Currying Favor with Tech: Jason Earnshaw's Journey Through Lotus Notes to Low-Code Revolution and Dynamics 365

Mark Smith: 0:31
Welcome to the Power Platform Show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guest inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. Now let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Huddersfield, england in the United Kingdom. He is a Low Code Practice General Manager at A&S Group. He specializes in Low Code Platform and Ecosystems at scale, including expertise on customer success, adoption, change management and digital transformation. He's worked for Mendex. He's passionate about Dynamics 365, dynamics CRM and, of course, the Power Platform front and center. You can find links to his bio and social media in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Earnshaw: 1:16
Thank you very much, mark. It's a pleasure to be here. You do know I'm not an MVP, though, don't you?

Mark Smith: 1:21
I didn't say that did I.

Jason Earnshaw: 1:23
No, no, no, no, you didn't, but I only thought you used to have MVPs on when I used to listen to your show back in the day.

Mark Smith: 1:29
Yeah, it never started with MVPs. That's the thing. It never started there. It always started. My first episode was with a partner out of, I think, denmark, and I went a whole year and a half of interviewing folks that were like James Phillips from Microsoft, all the senior people Charles Lamana wasn't where he was now, but him, ryan and a whole range of them and then I was like I'm really enjoying this, I want to go to two shows a week. And that's when I introduced the MVP show and just focused on business application MVPs and I thought I'd run out. Right, I thought I'd run out because but the thing is is that new MVPs keep coming. They've got new stories, they're unique, they're from different geographies. So, yeah, the business application podcast started with all comers before. I then did that MVP show separately.

Jason Earnshaw: 2:24
Yeah, it's always been a show that I've always listened to. So I mean I'd regularly go out for a walk to take my mind for a bit of a chat and I'd listen to just one of the podcasts while walking. So it's part of the life of a consultant in the dynamics area, for sure.

Mark Smith: 2:40
I love it. So who is Jason? Where and what do you do? Food, family and fun are always like the audience to get to know you personally before we jump into your tech roles.

Jason Earnshaw: 2:52
Yeah, great question. And I always like the food, family and fun. I even incorporate that in getting to know our team as well. So we regularly run spotlights and it's always food, family and fun. You know there's a fourth one. There's a fourth one. Is it a fourth one? What's the fourth one?

Mark Smith: 3:06
Friends and that came up yesterday randomly. I said oh, tell me about food, family and friends. And I was like oh, where did that come from?

Jason Earnshaw: 3:15
And yeah, where did that come from.?

Jason Earnshaw: 3:17
Some believe there's a fifth one, but it's not for general viewership, so I can imagine, and I think that's open to, it's a To people making up the fifth one.

Mark Smith: 3:28
Yeah exactly Exactly. It's more the conversation at the bar rather than on the podcast, so yeah, absolutely Absolutely.

Jason Earnshaw: 3:35
But let's, let's, let's start with food. Quite like a wide range of different food from Italian food, chinese food, indian food probably more of a spicy guy, more than anything else.

Mark Smith: 3:47
If I'm honest, I do like a lot.

Jason Earnshaw: 3:49
I do like a good curry. Do like good curry. Lived in Reading as well for 12 years and found a great Reading Reading restaurant in in Reading and basically there's a great Indian like an Indian gravy called probably pronouncing this wrong from my York accent, so apologies to to anybody that I might upset but called chicken Katanadi and it's like. It's like a really spicy gravy, absolutely beautiful with really tender chicken. So do like spicy food, but coming from coming from Yorkshire, you've always got to go for good old, traditional, hearty food as well. Do like a large Yorkshire pudding filled with anything at all, mark, so. So that's probably my. That's probably the food coming from family. I've got a beautiful wife, gemma, of 12 years, and got one son, hugo is just turned age 11. So pretty much keeps me, keeps me on my toes. Yeah, I think because he's the only child I'm probably the guy that he argues with the most. Yeah, because he doesn't have any other siblings to argue with. So regularly argues with me and to the annoyance of my wife. So, and then in terms of, in terms of fun, I quite enjoy. I'm a sporty guy, so I quite enjoy sport. I prefer probably playing a wide variety of different sports than than watching, even though I do watch, watch sports as well. So, even though I'm even though I'm probably way past it still play five side football with my friends on a on a Monday, swim, enjoy running, cycling and, to be honest, most of my, most of my fun these days is pretty much just taxiing my son around to do all these other different sports as well. I mean they might have different sports that children can have got exposure to now. I mean, back in my day he was, he was quite limited. You had, like you were either running, or you just swimming, or you play football, you play rugby, but now I mean my son is doing parkour, is doing, yeah, all sorts of different things. So that's pretty much what takes up most of my time, which is which is fun Seeing seeing your own children grow and and enjoy all these different things.

Mark Smith: 5:52
Well, out of that introduction I have so many questions. One question, number one you lived in Reading for 12 years.

Jason Earnshaw: 6:00
I did live in Reading for 12 years. How did you?

Mark Smith: 6:01
survive living in like. Honestly, I was asked what I got when you know, because Microsoft was out there when I was considering going to the UK and I'm like I would never, ever sorry to anybody that loves Reading but living reading.

