
15:52
Speaker 3: taxpayer's dollars basically on that. The other thing I mentioned
15:55
Speaker 3: in particular is that again the world's already gone hybrid.
15:58
Speaker 3: Government is doing that. As we mentioned, government's going digital,
16:01
Speaker 3: an area that we can do very well with Infinity
16:04
Speaker 3: as things around collaboration tools and collaboration platforms, so teams, zoom,
16:09
Speaker 3: other things like that, because those are now mission critical
16:11
Speaker 3: systems that honestly weren't even really considered kind of main
16:16
Speaker 3: use about four or five years ago. Now it's something
16:18
Speaker 3: that every federal employee uses in some aspect, just like
16:21
Speaker 3: the rest of the world on a daily basis. That's
16:24
Speaker 3: something we can really help them with the Infinity platform
16:27
Speaker 3: in a way that we could not do before bringing
16:29
Speaker 3: our sas capabilities to government.
16:31
Speaker 5: Hey Chris, and welcome back to the podcast. And I
16:34
Speaker 5: also want to say thank you for your input. I
16:37
Speaker 5: think it was a month ago, it feels like a
16:38
Speaker 5: year ago. But with the report that we put together
16:41
Speaker 5: you and your teammates on it's called the cost of
16:44
Speaker 5: doing Nothing by public sector productivity lags behind other industries.
16:48
Speaker 5: You can find it on the next thing dot com
16:50
Speaker 5: slash resource page. If you search for productivity or public
16:54
Speaker 5: sector that will pop up, So thank you for the
16:57
Speaker 5: work that you guys put into that report.
17:00
Speaker 3: Question.
17:00
Speaker 5: So you're in the currently during the FedRAMP process. Now
17:04
Speaker 5: I'm curious like what comes next, what comes after this?
17:07
Speaker 5: What's the roadmap I suppose in terms of next think
17:11
Speaker 5: government offerings and how you're continuing to partner with agencies
17:15
Speaker 5: through these digital shifts.
17:17
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, So for us, so, as I mentioned, we're
17:20
Speaker 3: FedRAMP and process, and for those who aren't familiar, that
17:23
Speaker 3: means that we have our environment, we have hardened it,
17:26
Speaker 3: we've fully documented it, which is actually thousands of pages
17:29
Speaker 3: of documentation for those who aren't aware. So it's it's
17:32
Speaker 3: no mean fee to be able to do that, and
17:34
Speaker 3: we're now in the process with our third party auditor.
17:38
Speaker 3: The federanp process itself, in the last eight months has
17:40
Speaker 3: also undergone significant change. The Federant program has rolled out
17:45
Speaker 3: what they call FEDERMP twenty x, which is a modernization
17:48
Speaker 3: of the process. We're being certified under FedRAMP federrot excuse me, rev. Five.
17:54
Speaker 3: But the big benefit with these changes is that we
17:57
Speaker 3: the timeline to finalize the authorization has been greatly shortened,
18:01
Speaker 3: so we fully expect to be authorized by early fault,
18:05
Speaker 3: so we'll be fed REMP moderate in the marketplace, where
18:07
Speaker 3: in the marketplace today's in process, but we'll be fully
18:10
Speaker 3: authorized by early fall. So again that basically means that
18:14
Speaker 3: any organization can then consume us and can go out
18:17
Speaker 3: to the marketplace to pull down our security package and
18:20
Speaker 3: do their own security review at that point. So we'll
18:22
Speaker 3: have that. That's the first step, and that really opens
18:25
Speaker 3: the floodgates and being able to support organizations the other
18:29
Speaker 3: thing that we intend to do as we move forward.
18:31
Speaker 3: So FEDERANP moderate was the first step that we've got.
18:34
Speaker 3: There are several levels of security classification and in FEDERM
18:37
Speaker 3: we intend to go higher up. We intend to actually
18:40
Speaker 3: go up to Aisle four or Aisle five to support
18:43
Speaker 3: our DoD customers. Today. We also actually have another version
18:47
Speaker 3: of the platform called next Thing self Manage. This is
18:50
Speaker 3: a virtual appliance architecture for organizations. As we discussed that
18:54
Speaker 3: maybe have aren't ready to use the cloud or have
18:57
Speaker 3: too many security requirements. Maybe it's an air gap network
19:00
Speaker 3: that's offline and can't connect to the cloud, and so
19:03
Speaker 3: self Manage exists and it solves a lot of these problems.
19:06
Speaker 3: As we talked about of being able to see diagnosed
19:09
Speaker 3: and fixed. But we're going to take infinity, which is
19:11
Speaker 3: the best to breed, and bring it all the way
19:13
Speaker 3: up to a version that can be consumed by the
19:15
Speaker 3: DoD and that will happen over over time here as
19:19
Speaker 3: we work with those clients as well.
