ERP112 - 5G, AI, and the Cloud

We came up with this idea was by accident. I always call it the happy accident, right? So one of our partners, there's a food truck convention or something. And their POS, he was talking to them and he and he brought me on for their point of sale. And I go, how reliable is your square devices? And they said 75% of the time it works. And I went, so three out of four sales go through? And the guy goes, yeah, it sounds about right. And the partner was like, what? And I'm like, well, what if we could get that so that maybe one out of 100 fail? Would that help? And he's like, yeah, that would be great. Welcome to Evolved Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host Todd Kane. This episode is brought to you by Evolved Management training courses, a whole series of courses built specifically for your MSP training needs. There's a project management for MSP's course, an MSP service manager boot camp, MSP security fundamentals and an IT documentation done right course. Check out the full suite of courses at training.evolvedmt.com. Or look for a link in the show notes. In today's episode, my guest Steve Copeland and I are talking about a bunch of nerdy tech stuff. But also some serious business opportunities. We're covering 5G technology and how your MSP could potentially leverage the technology for a differentiated service offering. We also chat about AI and its impact on the technology space and especially data privacy. We also chat about the cloud and why some companies are opting for on-prem servers instead of the cloud once again. Get ready for a fascinating discussion that will leave you thinking about how these advancements will shape our world. Steve, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. I am absolutely ecstatic to be here with you, sir. How are you? I'm well, thank you. It sounds like you've been very busy. You want to tell us what you've been up to the last few days? Uh, yeah, there's a weird little thing that happened in Houston called a hurricane. Uh, I live in California, I just get earthquakes. But this uh hurricane happened and um evidently the internet was down to 30%. meaning 30% up. So we had a lot of partners calling us and uh I think it was answering calls at midnight. So that's got to be what, 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. in Houston. trying to get people's internet back up. So, um a lot of shipping and then we had to shoot out an email going, I have ramp production, but we're out. So I need a little bit of time to get get some what we're talking about is the my little magic internet box, 5G router that can just plug in and take the internet back up. So Yeah. Uh we've got some uh boxes landing today and I'll be looking to see how well it does. So the cell towers are going to be really taxed. Yeah. So Well, it's a good positioning of like, like uh 5G is pretty ubiquitous. Uh everyone sort of, I think in the listening to this podcast would assume would presumably know what it is. We'll breeze past that. Uh but um I think it's it's almost in a way so pervasive that people tend to not think about it and think about it uh in a way that, you know, there's something you can do about it, right? So, like like the failover of networks, um, you know, you have an AT&T connection or, you know, someone has a a landline that gets uh cut for whatever reason. Um, you uh so back in the day, we used to deploy uh Mirakis and maybe some Dato networks, they would have a 5G sort of failover. Um, uh that's not in I would say incredibly common as a deployment strategy. But I think the idea of uh having some type of failover ability, especially in sort of disaster prone areas like Gulf Coast and tornado alley as well, right? Or or just straight outages. I think so and and and some of those strategies that are out there with 5G as a failover are interesting and a lot of them were actually 4G. Right. So and which is 4G A and I could tech everybody out, but I'm not really going to do it. 4G, 4G is about 120 megs. So if you're seeing them out at 120 megs, 4G A, that's you're really getting 4G A, you're not getting a true 5G connection. So, but uh which we have as well. Um so it depends on what the infrastructure is. But um, yeah, I I think it's coming around as a strategy. Um, we're very excited about it. I like to take that strategy a step further because I was as I've designed networks and worked at different places, I never want to have wasted cost or wasted bandwidth. I've always thought it was really bad to have a one line come in and then the other line is just sitting there in case I need it. I want to use it as well. So, uh that's that's the strategy that we try to take with our partners and and get them there, but um, yeah, it's uh it's coming around. Um, there are a lot of things that that are out there that are starting to have SIM cards, but they still take that approach that it's your phone. Your phone doesn't have the antenna that that that you really need to get true 5G. You've got to have this antenna that's as big as a TV. Especially if you're kind of distributing that that network to, you know, say an office, right? Like the failover coverage historically has been like, yeah, you can keep stuff on. It's going to be brutally slow for everybody, but generally, at least stuff is still attached, right? Um, and I think uh sort of the the 5G and sort of future, uh what is what is the next um 5G plus, but what comes after that? Like what's coming after that? So, it's actually 6G they're working on it right now. Yeah. So it's it's planned to hit around 2035, I think. Oh, wow, that far out. Okay. Yeah, well, 5G, if you remember way back and just going into the way back machine, Apple refused to go from 2G or 3G to 4G. Do you remember that? No. Like, oh, you can't you couldn't get a 4G Apple phone. They wouldn't do it. They just held it for so long. So really it was because of this this deployment. They have to deploy it nationwide. We're at about 46% deployment for 5G, but it's a smaller footprint, so they need to add more repeaters. Um, once they do that, you should be able to get 10 gigs per device. Wow. Yeah. So 6G's coming, but Yeah. Are we really do we really need 100 terabytes per device at this point? Like like we really going to go that far? Yeah, good point. And at the Cisco Tech event in Vegas, Cisco, the Cisco conference, they were talking about 100 terabyte back haul lines. Yeah. It was ridiculous. That's wild. Yeah. All right, so point still stands. You know, the the 4G was it was okay. It's like you could you could keep the connection up. 5G, you know, um I don't think a lot