Jason Earnshaw: 6:17
I, we still go down. We still go down now, I mean my wife. I met my wife. Well, first of all, why would I live in? I live in Huddersfields. If you've seen Huddersfields, there's nice areas and good areas of everywhere. In my case you know, but I pretty much went down to Reading because that was the IT hub. Essentially that M4 corridor is what it was called.

Mark Smith: 6:40
You had Microsoft there, you had SAP there you had Oracle there All out of the CBD right, everybody out of the CBD and out there, absolutely.

Jason Earnshaw: 6:48
Yeah, absolutely, and and I actually joined a partner that was down there, but it was a Lotus Notes partner, and I ended up just moving down there for a year.

Mark Smith: 6:57
Well, more questions, more questions.

Jason Earnshaw: 7:00
There's probably even more questions. Absolutely, how long have we got? Yeah, yeah, but so, yeah, I joined a Lotus Notes partner that were based in Reading, so I basically moved to Reading and then, yeah, I spent pretty much is probably now pretty much going into my career, but I spent five years as a Lotus Notes developer building solutions on Lotus Notes, lotus Domino and all sorts of good things like that. I actually looked it up in terms of chat GPT as well. What was the first low code platform? And if you actually put it into chat GPT, it actually says Lotus Notes was traditionally probably the first low code platform, did I?

Mark Smith: 7:38
tell you that there's no swearing allowed on this podcast.

Jason Earnshaw: 7:43
Classic. Is that because it's now part of IBM? Is that what it is? No, or it used to be part of IBM, didn't it it?

Mark Smith: 7:50
used to be. You wouldn't believe it. I've been in IBM about two years, four or five months, and when I joined, lotus Notes was still the email system and I heard your podcast at the setting and the phonetics in here that just loved it and I'm like have you, because this is a thing. Is that? Is it called Stockholm syndrome, where you start to you know you only see everything. And well, the thing is is that what I noticed with coming into IBM is that they think I better be careful. I still work for them. They think their stuff is so amazing and I'm like it's so amazing because they actually don't know what's outside. It's like you know, if you've been fed, try pull your life and you think you know the all the different ways you can make tripes is just the best thing to eat and you've never tasted ice cream, you've never had bacon, you've never had everything else in the world and you just think this is the best thing. And it's just like, oh my gosh, they have no idea of concept of personal productivity with tool sets like M365, because they've never touched them, experience them, because it was such a controlled ecosystem inside the company and it just blows my mind. The phonetics.

Jason Earnshaw: 9:01

Imagine what it was like having that toolkit Now no. Yeah, but imagine having that toolkit back in the 1980s where you could literally just spin up a lotus notes kind of like database. Was it a database? Probably wasn't a database. Yeah, you could just spin it up and you just literally just build anything, yeah. So, yeah, I'd build HR systems. I'd build, yeah, tracking, people's holiday tracking, tracking, all sorts of things that you'd build contact relationship management systems which then send into CRM. So literally you could just build anything which to this day is pretty much exactly the same as the power platform. Yeah, so it's as if my whole career is kind of it was quite strange because I was working for a company, I was seconded to a company building solutions for this large German pharmaceutical company on lotus notes and then, pretty much two years later when I joined, when I joined Mendix one of my first customers was this company transitioning their Lotus Notes databases to Mendix. Wow, and it was just mind blowing. So it's just like I've just gone a full circle in my career. I mean, I've been in IT now for essentially two decades, but it's quite strange seeing trends come around and I mean Lotus, Lotus, Lotus Lotus was it called Lotus Scripting or Lotus Notes Script? Essentially it's a little bit like PowerFX. Yeah, this is its own little modeling tool or programming language. So it was quite an interesting, quite interesting.

Mark Smith: 10:27
Are you saying Microsoft took their ideas from other companies. I mean, that wouldn't go back as far as DOS, would it? No, no, absolutely not.

Jason Earnshaw: 10:38
Not at all, mark. Microsoft come up with all sorts of original tools all the time. Actually, microsoft CRM is pretty much probably one of the only tools that they've probably written from scratch, isn't it? I still call it Microsoft CRM by the way I know it's D365. CE or whichever one it's called. I still call it CRM because I think I came into the market back in 2006 and it was transitioning from 1.2 to version 3. So I had some customers large library in Britain, you can pretty much guess the name were you still using 1.2, transitioning over to version 3. God knows what happened to version 2. I think I read the story that they kind of can version 2. I've been in it since version 1.2-ish, moving to 3 and then 4.

Mark Smith: 11:20
20 years.

Jason Earnshaw: 11:22
So that's where I started.

Mark Smith: 11:24
As an always MSCRM back then I've even got the logo, the original logo.

Jason Earnshaw: 11:30
I wish I'd kept the books. I can remember clearing out my desk and literally throwing all the books which, to be honest, you remember all the Sonoma partner books which I shouldn't really be saying because they cost quite a lot of money at the time and now they're probably collectibles, but I remember literally throwing them in the tip, thinking I'm never going to need this again and I'm just thinking I wish I kept them for nostalgia's purposes.

