ERP026 - Desktop as a Service (DaaS) with Ted Hulsy

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking with Ted Helsey. Ted is the chief revenue officer for Itopia. Itopia is on a mission to make it easy to migrate Windows workspace environments to the cloud. In the conversation, we talk about the evolution of cloud computing, including desktop as a service or DaaS, and using public cloud for rapidly deploying computing infrastructure. This is a rapidly growing space, the solution in the IT industry enabling providers to spin up remote desktop environments in no time at all. Ted and I also talk about the competition between Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google in the public cloud arena. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the web page evolvedmgmt.com/podcast. For show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Joining us today is Ted Helsey of Itopia. Ted is the chief revenue officer with Itopia. And today we're going to be chatting a bit about the MSP industry, a bit on backup and DR, as well as some cloud solutions. Thanks for joining us, Ted. It's great to be here. Thank you. I originally reached out to you, Ted, to talk about the merger between Axient and E-folder, and you were previously in the sales organization at E-folder, correct? Yes, I was actually VP of marketing there and was there for nearly six years. So, um, but but I I led marketing. I mean, I spent all my time with the sales team every day, but um, led marketing throughout my tenure there. Sales and marketing are kind of like peanut butter and jelly, right? That's right. That's right. Sometimes oil and water, but you know, most of the time like peanut butter and jelly. Excellent. So, I I did want to get your input, uh recognizing that that you're no longer with E-folder, but did want to get your input on on that the the acquisition uh with E-folder um picking up uh Axient. And what I found interesting about that was um when I ran fully managed, I was a customer of uh E-folder. And I think at one point we're shortly a customer of Axient as well. And the one thing that that I felt uh was really missing, E-folder was a great provider, a great solution, but I did really like the integrated approach of Dato. So what stood out to me when E-folder acquired Axient was that they were really kind of taking that same position of having an integrated stack where the appliance, the software, and the cloud solution was all rolled into one vendor. I was curious on your input on how you see that field shaping itself and that if that is uh the industry aligning itself to the Dato model of a single integrated solution. Um, I mean, I think the short answer is yes, and I I think it's important for me just to caveat that, um, you know, I was a on the leadership team at at E-folder and I'm a shareholder in E-folder. Um, but the Axient um merger did happen, you know, several months after I left. So, uh I'm not privy to the, you know, the internal logic, so I'm just an industry pundit, if you will, uh outside looking in, um on the whole uh deal. So, I guess that's just a just caveat to put out there. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean, look, Dato is the market share leader in the category. And I think the some of the things that Dato did extremely well was not only to have kind of an end-to-end experience, but they also simplified a lot of things. Um, I I think E-folder with E-folder actually with the Replibit product line had done a pretty good job of having an end-to-end experience where, you know, where E-folder owned the IP and all the technology from the endpoint all the way to the cloud. I I think the from what I understand, the the the logic of the merger with Axient, um, is, you know, I think at one level, it's market share and just scaling up these companies that there's a consolidation effort going on ongoing in the in the whole category. But, um, I think the Axient um developed a lot of solutions around backup and DR leveraging the public cloud, specifically Microsoft Azure. And the level of automation and integration with public cloud infrastructures as recovery environments was kind of the crown jewel from a technology perspective, um, at Axient. And I think that's why the the the combination made great sense with all of the other IP and product lines that that E-folder had. Excellent. Okay, well, I appreciate the input and and obviously I think uh you being slightly removed and having to to add that caveat is probably beneficial. Because then we're not necessarily getting the company line, it's more just sort of uh someone with some some direct industry experience. So I appreciate the the input on that. Mhm. Okay. And so now you're you're working with Itopia, uh which is a bit of a uh sort of a newer name for me in in the market. And I I've had a few people that I work with and and clients of mine ask about the solution. I think it it is really compelling once I started to dig into it and looked around, I I was uh really sort of pleased with the solution that I think you guys are trying to build and the the the market that it's going after. Um, a bit of background, one of the things that that I really have been striving for, my background originally as a tech was a Citrix administrator. So I built large enterprise-based uh Citrix farms. And the back in those days, this was kind of the uh early to mid uh 2000s. And the uh the solutions were really kind of trending towards VDI and desktops. Spinning up servers as as were required, but what kept people away from that solution in most cases was the capital expenditure for that type of infrastructure was a no was a complete show stopper for most environments unless you were a very large organization. So now what I'm starting to see is a lot more organizations are taking