Navigating Tech Challenges and Cybersecurity Threats Amidst Political Dynamics

Mark Smith: 0:31
Welcome to the Ecosystem Show. We're thrilled to have you with us here. We challenge traditional mindsets and explore innovative approaches to maximizing the value of your software estate. We don't expect you to agree with everything. Challenge us, share your thoughts and let's grow together. Now let's dive in. It's showtime. Welcome back to the Ecosystem Show. We're excited for another episode. We have got Chris back all the way from Ignite. We haven't released that episode, that previous episode. We just got some technical issues that we're sorting out, but we'll get it live soon.

Andrew Welch : 1:05
Why haven't we released that episode? Let's discuss what the technical difficulties are, because they're the most Chris Huntingford problem ever. I'm sorry.

Mark Smith: 1:13
So here's the thing. Let me just explain how the software we use works, just so everybody knows. Why do we do this in Riverside? As opposed to Teams, as opposed to any other product, riverside was designed for remote interviews, in that it took into account the nature of the internet and that you can have latency. And what latency does is stretch audio, and it stretches video, it pixelates it, it freezes it, it makes it a poor quality experience.

Mark Smith: 1:42
So how this product works, it's via either chrome or edge browser, and each of us individually, our video and our audio are being recorded to our local hard drive in a thing called cache. Uh, andrew, sorry, cash, american interpretation is cash and so what happens then is about 60 seconds, maybe 90 seconds later, it buffers that data back up to the riverside server and then the riverside server, using ai, merges all of our three four in this case, this case video and audio together and makes it look like we're all in as in from a quality perspective, in a single room, single experience, that type of thing. Now, last week Chris was in Vegas and he joined live Chicago Ignite Chicago Sorry.

Mark Smith: 2:30
Vegas, my bad Ignite in Chicago, joining live as our field reporter, and we're excited to have Chris online. The problem was the Wi-Fi wasn't that great there and before his content uploaded from his cache, we lost it, and so I sent to Chris. There's a little feature in riverside that allows you to pop an email out to the individual that we didn't get the upload from and it just says hey, click this link, open the browser that you used for the session and or grab it out of cash and it will load it to the server. So chris goes to me, okay. So what email address did you send that to? I've got like five email addresses, okay. So problem number one and there are three. There are three gaps in this recording, so three videos. And I sent this a week ago to him. Then he was like, um, I can't remember what laptop I was using. I was like what do you mean? Like I only have one laptop. Well, I've got 10 laptops and I take them all with me wherever I go. How many?

Andrew Welch : 3:35
laptops. Do you have, Chris?

Chris Huntingford : 3:37
I carry three around Wow.

Mark Smith: 3:40
It blows my mind, I just.

Chris Huntingford : 3:41
It's weird, dude. You will see, going through customs at the airport is the funniest shit in the world, right, like they haul me out? Right, so I'm pretty good. Right, I'm pretty good with going through security me out, right, so I'm pretty good. Right, I'm pretty good with going through security, like I've got, I've got tsa in the states, but it is, it is harder for me to leave the uk than it is for me to get into and leave america okay, but that's the way. Yeah, that's 100.

Andrew Welch : 4:04
The british are extraordinarily difficult at airports. Dude I get.

Chris Huntingford : 4:08
I get hauled out on. You know what are they called um snap searches or spot searches. Nine out of ten times it's because I look sketchy. I'm away right.

Mark Smith: 4:17
Are they trying to work out which laptop is your porn laptop, probably.

Chris Huntingford : 4:22
Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's exactly what they're doing. They're trying to figure out which is my only fan's laptop. Yeah. But it's funny because, yeah, because, like I load up the trays.

Andrew Welch : 4:30
Chris is a content producer, to be clear. Yes, I am A content creator. Create. Create A content creator.

Chris Huntingford : 4:38
Yes, yes. And I load the tray up and they're like I know one laptop per tray. And I'm like you're going to instantly regret this. And they're like, oh no, no, no. And then I start whipping out laptops plus a spare screen and they're like, oh funny dude, instant regret. I watch them all the time and then I always get hauled out. I've been felt up more by security at Heathrow Airport than I have in my entire teenage years, dude.

Mark Smith: 5:04
Wow, wow, wow, so once then.

