Unraveling the Mysteries of Microsoft Power Platform: A Deep Dive into Low-Code Development, Strategic Foundations, and the Power of Conversations

Mark Smith: 0:30
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. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ecosystems podcast. This is episode five for us. We have covered a lot of ground Today, andrew, if you have the chance of bringing up and putting on screen there, we'll be discussing the final layer of the pyramid. From there. We are really interested in your feedback as in to where we will go. But what we've covered so far of the strategic pyramid we've talked about particularly the top two layers, is where a lot of people are operating in at the moment, which deals with building solutions and then the governance around those solutions. In the last episode we delved deeply into building the platform ecosystem. Today we're going to focus on architect the strategic foundations, which is new for a lot of people, and it's where the high comes. Going forward With that, andrew, anna, why don't you walk us through the architect, the strategic foundations, and we will take it from there? But before we do that, actually, why don't we do a round of introductions? Because that's what we do here. Chris Huntingford, this week I saw you in very flash of tire. I saw you the week before in Vegas in not so flash of tire. I think you got a. I saw your legs were out. Yeah, I saw you presenting to. I think it was about two and a half thousand people were in the session that you're in and you. You were walking around in white socks in your presentation like Really Fuck shoes it's and yeah, you nailed it. But and the crazy thing is that I spend a whole week in Vegas with you and didn't even speak to you once, apart from, you know, sitting in the back of your session there. But I got to you know, cuddle your wife a few times and say hello there, so that was nice.

Chris Huntingford: 3:03
Yeah, she said I was. I was very jealous not of you cuddling her but she cuddling you, but that you know thanks, thanks for coming to the session. Like when I saw you at the back I'm like, yes, this is awesome and yeah, it's pretty pretty about the tech. It was a bit pissed about that. But yeah, man, thank you for coming along.

Mark Smith: 3:22
Your content was on point, my friend. In fact, I'd like a copy of those slides I said something about you're going to post them in the app, but I never saw any functionality in the app that allowed for that.

Chris Huntingford: 3:31
No, I just. I just chucked a link in the comments, man, but I'll fire him over to you. To worry, I'll send him over.

Andrew Welch: 3:35
Got you.

Chris Huntingford: 3:36
Yeah, yeah, thanks man, I appreciate that.

Andrew Welch: 3:38
I saw the great sock incident of twenty twenty three on LinkedIn. But what was the why socks? Why no shoes?

Chris Huntingford: 3:44
Dude, I just don't like presenting in my shoes Like I do it sometimes. Yeah, but OK, I don't know, just it's weird. And also the thing is those stages were really long and they weren't deep right, so you had to do a lot of walking across to get to keep the attention right.

Mark Smith: 3:59
So I was like you know what, and that's on top of walking at the conference. I have not had a blister on my feet in years. Yet I got a blister the first day because you are forever walking, literally miles, to just to go from one side of the hotel to the other, right through, you know, when I was in another hotel, so therefore that's another four hotels you walk through because of the way Vegas. You know one casino in Vegas is connected to the next. You never know when you walk through that hole in the wall you're actually leaving one casino and you're now in another one. And it just goes on forever and ever and ever. And, man, the amount of walking you do there is just ridiculous.

Chris Huntingford: 4:41
Yeah, it's bonkers man, I wasn't seen.

Andrew Welch: 4:44
Well, and Chris, in fairness, though going, you know, like not wanting to wear shoes during your presentation. I could be wrong about this, we'd have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure that dinosaurs, when they presented the conferences, they also. Absolutely so you are. You are following, you're following in the literal footsteps of your spirit animal, your spirit species.

Chris Huntingford: 5:05
Yeah, you know, it's like my kin. My kin, the, the, the ankylosaurus would never wear shoes when presenting the formal presentations to its co and kin. So yeah, absolutely, it was an epic conference. You know, you know what they say. You know it happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Vegas, that's bullshit man. I want a tattoo in covid back with me. It does stay in Vegas.

Andrew Welch: 5:31
And what was the tattoo?

Chris Huntingford: 5:32
I have a date of a tattoo tattooed on my leg because it's actually a real database and I feel like you know. The icon is cool. It looks like a green ceiling fan.

Ana Demeny: 5:41
Why do you keep doing that to yourself?

Chris Huntingford: 5:45
That's what I want to remember the good times.

Ana Demeny: 5:47
Well, yeah, but you also have a power apps and a power automate.

Chris Huntingford: 5:51
I have a power apps tattoo.

Ana Demeny: 5:52
It's on my lower back Microsoft Flow.

Chris Huntingford: 5:55
No power apps, but it's the power apps. One word, not with the space, and it's the logo.

Ana Demeny: 6:01
Right, why? Why do you do that to yourself? That's, it's not OK. I'm sure like there are support groups.

Chris Huntingford: 6:09
No, I wanted a slutty lower back tattoo on my lower back and I got a power app one because I thought you know, that's, that's the way to go.

Ana Demeny: 6:18
That is a bit slutty, right.

Mark Smith: 6:25
Yes, I love it. Anna, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and we're in the world? Are you today?

Ana Demeny: 6:33
So I'm home with my parents. I flew out of London on Monday to avoid having you know a baby in the midst of moving houses. I am going through a bit of a screwed up time at the moment with our exactly our house is being flooded by all the rains in London and, like the move has been horrible and property solicitors in the UK suck big time, looking at you, alexander JL O worse convey service announcement right there at all times. Yeah, other than that, you know what I'm good, I'm good to be having this chat with you. Last week, we presented on strategic thinking for the Microsoft Cloud, so this is like the perfect subject to be had right now, after having a few conversations with you, know, and gathering some people, some feedback from, from people who are in it right now, who are either dubious about AI, or worried about AI, or worried about their company, or thinking they're ready for artificial intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, mixed bag for me, but mostly bad. It's mostly I'm mostly not doing well.

Andrew Welch: 8:05
Did you say where in the world you were? You said you went to your hometown. You said, okay, all right.

Mark Smith: 8:10
So well, nobody knows where parents live. Where is where? Oh yeah, I'm in.

Ana Demeny: 8:14
Romania. I'm sorry, I'm in Romania, but I show Romania. It's actually a very lovely town, though I didn't go out yet.

Andrew Welch: 8:22
It's a beautiful city, but Russia was a beautiful city. Hmm, gorgeous city.

Mark Smith: 8:26
Nice, nice, so good Andrew.

Andrew Welch: 8:31
You want a where in the world. I am having my third night in our new flat in London, anna. What she didn't mention is that she did go home and she took the baby home, but that left me to do this move. So I've been doing my utmost the last several nights to get everything arranged so that when Anna comes home in a couple of weeks she'll walk in and she'll be like oh my God, this place is beautiful because, on for no, on Saturday I'm meeting her in Romania and we are flying off on our honeymoon. We had a proper wedding last month and now we're having a proper honeymoon, so we're going to go to Bali by way of Qatar. That's the plan for Saturday. So we are off, yeah, and then we're coming to visit you, sir.

Mark Smith: 9:27
Yes, yes, and the told me.

Andrew Welch: 9:31
Leave it to us to say oh you know, while we're in Bali, we might as well stop in New Zealand, because they're close.

Mark Smith: 9:38
It's not that close, it's not European close, no, it's.

Ana Demeny: 9:43
Normally we're good with geography, but maybe not this time. We thought they were close. They are not Nothing's close to New Zealand and nothing.

Mark Smith: 9:52
Yes, correct, and that includes nuclear weapons. All right, they're not close to New Zealand either, so true.

Andrew Welch: 10:01
Pretty much. Stopping in New Zealand while we're in Bali is like saying, yeah, we were in London, so we thought we'd stop and see friends in Seattle while we were in the neighborhood. That's basically. That's the equivalent right there.

Mark Smith: 10:15
I mean, I'm not sure it's quite that, not quite Seattle Say no, seattle is right, because it's a nine hour flight, isn't it between London and Seattle?