advantage of both public cloud as well as uh private cloud infrastructure as a service model, and uh I'm really hopeful that of that uh with some of the other vendors that I'm seeing in the market that there's going to be a a viable desktop as a service solution where you can just uh instant on uh a desktop and get a bunch of people loaded into your systems and be able to flip a switch and get people up and running probably within a matter of hours. So that uh uh maybe if we could start with uh my dream for the very easy DaaS solution, is Itopia going to be able to play a role in in making that dream come true for us? If if your dream is to spin up a client environment and serve up their users' cloud desktops in under an hour, we're the solution. Excellent. Along with Google Cloud, so dream come true. Um, I mean, truly, that's that's really the that's really what we do. I mean, uh Itopia, I mean, there is always some confusion and the market's very diverse and complex a little bit, so it's important to make some caveats around this. But we're a pure play software company, we're a SAS provider, we're focused on the MSP space. And um our software works specifically with Google Cloud. And so you can't use our software on Azure or AWS or anything, but it's specifically around Google Cloud. But Google has put a stake in the ground to catch up and surpass Amazon in in public cloud infrastructure. Now, that may be a bit of a stretch or or a boast on their part. But they've put $29 billion into the into that boast and um in the just the past three years, and so it's very credible. We like Google Cloud because it's a very programmable uh environment and they're really driving a platform strategy. And so we were able to engineer a software product that allows us to bring the Windows desktop experience and run it at Google Cloud. So the best place to run Windows server infrastructure to do cloud desktops is actually Google, not Azure. Um, ironically enough. And and when you think about our conversations with a lot of MSPs, that's the one that's the real head scratcher to a lot of MSPs is they don't really they they that. I mean, it's it's ironic and once they start thinking about it, it's kind of interesting. But so that's what we do. Is our software automates the the provisioning, um migration, provisioning and management of that Windows server infrastructure to deliver cloud desktops from Google Cloud. So it's interesting you mentioned that that Google is really going after the market and putting some some heavy dollars behind the kind of eating the other competitors' lunch as it were. But I I find it interesting that you don't tend to see them as much as a visible player in the industry when people talk about uh the the cloud models, they tend to refer to Amazon or Azure. And I I don't tend to think of Google as a a platform provider either for uh larger scale infrastructure or even especially for the SMB community. Is that something that's a fairly recent initiative for them? It it is in earnest. Um, I I would say and I would say everybody just kind of keep your eyes peeled and and look out. Because it's it's really it's a wave that's coming. Um, I mean, if you look if you look at Google is growing, the the analysts have just put out some numbers. I mean, Google's growing the fastest, but is number three in terms of market share behind Azure and and Amazon. Amazon has a massive lead. Um, no question. Um, but I think when you look at Amazon and Azure and Google Cloud platform, they're each pursuing a slightly different strategy in terms of how they're looking to grow grow the business. And I mean, when we when we look at it, I mean, the reality is is only 5% of all compute workloads run today in what we could be considered a public cloud environment, like a Google, like an Amazon, like an Azure. And so there is just massive growth ahead. And so in markets like that, big market share shifts can still happen because it's it's still early in the game. I mean, if you look, um, I mean, you know what, if you just look at look at how Google was able to turn Android into 80% of the market, um, in, you know, five to 10 years. Um, Google is not to be underestimated in my view because of the way they uniquely go and attack markets and the resources of the company. And so we've hitched our wagon to them. And but but ironically enough, it's really all about a Microsoft Windows experience, um, using server 2012, 2016 and the RDS technology to deliver a Windows desktop experience to the users. Because that is the primary business compute uh platform and user experience and it's what most MSPs know and love. Um, it just so happens that we feel like running that running that cloud desktop infrastructure at Google is the place to be doing it. So in the industry, I find with Azure, AWS, it's not very easy to configure unless you know exactly what you're looking for. If for just a a typical uh IT provider that wants to go in there and and spin up a server, uh the templates are not that easy and it requires a lot of technical configuration to get the the the systems that you want thrown together. And a lot of it kind of probably based is based on scripting and from my perspective seems to be targeted much more towards the developer community, whereas Azure uh tends to look a bit more like infrastructure as a service, platform as a service model. It comes with some templates, probably a little easier to throw together on the fly without uh a lot of back end technical or scripting work. Do you have a sense of how Google tends to position itself in the market, is it going to go for the enterprise, is it going to look towards the developers, or is it going to go for the broader IT industry and uh work on the infrastructure as a service model? I I think all of the platforms, um, I don't