Chris Huntingford : 5:13
I told the one man. I told the one man he had the supple hands of a teenager. He was so mad.

Andrew Welch : 5:21
So earlier today. So earlier today I take Alexandra, who, for context, is two and a half right. So I take our daughter to nursery and you know, she gives me a hug, she gives me a kiss, and I said, and she said I'm happy. And I said, alexandra, what are, what are you happy about? What are you? What are you going to do in school today? She thinks, and she says boys.

Andrew Welch : 5:44
And and then the nurse you know her care one of her carers comes to the, comes the door to pick her up and to meet me. And I am just cracking up at this two and a half year old. And I said, I said to the, to the woman, I said yeah, you know, I explained the situation and Alexandra replied and said boys. And then I added I wasn't expecting this for another 12 years or so. And her caregiver sort of laughs like very awkwardly and says, well, perhaps what alexandra meant is that she was looking forward to playing with some of her male classmates and I was like dude, I'm not offended by this, I think this is funny. You don't need to make me feel better about it.

Chris Huntingford : 6:27
That being that, it's. Yeah, you just got mansplained, I know it was britized, the thing was Britishized, Got it, got it got it.

Mark Smith: 6:38
So I don't know, maybe five days ago, maybe ten days ago, I reached out privately to Anna and I said Anna, what's going on in Romania at the moment? Because you know, I watch my news feeds and stuff like that, and I generally do that on X and there's an underlying current that something is going on. That is technology driven at its core, in that the person, the presidential candidate, my understanding for romania four months ago nobody had ever heard of this person and about, I don't know, in the high 90s percent of romanian people have never, ever heard of this dude. Yet he's winning the election and of course there's been a lot of inference that there's Russian interference.

Mark Smith: 7:20
There's been calls for TikTok to be shut off in the region because it's been seen, reuters says Romanian watchdog calls for TikTok suspension over election fears and that just came out a day or so ago. And so that's, you know, caused me to reach out to Anna and said Anna, what's going on? And at that point Anna was none the wiser either, I suppose, of what was happening. But of course things have changed. What's up, anna?

Ana Welch : 7:50
Yeah, I'm pretty upset actually about the situation because it's going to affect real lives and real people here. It's more than artificial intelligence. Can, you know, create content and we all laugh about it or we all, like think about how that would be used in future. We're talking about, here and now, farms of bots, kind of watching TikTok videos and then randomly posting. I vote with this individual. Like, by the way, go out and vote with this individual. Like, by the way, go out and vote with this individual because you know our country will be better and these sort of messages they appear at content creators who put on makeup or like, get ready in the morning.

Ana Welch : 8:53
Nothing political, nothing to do with anything, but the algorithm is good enough to spot. You know what videos have a high level of interaction and therefore you know the message is going to come across. You know better, and not only that. Like this individual, he was in Romanian politics for like the past 30 years or so and he's been banned from the worst of the parties for being too extremist. Can you imagine Like he's preaching stuff? Like information flows through water and Pepsi implants microchips in their drink so that you know the big American corporations can control us all, like women, are not fit to lead anything because they have a different role in society and that's to make babies and procreate, and the algorithm is good enough. And this person was again banned from these political parties for being crazy.

Andrew Welch : 10:11
He was banned from the far-right, ultra-nationalist parties. Right Wow.

Ana Welch : 10:15
Because they were like, dude, you're two weeks three. You don't go out and say, well, sure, putin isn't perfect, but like his firm, he has a very clear message and that's a good thing. Like it's insane, right, but what the algorithm does behind it is they are able to filter through the crazy, right, yeah, and they only post stuff like Romanians will eat better. This is all for food, health and safety of our people. Vote with me so that you know the political parties who are corrupt are not going to lead you anymore and like messages that seem kind of harmless. And if you're a person who has lived in Romania for the past 30 years or so, you're not like super happy with your livelihood, so you're happily going to embrace the message that someone's coming in from an independent position and is going to do better. So, yeah, it's insane.