Andrew Welch: 10:22
The internet knows. But yes, it is a nine hour flight, more or less.

Mark Smith: 10:27
Yeah, so it is about the same then. But if you are stopping off in New Zealand on the way somewhere, that place you'd be going would be Antarctic.

Ana Demeny: 10:37
But anyway, this is where we are, and we are here to talk about architecting the strategic foundation.

Chris Huntingford: 10:45
Trust them to get right into it. Hey no, behave yourselves. No more small talk, let's get cracking.

Andrew Welch: 10:50
No, no, no. Let's look at All right, london to Seattle, we can all see, is nice Four thousand eight hundred and six miles Right. And then let's say Bali to Auckland. Bali to Auckland is, so we'll say deep, what is it? Dps to AKL, right, ok?

Mark Smith: 11:12
Yeah, yeah, it is.

Andrew Welch: 11:16
Okay, it's slightly closer, at a distance of 4,190 miles. It is slightly closer, not much, right? Okay, anna, we can go back to what you were doing. I'm sorry.

Ana Demeny: 11:29
I thought that was important because when we talk about building up the platform ecosystem, that sounds pretty strategic to me and to other people as well, right? So the moment you think about implementing some solid foundation to your systems, when you're thinking about looking at the entirety of your data in your customers' organization, or when you want to do enterprise data governance and integrate everything in a certain way and have sort of patterns, then that seems quite strategic. So that's why I thought it was really really interesting to have these two put together and to emphasize the difference a little bit. I believe that architecting the strategic foundation stakes everything above it and structures it in a way that fosters success and continuous success, because oftentimes what people want organizations, partners and Microsoft and customers what they want is to start doing some work and then create loyalty right. They want to have a customer and then have that customer forever. They want to be friends. They want to be able to really guide their systems and processes. This is where architecting the strategic foundations comes into play. This is a sort of work for very mature organizations and for highly senior individuals, because it requires expertise and experience and knowledge and also the ability to listen to other experts within the organization, so that you can actually create and execute a vision for your customer and for your organization as well. At this point in time, we are definitely going in with a series of reference architectures and we can see how all of those connect with each other, maybe similarly to a building architecture design. Once you have that, you know exactly what to change where, if everything is written that properly and if everything is structured in a way that's sustainable for the whole building. Yes, then we go into more details as well, such as maybe the tipping point for most people and for most of our listeners and Microsoft partners as well, which is workload prioritization and how to do that. How can you isolate the things that need to be done right now with the things that can be done later, with the things that will allow us to get to where we want to be? How do we isolate crisis and whoever shouts the loudest to align to our actual executive vision? Today's episode is very much about that. It's going to be fun, because the other people on this podcast are going to talk as well. Don't worry, don't go away.

Mark Smith: 15:24
A couple of things jumped to mind here as you were explaining this for me. I look at each of those items executive vision, workload prioritization, ecosystem mapping, reference, architecture, data.

Ana Demeny: 15:39
Andrew, what do you think? Why do we even have this layer? Why didn't we just stop at building the platform ecosystem?

Mark Smith: 15:47
My question is is this a one and done type process of doing Now? Of course I know it's not. I'm asking that question.

Andrew Welch: 15:56
You're leading the witness here, right?

Mark Smith: 15:59
Because is it something that's really done? Definitely not on a quarterly basis, maybe on an annual basis, maybe on an annual basis. It is strategy, and you don't alter strategy every five minutes in an organization.

Andrew Welch: 16:15
Mark, you were just asking. You were talking about basically is this a one and done? Does this go on? First of all, going back just a minute, this is such an important way of thinking and way of doing business. I was in a call with an organization earlier today and they said no, we really just want to build out the platform and we can do strategy later. I was very transparent with them. I said, alternatively, we could get a bunch of money and put it in a bag and set fire to it.

Mark Smith: 16:50
Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Welch: 16:53
I think that kind of drove home the point, but it's not exaggeration. This is where so many organizations have gone wrong, because they've plowed into not even building the platform ecosystem, but say the conditions for success, which they wrap up as governance and infrastructure and all those sorts of things, and they have no vision. They have no vision for where they're trying to take the technology, why they're investing, what are the guiding principles and the outcomes they're trying to achieve that are going to achieve that vision. The reason that I backed up when you asked that question is that outcomes that you're trying to achieve as an organization, they're not static. I also think that organizations make a mistake when they say, oh, we're only going to think strategically on an annual basis. This is something that has to happen all the time. You might have a burst of energy where you put some real brain space and some real time into this, say on a quarterly or an annual basis, but if you then just do that and walk away from the strategy, then you might as well again you put a bunch of money in a bag and you've set fire to it. This is ongoing and it's not like a one-off where we do it in a neat little calendar. We do it according to a neat little calendar, I agree 100%.

Chris Huntingford: 18:10
I think for some of the orgs we're working with, they're like okay, we're going to set the executive vision and we're going to start setting the strategy and then that's that for the next 4,000 years. I'm like absolutely not, Absolutely not, why. What we want to do is we want to get a great vision for the next X amount of time. You're always going to review that strategy underneath the vision, because the strategies affect how you execute the vision and that might change. The vision might be X and the strategy might be implement X, implement Y, implement Z, do A, B and C, map to these KPIs, slash whatever, and then you have success. If you look at tools like LowCode and Co-Pilot, they're constantly changing, legitimately, all the time, and therefore your strategy will change and will have to change depending. It's the same with data. You can't say, okay, our five-year dream is to put in a SQL data warehouse to centralize data and then five years' time you've got things like one leg. Nope, absolutely not. You have to review. I always say to folks you've got to bolt this to. It's got to be your vision, your strategy and your plan. If you bolt those three together and review every three to six months, that's good, depending on the cadence of how fast you want to go through the program.

Andrew Welch: 19:30
If you look at the activities, I do this with CIOs all the time. I pretty much, at this point, my entire professional life is lived inside of architecting these strategic foundations. Sometimes I branch out into building the platform ecosystem, but that's mostly to just make sure that what we've actually architected is being properly built and executed, and we're going to get a nasty echo.

Mark Smith: 19:58
Yeah, that's all right.

Andrew Welch: 19:59
I was just going to say. If you think about to Chris's point, these activities. The vision is all about what are we trying to achieve with the technology? And, really importantly, how does the CIO or the CISO, chief Information Security or the Chief Data Officer, how do those organizations go from being superintendents of a utility company to being actual strategic leaders within the business? That's a huge mindset change for IT leaders. The executive vision is all about where we're going and what are our guiding principles and outcomes to get there. Then we just start layering on Workload. Prioritization is about saying here are all the problems we're trying to solve, the apps we're trying to migrate, the things we're trying to achieve. What's the priority order? We can't do everything at once. Then, when we map the ecosystem, we arrange all of those things into our city map. We go on. The reference architecture gets even more specific. What we're doing really is we're building up an overall architecture and direction that the folks who are working to build the platform ecosystem can then take and run with. This feeds every level of the pyramid on up.

Chris Huntingford: 21:09
But you have to be able to pivot. That's the thing, dude.

Andrew Welch: 21:12
Exactly.

Chris Huntingford: 21:14
What I've found is because we use the city map view as well the tube map, things are going to change so rapidly, so rapidly Like now. We've got customers going through the enablement program and all of a sudden, new tech gets dropped in or new things get dropped in, and then we have to be able to pivot. I don't think that organizations with legacy, vision and strategy built in by, I would say, in some of the big four, have the ability to pivot. I just don't think they can.

Mark Smith: 21:47
Well, if the big four themselves can't pivot, how do they encourage their customers to pivot?

Andrew Welch: 21:53
Yeah.