Mark Smith: 11:53
But even the concept of those heavy books and buying them. They're always big, massive, but really they got the IT industry to where it is today back the people learning, of course it did and it propped up my laptop.

Jason Earnshaw: 12:06
great, you stopped me from getting neckache. Yeah, you could pile them up. Right, you could pile them up.

Mark Smith: 12:12
So true, so true. Just back on reading. One final point. I only went to reading twice in my life. One was to do a Power Apps in a Day session when I was living in London, and the second time, which was the best time, was for a party in a house of Chris Huntingford's.

Jason Earnshaw: 12:33
And I think he's a little bit sad of leaving Reading as well. Yeah, so you saw his infamous bar and outside area and things like that.

Mark Smith: 13:30
Yeah.

Jason Earnshaw: 13:31
I've got some fond memories of Reading. I really have, and I know a lot of people think Reading seriously, how long do you stay there for? But there are some really nice areas and the areas around it as well. Windsor, oxford, the access into London, it was just, I mean, 20, 25 minutes on a train into London. It served its purpose at the time when I was in my 20s, early 30s.

Mark Smith: 13:54
I'll take the Paddington-Marxsoft office any day over the Reading office.

Jason Earnshaw: 14:01
Yeah, I think they're even shrinking the Reading office, aren't they? I don't even think it's that large anymore. But I remember TVP going down to TVP many times, running by the river and things. So, yeah, I've got some fond memories of Reading, even though, yeah, it's probably not the most glamorous place in the UK.

Mark Smith: 14:16
Microsoft even has an office up in Oxford right.

Jason Earnshaw: 14:19
It's even got one in Manchester. So where I'm based now I'm based north of England, so in between Leeds and Manchester. So I actually ANS's office at Quart in Manchester and, yeah, microsoft have even got offices now in Manchester, so in the UA92 building.

Mark Smith: 14:35
Wow, well, manchester, interesting town.

Jason Earnshaw: 14:39
It certainly is. You've obviously got some stories about that one as well, Mark.

Mark Smith: 14:43
Yeah, I've been to Manchester, OK. Ok, let's talk about how did you transition out of notes into, obviously, dynamics and I take what's part of the side you're working in?

Jason Earnshaw: 15:02
Yeah, it was again good question. So Finnish University I probably want to. One of the one of the strange ones that actually had a computing degree, computing in business learnt Python, thought this coding is not for me, so I fell in love with Lotus Notes. I even did a dissertation in Lotus Notes between a relational databases and non-relational databases at the time. So I just fell into Lotus Notes. The first partner that I went to ended up getting bought out by a company called Cyber, which were a large Microsoft partner at the time. They essentially bought. So the company that I was at were kind of like Lotus Notes and they also did a number of other things as well. They kind of wanted to transition over into Microsoft technology then, but I wasn't quite ready for it. So I stayed in Lotus Notes again, just building loads of different databases and things like that. But you kind of sort I mean, what would that have been 2005? You kind of saw it's kind of coming to its end, these Lotus Notes building databases, and I wanted to do something different. So I applied for another Microsoft partner that were based in Stains, a company called Aspective, don't mean if you remember Aspective. So I ended up applying for those as a Lotus Notes sorry, not Lotus Notes, but a Microsoft CRM functional consultant at the time. So, yeah, I transitioned over into that role and essentially 2006 and been in my early 20s eager I just threw myself into all sorts of different roles. Within that functional consulting role I'd be running workshops, I'd be shadowing senior solution architects, I'd jump in to do data loads and I learned Scribe. So I then became Scribe certified. You know all sorts of roles and we used to do single stream projects where I kind of start leading some of the projects and I'd start building out and I'd do the whole thing. So when you do a single stream, you kind of then become more of a project manager as well as understanding the functional side of stuff. So my roles kind of move from technical to project manager, back into solution architecture, then senior solution architecture and kind of just over time you kind of just work your way up as you've got more and more projects under your belt. So that's essentially what happened. And now I moved over into Microsoft and my journey in the Microsoft Partner Network as well.

Mark Smith: 17:33
Were most of the solutions you're building then what we called XRM solutions back then, or were they really pure play CRMs?

Jason Earnshaw: 17:43
Combination of both. Really, I didn't mind the term XRM and I can remember Microsoft Coin and that video of basically just trawling through different things with a cow's face and all sorts of things.

Mark Smith: 17:54
I use it in the 90 day mentoring challenge.

Jason Earnshaw: 17:58
Is it still about that video?

Mark Smith: 17:59
I've got it. I've got it.