think any of them have made any public pronouncements that say, you know, we're more enterprise versus the software developers or ISV community. Um, I I I think they're they're trying to go after all these markets at once to be quite quite honest. Um, about it. And that may change over time, I think all the platforms suffer from the same challenge though, however, there's they're not very intuitive. And um, it it takes quite a bit of educational investment in the platforms to become experts at it, and I think that really raises um, raises the the a big challenge for the MSP community. And in the sense that you have a learning curve, you have investments. You have training you need to send people to, and uh that's the bad news. The bad the bad news is you can't just put a a toe in the water, you have to put like half a leg and then a whole bunch of money in as well. But that's really where our solution comes in, um, when it as it pertains to cloud workspaces specifically. Is that for MSPs that want to deliver um a cloud desktop environment to certain swaths of their client base, you don't have to go get a PhD in the Google Cloud to do this. Um, and you don't even need to have your level three Windows text as the guys who are doing the deployment. Um, because that's really what our software does is we we flatten out the level of expertise and investment you need to make and really take what's complex, you know, level three Windows tech work and and complex stuff in Google Cloud. And we turn it into a very streamlined SAS-based application focused around a single use case. And that's really what allows us to simplify the workflow. And to make it so the on ramp is very easy for the MSP and their text and why you can literally turn up a a cloud workspace on Google Cloud with our software in less than an hour, uh because we're we are laser focused on that one application and we've done the deep work to understand all the buttons and knobs and APIs inside of Google Cloud, so the MSP doesn't have to. So with that, um, if I'm picking up what you're saying that the use case for Itopia is specific to the desktop deployments. Is it not a not not a solution for the uh say an AD or a file server environment like a pure cloud play or is it primarily the desktop approach? Well, we're we're talking about the desktop experience, but in fact, we're we're delivering the desktop experience using RDS technology. So what we are in fact building out, um in Google Cloud is the complete Windows infrastructure you would need, um to deliver that desktop experience. So a domain controller, the RD server, maybe a dedicated file server, um all of the security settings on the firewall, potentially VPNs, um an RDS gateway in most cases. So we'll build out all of that infrastructure. And then beyond that, um, whatever role-based servers are also needed in that same cluster of of resources in that what Google calls a project. So we'll stand up SQL servers or exchange servers or line of business applications and all of that can be provisioned and then managed by the Itopia software in that cluster of resources. Okay, so it is a full solution for the the server environment plus the desktop delivery then. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And one of the areas I've seen maybe a bit of struggle is um if you're doing a lift and shift or a brand new environment, then this approach tends to be fairly easy. But if you're augmenting an existing physical infrastructure or even a logical infrastructure that's hosted somewhere else, you mentioned VPNs, that tends to be a a bit problematic in bridging those environments and getting that that set up. Do you have uh some experiences that you can speak to in in the ease of of integration between two environments? Yes, um, you know. I mean, I think there's the first thing I'd say is yes, there's a lot of uh clients where, you know, the cloud desktop use case might not be the right fit for 100% of the workforce. And so you will have kind of hybrid type deployments where some users will, you know, if they're, you know, either high-end graphics users or engineering users with CAD applications, those sorts of things where it just might not be the right right solution at this time for the client. And so yeah, that that's I mean, it basically comes down to having to federate active directory environments. Is is the most complicated thing, but it's it's technically possible. It's not the most common scenario, it's not the most common use case we have. But it's it's definitely something we're seeing especially as we push into larger client, you know, into deployments that involve larger clients. So maybe to ask a a different way as well is what's the the really hyper specific use case that you find people are are wowed by? Like just to maybe spell out a scenario for us. Where uh if you have this need, this is going to be the solution for you. Well, I think I think what you can say in the small business market, um, and this has been this case for a long time, even when things were far more expensive, is that if there's an overall compliance, security and compliance need for a certain client, then cloud desktops are a great solution. I mean, I think that's that for us and you know, when we're looking at the medical vertical or we're looking at the financial vertical. Um, you know, any sort of client that has a really strict, um, you know, compliance mandate and uh data privacy and security are paramount, those are just no-brainer use cases for a cloud desktop type deployment. Because that's that is the thing you're the one of the principal objectives of kind of centralizing that desktop experience. Having strict control over the files and business content in that company, you know, restricting access to local drives, you know, uh from the desktop