Mark Smith: 21:57
Badly. But my question is then well one, I've got a couple of ones. Chris, give us an example of technology. You're saying about being in a position where you can change, but technology although we in our roles are on the cutting edge of it for most organizations don't change that rapidly and most organizations don't have the ability to execute outside of financial year. So let's say, your technology comes out in FY23. They have not allocated budget to take adoption, so it's going to at least be FY24 before they touch that thinking, Maybe FY25. So I'm talking about are we talking about a very slow moving process? I can only see SMBs being in a position to move quickly in that scenario. Smc space, the enterprise space, doesn't have that ability to move as such.

Chris Huntingford: 22:57
It's really hard and this is where we have to have our eyes on the future quite a lot. So, yeah, it's exactly the turning of the deliverable. What I've found is that when you're looking at doing an enablement program with a customer right, if you are okay, I want to tell you about this discussion I had with this one guy and I promise I will pivot out of this right, but we did this panel, okay. So Andrew myself, will and Rory did this panel with AJ and we were taught the word ecosystem came up and the guy was like this dude Bora came out to me afterwards and man, this guy was amazing. I think he was a neurologist and he's like hey, man, do you think the businesses of the ecosystem or the industry is in the ecosystem? And I said, no, I don't think either. Is I think it's down to your circle of reference and sphere of sphere of reference, okay. So if you are standing looking directly down at your feet, your ecosystem is your area of control, okay. But if you're standing on the moon, all of a sudden the, the well larger areas become your ecosystem and you care about fewer things that are smaller, okay. So when we are putting a program in with a customer, the person putting in the program, the organization, has to have the full sites and the ability to zoom out and zoom in, and this is something that I'm really passionate about. So, in the customers we're working with, I know that co-pilot is a big deal. Okay, I'm not looking just at low code, I'm looking at co-pilot data, loads of other things, right? So the executive vision that I want to put out will include those things for the next FY and the next FY based on how far I can see. Okay, and that's because I read, I do research, I talk to you. If the company has not got the capability and capacity to do that, I think the program will fail.

Andrew Welch: 24:34
There's an element here, though, of the you know, chris, the way that most organizations the ones that Mark is talking about where they budget according to fiscal, they budget for technology according to fiscal year. That model has got to die right.

Ana Demeny: 24:49
That was an acceptable model.

Andrew Welch: 24:51
That was an acceptable model when we had these big gaps between major technological change and this is going to be hard. Mark is smiling like, yeah, good luck with that. But my response is good luck not doing that in the end. You're going to limp along for a couple more years, but you have to go to this model. You have got to adapt to. You have to budget for uncertainty you have. You cannot get into these long engagements with your technology budget where you're working off two or five year roadmap as anything that's happening in 12 months, let alone 24 months, is still going to be the way it is today, Like that's not a thing and you're ruining yourself by locking yourself into that budgetary model. It's a huge change that has to happen.

Mark Smith: 25:41
But the thing is is that the minute you talk about budgets, you have to go very high in the executive layer of an organization. We're not talking about any of the doer roles in the organization, we're talking about executive decisions being made. That and so my question comes back to if we look at our audience, if we look at who listens to the show, et cetera and I'm not saying that people are not playing in that space, but I'm saying that people are not playing in that space as a rule that are in our ecosystem.

Andrew Welch: 26:12

We don't have a lot of C levels listening to our podcast because they're busy, it turns out.

Mark Smith: 26:17

I don't think that they're in the Microsoft I don't want to say weeds, but in the stuff around choosing technology and stuff, they have people that do that for them and they get a report on their desk and in a board meeting they make a decision if this is the way to go. They're not the ones doing the research. They're not the ones they're wanting to read a summary with a $20 million budget or $10 million budget at the bottom and go, okay, is this going to be a valuable sign it off? So I'm saying who is this discussion for? Is it only CXO levels? Convince me.

Andrew Welch: 27:46
I have wondered if you're trying to team me up for an advertisement of my services. This is or, as Donna Sarkar told me over the weekend, she was like Andrew, you were therapy for CIOs and that's.

Mark Smith: 27:59
Therapy for CIOs. I like it.

Andrew Welch: 28:01
Digital psychology man Digital psychology 101. Yeah, but it goes back to the question that we were talking about a moment ago, where it is so important here that these leaders, these executive leaders, make the transition. From being superintendents of a utility company I keep the lights on the phones, on the email running I am now, as a technology leader within a non-technology company. I am now a. You are now a strategic leader. You need to be a strategic leader and you need to be driving all of the different pieces that are going to make a difference here, and it has to do with budgeting, it has to do with people, it has to do with technology. But, yeah, the CFO has to be your friend and CFOs have to change their ways here, because the way you budget is killing you. Institutional barriers are killing you now.

Ana Demeny: 28:59
I think that driving is a really good word here, because so many times you talk to CIOs, ctos, and they are proudly serving their company rather than driving it. Their role is to enable their teams to solve problems, and it's not very often that they look at things strategically or that they actually have a vision for anything. They are a CIO or CTO, a technical C-level in a non-technology company, and they cannot afford to go and propose a budget that's going to be fluid. No one's even like that's not their business. So is that a thing that we should change? Is that a thing that we are here to influence? Do we believe that this is something that eventually will actually drive value on the product that a company is selling in general? What does technology do, after all?

Andrew Welch: 30:14
So I'm working with a I won't name names, but I'm working with an organization right now with a CIO, and his organization has been. They've taken an investment from private equity and they are engaged in a lot of M&A, merger and acquisition activities, so they're buying companies right. But one of the things that they're trying to do is they are trying to use the investment that they have to become the preeminent offeror of the services that they provide in the geographic markets where they provide them. And what I love about working with this particular CIO is that fair game. This is not a tech company, this is an industrial company. Okay, and their entire attitude, their entire approach here is that we are building value in the company by embracing ecosystem oriented cloud technology, that is, and their belief is that that is going to build value for our shareholders, the private equity firm, that's going to build value for their employees and that's going to build value for their customers, especially as they acquire new companies, and essentially, the companies that they acquire become beneficiaries of the modernization that is happening across the portfolio here. So I realize that we're pretty far afield of the usual technology conversations that we have, but I believe absolutely that the innovative and the strategic thinking, cios and other C-level folks are starting to catch on to this, because I'm seeing it in the market.

Mark Smith: 31:48
So how do senior people and I'm talking about senior people now that are part of the Microsoft ecosystem that we have all come from how can they move up to that level of having those executive conversations? Because, as you've talked, I'm like Andrew, this really makes sense for you as an individual and your role, sorry, right, and that totally makes sense to me, but how does, how do we get to the point that you can upskill, maybe somebody that's an architect, that's really developing their executive engagement skills, to actually then have these conversations?

Andrew Welch: 32:28
My first thought here is that there is no course. And before, mark, you ask yes, I'm working on a course, but as of now, as far as I know, there's no course about this. And even if there was, and when in the near future there will be, I think that this is one of those areas and, frankly, it's just like so many areas that we look at. Right, you can take a course or a class on how to architect a solution or build a data model, but until you've been exposed to it multiple times, all you have is theoretical knowledge. You have to kind of acquire the experience of having seen it, having done it and, really importantly, having failed at it or seeing what fails. So, as always, what I'm going to say is that the number one way to elevate your you know, to kind of take your conversations and the discussions you're able to have right, is to seek experiences with the people who already do this right. And you know I realize that that might make it sound easy, but I see this all the time where people in the architect role whether you're a solution architect, enterprise architect you know, I think that this movement around ecosystem architecture is really trying to change this right, but you need to elevate yourself right. Don't step out of the conversation because it breaks, it goes outside the foundry or the membrane of your solution right or of your technology. So, as always, pick up the experience by just starting these conversations, by working with people who are already doing it, and I think that you know this cloud strategist role, so to speak, is it's few and far between. There are not a lot of people in the industry who do this, but we desperately need there to be more. So there's your invite.