Mark Smith: 11:30
So we saw in past elections around the world Cambridge Analytica being heavily involved in manipulating stuff on the meta platform back in the day, facebook, and now we're you know, obviously seeing you know, with TikTok's influence, et cetera. That, and even you know what happened recently in America and how those elections were won, is interesting how much tech and I suppose AI is becoming much more in everything. And it was interesting to see at Ignite, in one of the videos I watched on security, the CVP from Microsoft reiterated how much cybercrime and the dollar amounts of cybercrime that has been influenced now, and something that Yuka came up with this week which I had no idea, that there's been multiple instances, dare I say it, and I just even now don't want to say it I'm checking myself of ransomware being carried out in Dataverse environments that have been reported, that are known, of documented, and so therefore there's always the ones that aren't reported as well. And so sure people, when I see them, take a stance and, like I've talked to ctos and cios, it says we have no breach in our firewall, we're robust, there's no one's going to break through us, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, it's such a risky stance to actually take that you're impenetrable and there's no way anybody can get in to your environment.

Mark Smith: 13:02
And then once so, therefore, as long as we keep the firewall secure and sound and this, this concept, is called a ward garden, right, a walled garden works on the presumption that nobody can get through the wall, and so what happens is that if can get through the wall, and so what happens is that if you do breach the wall, there's no security inside the garden, because it's like the wall is so high, nobody can breach it, and it's just a fallacy of thinking that because we have got such a high wall or a deep moat around our corporation data, that we are protected around our corporation data, that we are protected, and the problem is that the moment you feel like that and you think like that, you're really trusted.

Ana Welch : 14:22
Therefore, you don't feel the need to invest in resiliency plans or what are you going to do next? Like so many people, whenever I ask them about adjacent subjects, they come back to me with Microsoft articles from the internet and they even incorporate it into their own like documentation and procedure and stuff, and it's not without really adhering to any extra security measures. That's where the danger comes from, right.

Chris Huntingford : 15:03
Oh yeah, yeah, I like your walled garden analogy. I think it's so true. I think I wish I was an expert in security, but I'm not. I'll learn it, but I'm finding it really interesting, like there's some pretty big shots at Microsoft who are saying now that that's the thing. And what do they say? I'm going to get this wrong. If security breaching or hacking were a company, it would have the world's third largest GDP yeah, something like that it's that's exactly right.

Mark Smith: 15:35
So it's basically the world's largest is the us, the second is china, the third is germany, but it actually would slot right in between china and germany for uh, cybercrime. The amount of money um um taken or or or impacted is the third largest GDP in the world.

Chris Huntingford : 15:55
Yeah, interesting, right. So if you think about like I don't know if this is a word the lucrativeness of that lucrativity I don't know, andrew, help me yeah yeah, we're making up words now.

Andrew Welch : 16:07
I think it would be lucrativeness, or you'd phrase it like how lucrative something would be but there we go.

Chris Huntingford : 16:14
Yeah, you know the English, I'm South African, bro, I suck at this. But yeah, no, it's just so interesting and you can see why people attach themselves to it, right. But also, like just getting my fingers dipped into the security pie a little bit, I've started to see why it's important even more so, and actually that's all come from looking at things like Copilot and looking at that sort of white hat hacking and chaos engineering side of things like what can actually be done and man, that is endless.

Andrew Welch : 16:42
I'm torn where to take this conversation because on the one hand I want to get back to the phenomenon, sort of the societal implications, the phenomenon of Colin Georgescu in Romania.

Andrew Welch : 16:55
But I also want to just take a moment here to say that one of the real challenges in really practical terms within an organization that we have when it comes to ecosystem-oriented architecture the namesake ecosystem of of this show is that the ability to integrate data Right, which is so important for for artificial intelligence and for just the modern good functioning of a typical organization right, but the ability to move data around or to integrate data or to virtualize data in different places has accelerated, has grown so much faster than the ability to secure and govern that data in any sort of reasonable way.

Andrew Welch : 17:53
Right, and you know I go back to this conversation that I've had now with the Microsoft product group for several years. Right, and you know I go back to this conversation that I've had now with the Microsoft product group for several years. Right, and this is that I love, as people who read my stuff and listen to this show know. I love the ability to shortcut data from Dataverse to OneLake, to Fabric, but the problem is that Dataverse has a security model and Fabric and OneLake has a security model, and these security models don't talk to one another. Right Like the data that you secure in point A, you have to re-secure it in point B using the security capability that is built into point B.