experience. All those things you can do with a cloud desktop, um, are are really driven by security and compliance. So that's that's for that's for so many verticals and for so many MSPs that have a vertical focus, that's why this is a a really a rock solid solution. So that's a great use case. Um, I think that that's going to be one that's that's particularly uh interesting to um especially the mid-market providers that are looking for some solution to mature the infrastructure that is maybe um that they've had to inherit where they bring on a new client and it's just a bunch of old machines that are not been cared for. Uh it's a pretty expensive project to evergreen that entire environment or they can convert a lot of those workstations simply to terminals and have them jump onto an Itopia cloud solution. Absolutely. I mean, the other I mean, just to kind of go down the list, um, you know, the avoidance of major hardware refresh projects on premises. Um, is another huge driver, um, you know, whether it's a complex environment you've inherited or you're just have a client who's staring at a $20 or $30 or $40,000 refresh project. Um, nobody wants to make those sort of CAPEX investments really anymore. I mean, Microsoft is the one out leading the charge of turning the Windows experience into Windows as a service. And and really that's where the desktop experience should go. And so, you know, instead of paying that $30,000 bill up front that that business owner, that client would gladly pay, you know, $80 per user per month for a managed, fully secure, completely backed up, uh Windows desktop experience instead. Um, you know, which which adds up to a couple hundred dollars a month, you know, or maybe $8 or $900 a month, whatever for that for that client, um depending on the number of users. But it's it's a it's a far more palatable and sensible way to to deliver the technology today. So, first off, I'll I'll applaud your your uh. Your use of premises rather than premise in that scenario. It's uh one of those those little grammar things that always drives me crazy whenever people are talking about cloud and they say on premise. It's like, what an idea. It's not a place. Anyway, so thank you for that. Uh another scenario that I I know I've had some questions on and I'm I'm particularly interested in is um wondering how Itopia would play in that space as well. Is creating um dev environments where you can have a maybe a pre-scripted environment that you would be able to spin up, do some work on, then collapse it and be able to spin that environment back up later uh to do some testing. Is that something that Itopia would fit well for as well? Um, absolutely. I mean, provided that the I mean, the the environments you were trying to spin up, um, you know, were were were what were kind of when you if you say kind of a dev environment. If you were trying to, you know, do like a proof of concept for a client, um, or, you know, kind of do a, you know, a test environment. That's yeah, I mean, as long as you're simulating the traditional kind of SMB compute environment where you've got Windows server. Uh, you know, desktop sessions and role-based servers in a cluster, um, yeah. I mean, that's the ability to really turn this infrastructure on and off. And manage it in a very efficient way is amazing. It's really quite amazing. I mean, to me, one of the big uh killer apps of. Uh for up time scheduling. So Google, one of the areas Google has really innovated is in uh pricing. Pricing innovation, really how you price and package infrastructure as a service. They charge by the minute. And and so one of the really big use cases is what we call server up time scheduling and you uh for for clients that have uh task-based workers or hourly-based workers who simply aren't going to need their desktops at night. You can turn off infrastructure at night. And if you turn it off at 11:30 p.m., boom, at 11:30 p.m. you stop paying and you know, if you don't turn that desktop back on until 6:00 in the morning. You've just saved, you know, roughly a a fourth to a third of the of the cost of that infrastructure for the day. So the ability to kind of turn infrastructure on and off, to tailor the the way the infrastructure behaves to the client need and their and their users, um, is quite impressive. And and with the per minute billing, it really means you're kind of never wasting money on on assets that that aren't being used. That's great, that's actually leads to the next question that I wanted to ask. Is is uh how persistent or how how persistent the environment has to be. Uh and wondering if uh, you know, some of the stuff can turn on and off based on use and there may not be some scenarios where you want it to be delayed and turned on when it's turning on. But if it's able to actually respond to a user request, spin up that desktop and then when they log off, it turns itself back on or it turns itself back off. Would that be a use case or is it more based on persistent scheduling? It's persistent scheduling today. Okay. So, uh, but it's fairly flexible, uh, I mean, I think we definitely are road mapping. Um, you know, where we can apply, um, you know, AI and machine learning to to really make the the infrastructure more intelligent and adapt to the kind of known use patterns from the client for instance. I mean, there should be a button that just says, boom, customize this server schedule so that it's relevant. You know, relevant within boundaries for this particular client, so you're saving them money. We're not there yet. Today the MSP needs to go in and know, you know, when this infrastructure should be on and off. Uh the a user can't invoke it and turn it on as a at a user level. So we're not we're not there yet with that sort of adaptability. Um, but what you can do, for