Mark Smith: 34:31
OK, ok. So here's the question, because I want people to listen to this and go away with tangibles, right, not theories. And if I, if you, created this job description for this role, what skills are you looking for for somebody that's not necessarily at this level yet, but are going to move into it? What are you going to want to see on this CV? Around two things one, formal learning and education, and two, experience. What are you going to look for on this CV to and let's call them the cloud ecosystem architect? That's the title. What skills, what experience are you going to look for? That's going to be your indicator that you want to have an interview with this person.

Chris Huntingford: 35:15

We have an official role at AMS called ecosystem architect, right, and we have three employed as ecosystem architects, and I'll tell you what man, the two, so two of them really differ in role. Basically, think of it like this you have to have somebody that is a is going to be difficult and enterprise ecosystem architect who can oversee the entire, the entire tube map of the whole, the whole map of the of the ecosystem.

Mark Smith: 35:44
So think of it as like has someone got a tube map that you can bring up a tube map, just because I think we've mentioned a few times. We haven't mentioned it for about three or four episodes and it might be worth just setting the context.

Chris Huntingford: 35:54
Bring it up. Yeah, absolutely, man. I'll share my screen right now, if you just give me a second.

Mark Smith: 35:59
Yeah.

Chris Huntingford: 36:00
Okay, so you'll have you'll have a bunch of cities in your business, right, and the cities. We always look at things as cities. So you've got data city, which is king and queen of the platform. You'll have custom dev city. You'll have bazaar city, you have low code city and this is all wrapped around with security, right? So security kind of wraps this whole thing. When you zoom into low code city, there are different lines you need in low code city. So you'll have your technical line, which is this one I'm moving my mouse pointer along here I hope it's blue and that effectively focuses on the technology, right? So we have some ecosystem architects who are super good at defining things like ALM and security and environments. Okay, then you have your people line. Your people line is really around those relationships that Anna and Andrew were talking around. So your strategic management. By the way, these little dots are indicative, right. These change. There's way more. I think we're probably at about a hundred of them in the target operating model, so we probably need to update this and this people line will change. So, as I'm saying, you kind of want program owner, enterprise architecture, all these people involved, and you have to drive a layer of adoption here, the process line, and you can see I've duplicated data strategy. I can't remember what I was doing, but anyway. So the process line is really where this gets really detailed. Now, the process line is a mixture of technical people who understand business process. Okay. So what is the thing we need to do to build out and this is low code specific, what is the thing we need to build out a maker support process, and there will be tools like we need to have a thing in service. Now we need to have SLAs and KPIs set up and all that jazz. So that gets quite big right, and actually this is the most complicated line. And then your portfolio is around maker enablements. So, actually, how do we drive these makers to build things that are useful? Where do we direct them to? How do they do this thing? Now, what we worked on is that these stops on this map connecting up to the target operating model. So this is the model we look at. We call it the six P's. It's setting your purpose, which is what Andrew and Anna were talking about very clearly. So, like, what is the thing that you're doing? Okay, your plan wraps your purpose and then your platform, process, people and portfolio live inside your plan and you're always wanting to build those. And actually what you find is that in the beginning you may start out with a lot of portfolio and whatever you're doing, but that'll take a dip as you get the guardrails in place and you'll start to structure phase. You will then find that that will grow with people, your portfolio will grow with people, but then there still needs to be an elements of governance. That's put in place right. So when that governance gets put in place, actually the people takes a little bit of a dip, because the more governance you have, the more automation you have, the fewer people you need to have managing the platform. Okay. So what we did is we sat down and we were like, all right, what if these things are technical? So we looked at all the things and we were like, okay, the platform line is obviously technical. We need to have somebody like a Craig White who understands this technology and can actually talk to a customer and say what would your environment strategy look like? How was your department set up? How was your organization set up? Okay, so we kind of have to go through that program there. What we then do is we have Azim, and Azim is a absolute legend but he is not technical. Azim is a process genius, so that dude goes in and starts talking about support structures and all that jazz. And then we have people like Janet Robb who are a brilliant organization enablement Like. Janet is wonderful at that. Now I am an enterprise ecosystem architect by trade, right, so I can cover this whole thing at a minimum of level 200 on every piece. So I can go in to talk to a customer about monitoring, I can talk to customers about building up support processes, about governance, about training and enablements and all sorts of things, even, maybe even level 400 and sometimes 500 on the technology. But I know where my strengths are. One of my strengths is not doing things like Azure DevOps. So I'm really good at ALM, but I don't know that. So what I do is I parachute people from the business in, but with the ecosystem architect role, what we worked out is that the enterprise architect will kind of have a higher level bird's eye view. It's kind of like standing on the moon, okay, but then as you drill down, you might find that your one ecosystem architect is really talented on the process piece and they're like, yeah, that's my jam, I'm super good at that, but I'll hook up with my technical architect, my technical ecosystem architect, on the platform line. So actually the role description we have for this stuff doesn't always drive down the technology routes. Okay, it is very much driven down the empathy routes, the listening route, the compassion route, consultancy primary thing here. One of the things we put in the role is we said we don't want people who cannot stay and stand in front of a customer and actually present and then get feedback and pivot quickly. Yes, like that, friends in person when Ross is yelling, pivot when they're trying to take the sofa upstairs. It's like you have to move, like if a customer says, how is this ball to my monitoring strategy? Sure, no problem, then we tell you right. So you need to understand, at least at level 100, but you need to be able to focus. The other thing that we figured out about the role is that the folks that we need here are not going to be like hyper nerds. Okay, really relatable, really like consultative, and actually we're going back to the age or discussion around what does a consultant do? And actually all of this, to an extent we just really good at some pieces. Does that make sense?

Mark Smith: 41:08
Yeah, that's cool. One thing I have the devil's advocate on. Okay, this is low code city. Take me back to slide 27.

Chris Huntingford: 41:21
Yes, so with data city.

Mark Smith: 41:24
Exactly Data city, but also you've got biz app city, but really purpose, I would say biz apps could be. Yeah, they're all business applications. I suppose I've got a bias to Microsoft biz apps. Am I thinking of how you've labeled that? But you know let's bring in three cloud platforms. Let's bring in, you know, aws, let's bring in Google cloud platform and let's bring in Azure. Of course, are you expecting that individual to be at level 100, 200 across this slide here, which is well outside just low code? And you know you've got custom city there as well, yeah, so what are your thoughts?

Chris Huntingford: 42:10
No, I'm not. One of the things that I found is that when you're starting to look at that, Mark, all we're doing is, if they're doing low-code city, that Google Cloud Platform or Amazon or SAP or whatever it is, it's just a connector up to Data City. That's all it is. Andrew's got a really good slide. Andrew and I built a wonderful slide talking about the different neighborhoods from an integration perspective.

Mark Smith: 42:28
Yep, what was interesting.

Chris Huntingford: 42:31
Have you got it? Just to remember. I know he'll present it, so I just want you to think you have your business applications. Neighborhood Andrew, what did you call it?

Andrew Welch: 42:41
The core business systems neighborhood.

Chris Huntingford: 42:43
On the bottom of the slide I've committed to memory. On the bottom of the slide you have that low-code EPs with all the data stuff. That's that custom dev city. Be custom dev city. Integration city lives here. What's interesting is that you hadn't built that slide yet and we hadn't seen it.

Andrew Welch: 43:00
Yeah, we did this totally separately.

Chris Huntingford: 43:05
We know the architecture. That needs to be Just remark. For me, any third party or different application that doesn't live in the Microsoft Cloud Stack is just a connection up.

Mark Smith: 43:13
Here's my thing If we go back to the strategic pyramid and I bring in a whole bunch of SAP architects, they don't give an F about my low-code city. For them, it's not just about connections. As far as they're concerned, the world is only SAP. If you're having an engagement at the C level of the organization, I feel that if you're going to be strategic, you can't be strategic about this one little piece and forget about the actual whole fucking organization, which is many pieces. My concern is if I'm saying I'm an ecosystem, am I saying a single, as in single ecosystem, are we talking about the ecosystem of the entire organization?