Jason Earnshaw: 18:00
You've got a copy of it yeah, because I can remember using that video as well, but probably when I joined another Microsoft Partner, just to explain the fact that you can actually build anything on this, whether you should build it, it was all about using the platform, which is obviously where it came out of. But no, I mean, we ended up building solutions and templates at the time. I can't remember which version it came out where you could actually build the templates and store them that way. I can't remember if that was version four or 2011. I can't quite remember, but we ended up building templates that we'd reuse in certain sectors. So we built the private equity template on how they used it for tracking their deals and referrals and all sorts of things Two stuff that were nothing to do with contact, relationship management or customer service or anything like that. So, yeah, pure play, xrm using the expensive license at the time, even though it wasn't expensive it was probably about £22.50 per user per month at the time when it first launched Building all sorts of different solutions, nothing to do with contact sometimes, and you'd end up tracking. Yeah, I mean one of them went in to talk about how they could use Dynamics for tracking bullseaman, for which has nothing to do with contacts or accounts. So it was an interesting time at that time when we used to call it XRM, I mean, I think it was called something else as well at some stage, but I can't remember what it was.

Mark Smith: 19:18
XRM is the one that sticks. Yeah, the XRM. Only it was a concept that came out of the product team and it was smacked on the head pretty quickly. So it came and it disappeared as quickly as it came because of internal politics inside Microsoft and that SharePoint were the low code platform as they saw it, and there was an internal flight my understanding it went right up to Bill Gates at the time and so the concept of XRM was quickly so as quickly as it had grown inside Microsoft was knocked on the head. But like, if I look at my entire career, it would easily be skewed 95% to building something else and not being a sales management system, which is the concept of XRM. Right, and so, yeah, when the power platform came along, it was kind of like for years of asking for because we wanted. What back then we kept asking for was a platform skew. We don't care for all the opportunity entity or the invoice entity or the product entity. We don't want any of that. We just give us a clean system and let us build all the entities that we want, and of course that's what we got with the power platform.

Jason Earnshaw: 20:37
And there was some great ISVs out there that were building things that were nothing to do with it as well.

Mark Smith: 20:42
Yeah, I mean, if you remember the time you needed ISVs, then you needed it. We don't need them as much these days. You needed them then.

Jason Earnshaw: 20:49
Yeah, no, you did. I mean, I worked with a guy that wrote the voice to the customer and he made a living out of it and then sold that into Microsoft.

Mark Smith: 20:58
Yeah, something, for what was that called Mojo forms or something.

Jason Earnshaw: 21:02
Mojo forms yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, we used to work together at Aspective at the time, so Simon was a contractor there, working on the projects whilst doing this too.

Mark Smith: 21:14
So he's retired, living in the Bahamas now that Microsoft automatically?

Jason Earnshaw: 21:17
I don't know if he is actually, I probably need to reach out to him after this call and see how he's getting on, how much bank did he make from being a company?

Mark Smith: 21:27
Because they didn't acquire his company right. They acquired the IP, my understanding, which was unusual because at that time Microsoft was vacuuming up companies left, right and center. They did what is now field service. Back then, what was the name of the company they vacuumed that up?

Jason Earnshaw: 21:44
The PSA took the PSA ones Marketing tools. There was Gamer.

Mark Smith: 21:47
Vacation Company. They bought in a whole range of them.

Jason Earnshaw: 21:52
Interesting that they never bought a marketing one. So loads then as well. Community Gator. Yeah, they did.

Mark Smith: 21:58
They bought a product called Marketing Pilot. It was absolutely the biggest pilot shit ever Steaming Pile.

Jason Earnshaw: 22:05
I did forget about that one. That's probably one of them things. Yeah, the reason why you probably forget is because it won't exactly the best tool. Yeah, yeah, we always thought we should. Should they buy click dimensions or what was the other one at the time? Click dimensions or come motifs wasn't, it was yeah with a made to at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and, of course, click.

Mark Smith: 22:23
You know, because I thought they would have acquired click. I mean that many times, I thought they would have especially. But I mean, hey, click made bank right. I mean I think they must have been one of the most successful ISV's. I think he sold the company for $60 million when he sold it to VCs. That's a that's a bit of coin brilliant.

Jason Earnshaw: 22:43
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely so. So yeah, I mean coming from that we we use the Microsoft platform at the time for pretty much just building all sorts of stuff, mark.

Mark Smith: 22:54
Yeah, yeah, which, you know, just is absolutely why I've been attracted to it. How many years were you doing that before you decided to chuck in your talent and walk away from Microsoft?

Jason Earnshaw: 23:06
So it was probably only to 2021 that I probably did that. So what's that 15? Yeah, 15.

Mark Smith: 23:15
So I don't realize so recent that you walked and you left the Microsoft ecosystem only in 2021. So what COVID got you down, got you depressed and you decided to.

Jason Earnshaw: 23:25
I think it was probably. Yeah, I mean the so many projects. So the way that we used to run project used to run large scale projects and really quick projects and we used to turn them around quite quickly. So I moved to a partner, which is probably one of the best moves I ever did. Really was Mootopanical 0 to 10 yes, yes you remember, you remember 0 to time. And well, because they were big in the US.

Mark Smith: 23:47
Right, they kicked off that model of. I mean, gus Gonzalez developed his career in 0 to 10 in the US, now working at Microsoft. But they were. They were masters of a rapid turnaround cycle in a business model at no other partners were doing. Right.