19:23
Speaker 5: That's great to hear, and it sounds you actually answered
19:26
Speaker 5: some of the questions I had. I was curious about
19:27
Speaker 5: the second half of the twenty twenty five, But I
19:29
Speaker 5: have another good question. I'm curious what advice would you
19:32
Speaker 5: give to federal IT teams trying to make progress amid
19:36
Speaker 5: all the noise that's happening.
19:39
Speaker 3: So I think I would go back to what we
19:47
Speaker 3: talked about a moment ago. That decks is both the
19:49
Speaker 3: GPS and the referee. It's you know, what's our path
19:53
Speaker 3: and then are we actually making progress? Are we scoring
19:55
Speaker 3: goals the way we intended to? I would suggest you
20:00
Speaker 3: can deploy it to assess what's going on and baseline
20:04
Speaker 3: what your issues are. It's something that is very easily
20:08
Speaker 3: done that we've even worked with an organization just to
20:11
Speaker 3: give them that snapshot to show them where they want
20:13
Speaker 3: to go and what the problems are. As I mentioned
20:17
Speaker 3: a moment ago back to the Air Force example, several
20:20
Speaker 3: years ago they thought, oh well, we'll just buy more hardware.
20:22
Speaker 3: We'll turns out in the actual problem with something different.
20:25
Speaker 3: That's something we can actually get tangible proof of in
20:28
Speaker 3: a very short order and be able to help an
20:30
Speaker 3: organization chart that path for their way forward. So that
20:35
Speaker 3: would bring that And I would also add is that
20:37
Speaker 3: this is something I think, as you guys know you
20:40
Speaker 3: talked to a lot of dexperts in the years here
20:43
Speaker 3: that this move to proactive IT and the use of
20:46
Speaker 3: decks to drive IT operations is something that is now
20:49
Speaker 3: widely adopted and commercial and now is one of those
20:51
Speaker 3: times I would suggest to really lean in and see, well,
20:54
Speaker 3: what is the commercial best practice, how are the best
20:56
Speaker 3: ways that large organizations are doing this, even if or
21:00
Speaker 3: not a government agency, and maybe don't have some of
21:03
Speaker 3: the similar security concerns or process concerns in there, because
21:06
Speaker 3: again I believe that much of what the of the
21:10
Speaker 3: challenges were solving for commercial organization are very relevant today
21:15
Speaker 3: given the new focus around efficiency and accountability on budgets
21:20
Speaker 3: as well.
21:23
Speaker 6: Hey, Chris, welcome back. So one of the standout benefits
21:28
Speaker 6: mentioned in the announcement was helping agencies reduce software waste
21:32
Speaker 6: and increase it automation. How are these outcomes translating in
21:36
Speaker 6: the real world and can you share any early feedback
21:40
Speaker 6: or expectations.
21:42
Speaker 3: Sure. So that's a very that's one that's driven a
21:45
Speaker 3: lot of interest out of the gate in the last
21:47
Speaker 3: several months. And with the size and the scale of
21:52
Speaker 3: a government agency typically you know, in some cases it's
21:56
Speaker 3: far bigger than a global enterprise, and they use even
21:59
Speaker 3: more softa where than a commercial entity. That the result
22:04
Speaker 3: here is that there are a couple of organizations we've
22:05
Speaker 3: spoken to that believe that, hey, we know we're over
22:08
Speaker 3: licensed in our subscription software. We think that we could
22:11
Speaker 3: save between five hundred million and a billion dollars a
22:14
Speaker 3: year in kind of normalizing and rationalizing our software spend
22:20
Speaker 3: if we deployed a tool like this. Now, that is
22:23
Speaker 3: that's on the far side of the scale. That's one
22:25
Speaker 3: of the really large organizations. But every single entity we've
22:29
Speaker 3: spoken to within the federal government has some level of
22:32
Speaker 3: interest in rationalizing their hardware and their software spend and
22:37
Speaker 3: usage and being able to actually see, you know, what's
22:40
Speaker 3: licensed and what are people actually using it? Can have
22:43
Speaker 3: a massive impact, maybe not necessarily a billion dollars a year,
22:46
Speaker 3: but commensurate to the size of an organization, it's a
22:50
Speaker 3: similar level of impact for them. So it's a a
22:53
Speaker 3: big deal for them, potentially.
22:56
Speaker 6: Totally agree, not just from a compliance perspective, also from utilization,
23:01
Speaker 6: under utilization, or even over utilization. It would give them
23:04
Speaker 6: a lot of perspectives, just even starting from the sea aspect,
23:08
Speaker 6: and then you move on to diagnosing and fixing afterwards.