Chris Huntingford: 44:03
This is exactly my frame of reference when it comes down to your area of expertise Ecosystem architect that does low-code. Power platform is going to focus on low-code. That's their area of influence. When you zoom out, I can zoom out. Dude, I've done work with Salesforce, with Mendex. For me, the platform line just changes. I'm just like screw it, man Cool. Another platform kick ass. My processes are still relatively the same, same with my people and my portfolio. What that means is that my platform line becomes different. As a higher-level ecosystem architect, you're just zooming out. It gets difficult because you then have to do reading. You have to understand architecture from a technical perspective, but also you have to understand the structure of the business. That's where techies fall down.

Andrew Welch: 44:50
My perspective on this and I think it's probably safe to say that when Andrew and Chris go to work, chris is much deeper into the specifics of that low-code ecosystem. I'm probably more zoomed out and spend more time with Azure technologies and data platform technologies and that type of thing. I do think that there's probably a spectrum on which you can define what an ecosystem architect does. I think, really importantly, there is a difference between the ecosystem architect and the cloud strategist. That cloud strategist is, I think, even more zoomed out, where I have going back to the example that I mentioned earlier with this industrial company that's been bought by private equity. I have a really good relationship with a very smart they call them an enterprise architect, but he's effectively an ecosystem architect. A lot of times, what he's doing is he's taking the strategy that really zoomed out. Let's assemble the data platform, azure infrastructure, the security services, low-code core business systems, et cetera. Let's assemble all of that. He's then translating it and doing the work of parceling it out to the various architects column, whatever you want to call them, but to the various architects. You go much, much deeper with that technology. I think that the relationship between cloud strategist which Mark going back to your question about what's in the job spec the cloud strategist has to be. They have to be a consultant. They have to be able to stand on their feet to facilitate, to guide senior people through a process of establishing and renewing and refreshing their vision. They also need to have some experience, preferably some depth in at least one of those technology areas and some breadth in multiple technology areas. It is something that only comes after you've moved around a bit. But in defense of not getting so focused on, I am an FNO solution architect. This is something you want to do in your career. You have to move around. You have to move around when you're at the mid and the mid senior levels, I think.

Mark Smith: 47:33
Interesting, interesting. It's good clarification for me because in what we had spoken about, I really thought it was up to. Today was much more broader. Rather than the ecosystem, what I understood from Chris is around the low code specific ecosystem.

Chris Huntingford: 47:53
It's wider, it's wider. You just got to remember, man, the lens I'm taking. In the scenario, the lens I'm taking is low code, yeah, but the lens doesn't always have to be low code, ever. You can literally take that model that I showed you, zoom out and go something else or all of it, but you just need to know to change the wording and how the people interact with it. This is my favorite slide, by the way. They're true, but I see.

Andrew Welch: 48:20
So, chris, since you've seen this, should I do a quick build up and tell us over here? Yeah, for those of you who haven't seen, I'm going to fly through this. Anna and I have been doing an hour long session at conferences, just on this slide, pretty much. Just fly through this. We've taken the city model and we've broken the ecosystem down into neighborhoods. So what you'll see is this is higher level than what Chris showed, but in most cloud ecosystems we have what we call the core platform services neighborhood. Think of this as the municipal services city hall, police, fire, rescue, power, water. Here we have things like these icons are not called out, but we've got data governance and data lineage and identity management and application monitoring and various governance tools manage environments, app insights, security center, et cetera. We like to go next to One Lake. One Lake is the data lake technology that's part of Microsoft Fabric. One Lake becomes the downstream destination for most of the data distribution within the organization. This is, if you are watching on screen, the golden highway or the golden mile here of your city is the connection between One Lake and your integration neighborhood. How does data get integrated at the center and pushed into One Lake? So now we're downtown, this is the center of the city. Data integration, event driven integration, logic driven batch integration, master data management Looking when it comes to shoveling data around, this is the downtown, this is the main artery of the city. Most organizations have a series of core business systems, so here we're representing those core business systems. So, mark, we're getting a little bit outside of Microsoft. We've got bespoke or a custom core business system built, say with Azure SQL, but let's say we're running SAP for our ERP or Workday for our HR. We might some of these systems then integrate via the integration neighborhood, but then we might be migrating a legacy application out of virtual machines or out of on-prem, say, to Dynamics for CRM. We might be doing similarly with a custom application built with Power Platform. These apps, of course, are going to keep their data inside of Dataverse and that is going to pipe right into the central artery of the city. Other, this forms the core business systems neighborhood, so your core business systems might look different than this. We've tried to be representative about it. Next up, we have what I think Chris was talking about low-code city. We call it the application portfolio and it's a little bit misleading, right, because low code happens in core business systems as well, which is why we don't make that distinction here. So most organizations have a whole portfolio of legacy applications that over time, yeah, we want to migrate them to say, dataverse-backed Power Platform. But we also might be getting a little more sophisticated and there's a bunch of integration patterns here where we're maybe landing data inside of a data landing zone and then we're using various integration tools to pipe that data out to the various environments that make up our application portfolio. And what we've done so far is we've talked a lot about structured data. But there's a whole other story here for unstructured data. So think the files, photos, videos, sound clips, et cetera. This is all unstructured data. It might be living in network storage remember the Z drive right? So I'm actually working with an organization where we had to get the data out of the third floor of their office building. So let's just say it's network storage, but we're going to migrate that using various migration tools to, again in this composite ecosystem, a combination of Blob Storage and M365.

Mark Smith: 52:16
So when you say that they're on network shares et cetera, z drive, are you talking about ransomware city All?

Andrew Welch: 52:24
right, we'll just rename it here, yeah, yeah, I mean, one of the things to keep in mind here throughout is that the goal here we've studied and we've looked at a number of different organizations from our collective past. I mean, we've tried to build a composite. So in this reference ecosystem, you make a mistake if you look at it and say, well, we don't do it that way. The idea is that this is a composite of many, many different organizations, and whether you're keeping your unstructured data in network storage today or in data center today, or maybe you've already gone to Blob and SharePoint great, let's look at the other parts of your ecosystem and how it all hangs together. Or ask yourself the question are you using tools, say, like Microsoft or Neva, right, are you using those sorts of tools to make sense of that unstructured data and to feed that back into your core systems? And now we get to. So that's our unstructured data neighborhood. And now we get to what is, I think, presently my favorite neighborhood. Let's take that data out of Blob and SharePoint and use Cognitive Search to index that data. We're also using Cognitive Search to index the data in one lake. And then we're using Cognitive Search for a variety of things, chiefly to enable AI workloads and to enable enterprise search, which is, you know, say, delivered through various application user experiences, but we like Power Platform for this. We might also be piping data through APIs out to the open internet, of course in a secure way, and we might be using Synapse technology, say data warehouse or real time analytics, to feed our analytical workloads, which, again, our go to here is also on Power Platform. It's Power BI. So this then becomes our data distribution neighborhood, and I think that the key for the cloud strategist and for your more higher you know, kind of your more experienced ecosystem architects, is having the knowledge of the ability to take a strategy of the organization, the guiding principles, the targeted outcomes, and to stitch them together in such a way that this is the ecosystem that's going to get you there. And, yes, we're going to tap into each of these neighborhoods and architect them to a deeper level. So, you know, chris's Subway map zooms in on that application portfolio neighborhood. These play really well together, I think.