of people would think about this as office coverage, right? Like is that true, right? Because like you said, if you're just trying to tether a every everybody to your phone, like that may not work that well because it's just the technology is not intended to do that. But the sort of the system that you've built, uh it pulls a much larger sort of section of the bandwidth and could actually stabilize the connection for an office that has had an outage or um potentially, I guess even an area that's been impacted by um, you know, a hurricane for example. Is that the case? That is the case. It's it's interesting. So we use traditional Wi-Fi 6 as well as 5G. So 5G is grabbing the wide area network and Wi-Fi 6 is grabbing the local area. And you're starting to see a really big intersection and cross with that. One of the big uh pieces that are coming out, Amazon's pushing a lot. Amazon of all people is pushing. Uh and surprisingly enough, Dish Network who owns more of the 5G spectrum than AT&T. Really? Um Interesting. Yeah. Old Dish Network. Um they're they're pushing really hard at the 5G fixed wireless. So that would mean in a warehouse for say, I would put up my own 5G tower and everything in there is in my own private 5G domain. So you can't make a call on it, right? Right. But they'll have a way out. It's kind of it's really interesting how it's kind of taking this own life of them. Yeah. Um so it's uh it's not there yet. It's probably about we're probably about well, the way things are going with AI, probably about I would have said a year ago or three or four years out, I think we're about a year and a half out. Because 5G and AI play really really well together. How does that work? Like what's what's the crossover between those? So, it's latency. Oh, I see. Okay. 5G latency is uh 5 milliseconds. It's faster than you can see things. So, um, and traditional latency, I remember when I did VoIP systems and VoIP was the big thing and 200 milliseconds or 300 milliseconds, oh, work good, right? The jitter's good, the latency's good. Now they're at 5 and 10 with a 5G piece. And AI needs that. Um, and there's a thing called high value data, low transmission. Uh, a perfect example of that is cows. Cows? Dude, have you ever watched Yeah, have you ever watched Yellowstone? Uh, yeah. Okay. So Yellowstone, great show. I love it, right? In order to figure out where his cows are, he's got to send out people on horses and helicopters. So high value low data is putting a 5G little tag on the cows so he can look at his iPad and figure out where his cows are. This this is something that's come up in this podcast a lot actually. Um, uh so way back when, very early, this is like probably the first, maybe the second or third episode of this podcast years ago. I was talking to this guy Alex Dirk and he was um very early in in the Bitcoin community. Uh and we talked about how he grew up on a on a farm, like a dairy farm. And he talked about how a lot of the technology that we use nowadays was born out of like dairy farming and agriculture and stuff. I had no idea back in the day that this is the thing. And it continues to come up. It's really interesting. So that that was interesting when we were in Chicago where we got to go to to an event together. Um uh I got I got approached by a uh a company that does a lot has a lot of farmers as clients. And they're like, would you fly up? Because they're really at the forefront of something that's not that we weren't going to talk about, but is tied in IoT, internet of things. Yep. And they're like, they they have they're in the middle of deploying hundreds of sensors, again, high value, low data. Um, all across, water, temperature, heat, everywhere. So that they can literally look at a map and see where they need to water and efficiently and smart water. And then you apply machine language learning to that and then now your sprinkler system is spraying for two minutes in field A. Right. So it is they it does push a lot of things. It's really interesting. They're like, would you come up? I'm like, yeah, I'll fly out. So I I think I'm going out before we I'll see you in Boston before we go up there. Yeah. So I mean that that that's a good example of this of like um, you know, the the 5G potentially being a better type of mesh network than a say a traditional sort of uh land infrastructure using say maybe like radio towers or microwave. Um it it gives you sort of I guess a better spread um because of the radio technology, I would guess. It's a better spread, it's a larger spectrum. Yep. So they turn if you didn't notice, they turned off 3G and 2G. Do you know why? Because that got that got added to the five five Right. So they they absorbed the the the radio bandwidth. Yeah. I was like, okay, that's interesting. Right. Why wouldn't you just leave my phone the way it was? Because it was indestructible and I got to play snake. It was great. I loved it. The indestructible Nokia phone. The indestructible Nokia phone. I think I still got one in my garage. Uh but yeah, no, that is uh that's it is. The war, there's a couple different, I don't want to say wars, but I call them network wars or chip wars, right? There's a couple different conflicts that are happening. One of them is um I have fiber to my house. The city that I live in decided to do this. The guys were out digging, I had raised my front yard and they were out digging for two days and I was like, I brought them water. I felt bad, but it didn't cost me a penny for them to put fiber right to my house. Um, but that's a very expensive labor intensive piece. Now, down the street at the park, if they had put up a 5G tower, I could get the same speeds. Yeah. But who wants a 5G tower, you know? And if you ever watch the conspiracy theories and the different pieces with that, that that is a big push. It's interesting I watched a good documentary on that and they were talking about that that's been around since radio. Right. Like it's 1900s like, oh no, you're going to get this. So it's kind of funny. I was like, oh, I didn't I didn't I didn't think about it that way. That's really interesting. Yeah. There's actually a uh I don't know it off top of my head, but there's a term for it. Um for having that fear of radio technology, so. Yeah, we don't need to get into the fringes, but yes, some people are afraid of 5G. Like it's not it's not a not a thing. Um um that's sort of another interesting aspect of this, I suppose is is um the the use of sort of 5G and and and sort of how it could be leveraged differently and in different areas. And that's that's I think part of what what I was curious to talk to you