Ana Welch : 18:37
And it's going to be different as well, right, Like when you. If we're talking specifically about these systems, the security model in point A dataverse is incredibly granular. Once people have invested in setting that up, they kind of rest easy. That thing has happened. Many of them don't even remember at field level what stuff gets seen by other people. So when you get to point B and you shortcut it into a security model, that's much simpler right. What happens then?

Andrew Welch : 19:21
Well and I think that this is a really important theme that we see emerge again and again that application data, data that's stored in storage technologies that are meant to be transactional, that are meant to provide, you know, to fuel applications, those storage services tend to secure data at a much more granular level, like at a record level right, whereas data that is stored in a technology that is really meant for analytics, for data science, for visualization and for AI right and for retrieval, augmented generation, rag patterns or for other forms of AI reasoning over this data, that data does not, in general, get secured nearly as granularly as it does in the application that originated it, and this is an extraordinarily hard technical problem to solve.

Andrew Welch : 20:17
It's not like Microsoft's not trying to solve it. In fact, I would say that Microsoft has a better chance of solving it than 100% of all of the other vendors out there. Amazon's not going to solve this problem, google's not going to solve this problem, salesforce is not going to solve this problem. Microsoft has the best shot of solving this problem, but it is still an extraordinarily hard problem to solve and I realize that's a rat hole. We should get back to Mr Georgescu in Romania.

Ana Welch : 20:44
No, not necessarily, because, listen, I have been humbled this week by how ignorant I really am. I always thought, and I preached since forever, since any of you guys have known me, this is what I talk about. Right, data integration. Data integration is number one. These are the techniques of integrating data. This is how you should move it. That's how you maintain operational efficiency. This is how you should move it. That's how you maintain operational efficiency. This is how you maintain security. That's how we can create DevOps processes around it. That's how you test it, et cetera. It goes on, and on, and on, and on and on. I'm really passionate about it and I think about it all the time, and yet what happens is you need those teams to talk to each other because they just don't know the fabric folk. This is why it's a complicated problem. Yeah, the fabric folk who are working on the security model do not know enough about the data security model everywhere.

Mark Smith: 21:53
And they're in the same company, right. The minute you go, then outside that it becomes. You know, you bring SAP into the mix, oracle or something else, it just becomes absolutely. There's no way there's any collabs going to happen.

Andrew Welch : 22:05
This is why I think Microsoft has the best shot of solving the problem, even though they're still a long way off from it.

Ana Welch : 22:11
If you go back to the election now. This is why it's working. Back to the election now. This is why it's working. Nobody gives a damn about what's leaking, that the messages are not true. No, they just tailor a thing and then they talk to each other. The team who's able to shoot out a message can talk to the team who measures insufficiency.

Andrew Welch : 22:39
I think that people give a damn now, right? So Politico has reported that the CEO of TikTok has been summoned before the European Parliament, kind of like a big WTF bro is happening. Is your tech doing in Romania? Though? I mean good job guys, good job for actually solving the problem before it became a problem.

Mark Smith: 23:09
Yeah. So here's the thing, though Is it the actual distribution platform or is it something else, right? Because I think what's it's? It's aggregating millions of dot points, like it might look at a post that I wrote, let's say, three years ago, and let's say I had I was against something, or for something, or not happy with something, or happy with something, right, and so now it can classify me and then can feed in a message that says I feel like it's coming down to this whole thing of marketing to one not marketing to the masses, but marketing to one so it can tailor a message that knows my buttons, my hot points, and it can tailor on the fly the message to me, knowing that it's only going to press the buttons that it needs to press for me to elicit the response it's wanting for example, I do not see the messages that are uh, um, anti-lgbtq.

Ana Welch : 24:11
Plus, there are. I know there's a ton of them because I see fools posting on social media and I have stopped removing them because I feel the need to to learn what other people think. Yeah.

Mark Smith: 24:26
Yeah.

Ana Welch : 24:27
So I know for a fact. I know those memes because they post them on their own pages manually these individuals right, but they never reach me. What reaches me is your parents are going to be living a better life, your health system for people who are starting to retire is going to be better. These are the sort of things that reach me, because that's what I'm interested in. However, it reaches other people with stuff like if you've got two kids, you don't have to pay, you won't have to pay taxes anymore, and BS like that. You know? Yeah, it's incredible.