Mark Smith: 55:01
I love it. I love it. This is great. The build up, the build out, et cetera on the site is great. If you're seeing this, what's wrong with what Andrew's got here? What's missing? What have you seen in organizations that you feel he is overlooked? Would love to hear your feedback, but, you know, put it in the comments, either on YouTube or put it directly on the website. We've got set up for this because we definitely want to keep this as fluid, right, we want to keep refining this and our thinking as we go forward, and so if you feel that, hey, but you've forgotten this or you've forgotten that, let's hear. But this is fantastic and I think that clarity I'm going to always drill into. How do I practically apply it? What skills do I need in my career to be able to play at this new level, because I feel people want tangible how tos, how to go to their next level in their careers. How do I become an ecosystem architect? What skills do I need and I think it's a growing, you know, layering of skills and one we haven't covered is communication. Right, you've got to be an expert communicator, and I liked the term you had earlier there, chris is that you need to be able to take feedback and pivot right. I think that is so, so important. You can't go, you know, dare in headlights type scenario when all of a sudden the customer throws something out of left field.

Chris Huntingford: 56:32
Oh for sure, man, it's something I've learned over the time. Like when I started doing this, when I was in Microsoft, I always had this vision of what it should look like. So, 이쁠게, I won't lie, I've been in some pretty precarious situations, man, With some customers. It's been really interesting. One of the things I learned is that actually I'm not sure, but I'll find out for you as a perfectly wonderful answer to give somebody- 100%. Yes, it's hard, because I remember somebody asking me about something around. What was it? Security and service principles. I was just like you know what I legit actually do not know that I said to them. I said you know what I don't know, but I've got a really cool person in security that I'll have a chat with. Give me a few days and I'll find out. It was awesome, because I had the chat I learned some really good stuff. I have this one slide that I show people in our presentations man.

Andrew Welch: 57:26
Chris, while you're pulling that up, before I forget, I do want to. You said you were talking a moment ago about pivoting and not knowing something and admitting when you don't know something. I think that the companion to that is that one of the most difficult things I think for more senior ecosystem architects and cloud strategists to get right is to shed their loyalty to what they consider to be their home technology or the place they came from, the place that they identify with. In my case, I've been fortunate to get to work in business applications and power platform and Azure technologies. By far most of the architecture work that I've done as a solution architect in my past has been in the Microsoft business apps space. That was a journey for me. Right Is shedding my loyalty. I have very little loyalty to power platform or dynamics at this point because you can't. You have to look at everything and say someone else's tech might be the answer. That is a journey. You have to go up, but you have to be open-minded and eyes wide open.

Mark Smith: 58:43
I'd say even what you've said there. You've only dealt with Microsoft and you'll think it isn't in what you're saying there, right? Yes, you're dealing with the three different platforms that sit within Microsoft broadly M365, azure and BizApps. I suppose part of the org that I'm currently working for has expanded my thinking on is a multi-cloud platform that is multi-vendor and not just Microsoft World.

Andrew Welch: 59:15
Fun fact I did much earlier in my career. I did work on SAP, oracle, peoplesoft and Google Tech as well. I just work on Microsoft because it's vastly superior.

Mark Smith: 59:26
Well, that's why we're all in the game, right?

Andrew Welch: 59:29
Exactly, are there many non-Microsoft folks listening to this podcast? Because, if there are, we want to hear from you. We want to know why are you listening and how can we engage more with you, because you have something super valuable to offer here we need to learn. We need to learn. Yeah, we do.

Chris Huntingford: 59:46
This is why working with Jason is epic, because Jason is ex-Mendix, so he's like dude. Why? What about this? And I'm like you know what? It's good because he keeps us really honest and the target operating model we have made is not just Microsoft-based at all. Jason's thinking of that has been huge, huge, and we also read a lot of the OutSystem stuff.

Mark Smith: 1:00:11
Yeah.

Chris Huntingford: 1:00:12
That's from the low-code perspective. We milled around and tried to figure it out, man, but the thing I've learned in going through this program with a number of organizations over the years ANS is not new to ANS, by the way.

Andrew Welch: 1:00:24
We misspelled organizations.

Chris Huntingford: 1:00:26
Yeah, well, by the way, this is England dude. It's interesting because you cannot know it all. Like I'll tell you what. When we were working with OneOrg, they were like hey, man, can you do a work stream on documentation best practice? I'm like 100%, according to our team on my case, folks, we don't have anything of documentation best practice in the enablement program. Shall we make it? They're like yes, so we did Another one Can you do something on? Oh, freaking hell, there's just loads of them. They're kind of like make an architectural best practice. Yeah, sure, no worries, what do we do? We just go and make it. And the good thing is is because we have such an array of skills but we tell people and we show them the slide and we're like the more orgs we work with and the more good ideas that we get, we're just happy to share the content when we build it out. So for each of those tube stops that you saw on that slide, the reams and reams and reams and guys, I'm not joking, it is deep content, like deep. I'm talking like 150 slides of pop per thing there.

Andrew Welch: 1:01:36
You have a reputation for making a lot of slides, chris. I do, I just you do.

Mark Smith: 1:01:42
Yes, that is great, and that's not a bad thing, right, as in there's been too much confusion in the past around paper and slides and I think you know you can have 20 slides in a in a animation format that really illustrates and builds out a story and people go what? You got that many slides for that one point? Yeah, but it actually it takes people on the journey, cause if you just dump it on a single slide it doesn't work. It's nothing.

Chris Huntingford: 1:02:07
Yeah, and that's sort of what we do, right. So we and we have a lot of examples. So in the decks, things like environment strategies, security strategies, data policies we have lots of examples of where this has happened in the past, right, but when we do a new one, we just rip out the naming conventions, rip out the names, remove customer names and be like cool, we'll just add it as an example. So now the next customer that takes this, and what we also try to do is connect our organizations. So we're going okay, customer, I speak to these people, right, and like let's just share, because this is ecosystem enablement, you're not sharing data, you're sharing kind of strategy and planning. So this has been wonderful because, yeah, the orgs that we're working with are just like hey, man, that's quite cool, we're in, yeah.

Mark Smith: 1:02:50
Do you ever have the scenario of people go what you're taking the learning from our organization and you're going to make it publicly available, like you know, w2tf type thing, and that they're taking our IP, or are they much more pragmatic?

Chris Huntingford: 1:03:07
Most orgs that we work with are super pragmatic, like we don't make it publicly available. We'll share our best practice and our two maps. But most orgs that I would say we haven't had a single organization say to us no, chris, don't you know, make our environment strategy vanilla and never share it. Basically, I'm going to give you an example like a three tier environment strategy that is not another company's IP, that is common knowledge. Common sense Like a departmental based environment strategy is the same thing. Knowing that using Google Sheets and Dropbox and the DLP is a fucking dumb idea. Right, don't do it. You can't really claim what's.

Mark Smith: 1:03:44
Yeah, so it's really what I'm seeing there is, we're extracting best practice and making it available, which is not IP, it's just the best ways of doing some things. And I see, andrew Krittin, because are you one of these ones that hate the word best practice, or?

Andrew Welch: 1:04:00
No, no, no, no, no. I was thinking when. So I'm in a CTO role now and as I've kind of worked through and gotten to know this role, I've been thinking about just mentors that I've had who have served as CTOs in the past. One of them is a fellow named Vishwas Laylee, who's the CTO at a former company of mine, and I asked him this very question one day. I said, hey, vishwas, I've got these ideas. Should I share them? Should I write about them? And he basically told me in so many words I share. I, vishwas, share almost everything, because I acknowledge that you don't have a monopoly on good ideas, basically, and you don't share it, someone else is going to share it. So when it comes to doing that with so he and that idea have been very influential with me, and one of the things that I tell organizations I work with is listen, we're not, I'm not going to give away your secrets, I'm going to anonymize, and we're going to have the judgment to know when something shouldn't be shared. But I actually think that that's a huge benefit of working with a partner is that you are. That partner is sort of like the Marco Polo of the cloud. They're collecting knowledge and they're collecting experience and they are circulating. They are circulating those best practices and those ideas throughout the entire industry. So I think that's a feature, not a bug.