about here is like this is a bit of an opportunity for for IT people, right? Like the IoT infrastructure and being able to to sort of leverage a a different aspect of of network technology and leverage it for for your clients. So, um the failover being a big one. Um the other one that I I found really interesting that I you had to educate me on was event coverage, right? Because I sort of said to you was like, okay, like you can rent these boxes, these uh the the the radio boxes that you have and provide network coverage for an event. And I was like, but, you know, everyone has a phone and there's 5G cell towers everywhere. So why does that matter? Like that I you want to dig into that one because I found this really uh interesting and and non-intuitive, I guess. Using the joke that I always like to use is size matters. So the antenna that you have on your phone is not the antenna that that would be used for a 5G network. It is uh our antennas on our phones. The the antennas that we use are about 10,000 times that phone. So it's 10,000 phones per box. With their bigger box, it's about 50,000 phones. So you you're grabbing more of that air space, that bandwidth. So priority Sims are something, but and we have those, but priority Sims are are they mean they have that, but the way that that works there, there's different bands and if you can grab more of that band, you have that. If there's a national emergency, a police cell phone will still work, yours won't. Yep. And that's because of a commercial band in there. But it's still the same air. Right. Right? So it's the same it's the same kind of concept that you're grabbing more of the the air wave than another device. Even if like 20 people are standing around, they're still not grabbing as much air wave bandwidth. It's almost like uh fiber, like I grab more of the fiber bandwidth than anybody else. So that that's what really helps with that. Right, okay. So like like you're you're basically kind of scooping up more of that that uh that bandwidth and distributing it to the people that are attached to your network instead of the people that are attached attaching directly to the cell tower. So, if I think about this, like what are you seeing some of the the partners do with this? Because I could see how, you know, we just want to have good coverage, so therefore we deploy a few of these boxes around an event site. And therefore, you know, people attending it, they they they have full bars and they have a good experience. Have you seen anybody do it where like you reserve you get basically priority Wi-Fi, so you like maybe sign up for this service and pay for it in order to reserve sort of better bandwidth at an event? That just happened. So, um so I'm learning as we go too, right? So I we came up with this idea was by accident. I always call it the happy accident, right? So one of our partners, there's a food truck convention or something and their POS, he was talking to them and he and he brought me on for their point of sale. And I go, how reliable is your square devices? And they said 75% of the time it works. And I went, so three out of four sales go through? And the guy goes, yeah, it sounds about right. And the partner was like, what? And I'm like, well, what if we could get that so that maybe one out of 100 fail? Would that help? And he's like, yeah, that would be great. I'm like, okay, well, let's let's Now we're only talking about 99% uptime, which isn't hard to get to, right? So I'm like, I'm like, all right. I've not 9999, right? But so I'm like, all right, all right, well let's let's figure out what we can do this. So we did that and then that came up and the partner goes, well you had said that you had guest Wi-Fi too. And he goes, yeah, but that wasn't working either. And I go, well, we could put a a guest Wi-Fi page and help you gather that. And he's like, yeah. And then we got off call and the partner goes, what should I do? I'm like, charge him for it. Yeah. He's like, what? I go, charge him for that data. I'm like, he goes, well, are you going to charge me for it? I'm like, no. It's already built in. It takes me two minutes to build you a nice little pretty landing page. And he's like, he goes, and what should I charge him? I'm like, I don't know, charge him 500 bucks. And he did. And he called me, he's like, they want us at every I guess it's monthly now and they want him in every one of these. So that was uh that was pretty cool. Um and it led to like a restaurant discussion he's having now. What was the what was the other cool? Oh, uh golf courses. That was huge. In fact, we're in Chicago, I had somebody that wanted me to do the John Deere golf course. So yesterday on ESPN was the NB invitational. at Huntington Club in Huntington Beach. And that was carried on these boxes. The live when it was shot in in in March. So like the video transmission or The video transmission, the POC, the the point of sales and the guest Wi-Fi. Wow. All on four boxes. That's wild. Okay, cuz yeah, live video streaming is intense bandwidth. Yeah. Well, it's intense upload. That's the trick with it, right? Yeah. Everybody gets good download. Everybody talks about Starlink, Starlink and we could put Starlink in. I call it non-terrestrial. because, you know, I get to use fancy terms, right? Or LEO. But low Earth orbit. But it's it it's uh um but their upload speed is the problem. It's not their download. I could use those. So we kind of splice that network a little bit. I threw I threw two star links on the back of it. So we got got uh some download speed. off to the side of it, but the upload speed we had just siphonned off so that most of that was going to the truck. I have it in my deck when I when I do present presents, but you see this deck and they for some reason they didn't want to dig up um this fairway to put in fiber. Imagine that. I don't know why. So but we we were in Chicago, I had another partner, well, he's just became a partner, right? And he come up and we were talking about that and he's like, could you get there next week? They have the same problem. I'm like, I'm booked. You know, I have some other things going on. I go, I go, I go, I have it. You have to really scope the area and I go, we haven't seen it. Call me. So we called and he goes, there's another golf event happening in two months. And he goes, well, we're planning it out. So we've got another partner doing the same kind of golf event. So it's it's kind of interesting. What was the other big thing that we got? Oh, I have no idea how many people on the planet are businesses are in between local area or wide area network coverage. And it's