Mark Smith: 25:10
Chris, last week you were at Ignite and you've done a couple of major conferences this year. If there was only one conference that you would select that you're allowed to go to now, of all the ones that you've attended both in Europe and the US, what is the one conference that is still top of the pile that, if you could only do one, what would it be?

Chris Huntingford : 25:30
Dynamics Minds.

Mark Smith: 25:32
Awesome, okay, good answer. Um, now tell us about Ignite. What were the epic things that went down in your mind? Kind of give us the top three to five that made Ignite epic.

Chris Huntingford : 25:45
So it was my. I'd never been to Ignite before, right Like I didn't go to. I did Ready when I was at Microsoft and that was cool. That was like loads and loads of people.

Mark Smith: 25:53
Can you just explain what Ready is, because a lot of people won't understand that that's an internal conference.

Chris Huntingford : 25:58
Microsoft used to have a partner conference called Inspire right and a Microsoft internal conference called Ready, okay, and it was all about like, psyching up the partners, getting all the partners ready to rock and roll, and then the internal Microsoft folks who would chuck us all in a stadium and, you know, get the flags flying, get everyone beefed up. And then the internal Microsoft folks who would chuck us all in a stadium and get the flags flying, get everyone beefed up and then release us into the wild for the next year.

Mark Smith: 26:21
Yeah.

Chris Huntingford : 26:22
And that was big right. I remember that being massive.

Mark Smith: 26:24
I mean we filled up the MGM 17,000 was the biggest number in my mind for a Microsoft in-person event that I can remember.

Chris Huntingford : 26:33
It's probably about that. I remember they filled up the whole of Mandalay Bay and the MGM and they were still spilling out into all sorts of other hotels, so it was huge, right. The thing that stuck in my mind about Ignite was, I think, number one, it was the sheer size of it. There were 10,000 people. But you knew there were 10,000 people at that conference. You knew, I mean, it was brilliantlyiantly organized. I have to give it to them, I think they did an extremely good job of running the conference. I think like it was so professional. But, man, you knew that there were ten thousand people there.

Chris Huntingford : 27:07
Um, like, I was at, I was on a booth. I'm doing booth, babe, judy. So I was in the microsoft learn booth and, um, being booth babe, it was my job to you know, babe, the booth and chat to all the on walkers, and I'll tell you what, man, I did four hours a day. I did not stop talking for four hours every day. Wow, dude, like, and that was a Microsoft Learn booth I went past people like Dwayne at the co-pilot booth and that, and the dude was just mobbed. I bet it was just wild, right.

Chris Huntingford : 27:33
So the thing that stood out, the thing that I loved the most is that there were people that were super hungry to learn, like super keen on getting stuck in, and not only partners. But I actually probably spoke to maybe one-quarter partner about three-quarters customers In fact. I'll say one-quarter partner, one-quarter Microsoft, one-half customers. Like that was my split right. And I mean I remember one of the dudes from Kellogg's coming up to me and saying, hey, man, you know, can you explain this? And I was at the Microsoft Learn booth for Copilot but, dude, I was doing Purview demos, ai demos, showing the Microsoft roadmap, like jumping into Power Platform, doing all sorts of things right. So it was a big split and people were there looking at the demos, really getting stuck in. So I must say this conference for me, of all the ones I've been to this year, there were people there where they're actually spending their money, if that makes sense.

Ana Welch : 28:24
Amazing.

Andrew Welch : 28:25
So it's funny actually that it barely. I had a notion at one point maybe, that I would go to Ignite and then things happened with my health and I couldn't. But it's funny, ignite barely registered. Of all of the conferences, it barely registered in my psyche this year. But what I do really like about what you said, chris, is how people seem to be there to learn, because one of the things that I found increasingly with these conferences is that they have become less about learning and less about actually getting business done. Whatever your business is, it could be learning, it could be ideating, it could be selling something you know. Whatever it is, they become less about that and more about having a party with your friends.