Jason Earnshaw: 24:03
And the guy that invented that business model, patrick Lewis he was. He was a guy that was. He was just headed ahead of his time. Yeah, the way that, the way that he saw the market and he, the way that he saw how Customer should really adopt CRM is not really going to a partner and and getting a partner to do it to them, is I mean this, this? This was eight, ten years ago, so we were kind of we were kind of delivering solutions in an agile way, but I just wasn't really formed and people still doing waterfall, yeah, and we were doing quick engagements and the model that he saw trying to, that he saw that was successful was well, let's actually get the customer to, to give us some of their admins and let's, let's bring them into the fold and let's get them to do some of the configuration with us. Unless let's enable them to do it, because when we then come to leave, they can pick up the man, they can pick up the basic stuff, and they're not just coming to us and saying, by the way, can you now add these two fields? And then you have to spend sixteen days trying to put a statement of work together and just for do you know what I mean? So it enabled them to do so that concept ten years ago. It was just ahead of the game and it just got my brain thinking. And that's when we got into videos and we got a little bit like like yourself, where if we were having the same conversation two or three times with the same customer which is great video we then set that as homework, get them to watch that video and then nice, yeah, I'm not wasting my time, I'm not wasting their money from me telling them stuff that I can just get into watch a video. So, yeah, it was really ahead of the game and it kind of changed the way that I thought about delivering CRM and solutions.

Mark Smith: 25:37
To be honest, so the reason for leaving, so the reason for leaving was the fact that, yeah, probably covered.

Jason Earnshaw: 25:47
I was leading the D365 team. So at zero to ten it got acquired by full scope. It then got acquired by by Alithea and it just got really big and the sales director at the time he moved us to basically just move the UK arm and moved us to to a and s at the time and I think I didn't realize that that I am yes, is that yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's the UK.

Mark Smith: 26:13
Wow, yes, I had no idea, okay.

Jason Earnshaw: 26:18
Yes, so, so, yeah, so we became then a, and s is D365 arm, basically, which was born from, from what, what, what we did at Alithea. So why did I leave? Probably. Just how many times can you talk about sales processes? How many times can you talk about what's the difference between a lead, a contact and an opportunity? Yeah, and it just just got. I'm just thinking, I just need something else, and I can remember speaking with with Chris, probably about five, five years ago, and we're talking about the power platform, and it's not just about building solutions, it's more than that. It's about enabling things either moved on to, either moved on to Microsoft, or he was at Microsoft at the time and I just I just kind of got a buzz with with, with low code at the time, or power platform, but it was so the way that the market was talking about it, the way that Microsoft were talking about power platform at the time was quite immature. The way that the partners were talking about it was quite immature. I mean people kind of building games. I don't think people really knew what to build. It was just try to prove what the technology was, and they were just talking about how great the tech is. It's like there's so much more to it than tech. Yeah, how do you actually enable a customer? What value does this bring to a company? And during my time, before I got to it as well, I started getting obsessed with more around the adoption side of Dynamics 365. Interesting. So actually it's not just about the projects, it's understanding what, what the outcomes that they're trying to achieve and then feeding that through the project and then making sure that they're adopting those outcomes and what they're, measuring those outcomes and just driving adoption. So I ended up getting myself pro-sized certified, ended up coming working with it with with a Microsoft CSM is quite closely. So I ended up working with with a number of the CSMs there and I kind of got that buzz. So, combination of probably wanting to get out of Dynamics 365, wanting to focus on low code, wanting to try and try and challenge myself and get out of tech and maybe do a different career path, I ended up getting an offer, an opportunity to join, to join Mendix. So one of the CSMs that was at Microsoft probably maybe five, six years ago he'd gone to Mendix. He was looking for a CSM. I read up a little bit more about Mendix. I knew of Mendix at the time and I ended up reading some of their stuff. I ended up reading their execution digital execution manual and it just blew my mind Absolutely amazing it blew my mind in terms of how they spoke about it. I did my research and even though Microsoft Power Platform was at 2014, 2015, when it probably came out, looking at, the looking at. Yeah, looking at Mendix's history, I think they formed in 2002. So low code has been around for a long time. It's not a new concept. And how they were talking about it and some of their enterprise customers and the journey that they had and that the journey that they had laid out, I just wanted to immerse myself in it and also invest in myself.

Mark Smith: 29:17
So tell me about Mendix, because obviously they've been in my peripheral for as long as the power platforms being discussed. What are your thoughts on Mendix and just perhaps if you want to do a synopsis of what their focus was, what they do, and I think the listeners would find that interesting.

Jason Earnshaw: 29:40
Yeah, so Mendix is another low code application platform. If you look at the Gartner reports and the Forrester reports, it's always in the top three. If you look at the Gartner reports, it's always the number one. It's always the one that's out there in the front.

Mark Smith: 29:57
I don't look at that. I only look at Forrester's reports.

Jason Earnshaw: 29:59
You'll look at Forrester's. That's because they've overtook Microsoft, I get it. I think that might change. I think maybe Mendix took the eyes off the Forrester's one and just focus maybe too much on Gartner, I don't know.

Mark Smith: 30:13
Yeah, they didn't take the right people out for lunch and dinner and a holiday in the Seychelles or something.

