Transforming the Academic Experience with Apporto's Cutting-Edge Cloud Service
Mar 19, 2024
Evan Kirstel
Discover a world where students can harness the power of high-end software from the palm of their hands, no matter where they are. On our latest episode, we sit down with Anthony from apporto, a visionary in cloud desktop technology, who's carving a new path in virtualization for the hybrid work era. Anthony takes us on a journey through the inception of apporto, the company's strategic alliances with higher education institutions, and how they're revolutionizing remote access to applications—making educational technology not only accessible but also secure and cost-effective.
We also tackle the elephant in the room—cybersecurity. With Anthony's expertise, we uncover how apporto's browser-based virtual desktops are a bulwark against malware, negating the need for risky client installations that have traditionally left organizations vulnerable. As we delve into the architecture of their innovative service, Anthony illuminates the significant financial advantage apporto offers universities by sidestepping the hefty price tag of extensive hardware. Prepare to be enlightened as we explore how this game-changing approach is reshaping the landscape of educational tech.
Discover a world where students can harness the power of high-end software from the palm of their hands, no matter where they are. On our latest episode, we sit down with Anthony from apporto, a visionary in cloud desktop technology, who's carving a new path in virtualization for the hybrid work era. Anthony takes us on a journey through the inception of apporto, the company's strategic alliances with higher education institutions, and how they're revolutionizing remote access to applications—making educational technology not only accessible but also secure and cost-effective.
We also tackle the elephant in the room—cybersecurity. With Anthony's expertise, we uncover how apporto's browser-based virtual desktops are a bulwark against malware, negating the need for risky client installations that have traditionally left organizations vulnerable. As we delve into the architecture of their innovative service, Anthony illuminates the significant financial advantage apporto offers universities by sidestepping the hefty price tag of extensive hardware. Prepare to be enlightened as we explore how this game-changing approach is reshaping the landscape of educational tech.
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Speaker 1:
Hey, everyone, super excited for this chat today with a Porto who are reinventing the cloud desktop space. Anthony, how are you?
Speaker 2:
I'm doing great. Thank you, Evan. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:
I'm doing good Spring here in Boston. I see your sunny Palo Alto. It's where it's always summer, but really excited to have you on today. You're doing some very innovative work evolving the needs of the network to this new hybrid work environment and I have lots of questions on that. Before that, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and your current mission at a Porto.
Speaker 2:
Yes, thank you, evan. So about 10 years ago, as you mentioned, we were started in Palo Alto and we started talking to local universities like Stanford. Ucla is not exactly local, but anyway, we started talking to universities to understand their needs when it comes to virtualization and they told us that, though there were virtualization solutions out there obviously there are some big names in the space none of them were focused on the specific needs of higher education. So we decided that that was an interesting challenge. So we started writing code and we must have been lucky or smart, but now we have some 250 universities around the country, around North America and a smaller number, obviously, in the UK, who are using our service.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that's a fantastic accomplishment. What was it about their environment that was so differentiated or unique that legacy or current solutions weren't able to meet that need?
Speaker 2:
That's a really good question.
Speaker 2:
So the whole thing about virtual desktop is about privacy.
Speaker 2:
The reason customers embrace environments like Citrix and VMware is to enable a very private use of data, but in higher education the use case was very different. It was not so much about privacy as much as it was about enabling students to remotely access the applications that they needed, in the sense that in a traditional computer lab environment you have to have the students. To take the example of UCLA, drive to the campus, which, as you know, happens to be in a very busy part of town, find a parking spot, find an empty seat in the computer lab, use the application, drive home and maybe that made sense in the 20th century, but in the 21st century it didn't make a lot of sense. In the 21st century, students should be able to any device they may have, even if totally underpowered device, maybe even a Chromebook, if that's what they got when they were in high school point a browser to a port to, through that browser, access the applications they need, even 3D applications like AutoCAD or SolidWorks or Adobe, and go about their business.
Speaker 1:
Well, it's pretty simple but compelling proposition there. I guess the flip side of the coin there is cybersecurity. How did you address some of the concerns those institutions had? What's your philosophy there, as these organizations are particularly juicy targets for all kinds of security breaches? What are you doing there?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so funny.
Speaker 2:
You mentioned that Education tends to be a very prime target for bad actors everywhere.
Speaker 2:
Maybe they feel that the threshold of cybersecurity in education is lower, but what we've done there is that we deliver the virtual desktops always in the browser, and because we deliver the browser, whereas traditional solutions require that you install a client and anytime you install a client. I have a friend, for instance. He is a partner at a law firm and the entire law firm of I don't know 5,000 employees is under very strict instructions that, even though they use virtualization, they are not able to plug a USB stick in the laptop, because there has been instances where the malware travels from USB stick to the client that's running on the physical desktop to the server, and now you have some malware on the server Because we run in the browser and only in the browser. The browser provides a much more isolated environment from the operating system and therefore, from a security perspective, universities don't have to worry anymore about what do students have on their physical desktop, because we all know students are students and any malware that can be found out there, you will find it on students desktops.
Speaker 1:
Sadly so true. The other part of your value proposition is clearly total cost of ownership. You talk about the incredible savings that you offer. How do you do that? What does the environment look like, and how do you quantify that exactly with clients?
Speaker 2:
Another really good question. So in a traditional environment you would have to buy hardware to support the maximum number of users that you could have throughout the year. In a university that happens maybe two, three times a year, right At the end of the first semester, at the end of the second semester, maybe at the end of the third semester. You have a few spikes and now if you buy the hardware to support those few spikes, you have oversized hardware that's very underutilized the rest of the year. Because we're cloud native, we add capacity on the fly when there's need for more capacity, we remove that capacity when it's not needed and we're paying for the capacity when it's needed. So that enables us to save significantly over traditional environments for our customers who have those varying workloads.