Chris Huntingford : 29:15
No, that's what happened at Inspire. That's why they stopped Inspire. So this was not that. Let me tell you. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen this before. It was not that right. So people were going out to the parties but there was no one. People were there at eight o'clock every morning, dude, eight o'clock shop every morning, eating their breakfast, their bananas, having their coffee like man. It was wild. Like the parties were good but they weren't like 3 am is from what I could see. I mean, I was in bed every night at like 10 because I had 4 am phone calls. But legit, I was.

Andrew Welch : 29:47
I did, did check your expenses at one point and I was like, yeah, is Chris out and about? Oh my god, he's sleeping, he's sleeping. No receipts no receipts in the middle of the night this time.

Chris Huntingford : 29:57
No legit man, Can I tell you, you had to be on form at this conference. Like this was no dicking about, hey, like I found something out about myself that I loved is that when people take shit seriously like this, it makes me really want to take it seriously. And, oh my gosh, I loved it. I ended up at the. My favorite night was I ended up at the AI mixer Okay, of all the AI advocates and that type of thing. So I met people like Jay Gordon. Lee Stott was there Dude, I loved it.

Chris Huntingford : 30:25
I nerded out with Sheila, with Donna's boss, patrick, with Anthony. We just nerded out for like four hours solid at the bar just talking tech and Sheila and I ended up in this huge debate and Patrick, donna's boss, is like dude, you guys are going to start a podcast. But like that was. My other favorite moment was that you have these geniuses that you can never, ever, ever get access to and then all of a sudden, they're at a bar with you and the cool thing is they're not like hiding away from talking about the tech, like they're there to nerd out like we are.

Andrew Welch : 30:55
What's funny about that is that Chris is often the genius at the bar who other people don't have access to.

Ana Welch : 31:03
So there's the. That's very true.

Andrew Welch : 31:05
Though I will say, chris, look at me, stop typing and look at me. Sorry, sorry, no, you may not start another podcast.

Ana Welch : 31:17
You do not have time.

Mark Smith: 31:19
Let me add just something here, though around the podcasting side. Last week, I made an announcement that the Microsoft Business Applications podcast is being retired, and the reason is the world has changed and is continuing to change, so it's now been rebranded the microsoft innovation podcast. Um, just because I'm finding my, my sphere is going broader than you know, what I started on, which was dynamics 365 and even the power platform, I'm finding I'm moving more and more into an AI space, so there is actually going to be a new show coming called the AI show.

Chris Huntingford : 32:00
Ah, yes.

Andrew Welch : 32:01
Well, that's predictable.

Mark Smith: 32:02
Yeah, it's a no-brainer because I've already got the co-pilot show, which only Microsoft staff come on that show that are deep in the product. But I'm finding there's other minds that I want to interview, that I want to kind of get their lens on things that are broader, um, and so that that that is changing. Now the other thing is just a another dot point on what you said there. Uh, chris, am I correct in understanding that microsoft, with ignite, has also bought in the microsoft partner? They've knocked that one on the head which was called what, what was it? Inspire, inspire. It's now only just one event, right?

Chris Huntingford : 32:39
Yeah, Inspire and Ignite are one.

Mark Smith: 32:42
And that's why there are so many partners there as well, because I've listened to a few of the sessions now and there's a lot of sessions that you can tell are just for partners, because it's Microsoft saying here's the opportunity for you to go out and make more money with this, this, this, this and so there's obviously very partner-centric um deliveries.

Mark Smith: 32:58
But what I would say? I've attended a lot of microsoft partner conferences um over my career, um all over the world, not just in the us, they used to hold it in canada as well. Every so many years, microsoft and I tell you the amount of business that got done partner to partner at those events used to be off the Richter scale that's what's happening here yeah at that event because it was the only time you're honestly going to meet.

Mark Smith: 33:23
You know, for me from the southern hemisphere it was the only time I really met once a year people that I would do business with, you know remotely for the rest of the year yeah.

Chris Huntingford : 33:33
So I spoke to my friend Anna I won't give you her surname because I don't know if she's allowed to give this to me but she told me she got close on just leads, like people that were really interested in their products. Over 700 leads Wow, both, whatever that means to her. I don't know what a lead means to her, but 700 leads from 50 different countries and she's like we never have to go to another event again for the next year. But this is, this is how serious people were at this event. Man, like I've never. I've never in my life like people were really getting stuck in.