Mark Smith: 1:05:37
Personally, it's interesting because it really goes back to mindsets and how you operate and this kind of. One of the things that struck me in Chris's presentation at MPPC was he was sharing stuff on screen and of the ANS experience and people were like, can we get a copy of this? And Chris was like, yeah, man, I'm happy for you to build on it, grow on it, that type of thing. Now I've been in organizations where it was like, no, we keep it all to ourselves, that's our secret sauce, we don't give it away. But in that kind of attitude and I'm seeing it more from if you're outside the big tier vendors there is much more as let's collaborate, let's all learn and let's all grow together, rather than this is our secret sauce, because there's so many ways to create secret sauce, but there's these commonalities where the entire ecosystem grows together. I mean, when I'm looking in the low code space right now and customer after customer after customer after customer that are in the enterprise space, that have bought over 50,000 seats of premium licensing right, what's their number one problem that Microsoft has with them? They're not consuming right, because nobody knows inside an organization how to create a repeatable, scalable model that encourages innovation, that encourages everybody playing. That encourages not just IT locking the fuck down on everything right. And then you see of these Lighthouse customers like Luma Technologies, like Slumberj, where it took one person to actually go. You know what I'm going to do. But there's so many companies that I'm coming across they don't know how to do it and that's not documented anywhere. There's no how to guide. There's a void of information out there of repeatability on how to scale big organizations in low code, spot on man. Most of it has got nothing to do with technology. It's got to do with mindsets, thinking. It's got to do with setting up patterns of communities inside an organization, creating environment where people can self serve and grow without there being a single choke bottleneck. Most organizations still have IT as their choke net bottleneck in their adoption of low code. Crazy stuff I've heard of, you know, admins going in and every time somebody creates a new app that is going and delete it and stuff like that and oh, that's not what we're allowing people to do and I'm just like you know. But it's a mindset thing and it's a process that I think that is missing. Not in my process, it's a thinking and a model to operate at scale inside organizations.

Andrew Welch: 1:08:37
Chris, what did I say during the panel? Something about CIOs being shit at their job. If that's how you're approaching this is the first 30 seconds of this panel that Chris and I were on at South Coast some of this past week, and if someone asked a question and I said something to the effect of yeah, that's not right, and if you're a CIO and that's how you're doing it, then you are, quite frankly, shit at your job. That is a near direct quote of myself.

Mark Smith: 1:09:13
We're dropping a lot of expletives these days, andrew, I'm concerned.

Chris Huntingford: 1:09:16

Mark, do you know what Seagull syndrome is? No, okay, andrew has Seagull syndrome. You know what he does. He's like a fucking seagull man. He flies and shits all over everything that leaves. Yeah, I love it Turned on that note, let's switch gears.

Mark Smith: 1:09:34
What are we learning at the moment? What's new? We've had a couple of hectic weeks. I'll go first. Well, you can gather your thoughts. Gartner just came out with their low code magic quadrant.

Chris Huntingford: 1:09:46
I saw that.

Mark Smith: 1:09:47
And I find it interesting because if you put Gartner and Forester against each other, I know which one. I'm showing customers, I'm showing the Forester. What I find funny right, is that these analysts, right, they are competing companies, they are funded by vendors. Right to paint them in good light, like, come on, like is it totally devoid of any money transacting? I don't know if I've said it on the show before, but when I, you know, eons ago in my career, I worked with Sun Microsystems, which of course doesn't exist anymore and I was my first exposure to analysts at a big tech event and just how they were treated like royalty. You know they were bowing scrape and you know priority seedings, the box seat, the, and I'm like, ah, I see, I see how the system works. You know you butter the right people up the right way and you get a favorable analyst report right. And when I looked at what came out with Gardner and it means quite different than Forester, I have questions.

Andrew Welch: 1:11:04
I mean, they were buttered by different folks, that's right. One of them was cream cheese and the other was butter, I don't know.

Mark Smith: 1:11:11
The thing is, companies make their decision on those charts. I've been in and they go. They make those decisions on those charts.

Andrew Welch: 1:11:19
Yeah, hey guys like us, use those charts to justify the things we're saying. We're like, don't trust us. Look at the chart here. Absolutely Not that one, Not that one. Look at this one.

Chris Huntingford: 1:11:29
Yeah, I'm thinking. The thing that's interesting, though, is that when you look at the previous years, microsoft, mendex and ArtSystems actually dropped. The reason they dropped down in the execution and the ability to execute is because, as you said, it's not a crap load of licenses, but nobody actually builds things. Mendex just shot up far right. Do you know why? They created a digital execution practice in Mendex? Okay, so there is a digital execution practice in Mendex. Thank you, jason, for sharing all this wonderful info. It's interesting because they have now done that, so they're getting adoption. They're not talking about making the thing all the time, they're talking about enablements. So when you look at the Mendex roles and actually I will run an experiment through right now when you look at the Mendex roles on LinkedIn and you go and type in the word ecosystem architect, they rebranded a whole bunch of their people to ecosystem architects Interesting.

Andrew Welch: 1:12:28
Mark, do you have the graphic of the? I mean, can you show the new magic quadrant?

Mark Smith: 1:12:35
I just tried to Google it before, but I haven't found one that shows Gartner's latest. Yeah, there's so many of these graphics, right? You don't know? Do I have the right one? I don't know that I've got the right one. No, and I don't want to probably put it on screen because, as we've seen, some people have got smacked on their hands for publicly saying stuff. Shout out to our dear friend in Finland what's his name? Yooka, yooka.

Chris Huntingford: 1:13:06
Yeah, they scolded him. Oh no, let's make something public and put it in a graph, but do not tell people that we've made something public and put it in a graph and shed it all over the internet. That's like seriously ridiculous.

Mark Smith: 1:13:20
What were you going to add, Andrew? Were you going to add something to?

Andrew Welch: 1:13:23
I'm trying to think of where.

Mark Smith: 1:13:26
I was oh yeah.

Ana Demeny: 1:13:27
I was just going to say that listen.

Andrew Welch: 1:13:29
We, this crowd, we all work in the Microsoft landscape, so I think that we have lots of good things to say about Microsoft. But I do think that and I'm not up to speed on what Chris just said kind of the change that Mendix has made. But if it's half as good as what Chris says, then good for Mendix. Right. This is a mistake. I think that Microsoft does make right where you have Microsoft sellers who are often loading customers up with premium licenses that don't have the level of follow-through that is needed and the customer has to go out to a partner and get the partner engaged and I think that when the customer is where that works, it works very well. But I do think I mean this has been a long-standing problem with Power Platform specifically. Right is getting, as Mark you said, getting those things consumed and I think it's really improving. But advice to Microsoft you need to continue to invest here.

Mark Smith: 1:14:38
It's hard. Yeah, there's a lot involved, right? Can you see the screen I'm sharing now, which was another interesting thing that did come out of Gartner this week, which was the Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024 that they see coming, and I just thought you know no surprise that security trust is top and center. I don't know in Europe, but you know in A&Z we've had a whole bunch of ransomware attacks that have been in the extreme. In other words, one organization decided that they were going to take the ransomware people on and call their bluff and they leaked out to the market thousands and thousands of medical records and IDs. People had to go and have their passports replaced, driver's license, all sorts of things, and that's why I called. You know that neighborhood where stuff's sitting on sands. Oh, we got on a sand, it's fine. You know we got on a network share, you know it's fine. We'll, and you know, in that scenario I'm not going to mention the company name, but they had been in there for months harvesting. It wasn't all of a sudden, oh, we've had a data breach. It wasn't till they were told, by the way, people we have all your shit, pay up some money and they there was a whole publishing of all the conversations that went on with the ransomware people and they were really like, hey, listen, at the end of the day we are business people doing what we're doing, like hacking your systems. You got to think that we're looking at it from that perspective. This is not just us being you know some script kitties or something like that, this is our business. We go in like don't call our bluff, don't think we're not going to execute and follow through. And man it's, but it shows the exposure to so many. You know. For me, I'm like Excel in most organizations is probably the biggest risk factor because it's a share file on a network. Access databases mean. The amount of enterprises that these are still prevalent in is just mind blowing, and you know what? And then I've spoken with enterprises that said, man, our security is so solid there's no way we would.