instance, if you have a client and they have multiple terminal servers as an example. You can turn off say two-thirds of the infrastructure in the evening and leave one one of the servers on. So you can take your most expensive server resources and, you know, shut down two-thirds of it during those off-peak periods to really save a lot of money, but for the night owls or the person traveling in Japan or whatever, you know, they they still have access to their to their cloud workspace because you've left on a certain amount of resources. Right, that makes sense. Okay, so you don't have to turn everything off, you can just drop it down to the minimum use, right? Yeah. Exactly. Okay. That makes sense. All right, um, I guess what I I tend to like to to ask guests is is to kind of look towards the future. So either for Itopia or for the the the cloud environment in general, we've kind of touched on this in in your previous answer, I guess. But where do you see the industry headed and what do you think is next over the next couple of years? I I think the the one of the most exciting things that I've seen is managed service providers that are viewing cloud desktops as a really transformative tool in their business. So less, I mean, we talked about a lot of the end user use cases that would drive a cloud desktop deployment. And and there's we only talked about maybe two of the 10 most common ones in today's podcast. Um, but what you also see is there's some really um forward-looking MSPs that are looking at. This is the most profitable, most efficient, most labor-free way to deliver the Windows experience. And they are driving the conversation, they are seeking out clients who who will consume their their resources in this way. Uh, they're out selling it hard if you will to their clients and really convincing the client to move to the cloud, uh because it's ultimately a much more low labor and highly reliable infrastructure way to deliver the Windows desktop experience. So for me, that's kind of like the most exciting thing. Is where you see MSPs that are making the they're connecting the dots on the profit opportunity of a more labor labor-free, labor efficient, more automated way to deliver compute. Um, and the desktop experience to their clients and they're driving the conversation and those MSPs are quite exciting for us. And we and that I see is a light bulb that's going off more and more and more and more heads in the MSP community and that's going to be a huge driver in and of itself. Yeah, I agree. I think the the pays you go and pay for use model. I think it has so many advantages like what we talked about in in managing the scheduling. And I think what I see a lot of right now is is a lot of providers are actually just getting to the point where they're reselling infrastructure as a service. But then there's an outlay cost that they typically have to buy where they're they're buying a certain set of disk, they're buying a certain set of CPU, which they can then provision for client environments. Whereas in this scenario, you would spin up something specific for the client and you you pay as you go. And that that really limits the outlay of cost that the MSP would have to provide to facilitate that infrastructure to provision it. That's right. I mean, it's super capital efficient, super capital efficient. And it gets, um, I mean, a lot of MSPs have made investments in their own colos and in their own kind of private cloud infrastructure and it's been a kind of an unpleasant bumpy experience for many because of the the hidden labor costs, hidden labor burdens, the the amount of capital you need on hand to do refreshes every couple of years. So certainly like the the public cloud is a is a is a is a boon certainly for avoiding those sorts of unpleasant realities in the MSP business. But I think the more surprising thing, pleasant surprise for a lot of MSPs is when they do migrate a client to these sorts of environments, everything becomes easier. The number of tickets drops, the the the quality and con, you know, contours of business continuity are are far different, far easier, far less costly when you're delivering it in this way. And so all these other really tangible financial benefits start to kick in in terms of lower costs. Yeah, I 100% agree, it's one thing that I try to educate people on a lot. Is standardization eliminates a lot of headaches, so if this is a way that you can do that without having to get a client to get uh be convinced of a capital outlay. Then everybody's going to be better off as a result. That's right. So, uh, anything else I maybe I haven't asked you or we haven't talked about that you wanted to to table before we wrap up here? No, I just I just would encourage um the listeners that if you're you are interested in in cloud desktop technology. Just go to itopia.com and and we have a free trial for our product. And um and Google Cloud, every business under the sun today can open a Google Cloud account and get $300 of free credit. Um and Itopia can give you an additional $200. So there is a basically a global free trial available to every MSP if they want to explore this sort of solution just by engaging with Itopia um on our website. And then we can now help you navigate through that process. Excellent. Well, I appreciate your time today, Ted. And if uh people would like to get in touch with you and know a little more, they can go to itopia.com. And any social channels that they should reach you on? Uh I I try to be active on Twitter. So just uh just Google me uh Ted Helsey tweets and uh uh would love to, you know, engage with anybody on social media on Twitter or LinkedIn. And uh it's been a real pleasure being here today, Todd. Thank you. All right, I appreciate your time and uh we'll chat soon. All right, take care now.