usually when they're right by the freeway. So, um I was talking we were talking to one, this was Wednesday. He's a new partner, he's coming on and I was like, I was like, so what I go, so what's their their download and upload now? And he goes, they're getting five megs. Oh my god. And I went, I went upload and he goes, no, that's their download. He goes, they're getting one meg. And I go, how much are they paying for that? And he goes, 800 bucks a month. Oh my god. And I went, can you imagine? I'm like, I don't think I've had five megabits of download in a decade. Yeah, like paying ISDN prices. Right? And that's what they're doing. It's usually in rural places. They're really it's where they're making their money back on their investment, right? And it's kind of it's kind of I don't think it's great. I don't like carriers. That's not fair. Yeah. I'm not I'm not I if anybody is a carrier uh that listens, I apologize. I'm not a big carrier fan. So, that was one of the things that we built with this. I it was the first tenant. I had the tenants of what I wanted tech wise. And one of them was carrier agnostic and I just kept it right there. So. Yeah. So and that and that maybe that's one other spot to to sort of rifle around here because like that was the other thing I was thinking about when I when I sort of got introduced to this this solution. I was like, okay, well, you got an AT&T uh back haul, great. Like you can fail over to this if your local line goes down, like what if there's a problem with with AT&T? Uh so the fact that you can you have like multiple sort of cell providers in one box plus Starlink and they're aggregated and then they can sort of trade off if one is down. So like you like they're asking for. They're not trading off. They're actually being used at the same time. Right. But if one fails, then it like it it doesn't matter, right? So AT&T's down, fine, we're on the T-Mobile network anyway. All cell towers down, fine, we're on Starlink, right? So it's kind of it's it's in a lot of ways, not impervious, but very sort of resistant to network outages, right? Yeah, it it it's as close as you can get. I mean, nothing's going to be perfect. Like we one of the things that we've developed is an incident response kit. for security breaches. Um so just being able to to pull that out. And one of the first things you're doing on a security breach is you slowly clean people and bring them over, right? One of the things that we talked about was that security breach was being able to to uh I it's I call it I go, it's not finding a needle in a haystack, it's like finding a needle in a bunch of needles. And they went and they go, what? And I go, all you got to do is turn it on and turn it off again and you got a new IP. And they went, oh, I didn't think about that. I'm like, yeah, it's really it's it's a different piece. I don't have to now call the carrier, redo this, right? And that's becomes a different different solution with that. So we've had only one of those. So only only one time it's been used that way. But it's been uh it's been there. Thank thank goodness. I don't like breaches. You know, they're crazy. Really aside from bad actors. Um so like let's just sort of reiterate this because like one point I do want to sort of emphasize here. Not not not in sort of any promotional capacity. Um although we're doing that, but uh I I I think it's just interesting that this opportunity that this creates, right? Of being able to rapidly deploy uh a network failover coverage for for clients like in a in I guess reasonably a fairly not wide geographic area. But you could do sort of multiple deployments across a wider geographic area. So, like in the example of of outages after a hurricane, for example. Like like Houston, sort of Gulf Coast, like it's going to be a very busy hurricane season. Um and what does that look like? Like are partners charging sort of a a a reservation fee or only paying having clients pay for uh the coverage when it's deployed? What like how does how do you actually monetize this as a solution for clients to be able to provide sort of this interim coverage? So let's not make this I I agree. I want to not make this a commercial, right? So let's talk about how I would do it or what what I would do as an MSP because I feel very comfortable talking about that way. So one of the things that that that I liked was I would take anybody within a 10, 15 mile radius. And I I would say, you pay me 50 bucks a month and I'll have your internet back up. And I would keep two boxes off to the side. And you could do this, my boxes, you could build these boxes, you could, you know, take the time and do all that, invest all the money. It's it's it's not a it's not a concept of that, but you have to have the ability to deploy quickly. So you can't deploy, I live in LA or Orange County. I can't run out and go, I will have you up in LA because it could take me two hours to go from LA to LA, right? Right. So you have to have a a a a good piece of a geographic piece. In fact, we're doing this right now. We're we're developing SLAs, we're developing through through attorneys and I'm developing a uh marketing materials for it so they can do that. So that's one way to do it. I've always thought that was good. Um, as I've as we're only five months old. So as we've gone through and talked to more and got more partners, got more partners. It didn't really come back around to that until about two months ago. And people are like, Wait, I really do like that concept. We've kind of flushed it out and I'm like figuring it out. But that was my original idea. I'm like, oh, I would do this all day long. Right? I'd have 100 boxes and I would just deploy them at every employee's house, right? So it was like a whole like, you drive there now kind of thing. Um, uh so it it it kind of came that. There is that. There's stuff with um if they you know, just there's so many different new use cases for it and one of our, you know, our tagline is take you back to cloud. because that's the single point of failure. It's if your internet goes down today, you lose access to your ERP, your CRM, your exchange server, your files, SharePoint, smart sheet. I just the list could go all the way down. And yes, people have learned how to go remote, but a warehouse can't. Right. Right? So there's uh there's there's some interesting use cases with that. So to answer that, it's really that market that you start to go, hey, what happens if this happens? Yeah. What happens to your business? How much do you really lose? Not using the scare tactics of downtime costs you $10,000. Like really what what happens? What