Chris Huntingford : 34:04
And this is one thing. I did miss you guys a lot, right, because I felt I felt like it was worth it, because I funded this myself, I felt those. So the flights and everything I bought in february, which is but on purpose, and I'm telling you we need to buy our flights early, early, early for this, like as soon as they release, we're buying flights, right, but I can categorically tell you as a, as an organization that takes microsoft stuff seriously, if you are not at ignite next year, you're missing a trick like hugely yeah hugely and I would say even, even I will.

Chris Huntingford : 34:36
I will literally make a plan to get myself onto another booth because, genuinely, I met some crazy smart people.

Andrew Welch : 34:44
I would love to go next week. And one thing, by the way, Mark, I just want to say I love next next year. I'm sorry. I was thinking next week for the pop for the podcast recording next week. But I just want to say, mark, I love the. I don't know if it's a rebranding or if it's the retiring the sun setting of one of your podcasts and the sun rising on a new podcast. What did you call it?

Mark Smith: 35:07
The Microsoft Innovation Podcast.

Andrew Welch : 35:09
Innovation Podcast.

Mark Smith: 35:10
And here's the strap line exploring the intersection of people, business, technology and AI.

Andrew Welch : 35:16
So something I would love to talk about on a future episode, because I'm seeing some. I'm seeing a lot of really interesting investment activity in the partner space, you know, sort of M&A, merger and acquisition, new rounds of private equity investment in Microsoft partners, and it's really gotten me thinking a bit about what kind of if, through the lens of you know, which partners do we think are going to be successful Not like specific names, right, but which partners, what kinds of partners, do we think are going to be successful in the coming years. And to connect it back to your podcast, you know, to the rebranding of your podcast, I think that it is the partners that are best able to blend Microsoft technologies, rather than be a BizApps partner or an Azure partner or a whatever partner. And I think, through that lens, I think it would be a great topic for the show. I think, through that lens, I think it would be a great topic for the show.

Mark Smith: 36:23
It's interesting you say that because recently I've been reached out to by an organization out of Europe that has extremely deep pockets. They sold a company that all of you know the name of and we're talking about a very large fund and they are now wanting to go out and acquire microsoft isvs in the business application ecosystem and microsoft implementation partners. Now they're only focusing on the europe and um the us markets at the moment, where they're looking at pushing into the apac region. But if you are an owner and you want to and here's the model that they are working on they want you to stay as running the organization. They just want to invest up to 50% in your business, but you carry on running it. But what they want to help you with is getting you in front of new markets, new audiences, new opportunities. So their focus is on the sales and marketing part is what they're going to bring to the table. They want you to continue on with your tech, so they don't want to do the acquisition as in you, you, you sell out an exit. They want you to sell, stay, have the funding, but they're going to drive your marketing of business across Europe and the US. So, yeah, get in touch if that's of interest to you. The last thing I want to kind of cap as we finish up on time is Andrew, you wrote a post earlier this week and the post was on.

Mark Smith: 37:51
Let me just check it here, I'm just jumping to. It was on ecosystem architecture. I have the title. It was on ecosystem architecture.

Andrew Welch : 37:55
I have the title. It was principles of ecosystem oriented architecture the future of enterprise, cloud data and AI.

Mark Smith: 38:07
Correct, and there was a guy called Samuel Williams, and Samuel is from Georgia in the United States, and he had an interesting question that he asked, which was this is great call to action. What do you think is the first step for organizations to take right now to get started? And I thought I'd throw it to you, andrew, you're the logical respondent to this.

Andrew Welch : 38:27
And I would love to know each of your first step to get started. But my response to Samuel was that as much as you, as much as as many of us might want to. So the context right is that we're talking about ecosystem oriented architecture and I was talking in this post about the principles of of that architectural approach and organizations transitioning and adopting this architectural approach. And what I told him is that, as much as I think many of us might want to jump right into the tech, you need to spend time. The first thing to do is craft your vision right. Craft your why. Why are we making this transition? The transition, I think, is self-evident and I think it needs to be done. So I'm not saying that you should ask yourself if we should do it. I'm saying that you need to nail down the why for you. I can give you dozens of whys for other organizations and they have common themes, but you have to nail down the why for you.