23:11
Speaker 6: How important is it for agencies not just to meet
23:15
Speaker 6: compliance standards, but to use that secure environment to push
23:19
Speaker 6: towards a continuous digital improvement And what does that evolution
23:23
Speaker 6: look like in practice? How does next thing support it?
23:28
Speaker 3: So, as I mentioned before, government is already modernizing, is
23:33
Speaker 3: already going digital, and so it is very important. So
23:37
Speaker 3: compliancy obviously matters from a legal point of view. Is
23:39
Speaker 3: that you know these are this is the law of
23:42
Speaker 3: the land that these agencies have to follow. But it's
23:44
Speaker 3: also the most secure way to do this to protect
23:47
Speaker 3: citizens data and information and the mission of these agencies.
23:51
Speaker 3: So it is very critical that they follow these from
23:54
Speaker 3: a compliance perspective. But this continuous digital improvement is because
24:00
Speaker 3: everything has become digital. So the workflows that were maybe
24:04
Speaker 3: manual or analog are now all becoming digital. And so
24:07
Speaker 3: the idea that we've got to it can't be a
24:09
Speaker 3: one and done because more and more of the mission
24:12
Speaker 3: is becoming digital. It needs to be continuous in the
24:15
Speaker 3: way that they see and refine and fix issues in
24:19
Speaker 3: delivering those capabilities. So it is it is becoming more
24:22
Speaker 3: and more important. And I go back to you know,
24:25
Speaker 3: it's the roadmap, it's the GPS that actually charge. What's
24:28
Speaker 3: the underlying problem? It is the no kidding way that
24:33
Speaker 3: somebody can figure out where are our issues? Where do
24:35
Speaker 3: we invest? Because otherwise I think Tim mentioned that is
24:39
Speaker 3: that the breadth of responsibility for these organizations is so broad.
24:44
Speaker 3: I don't understand how else they would really figure out
24:47
Speaker 3: where to start without just taking a guess.
24:50
Speaker 6: At that point, totally agree to that. And when you
24:55
Speaker 6: talk to federal IT leaders, how much of the DEX
24:58
Speaker 6: conversation is about user sets faction since now we're starting
25:02
Speaker 6: to go more and more, like you just mentioned, into
25:05
Speaker 6: the depth of digitalization, right or making everything super digital?
25:08
Speaker 6: So how much is about mission readiness or public service delivery?
25:12
Speaker 6: And is there a mind shift or a mindset shift underway.
25:18
Speaker 3: Yes, so they go hand in hand. Is that that
25:20
Speaker 3: mission readiness and mission capability, that and that is always
25:23
Speaker 3: the focus of these IT organizations. It's carrying out the mission.
25:28
Speaker 3: But again as they're realizing that the mission is greatly
25:32
Speaker 3: affected if the end user has a poor experience, has
25:35
Speaker 3: a problem and a challenge, especially if their entire workload
25:39
Speaker 3: is moving towards the digital the digital side of the house.
25:42
Speaker 3: So they're very much tied together, but the focus is
25:45
Speaker 3: always framed around mission capability and mission delivery. It's not
25:51
Speaker 3: that people don't care about the end user experience, is
25:53
Speaker 3: that the end user experience really means it really equates
25:58
Speaker 3: to the mission capability These federal agencies phenomenal.
26:06
Speaker 2: Chris, you know you've not been it's not been a
26:09
Speaker 2: long time since you were back. But there's been plenty
26:11
Speaker 2: to talk about, and not only in your sector but
26:15
Speaker 2: inside next Think and the capabilities were offering and thanks
26:18
Speaker 2: to Sean not only for reminding us to draw attention
26:23
Speaker 2: to the report he mentioned on the IT in the
26:27
Speaker 2: FED sector and the impact of ai AI preparedness there,
26:34
Speaker 2: but for offering that report. It's an excellent read. The
26:37
Speaker 2: cost of doing nothing why public sector productivity lags behind
26:41
Speaker 2: other industries. You can get it for free, download it
26:45
Speaker 2: from the show notes, and will also include links so
26:48
Speaker 2: interested listeners can learn more about fed ramp. Chris always
26:53
Speaker 2: a pleasure. Let's hope the sector comes down a little bit,
26:56
Speaker 2: although if it doesn't, it would be a pleasure to
26:58
Speaker 2: have you on in another six to eight months, my friend.
27:01
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. I hope it comes down as well.
27:03
Speaker 3: But thank you so much for having me twice this year.
27:05
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it. Thank you.
27:07
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