really happens if that's there? And it you it's funny, I used to use this. I had I had um I had an MSP that I taught a long time ago as as a as a coach thing. uh business continuity plan. We used to do business continuity plans and QBRs. This is 2010. Um I'm not saying it was a groundbreaking thing, but there wasn't a lot of people doing those, right? And one of the things in my business continuity plan is switch off iPhone or iMessage and make sure you're on SMS because SMS will go through and if the cell phones are down, you'll still be able to text. Right. And he told me he's like, I've used that. in every one of them and everybody goes, oh my gosh, I've never thought about that. So like if something if there's an emergency in your area, text your kids. Yep. Right? So it's really it's really interesting that that that was still there. But yeah, um no, I I think it's it there's they're running out of data center space. Connectivity is going to become huge bigger and bigger. Nobody wants to uh I still have no idea why they put all the data centers in Phoenix and didn't think cooling was going to be a problem. I remember I was like, I we did this big data center and they're like, oh, yeah, where's the data center? Scottdale. And I'm like, Yep. It's 118 degrees. Yeah. trash cans melt there. Right? And like I'm like, okay, I don't think you'll have a cooling problem at all, right? And so it's really interesting, but the land was cheap. Right. Um, and then the other ones are all in California, so there's earthquakes. So it's really kind of uh uh but uh um that that piece of it as that cloud, the devices are starting to come down, this interconnectivity of the world is becoming really important. And I told you I was going to surprise you with something. Okay. So, and this kind of ties that 5G AI and cloud kind of piece together. So I got to watch this big things. I I you know, I have a bunch of different companies. And uh it was called human movement. So, what they're able to do is show me every Walmart in the Southern California area. And where people what down to the neighborhood. I'm not talking about census track, block. neighborhood block where they came from. Where they came from? Yeah. Based on tracking sort of the the tracking their cell phone and their movement. Whoa. If you don't know this, I'm I'm going to I'm going to completely blow your mind if you didn't understand that they're tracking you and there's facial recognition. Wait till you find out about driver's licenses. But this they had it so and I asked them, how did you do that? Because I'm I'm the guy in the room going, wait a minute. First of all, I'm going to throw my phone out the window. Like not I'm sorry to interrupt, but like the how is that public information? Like I've heard of data brokers, right? Is it a data broker situation? It's anonymized data. Still, right? They're still doing it. They're not doing it in they're they're still doing it. It's anonymized data. Now, they can't tell you, so the way they would break that that that fourth wall if you will, right? Um is if they could tell me what house I came from. Right. Yep. So now but they can tell me That's where it means like if they track you then yeah. They have it, but they have to Yeah, obscure it. Okay. Yeah. So that so they could tell me, oh, Steve lives in this neighborhood. Now, they can't tell me Steve does, they can tell me that phone does, subject A or person C, right? And they don't really have a a person attached to it, but they they will have straight numbers. And they were sliding this graph back and forth and I was watching it. And I go, how do they know where they live? And he said, he said, well, it's kind of interesting because I asked the same question. And these are not a broker, this is more of a um uh targeting, geo targeting kind of thing. Like for context, this is why like if you go to a store, sometimes they ask you for a postal code, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, and they're asking that, but this is from this is nothing to do with that store side of it. And I said, how do you do that? And he goes, when the phone at night sits for six hours, we figure out that's their house. Yep. And I was like, oh man. So, when I throw my phone out the window and take the take and jump into the 2001 F250 and throw the radio out, jump in the passenger side because we're going to we're getting the heck out. So, um, so you mentioned um cloud computing. Um one of the things we wanted to talk about because like like yes, like uh it used to be that if the internet went off, people couldn't send email and they maybe couldn't get things off of a web browser. Now, like 70%, 80% of what they're doing, they can no longer do without an internet connection. So the survivability of that, I think in in the modern office is particularly important. But it also sort of touches on something that we'd we'd we'd jammed about before is uh the expansion and contraction of computing, right? Uh so like all the way back to the 70s when, you know, they had mainframe micro servers and you just had a dumb terminal that interacted with it. And then the revolution of the 80s was um, you know, desktop PCs and everyone had their own computer. Uh then we expanded back to wise terminals and centralized serving uh serving servers. And now like this continued expansion and contraction. The recent one has been everything consolidating to the cloud. But now we're kind of look starting to see things push out and become local again. A lot of large organizations are now exploring whether or not they actually want to host their workloads in a lot of and some of their data for that matter uh in the cloud. And we're seeing sort of a quiet, I would say, revolution for local computing again. What are what's your perspective on this? I don't know, I don't know if it's that quiet. So, um AWS data centers, Azure, all of those are very expensive pieces. When you throw out and you need compute power, it's hard to have a sequel server out in the cloud, you're getting killed. Um, we we do that with some some data services that we use and and I made the joke to to that company that showed me that cool little thing and I was like, I keep I feel like a kid in an arcade, you keep charging me credits for Azure. And they call it credits, like it's supposed to be some kind of thing. I go, I feel like I'm feeling feeding Pac-Man quarter after quarter at this point. And uh they they kind of laughed like, yeah, we get it. We'll figure out how to help you do it. And they're not going to. Um, I think that it's moving there. So it's now be called, so they came out