Andrew Welch: 1:17:03
And I'm like, oh my gosh famous last words, right, right, but even if it is, don't say that yeah, Don't yeah you curse yourself yeah.

Mark Smith: 1:17:14
I find it interesting around sustainability. I don't know if you saw in the last 24 hours, the EU have come out that they're going to delay their new ECG requirements enforcement around sustainability, which I think is interesting, being that it was incredibly onerous on organizations and what they had to meet by what deadline, and so they've apparently pushed it out two years my understanding, which is going to be a psi of relief for a lot of people, but I think that there's a, you know, a come to Jesus moment for a lot of orgs that have realized they are so not far from compliance. It's the job to get. There was a lot more because when you look at the three tiers of the three levels that are required in there, one of the levels are 100% outside your control, which is all your suppliers and that you know party or supply chain, and where do they sit from a sustainability perspective, and no organization right now, or very few, can hand on, you know, provide the data that shows their entire supply chains. Sustainability are compliance and I think that's why perhaps I've moved it out two years, because I realize the work to get there is massive.

Andrew Welch: 1:18:34
This is something that HSO has been working on right. It's a data platform proposition around ESG data specifically. I think we'll probably see more partners and more technology vendors jumping into that. But listen, for most people, the reprieve is very welcome, I think.

Mark Smith: 1:18:59
What else? What has else been on your radar? What's new happening surprising?

Andrew Welch: 1:19:04
I have been so buried in this house move slash the previous house flooding that this has been a couple of weeks for just getting things done. So I'm not the guy to ask here. I've relearned. It's awful.

Mark Smith: 1:19:24
Yeah, I had one, one benefit this week that I in fact I'll show you to illustrate the point, just because I can at the moment why security can right now live feeding from my property and this vehicle I put into, get some rust taken out a year and a half ago and only got it back this week. It's been that long for them to you imagine living with one vehicle in a real location, like I am, and but it's pretty smick and it'll last me another 10 years. It's a collector's edition. The problem with it I haven't taken off the property since is that it's the highest. It's the number one stolen vehicle according to IAG insurance in my region, because it's old school and it's a vehicle that just keeps going.

Andrew Welch: 1:20:22
That says a lot about your region and that is the number one stolen vehicle.

Mark Smith: 1:20:27
Yeah, it's a pretty. It's a pretty popular set of wheels. It's a pretty popular set of wheels. So that's a bit of I mean over a year for me to finally get my my wheels back, but I'm happy that I have it.

Andrew Welch: 1:20:39
Nice Congrats.

Chris Huntingford: 1:20:40
That is cool. Yeah, very glad, dude, because that's a pain in the arse.

Mark Smith: 1:20:45
Yeah, definitely Okay. I suppose we're wrapped, we're finished with conferences for the year, have we?

Chris Huntingford: 1:20:54
Dude, I'm. No, I have one more.

Andrew Welch: 1:20:56
I've got some more.

Chris Huntingford: 1:20:58
Yeah, definitely got some more man. I'm going to ESPC in Amsterdam, Woo, European Shepherd Conference. Yeah, we're running a copilot in the bay.

Andrew Welch: 1:21:08
And they know about your, your.

Chris Huntingford: 1:21:10
I know exactly what you're going to say, whatever you're thinking.

Mark Smith: 1:21:16
absolutely what's he thinking?

Chris Huntingford: 1:21:18
Mate. He's thinking I'm going to go and destroy the place and get lost in Amsterdam and never return.

Mark Smith: 1:21:23
I could never imagine you doing something like that man.

Chris Huntingford: 1:21:26
I was working for a company once. It's super out of character. I don't know what he's talking about. I was working for a company once and I got invited to one of the conferences in Amsterdam and my boss was like no, you will die. I'm like no word, bro, you got to remember. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me.

Mark Smith: 1:21:46
I love it. It's so good. Is any birthdays coming up this week?

Chris Huntingford: 1:21:53
Mine's next week. Next week I've got my, my, my get together on Friday, which is going to be intense.

Mark Smith: 1:22:01
Is that code for piss up?

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:03
No, bro, I don't drink. Oh yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean I'm. My actual birthday is on the 27th.

Mark Smith: 1:22:12
How old are you going to be, mate?

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:14
I'm turning 40.

Mark Smith: 1:22:16
Wow, shit. 40. 40. Mate, I'm still a year or two off from 40.

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:24
Yeah, I'm sure You're the one I strive to be like Mark.

Andrew Welch: 1:22:32
It says the guy who worked for Sun Microsystems.

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:35
Yeah, Sun Microsystems. It was like the second MVP ever.

Mark Smith: 1:22:38
You know what they say Life begins at 40. Yeah, I've heard that song a couple of times you wonder why you feel so naughty.

Andrew Welch: 1:22:47
Yeah.

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:49
One of my pals said it to me on the weekend, I was like, yeah, I know.

Mark Smith: 1:22:53
What Really 40 is? What? The new 30? The new 25?

Chris Huntingford: 1:22:57
Yeah, bro, when I was 25, man, I was like scrapping around for cash, couldn't, couldn't figure out how to get my car working. You know working some like shitty network admin job. So not saying that that's bad now, but I promise you back then in South Africa it was not easy.

Mark Smith: 1:23:18
It is nice of the money you make. The older you get right, as in the things that I've thought of like oh my gosh, you still really worry about money in that respect and you can't imagine you know what you would earn now back then. But yeah, it's nice the way life goes.

Chris Huntingford: 1:23:33
Let me tell you something If I earned now, back then at the age of 25, I would be dead.

Mark Smith: 1:23:38
Yeah 100%.

Chris Huntingford: 1:23:41
Yeah, I'll be in Samoa somewhere.

Mark Smith: 1:23:43
Samoa yeah, that's a weird location. That's very specific.

Andrew Welch: 1:23:48
Yeah.

Chris Huntingford: 1:23:51
I would have started a hut building business with a dodge crew in Samoa and a small crayfish company that would have then gone bankrupt because I spent all my time building huts and my huts would be terrible. Yeah, I mean, I could carry on, man, this whole thing's okay.

Andrew Welch: 1:24:06
This is incredibly specific. Yeah, this is incredibly specific.

Chris Huntingford: 1:24:11
I love it. Oh yeah, yeah, dude, I would have a straw hat and I probably like that guy Monkey D Luffy from One Piece, the cartoon series, and it would be incredibly steady all the time. But my hut building business will then tank and I would have to stop my crayfish building business again in Samoa with the zest to travel to Croatia.

Mark Smith: 1:24:35
Let's wrap it up for the week and Mr Darrington sends his apologies. He wish he was here, but he has been literally smashed with workloads at the moment. We expect him back on the next one. You notice Anna had to drop off early because of family time, which is fantastic. I bet you, andrew, is missing her. That's right, andrew. Right, you are missing her.

Andrew Welch: 1:25:02
I am going to meet her tomorrow. For tonight, I continue to unpack that Nice.

Mark Smith: 1:25:07
You know something that caught me out this week. I finally posted the audio version of their first show, Nice. Anna Demney Darrington doesn't exist anymore on LinkedIn.

Andrew Welch: 1:25:19
No, it does not.

Mark Smith: 1:25:20
She did a very patriarchy thing of taking your name, I see.

Andrew Welch: 1:25:25
We discussed this a lot and my attitude is no expectation of name taking, but very welcome. I'm very happy to share Our daughter Alexandra Jennifer Welch. I think Anna wanted us all to have the same last name Nice.

Mark Smith: 1:25:46
Very good. Well, sirs, thank you very much. We'll see you on the next loop. Yeah, thanks, ditch Bye guys, ciao, ciao. 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 would like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out bymiacoffeecom. Forward slash NZ365 guy. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.