What's UP? AvePoint at IT Nation 2024

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Harry Brelsford 00:00

Nation. Nation, what a year at it. Nation met ducks. We'll talk about ducks in a moment and introduce them. But the it nation, connect 2024 it's the Rose Bowl. It's the granddaddy of them all. It you gotta go. You gotta go. I'm not suggesting it's the only one you go to, by my count, and talking to PR, roughly 4500 on site, which is probably even with last year. But that's a big number. And then I think it was 20 503,000 online. You know, the funny thing about online is is it's really hard to visualize that it's really hard to get your arms around online, but it also accommodates a global enterprise like ConnectWise that's quickly approaching a billion in revenue. I track them as an analyst, but someone I bumped into in no small part because they were giving away a Ducati motorcycle. Unfortunately, I was prohibited from joining the contest as media. You know how that goes. You can't do that, but I did meet Dux, Raymond's side ducks, how you doing? Harry?

Dux Raymond Sy 01:15

Fantastic. Talk about a phenomenal event. You were telling me you walk, what, eight miles or 10 miles the first day.

Harry Brelsford 01:22

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm off camera, but I'm lifting my sports watch and it don't lie, yeah, probably 10 plus my legs were sore. I had to take a day off and just watch college football, to be honest. My legs were sore, but so well, let's start with some fun, and then we'll talk about, well, first of all, your background briefly, and then we're gonna have a little fun, and then we're gonna talk about out point and what you're doing now and then. 25

Dux Raymond Sy 01:53

Fantastic. Well, Harry, thank you for this opportunity. Hey everybody. My name is Dux, Raymond sy I serve as the Chief Brand Officer here at Point, and I think I'm one of the few very technical brand or marketing leaders in the industry. My background is I'm a assembler programmer. For those listeners who don't know what assembler is. You weren't born yet, but so I've been in tech for a long time, and worked on this industry before the technology SharePoint, with SharePoint. So that's that's where I started to expand my repertoire. Written books about SharePoint when it was still on prem got involved with Microsoft investment in BPOS office 365 now Microsoft 365 and joined app point 12 years ago. So fast forward to today, just having a blast working with a lot of our partners around the world to help them build a business around data security, which is really, really important in the age of AI,

Harry Brelsford 02:52

yeah, and then the fun element, and then we'll move on to some serious stuff. But I attended the drawing for the Ducati, and I noticed a couple things. First of all, you know, huge crowd, everybody holding up their their ticket, and an excitement and noise. The second thing is, is that, and I thought it was, you know, worth noting. It was a little bit humorous, but because of the noise from the the drawing, it kind of drowned out the other booths next to you for about 10, five minutes, couple minutes. I mean, that's all good, but I enjoyed a chuckle. Well,

Dux Raymond Sy 03:30

thank you, Harry. If you go to YouTube, just search out point Ducati. We've, we've done it for a long time in lots of events, Microsoft events, and this is the first time I actually have done in a channel event. It's just, it's just so much fun, lot of energy. People are excited, and just just that moment when the person wins is, is just gold. Yeah, yeah,

Harry Brelsford 03:52

you were. You're busy as bees up there on stage, I tell you. So at point, as I discussed with you at the event, I think we need to reintroduce you to our community, because I never really thought of you as a SMB, MSP channel partner play. So again, we kind of had that talk, but for the sake of the audience, is that kind of accurate? And where are we at today? Because you're, you're you're here,

Dux Raymond Sy 04:23

absolutely so app point is the global leader in data security governance and data resiliency. We have the biggest platform today supporting a lot of the what I would call the productivity clouds, Microsoft, 365, Google, Salesforce, and at the end of the day, our technology ensures that if you have data in the productivity cloud, it's well protected, governed and secure. We've been in the business over 21 years, and you're exactly right. We started our business really working with. Large organizations, or as they would say, enterprise customers, from banks to the US government to the customers in Europe and Asia and Australia, and thanks to the cloud, our enterprise technology is now available to everyone as a SaaS offering and as such, a few years ago, we realized that the same need our large customers have is no different from customers that may be a little smaller SMB, but the reality is, we're not that big to be able to get into a lot of these customers. So a few years ago, we formally launched our partner program, our channel ecosystem, and we're so grateful. Fast forward, today, we have over 4000 partners worldwide. That's

Harry Brelsford 05:52

that, yeah, that's a that's a good number that's hard earned. Let me tell you,

Dux Raymond Sy 05:55

thank you. Essentially, what a lot of our partners, especially MSPs, would do is take our technology and build a services offering, and which is really exciting, right? Because a lot of MSPs out there, you know, specific, for example, to the cloud Microsoft 365 a lot of MSPs manage the tenant, you know, makes money off of Microsoft licensing, and maybe help their customers migrate or maybe back up, which we can certainly help you with. But beyond that, what's exciting to me is, in the age of AI, everyone's excited about things like copilot or Gemini. It's new, but what we're seeing is organizations and customers are getting stuck because their data estate is not ready. So what MSPs are doing, they're taking our product building a practice to get their customers ready for AI, making sure their data is of good quality, is in good hygiene. And then once customers are using copilot, making sure it's well secured as well, it's only the right people getting the right information at the right time. So a lot of our MSPs are thriving, and because of our robust platform offering, our MSPs are building more services that's recurring month after month.