Mark Smith: 39:39
You have to build that vision for why you are making this transition, because it is a hard transition, even though it's a necessary transition it's interesting because in the work that I've done over the last six months for an organization who's rolling out AI, they have the software that they're wanting to go with. As opposed and this is more in the area of AI as opposed to the IT department saying, hey, we should do something with AI, or the HR department going, we need to do something with AI. It's like when it comes from that level of the organization, it hasn't seemed to my observation to get the traction that when the executive go, how is ai going to align to our business goals, our objectives? Where are we going to go? How are we going to operate? What are we going to be known for? Setting that vision and strategy? It's like light and day, the difference to growth, adoption, adoption and scale of AI in this case in those organizations, if there's that strategic mandate, vision, strategy in place.

Andrew Welch : 41:03
Most organizations, that at least half of the organizations that I encounter and that I work with and that I help kind of get started.

Andrew Welch : 41:11
And I you know, you guys know I work with organizations throughout this journey but at least half of them within an hour I can say they've got what it takes or they don't.

Andrew Welch : 41:21
They don't have what it takes, they just aren't going to bring the strategic will and the executive support to the table necessary to make that happen. But you know, as I said a moment ago, this is a long and this is a difficult transition. You know, I feel like when we talk about cloud ecosystems which includes, you know, all of the above right you know we're talking about AI, data, whatever when we talk about cloud ecosystems and the ecosystem-oriented architecture that backs that up, I view this for myself and for all of us, this is a 10-year project right to really make, not a 10-year project in any one organization, but this is a 10-year endeavor that we are on on this show and in other places to really make this a reality. I think we're probably about a year or 18 months into that transition and I don't know how it's going to gel with my plans to run for president in 2028, but we'll have to see.

Chris Huntingford : 42:26
I like that. Can I tell you something I find interesting? So I run around telling some people that I work with that organizations have to have BMT to get this done and they're like what is BMT? And it's an old rugby term called big match temperament.

Chris Huntingford : 42:42
And what it means is that you have to be able to take on something big like a wicked problem, and when it starts falling apart or getting big, you have to be able to keep your head and carry on. And that's what I think a CIO or CTO is worth their salt in these type of tech projects is because I can tell, like my friend Nick Gilbert he's the CIO of London School of Economics, that dude has got BMT. Like that guy can walk into a place and he's like man, I don't know everything. I want to know everything, but let's just do this and figure out how to do it together. And that's how I judge it. So it sounds bad, maybe it's mean, but that's the way that I do it. No, it's good.

Ana Welch : 43:19
To me it's all of the things that you guys just said, like the attitude and, obviously, forming a vision. But the other question that I would also ask to companies who want to get started with, you know, with an ecosystem architecture type of work stream, I would ask them whether they are willing, ready and, you know, investing in their culture. Are they willing to let their culture change or are they going to be buried underneath the day-to-day Because they can have, like, the best ever vision? If this is a firm of like let's just say, 200 individuals and they all have their day-to-day work and that vision doesn't couple with an, with a willingness to change the culture and you're still plowing on with the same targets, you're not going to succeed agreed because people are just going to be buried, no matter how much bmt you said bmt big match temperament right.

Ana Welch : 44:37
No matter how much big match temperament you've got, if your teams are busy busying, you're not gonna achieve your goal I love it.

Mark Smith: 44:48
Well, we're at time. Guys and chris, I'd like you to uh sign us off all right.

Chris Huntingford : 44:54
So I think the moral of the story here is that. Number one not everyone's going to know everything about AI in the beginning, but there is a place to start. So thank you, andrew and Anna, for sharing that. Number two I think the tech is moving extremely fast. When you look at what's going on at Ignite, it is quite difficult, but you know, it's just about keeping up with what you can.

Mark Smith: 45:20
And number. You know, it's just about keeping up with what you can. And number three well, we have a friendly bunch of people like us to help you. So, yeah, reach out to your community. Thanks for tuning into the ecosystem show. We hope you found today's discussion insightful and thought-provoking, and maybe you had a laugh or two. Remember your feedback and challenges help us all grow, so don't hesitate to share your perspective. Stay connected with us for more innovative ideas and strategies to enhance your software estate. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and creating value. See you on the next episode.