with this new term. So we had cloud, we had uh um we had localized data, keep your data to yourself. And I remember uh you know, going back to that internet outage thing. I remember one of the things I said about VoIP when it first came out was I was like, so if the internet goes down and I can't email somebody, you want me not be able to call them too? And that was 2001 and people were like, what? And I'm like, just saying. Um now that that revolution is coming back down. So um they're really talking about this over the next couple years is this decentralized computing piece. Whereas, you know, going back to what we talked about with that collection of data, right? Like the cow data if we use. They want to be able to localize that data and have a server local that then measures that and then sends the results up to the cloud. Which is basically 1990 to 2013, right? So, um it's it's the revolution's coming back. It seems the contractions, I like that term that you use, the contraction and expansion, um are coming quicker now. Right. Yeah. The pulse is going a little bit faster. But yeah, no, it's there's a big push towards that. Um you'll see you'll see um a lot of things with IoT devices. Um and those IoT devices, those compute powers are really uh you know, just a computer. It's just a server with some SSD card, like SSD is cheap. When storage becomes cheaper, you see things starting to come back down and storage is much cheaper. What's not what's not cheap right now is compute power. Right. Right? Um the storage is there, but still, I mean if you go back to and Jay McBane says this all the time and on little post, but uh 85% of the world's data is still local. Wow. That's crazy to think about. Yeah. And then in order for AI to work, it needs to expand, right? Um somebody's talking to me about offline LLM and I said that doesn't exist. And they're like, what? I'm like, doesn't exist. It I mean it does. Is it is it functional? Well, it has to be a very specific use case, basically, right? Yeah, very, very specific. And they're like, like, I'm like, the whole LLM concept is the more compute power I can add to it, the smarter it gets. Right? Yeah. So it and it needs access to data, but it really does does it? And then then you get the storage piece and then you get the discussions of that, is your data, your data and we have big things with that. But um that compute power is why the Nvidia jumped Microsoft and Apple, right? That ASIC chip, which it's interesting you remember ASIC, I don't know if you knew ASIC chips used to be really big in the 90s. Yep. And uh uh now they're, oh, oh, we need those again. And I'm like, I was ASIC chips. I'm like, dude, they were using those on AS 400s years ago. And I'm like, what? So it is that cycle back. So it's interesting. I like it. So. Um so on that, uh Yeah, the uh I I sort of want to go down this rabbit hole. I don't know. Um Yeah, we'll save this for for for an offline discussion maybe, but like when I see you next, we'll talk about uh uh Ethereum as a world computer. So, uh if anyone's interested in hearing this conversation, send me an email, maybe we'll have you back on. Um, all right, so Well, it's it's funny, so not going down the rabbit hole, but somebody asked me just recently they're like, well, who holds the patent for Wi-Fi? And I go, I'm going to blow your mind. And they go, what? And I go, Nicola Tesla. Oh, I think I've heard this before. Yeah. That's wild, hey. God, that guy was an absolute genius. Yeah. He has holds the patent and specifically says for worldwide transmission of voice and pictures in 1902. 1902. Holy moly. Is that ridiculous? Yeah. That is wild. This is ridiculous. Quickly before we move off of this, there's one other one I did want to touch on that you sort of made me think of. And and uh I don't know if you saw, I I did a LinkedIn post recently just a quick thought of like I was getting really enraged by people talking about how Apple intelligence was just basically chat GPT shoved into an Apple device. And I was like, like, look, like the media does not understand this. That's not not the case at all. Um and one of the most interesting things that I saw come out of the recent uh Apple announcement around what they're doing with with AI is uh basically hybrid computing. So they have private reservations in the cloud for like like basically enclosed data for specific users. And then it's destructive, right? So it does a bunch of processing privately, destroys that and then kind of takes all the information back local. I think that this will be absolutely massive in the future. And it's interesting because a lot of the computing still comes local, I think, like where it's still kind of builds on this idea that we're talking about things coming out of the cloud. But like not everything can be done locally. Like you said, like a local LLM, the the processing power around that, it just doesn't make any sense. So if you need to run like a real model or some type of sort of advanced uh uh practice uh off of uh the device that you're currently operating on, then it just goes up and pulls all of these resources. This is by no means something that I think is recent or even going back to like the announcement of Xbox One. This is the same idea that I was super excited about that it would be able to call into the Microsoft uh server system and create servers and augment its capabilities. And it never really sort of came about. And I think a lot of this is probably to do with sort of latency of spin-up, latency of the network connection, a lot of those things are kind of going away where these private reservations can just sit. And it spins up in in in sort of a a few microseconds. Uh and you know, now you have basically uh you carry around a device in your pocket that is an incredible supercomputer. But it is also tied into a giant, giant global supercomputer whenever it needs to, basically, right? I think it's a really, really cool future use of the cloud. I I think Apple's take on um uh I'm going to get myself in trouble too. I don't I think Apple's take on the um uh AI, let's call it what it is, machine language learning, what everybody calls AI. I think their take is the right take. Yep. Um because uh I was at a um you know, Microsoft partner event at Microsoft. Um and a buddy of mine was there and he's like, and I've taken um I I jump and dabble in AI and 5G and he started elbowing me and he goes, ask a question. And I go, I don't want to go. I we just had a nice lunch. Let's just he goes, he goes, do it. I want to see if you can get him. And they're talking about co-pilot specifically. So, I