Jason Earnshaw: 30:22
Absolutely. But yeah, I mean in terms of a tool itself or an application development platform. It's kind of aimed at both. Again, I think we all hate the term citizen developer, but it's kind of aimed at both. So you take the top three, there's the top three players in the local space and that's Mendix, out systems and Microsoft, not in that order, being the leaders. Yeah, you probably look at all M3, and even looking at that top right and quadrant of the garden one, you've got Appian in there and you've got Salesforce and ServiceNow. Yeah, but Appian's more around, probably business process modeling. Mendix was the one that was aimed between citizen developers and pro developers, so it's had a tool that was click and drop, a little bit like the Microsoft Config tools, as well as like its own Studio Pro, aimed at developers doing extending it and doing more stuff to it, where our systems is probably more. From what I researched, my opinion it's probably more aimed at the Pro Dev.

Mark Smith: 31:28
And ServiceNow, ServiceNow.

Jason Earnshaw: 31:30
ServiceNow, it's got its own tool, hasn't it? It's more built on top of its service desk tooling. Yeah, so I don't think you really use a ServiceNow local tool to plug to SAP or anything like that. But with Mendix and OutSystems and Microsoft you can now extend and keep the core clean. Is essentially what we were talking about at Mendix here, where they were quite close to SAP. So we're OutSystems and so are Microsoft. You now see the SAP connectors that are out for Microsoft. But it was all about, well, actually keep the core clean with SAP and SAP low code over the top and connect to it, and you can extend it and throw it away, and then, if you change your mind, you're not investing thousands of pounds on over-engineering SAP and just get it to do what it should do, a little bit like what we did with CRM. Yeah, people used to extend it and it used to get all sorts of different ugly ads. You just shouldn't have really used that tool for that job. So, yeah, so it's a tool that caters for that two different sides of the coin in terms of Pro Dev and Citizen Dev, as well as it's more external focus as well, so you can literally build apps that you can download off the app source or things like that. So I saw really great solutions that were external, facing that basically banks were using Mendix, so basically people could download and access their bank details via a Mendix solution.

Mark Smith: 32:58
So that much more you could do consumer facing apps, not just because it's interesting.

Jason Earnshaw: 33:04
Absolutely so. Therefore, when I went into Mendix, it was a lot of the time it was Mendix versus Microsoft or Mendix versus Out systems. As the Gartner models started changing and the market started changing, it was like, I mean, what's the stat Gartner saying? That in 2005, which is a couple of years away, companies will have probably four, five local platforms in their estate doing different things. So I was working with the companies there and I was working with them to build decision trees when should you use Mendix? When should you use Power Platform? When should you really use ServiceNow? And some of the companies I was talking to. When they actually went out and started talking to the business, some of them had seven out there and thinking, crikey, I think we need to try and get this down to two or three as opposed to having seven. The finance team were waiting on IT to try and do something for them and in the meantime, whilst IT were focusing on probably sorting out their data, they went out and bought brighter or something like that. So there's all sorts of low code applications all out there now.

Mark Smith: 34:07
Interesting what were been in Mendix. Were they worried about Microsoft?

Jason Earnshaw: 34:12
I would say yes, why would you not? Yeah, but I think what the language ended up changing to was actually how can they coexist? Hmm, interesting.

Mark Smith: 34:24
Yeah.

Jason Earnshaw: 34:25
So it's no. We ended up changing the model and I mean I was working with really large enterprise customers, both in manufacturing and professional services and some of these professional services organizations. They had out systems and Mendix that one didn't really make a sense, make any sense having both of them to a new real estate. But with Microsoft, yeah, if it's quick, easy and yeah, it's internal business processes, why potentially use Mendix when Power Platform will do the job? So it was more talking about coexisting. And then the argument was well, the first argument really is do you buy or do you build? Yes, if you buy something off the shelf, absolutely fine. But if you're building, ok now is it low code versus custom dev? Yeah, ok. And then if it was low code, ok now. Which is the right low code solution, depending on your use case that you're trying to actually achieve? So it was all understanding the business solution first or the business problem first, before you then define which is actually the right low code tool for that job. If you're wanting to build a mobile, a mobile responsive solution that people can download off AppSource, that they can then connect to their data from an external perspective, would you really choose the Power Platform for that you could, but isn't the right tool for the job? Yeah, so it was more of a coexisting discussion as I started going through my time at Mendix.

Mark Smith: 35:48
What do you think they do better than the Power Platform in your opinion?

Jason Earnshaw: 35:55
So it's quite interesting because some of the guys in the team now have actually gone through the rapid training for Mendix and some of them actually quite enjoy that user interface and the ease of building solutions. Some of the solutions that I saw didn't even look like low code solutions, but you could probably say that about Power Platform as well. What do they do? What do they do different? They probably class themselves more as a one stop shop, so everything's built into their tool, and what I mean by that is it's got its own way of tracking epics and user stories within its own tool set. You didn't have to have DevOps to push. You didn't have to build PyT, so you didn't have to have loads of different products. It had it all built in. You didn't have to install a CUE toolkit. It's already had its own monitoring solution in there that you could tap into. So it was pretty much a one stop solution that you were working within, if that makes sense.