Speaker 1:
Well, seems pretty obvious, but it's great to hear so. As you know better than I, the Cloud Desktop market has been around for quite a long time. It's been a long time coming I think we were at Oracle at the same time that Larry was talking about Cloud Desktop to many, many years ago. But the market has arrived, but there are still hurdles to overcome. What typically do you see as the challenges, the roadblocks, barriers to Cloud Desktop deployment?
Speaker 2:
So in my view, the two biggest impediments are the user experience and the cost, in the sense that if you take a user and tell them we're going to replace your physical desktop with a Cloud Desktop, depending on their location and depending on the network that they're using, there may be latency, in the sense that when they move the mouse there may be like 10 milliseconds, 20 milliseconds, 30 milliseconds. At a certain threshold, typically around 50 milliseconds, the user experience deteriorates, so users do not like that. So that's number one Cost. If you have an under-optimized environment in the Cloud, surprisingly it does not achieve a lot of saving over having users having their own desktop. So those are the two challenges we see out there. We believe we have resolved the first one and I'll tell you in a little bit how we've resolved that. The second one. There's still more work to be done but we've made huge progress in that area as well.
Speaker 1:
Well done. That's no small feat. How do you, as an emerging company surrounded by tech giants, how do you try to stay ahead in this evolving marketplace? You're surrounded by big tech out there in Silicon Valley. What's your secret there?
Speaker 2:
Really, we are all about customer intimacy. We cannot compete with the giants when it comes to brand recognition, but when we identify a customer segment, a segment of the market, we can very quickly turn around and deliver unique capabilities to that segment of the market, whereas it would take somebody like Amazon or Microsoft, as I'm sure you know, it's like you have a big ship to turn it around. It takes a long, long time, a lot of energy For us. We turn on a dime. We deliver the functionality that those customers need. They greatly appreciate it. We deliver great service. So it's all about customer intimacy.
Speaker 1:
Well, you make it sound so easy. If only it were behind the scenes. I'm sure there's a little more to it than that, but it's exciting. I mean, directionally, you're clearly headed in the direction the industry is following. What are some of the trends, opportunities that you're going to be riding over the next couple of years in terms of the roadmap and the business?
Speaker 2:
So during COVID. As you can imagine, we got a huge boost thanks to COVID. I'm sorry to put it in no stir but, as you can imagine, most of the.
Speaker 1:
That's a reality, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, most workplaces needed remote access to applications, to software. So obviously that you know we rode that wave. And now there's a lot of turmoil in the marketplace. I mean, I'm sure some of your listeners are reading about what's happening with VMware being acquired by Broadcom. We're hearing about customers who are seeing their bills increase. You know, threefold, fivefold, 10fold.
Speaker 2:
Citrix was acquired by a private equity company and again, you know, this morning I was reading the register and they mentioned there's a twofold price increase, the respective. You know there's a lot of turmoil there. Any time you have a private equity that's running a company, you know they look at everything through the lens of a spreadsheet and you know that can result in some dysfunctional decisions. So that's creating very significant opportunities for us. And, for that matter, we've just introduced what we call a PortoNexGen, which enables customers to swap out their traditional legacy VDI environment that they run on local hardware and swap in a Porto. And what's unique is that we're offering it at the cost of the tech support that they were paying last year. So if your last year support bill was I'm making this number up let's say $15,000, $20,000. And now you're being presented by five times, 10 times that amount. It doesn't matter. You can come to us and say this was my bill last year. We'll swap your software and we swap in our software for the price that you paid last year for tech support.
Speaker 1:
Well, it's a pretty compelling offer. Talk about the team you've built. You're a pro, you've been at this for many decades. Talk about the culture you've built and the innovation engine, and looks like you're growing as well.
Speaker 2:
Yes. So when we started we are Silicon Valley veterans, so to say and we decided that we wanted to be not run by a spreadsheet, we wanted to be run as a go-to basics company. So we're 100% employee owned. We listen very, very intently to our customers. In fact, if you look at our Gartner reviews and those are reviews that are vetted by Gartner before they're published on their website 100% of our customers recommend our service. So, again, customer intimacy is core to it being able to turn on a dime, and some of the secret software is that we've used the latest and greatest technology. So we use containers, we use Kubernetes and microservices, and this enables us to add functionality very, very rapidly and respond to emerging customer needs very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:
Oh, very exciting. It sounds like you're A little bit of the best kept secret out there in some industries. Maybe healthcare and others could really use your technology. A lot of challenges there. What are you excited about over the next couple of months as we head into the spring Busy event season? Lots of travel. What's on your agenda?
Speaker 2:
Just responding to all these customers that are coming and telling us you know we can't afford our legacy solutions new price. Can you help out? I think if we respond to those guys in a timely and effective manner, that's another great way for us that we can write and to the satisfaction of those customers, and obviously it will make our company an even more valuable, bigger company.
Speaker 1:
Wow, onwards and upwards. Congrats to all the success. Thank you, I notice you went to MIT. Do you make it back on alumni trips or do you get back to Cambridge?
Speaker 2:
anytime I do get back to Cambridge. I try to go back to Cambridge in the summer. I spent a couple of years at MIT and I must say I enjoyed Boston very, very much, the weather not so much, which is why I settled in Northern California.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, otherwise known as Paradise. Weather wise. But yeah, maybe I'll catch you on one of your next trips over to Massachusetts and we'll grab a beer on the North Shore, but we'll grab a beer in Kendall Square. So congratulations on all the success and continued success. Take care, anthony. Thank you, evan. Bye-bye. Thanks for watching everyone. Bye-bye.