raised my hand, I have two questions. One of my other friends, this is in Orange County, Irvine, one of my other friends just started laughing right then. And I go, I have two questions. And the guy goes, oh yeah, what are your questions? I go, number one, how do you stop Jennifer from searching Suzy the CFO's files? And standard answer, oh, SharePoint, blah blah blah, their permissions. I said, I know all that. But Suzy's 62 years old and all of her files are on her desktop. No answer for that because co-pilot can go into that that way. There's no permissions, right? You don't have permissions on your desktop and I think the older you are, the more cluttered your desktop is. And I so my desktop's cluttered. Let's just be clear. I almost said it, but I I stopped myself. I was like, I probably shouldn't insult them. No, no, no. My desktop's very cluttered. My drives my son crazy. He's like, how do you live like that? I'm like, I don't know. Um but then the other question was really simple. I was like, I go, well, how do you see what was searched or or or what? Oh, well, that's in the the AD and it's right here in your compliance. I'm like, I know exactly where to go for that. I'm not asking that. What I'm asking you is, how do I see what was searched and what the result was? And they went, well, I'm like, I want to see what Suzy searched. Why she searched it, what terms did she use? I want to see all her prompts. And then when I I want to see what the results were that made her prompts go that way. How do I look at all of that? And uh uh they didn't have an answer for it. My friend laughed. I said, I said, see, we ruined lunch. So it was a good time until I until I got to talk. I'm like, how do you give me that? I mean, it and Apple, it does have that ecosystem to do that. And I think I you know, uh going on that is is you don't know if you want it to go out and uh go out there and figure everything out about you. I'm in the middle of uh um deleting myself from uh um a lot of different things and opting out of things because not because I'm paranoid, but because, you know, hey, I'd like my data. I would like to keep it. They don't need to know where I'm at, what my age is and you know, who I'm connected to and that's all over the internet. That's been out there for years. Maybe a little paranoid. Yeah, I am. Yeah, a little bit. Okay. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not watching. Exactly. So AI safety is I think this is a this is a big topic for me. And and part of the reason that I feel like um that the opportunity for AI consulting is probably a big market, right? Because um exactly this type of circumstance. I I was in a conversation with someone and I said, look, you know, think about it in this like exactly what you described of someone's going to go and deploy co-pilot for the entire company and then recognize like, oh, hang on. It all those warnings that I said yes to was telling me, hey, I'm going to ingest all of your company data and it will therefore be searchable. So people can look up financial records and other people's salary, people's HR history, that sort of stuff. Like you got to be really careful about this. And most of the vendors answer to this is, well, you have you need to have good good data taxonomy. And like as you said, most companies don't have good data taxonomy, right? Like even the ones that should know about this, they're Microsoft builds most of their products with enterprise in mind where these things are native to the environment. Like there are good shares, things are segmented from each other. So you could easily say like don't index all the things that are listed under this branch. Whereas like most SMBs, it's pretty flat. Like you have folders, maybe a few things are restricted, but you know, aside from that, like everything is just available. So I think this data taxonomy um going forward is is probably a good play of like, hang on, before you get excited, AI is amazing. I totally agree with you. Hold up. Like let's go through your data and understand what it's going to ingest and segment some things. Like almost in a way starting with what are the things that we should ingest to it? Don't say take everything. It's like, well, what do we want to search for, right? Like start with some knowledge bases, some SOPs, uh you know, some some client data potentially, right? But you also got to be really careful with those things too, right? It's it's really funny. One of uh one of our mutual friends, Jerry, right? Uh and I go deep into this every ask event. Like we're like we're off in the corner. I'm like, boom, boom, boom. And like it's really kind of fun. Uh but one of the things is uh so we deployed um with some of the other firms, we deployed a AI policy and it was not an anti-AI policy, it was a pause AI policy. And what it says is, we're researching it. You're not to use these because I don't know where things are stored. Um uh and it it's reasonable. Like I didn't want to I didn't want to say, hey, don't do this. But my concern is where's Otter AI, Otter.ai is a uh it starts showing up in our meetings, right? Yeah. I kick those things out. It's if it's my meeting. Seconds. Boom, I kick I no, I've gave them permission to kick it out even if it's not their meeting or say we are leaving if you don't make that leave. Right. Um, and there's reasons for that and uh um and I said, I don't know where that data goes. I don't know how secure that data that that's recording and doing that message that message is. I don't know how secure their data center is. You're you're letting all of this go out. And do you know how many seconds of your voice? which is going to scare you because it goes on Spotify. Two seconds. Two seconds. Yeah. They copy. Microsoft, what can remember the name of this product that Microsoft built, but it's it's two seconds and it can fully replicate your voice. And they've had to basically firewall it internally because everyone is is sort of stated like, this thing's dangerous. This should not be out in the wild. Well, yeah, and and video. And one of the things that we talked about, um I I I said this in in a in a company, we have a companywide meeting once a month and I was like, and I got called on to kind of talk about it and I said, well, you know how um and I didn't call the person out. But it does say in our external emails, um uh please do not buy gift cards. No one in this company will ask you to. Your friendly IT department. Yeah. So, so we've had it happen a couple times. I went wait till it calls you and it's my voice. Yeah. And and everyone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, that