Harry Brelsford 07:10

Yeah, what I would, if you don't mind, what I would tell you, you're hitting on something interesting that I have a little sensitivity to. But first, let me tell you, you know, I'm in Austin, Texas, so let me use a little Texas slang that I'd rather be early for dinner than late for supper. You know, because your your mama doesn't want you late for the meal she cooked the the analogy is this, I've been too early in certain Microsoft spaces, so and I would offer you have to be pause was arguably too early, right? And the name was, the branding was horrible. Sounded like but then came 365, and we did the same thing with small business server. We developed it 97 index. We really didn't make bank until 2003 right now, here's my point. I again, I'd rather be early than late, and by being early, it takes a certain amount of patience. But you know, you're carving out a beach head, and I would offer co pilots exactly that I've been tracking it, and I'm in some different partner groups, and the monthly luncheon. And the feeling for SMB is arguably, and I concur we might be too early. Copilot is very well placed for the enterprise in larger entities, but it's how the game is played. You got to start now. You want to, you want to bounce off what I'm saying. Ducks.

Dux Raymond Sy 08:47

Harry,

08:48

yeah,

Dux Raymond Sy 08:49

yeah, go ahead.

Harry Brelsford 08:50

Well, that's it. I mean, yeah. So I think that's good that you're in the space. Yeah. It's going to take some patience. And I'm your friend

Dux Raymond Sy 08:59

Absolutely. So let me, let me react to that. I think that's a very good point, right, obviously, especially for MSP partners. On one hand, you know we need to keep the lights on. We need to keep business moving. But on the other hand, we know this is coming. It's just a matter when, maybe a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, but you can't just stop everything you're doing and focus on what's coming. So how we work with a lot of partners out there, especially MSPs, because of the full suite of technology we have, you know, we help them first and foremost, let's say they still have customers wanting to move to 365 we have migration technology that they can build a service upon check, but that's transactional. And then we have a world class backup technology that, frankly, all customers need today, in light of things like ransomware or other threats out there, that right there is something that they can build a service upon that's recurring. Yeah. And I think what's also important for partners that are serving our US, government or the federal market, we're the only vendor for MSPs that has FedRAMP and GCC high which is important. A lot of the federal agencies now have cmmc requirements, stock two requirements, and we're here to support and grow your business. And then let's move on. Let's talk about copilot, right? Yeah. What's beautiful about that? Imagine if you're being able, if you're able to build a service off of our technology from the basic migration to backup, then you can start preparing for what's to come. You could do things like, Hey, let me get you ready by assessing your data estate, because regardless if you're going to use your copilot or not, let's face it, most organizations today has a messy data estate. They have redundant, redundant, outdated, trivial data. And even if you're not using copilot, the last thing you want you run a basic search. You don't want the TPS report from 1945 showing up, so there needs to be some proper hygiene in it, and we have technologies that partners can build a service on to perform that data hygiene exercise, because at the very least, customers can save money from storage. You and I know there's not unlimited storage in 365 and we have a lot of partners starting to do that. And the logic behind is, hey, customer, we're gonna get your data estate ready, making sure it's clean, things that are redundant, absolutely and trivia. We can get rid of it or move it to a cheaper storage so you don't have to pay extra storage to Microsoft. And then when the day comes, you're ready to turn on copilot, your data set is ready. And then the next point there is now security. Well, we all know over sharing is a problem. It's so easy for me to add Harry to a team share this Word document to somebody, and that person shares it. That's a common problem too. That's not even a co pilot thing, right? Again, a lot of our partners are building a service on top of it, offering them, you know, I don't know, a monthly data security package, making sure it's backed up, data is clean and it's well secured for X dollars a user a month. And then once copilot comes in, or when it comes in, you're all set to go. So you're absolutely right. But we have provided a way for our partners to have business day and prepare it so that when co pilot comes, they're ready to go as well.

Harry Brelsford 12:26

Yeah, yeah, exactly in ducks. In all fairness, we're having before we go, we're having the same talk in the ecosystem the community about AI. So AI is, you know, all about the CNBC business network and enterprises, and it's just hard for the little guy to get their arms around it, right. But, you know, we know it's coming, yeah, and it'll probably trickle down. I mean, now is a good time to use some of the basic programs. You know, I'm simple. I use a thing called otter, in fact, to translate this podcast. And it's essentially learning. Every time I do a podcast translation, it's learning, and it gets better and better and better. Well, that's practical, right, right? That makes sense. But, but, yeah, this idea that, you know, I'm going to be all involved in Nvidia. That's that's not going to happen, right? And by my choice. But Well, hey, ducks, we want to keep an eye on your final question as we go to 25 not too far out the you and your team, you're going to hit the shows. You going to do the show circuit again? Oh, for sure,

Dux Raymond Sy 13:43

Harry, I'm going to count on seeing you somewhere in 25 definitely, definitely back at it nation. Yeah, and there's, there's tons of, I'm sure, a lot of different channel, MSP events. We're going to bump into each other.

Harry Brelsford 13:56

Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, just as you were coming in, I was talking with your colleague about a list that a guy named Leonard in our space did, 500 globally, 500 MSP events annually. No, wow. Those include, yeah, they include lunch and learns. I mean, I want to write be clear, four hour lunch and learns with red wine and steak. But ducks, that's two a day, and that's a whole nother podcast

Dux Raymond Sy 14:25

that's like a full time job for someone.

Harry Brelsford 14:28

Yeah, yeah, ducks, thanks for your time. Thank you very much.

Dux Raymond Sy 14:32

You bet Harry, take care. You.