Mark Smith: 36:52
What did they do better from a marketing perspective?

Jason Earnshaw: 36:57
I'd probably just say well, if you look at the Garden Report, that's probably one of the weaknesses that it says Mendix is. But I think how it talks about low code and how they educated us when we came on, it's don't fixate on what the use case is. We're trying to push the platform here. It's a capability, it's not just one thing. And whenever new salespeople came in, it's like what's the use case that I'm trying to sell? What's the use case that I can get into, that I can get into with this customer? It's like you're not quite understanding this. This is a platform, kind of a speak. So we should be looking at trying to get three to five solutions that we're trying to solve as opposed to just trying to fixate on one. And then they were building all sorts of different solutions in their Mendix marketplace that people could download. So, yeah, from a marketing perspective it's probably just a different language, if that makes sense. But now I think Microsoft have probably caught up with it. I won't say caught up with it, but they use that same language as well. I can remember listening to Ryan's keynote speech. I think I mean what did he say? Low code is not just about technology anymore, it's about everything else. Yeah, it's about how you roll out low code. It's how you get people ready. It's how you roll out them capabilities and scale and change how people work. So that's been the refreshing change, I think, over the last couple of years, on how Microsoft are now starting to talk about low code as well.

Mark Smith: 38:24
And I know I'll make this my last question about Mindex Do you think they've had the opportunity to be acquired Like? I would see an Oracle acquiring them, I could see an SAP acquiring them to fill out their kind of solution portfolios.

Jason Earnshaw: 38:43
So yeah, I mean they already did, yeah, so they already got acquired. So they got acquired probably about three, four years ago. Quite a nice sum. They got acquired by Siemens, yeah, so Siemens, siemens are huge, yeah they do all sorts of building trains too, yeah, but they ended up being an IT company as well because they obviously needed a platform to be able to produce all the manufacturing stuff. So they actually acquired Mindex as a bolt-on to their team center solution at the time. And that's what was quite nice that when I came in I got aligned to the manufacturing and professional services industries, because Siemens is a manufacturing industry. It unlocked all sorts of huge enterprise customers that were using their team center technology, opened all sorts of different things up there in terms of that manufacturing market Amazing. I think, OutSystems was probably the only one that's not been acquired.

Mark Smith: 39:41
I might be wrong, but and so you obviously didn't stay there. When did you turn around and came and leave Mindex?

Jason Earnshaw: 39:50
So I left Mindex pretty much just a year ago just over a year so I mean the role there. It was great. I got to as a customer success and working as part of the digital execution team, I got to understand. Customers that were my portfolio of customers were pretty much at the different stages in their journey. So some of them were starting out with low code and Mindex. Some of them were basically already at the structure stage, while some of them were at scale, building hundreds and thousands, well, hundreds of solutions on Mindex. I got to see the whole spectrum, which was quite nice. I got to see how companies were structured or trying to structure themselves from an app dev perspective. Do they take the centralized model or the decentralized model? In terms of a dev ops model? It was quite nice just seeing that. I got to talk to partners as well, because obviously there was a partner network there, so some of my customers they would have a number of different partners working for them. So I got to understand the partners and how they positioned and talked about low code as well. So it really opened up my eyes to something that I would never have done if I had just stayed in the Dynamics 365 market at the time. So why I came back? It probably just felt the right time. To be honest, I can remember Chris calling me up and saying, hey, do you fancy coming and joining at Cent Share and things like that. And I'm kind of thinking I was actually talking to the CEO and the COO at the time at A&S. They wanted me to come back and start up. Well, not start up, but kind of take the local practice to another level as well. So basically I just counteracted it with Chris and just said, well, actually, what about joining me here and let's build this new vision on? what we were thinking with the Power Platform here at A&S. So that's pretty much what we did. So it just felt like the right time. It felt like the right time because when I was talking to partners before, they were fixated on just building solutions and what Mendix were trying to do. They were building their own digital execution practice, trying to actually work with their partners to try and expand the platform within their customer base. So I kind of saw that as kind of like an opportunity to be honest. And now you've got the ecosystem terminology that's banded around, that's coming around and it's all now about enabling your ecosystems and things like that, which was all born from Chris's head and what I was seeing as the gaps within the low code partner network. To be honest, because everybody was just fixated on building the solutions.

Mark Smith: 42:32
Tell me about culture at A&S. You have attracted some of the absolute rock stars in the UK community into the business. I see more and more people saying hey, I've just joined A&S. I've just joined A&S when I lived in London. I'd never, sorry, I've only heard of A&S in the last two years. I never came across them at all while in London. That was why it was interesting to hear the history just then. Is it the best partner to work for in the space in the UK?