we're years away somebody said and I said, it happened in February and they did it by video. Yeah. Yeah, the the one by video is wild. Like so for example, um again, like maybe getting to the uh are you too paranoid? Um so I don't know about you, but like we in our family have a family code word for this reason, right? Because I don't want someone having a frantic call saying like a kid has been taken or uh something like that or even just like like lightly nefarious of like, you know, some they're hurt, you know, can you come to this place, that sort of thing, right? Like um so we have an we have a family code word basically in preparation for when this becomes a problem in the future. I don't think it's something that I'll be hit with in even the next say five or 10 years, but I want to be prepared for the fact that it will inevitably come, right? You know, I I think that's brilliant. Um but those are some of the things. So we didn't take an AI policy to say, hey, we're not going to use AI. What the policy we took was, hey, we're looking at it. And once we've decided we what we're going to do, then we will deploy it. I I think it's a useful tool. But my concern is right now, if you use the word AI in anything, you get a click. And if you don't think nefarious people are out there or bad actors are not realizing that, you're not paying attention. And uh I mean, I mean, you could see uh hey, I would you like some new tennis shoes? These are powered by AI. And like 15% Yeah. So they're there's some it's it's become the buzzword of everything. IoT was that way and and and interesting enough, 5G was, you know, about two or three years ago. It's that same kind of buzzword thing. But it takes time for technology comes come around. And like um one of the things that that, you know, in discussions, the steam engine came out, you didn't automatically have uh the the cotton gin, right? So you didn't have railroads. Somebody didn't have a train until the technology starts to get used the right way. You have a lot of different things. Until then, it's just a lab toy. Yeah. Right? AI right now to me is just a lab toy. Let me we'll figure out where it's going to go. But it's going to take time and then you're going to see things that you never thought you would see come out of it. And that's what I'm excited about. Yeah. Um when used correctly, it is a powerful tool. But if I was an MSP, I would be and I talked about this, I think in Chicago. I offered it to a couple people. I was like, we I already built one. So if you want this, if you want the AI policy, let me know. And then actually Jerry hit me up and he's like, we got one too. I'll send you that. Let's compare it. I was like, he goes, he goes, oh, yours is really good. I'm like, cuz I list out every single one. And I'm like, you are not to use these. And you are to end any meeting that has this in and you have the permission to do that. from unless you have the permission from these two people and I happen to be one. And uh um it it was uh it's powerful, but you don't want your data going out everywhere. And I think MSPs especially small to medium-sized businesses, um really protecting, I think it's your obligation to protect your customers right now from that. Right. Not just help them through it, but to kind of go, hey, uh there's a reason IBM has deployed it. But there's also a reason the FBI hasn't. So you know, think about two different things, two different ways you're doing it. And which side do you fall on, right? Are you technical enough to understand this? Um interestingly enough and I never say anything good about our government in the US. Uh uh but but the government is taking huge steps to stop how this is going to go. Um and they they have talked about the country that comes out, it's it's weird. I think I hate to say it, but it sounds like whoever wins the 5G AI race is going to control the next iteration of the information age. Seems reasonable. Yeah. At this point, I would probably bet on South Korea for that then because they're they're they're They got passed by Saudi Arabia. For 5G deployment? Really? Interesting. Okay. We passed them in 5G deployment percentage. So we have a larger percentage of deployment. Saudi Arabia passed them in speed. Okay. They used to be the fastest country. The download speeds I was getting uh when I was was in was in Bahrain, blew my mind. Hm. Just my regular old iPhone from the US, swapped an eSIM my new card, right? And uh um I went and boom, like 250, 300 K megs. It was like I think I I was looking at him like, is it my phone? And uh one of the other people people was with was like, my phone's only getting 100. And then me and the CEO are walking around and I'm like, I'm like, hold it up. I want to see how fast this actually can get. We were getting real excited about it. And uh I think uh I mean and this is in a crowd of people. And I was getting like like 500 megs, almost half a gig down on my phone. Yeah. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And then we went somewhere else and it was even faster. So yeah, they're they're moving quick. So I haven't been to South Korea, so I haven't been able to do the full test. Yeah. Maybe that's a trip. Right, there you go. It sort of goes back to that same point of like like there there's there's sort of not a lot of future usefulness for deploying for digging up the ground and putting fiber lines in, right? Like for long haul trunks and things like that, sure, but like just for coverage of a certain geographic area, like wireless is absolutely the way of the future, right? Mhm. That's uh that's coming out. Comcast has got a big bid out there and you can search these RFPs. Um and they want people to be able to take it from a poll to a house. Yeah. And there's a bid for that. So there's uh they have an RFP out for that. There's an RFP out for taking it from a centralized location and going and and and I think I mentioned this, um the the largest owner of one of the largest owners of 5G spectrum is Dish Networks. Yep. And now they're coming out with 5G uh uh 5G satellite. 5G over satellite. Which is I don't know like how does that make sense? Let them figure it out, man. Yeah. All right, cool. But yeah, they're coming out with some great stuff. So this has been uh this has been awesome. Steve, I I think we could go on for a couple of hours, but we should probably put a pin in it and save uh save conversations for for in person. So, appreciate you coming on. Great talking with you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it, man. Awesome. I always have fun talking with you. Definitely. Take care.