Jason Earnshaw: 43:01
I enjoy working here Matt. I wouldn't have returned otherwise so I always enjoyed the culture. That was the main thing. And they're always looking at the latest technology and investing in AI now and what does co-pilot mean, and things like that. But, from a cultural perspective, never had an issue with the culture. It's a northern-based mindset, if that makes sense. They have fun. Everybody works hard, but they have fun doing it as well. So the cultural-wise I think it's great Now attracting. Has it probably changed over the last 12 months? Yes, I think. If you bring somebody like Chris in as well, who's big in the community and well-known in the community, that obviously brings in a different mindset. We're getting heavily involved in the community, a lot more than what we used to do as well, and it's more for just brand awareness, but it's more of we're seeing the team growing and contributing more in the community than what they've ever done as well. I mean, people are talking at the local communities, they're talking at the bigger events, so it's just great to see. I think the culture. It was great and I think it's got better over the last 12 months, if I'm honest. And some of the names that have joined the likes of your Janet's and your Kiles and your Dan's and, yeah, these are your names in the community. It's great just seeing their perspective and merging the two together. And yeah, the customers can only get a great experience from all these different mindsets pulled together. It's quite interesting trying to reign all them different mindsets in and trying to merge the two different visions on what good is that? What does it look like? But yeah, we're getting there and that enablement piece, the ecosystem piece and how we deliver the portfolio is quite unique, fantastic.

Mark Smith: 45:06
The last little topic area I want to chat on before we wrap things up is your fascination on tubes, as in what I'm talking about specifically, of course. I've even got a sign there. Look, yeah, look at that Low code.

Jason Earnshaw: 45:23
There's tube maps. Low code tube station.

Mark Smith: 45:25
Tell us about tube maps.

Jason Earnshaw: 45:28
So it was basically just. I find it the easiest way to articulate the journey, because everybody's going on a journey and you've got to start somewhere, and it's not always just one straight line, it's not just one road, it's a number of different things. It's not just about the solutions that you're building, which is what we call the portfolio. It's not just about the platform that you've chosen and how you lock down the platform. It's not just about the people. So there's different people journey. So depending on where you are, you bring on different people in the journey. So the best way that I find to articulate it is a little bit like a tube map. These are all the stations of basically like a city, and if you went to London, mark, and if I went to London, we'd probably maybe go to a different, we'd probably choose different tube stations to get off at, and our experience at that tube station would be probably different as well. But it's nice just to see the fact that. Ok, well, you need to understand your platform. So what is it that I need to understand the platform? So I need to understand ALM, I need to understand DLP. I need to understand all sorts of security, the tool kits that I can do for monitoring. So you've kind of got different stations, but you don't always have to stop at them. There's not a path that you have to do this one after this one after this one. You can kind of just go to one station and then go to another one and then come back to another one. So it was just great to kind of visualize it that way and also break out the platform from the processes as well. So once you've locked down your platform, and then that's where your structure kind of comes in. Well, actually, what are your processes? So, what do you think about your UI, ux, design? What's your change management processes? So there's all sorts of different things there. So I just thought it was the best way to try and articulate a journey. It's not one size fits all and it doesn't have to be in a specific order and I can go to that station or I can go to that station, and it's a little bit like a hop on, hop off kind of a mindset. Yeah, and what I'm now starting to see as well is another company just saying you know what your co-pilot destination is, these are the stations to get to. So I'm now starting to see other people starting to use that tube analogy as well, which is quite interesting to see, to be honest.

Mark Smith: 47:46
Yeah, yeah, very British, you know it works well in that market. I don't know if it translates into mine. The same, probably not but for anybody that's, of course, been in the UK, it totally makes sense. But yeah, I really like it. I like the way it and I like so much in IT right, it is putting it in terms that non-technical people can understand and be able to feel empowered by it, which I think you know why I see it being so effective. Definitely, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I appreciate it. Are you going to be at Dynamics Mines?

Jason Earnshaw: 48:29
I'm not planned on being, but I know Chris has put it down as one that he's attending, so I'll definitely take a look at it and consider it. Are you going as well, mark?

Mark Smith: 48:39
Yeah, I think I'll be the traveler that will come from the furthest afield location in the world to the event.

Jason Earnshaw: 48:49
So it's a bit of trouble, you must be. There's no excuse for me to not get there then. Yeah.

Mark Smith: 48:56
Honestly, transportation for anyone should not be an excuse. But yeah, I'm going to land into London like three or four days before it and just catch up with a few folks, hopefully, and the community that used to hang with while I was over there, and then make the way across there, and I'm not sure how I'll get across there, whether it'll be trains, planes or automobiles, so all of them, because you can definitely take a train all the way there and how. I know that is because I have trained from from Venice to Milan and I've travelled and I've trained from Milan to Paris and I've trained from Paris to London, so I assume it's the same type of deal. And then at Venice you can it's about an hour away by car or something I understand.

Jason Earnshaw: 49:43
Right, it sounds like a bit of a road trip as well, and so, yeah, and it's always good to just catch up with people over over a beer or two.

Mark Smith: 49:50
We never really got the chance in Vegas when you're at MPPC. So this will be our chance.

Jason Earnshaw: 49:55
It'll be our chance at this one so we can have a proper chat over over a beer, and all sorts of conversations come out. Once you've had a bit of alcohol, I like it, cheers mate.

Mark Smith: 50:06
Great thanks for that, mark, which I appreciate it. Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If there's a guest you'd like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out buymeacoffeecom. Ford slash NZ365 guy. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.