Unravelling the Future of Technology with Kevin Bloch - Part 1

In this episode of Securely Connected Everything, host Michael van Rooyen (MVR) engages in a dynamic discussion with Kevin Bloch, former CTO for Australia and New Zealand at Cisco and founder of Bloch Advisory. The conversation delves into Bloch's transition from a corporate role to running his own advisory firm, shedding light on the motivations driving this shift. With insights gained from over two decades in the tech sector, Bloch offers valuable perspectives on the current technological landscape and emerging market trends.

Bloch emphasizes the importance of understanding and leveraging new technologies across various industries, highlighting the ubiquitous impact of technological advancements. From cybersecurity to managed services, Bloch identifies recurring themes and investment opportunities, drawing on his extensive experience working with startups and established enterprises alike. He emphasizes the critical role of strategic planning in navigating the evolving tech landscape, stressing the need for businesses to leverage tools like AI and cloud computing to stay ahead.

Throughout the conversation, Bloch and van Rooyen explore the intersection of technology and strategy, touching on topics such as prompt engineering, skill shortages, and the evolving role of hardware in cloud computing. They discuss the imperative for organizations to adapt and innovate in response to technological advancements, underscoring the importance of staying abreast of emerging trends to remain competitive in today's rapidly evolving market.

Transcript

Kevin Bloch: 0:00

Let's say you want to be in psychology, or if you want to be an artist. I think it's still important to understand what this new technology can mean in your particular chosen field, because there's no doubt it's going to impact everything. You know, I can't think of any profession that is not going to impact.

Michael van Rooyen: 0:18

In a world where every device is communicating, we're no longer concerned only with connection, but protection. Welcome to Securely Connected Everything, your gateway to understanding the intertwined worlds of connectivity and security. We have a great conversation today, so stick around and we'll jump right in. Today, I'm joined by Kevin Bloch from Bloch Advisory. Kevin is the previous CTO for Australia, New Zealand, of Cisco, and today we're going to talk about all things technology, strategy and what's happening in the market. Welcome, kevin.

Kevin Bloch: 0:56

Thanks, MVR Michael and thank you. Orro and congratulations firstly to you. Thank you For being promoted to CTO and congratulations to Orro, who's really kicking some goals in the market. Thank you very much.

Michael van Rooyen: 1:09

Thank you for those who obviously a lot of people in the industry truly know you, but those new listeners or may have not come across your work. Do you mind spending a couple of minutes just walking, working through your transition from being the CTO for ANZ, for Cisco, which I believe you did for many, many years, to running your own advisory organisation, and what motivated the shift?

Kevin Bloch: 1:35

Okay, well, thanks for the question. 21 years at Cisco 21 years in any company is a long time, a very long time, especially at my stage of life, and I'm a big believer in synchronising your personal life with your work life. And so for me, as CTO too, after 21 years, I thought you know getting a bit frustrated with the corporate world. I've been in it for nearly 40 years, well, and I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to pursue. Plus, at the time, I wasn't that enamoured with some of the things that were happening inside the company. Okay, I will, however, say Cisco is still one of the greatest places to work, and I say that not gratuitously. They work on it, have worked on it from all the time I was there, and they deserve all the credit that they do get for being a great place to work. But again, for me personally, it was a time for me to make that call. My biggest fear was it was such a good job, what else am I going to do? That's going to be as good as that, sure, and I didn't know. And I decided, look, I'll just dive in. And I pulled back, and I actually didn't just sat there, you know spending a bit of time. Cisco again was great to me. They paid me for a bit longer because it was just when COVID had happened, which made me sort of have a second thought about it.

Kevin Bloch: 3:01

And people started coming out of the woodwork hey, kev, what are you doing? And I'm asking them what they're doing. And pretty much we narrowed down and so I established Bloch Advisory and essentially it's a technology advisory firm doing pretty much what I was doing at Cisco, except doing it for a lot of others, so virtual CTO, helping basically do anything. Some people call it polymath, some people call it a heptathlete, I don't know what you call it, but Cisco and some of my previous employee employers was a great training ground for me, right, if I didn't learn a few things from that time with them, then I'd be a bit silly. Yes, and I did. And so I've been since then engaged with startups here in the US, all the way through to publicly listed companies typically building technology. I've been engaged with telcos, the big names that you know here, our government and some enterprise clients as well. So it's kept me pretty busy for the last three years and it's been a lot of fun. I'm really really, really enjoying, enjoying yourself.

Michael van Rooyen: 4:07

Yeah, that's great. That's great, it's good. I mean, the good news is that you've been kind of taking the same fundamentals you already knew, expanding it across a broad industry. It must be some exciting startups and really what I'm keen to hear from you today is you know your time in the tech sector across many jobs over the time and now dealing with startups and new tech, et cetera. What are you seeing as some of the recurring themes that people are investing in or lessons that are shaping your perspective on technology investments?

Kevin Bloch: 4:37

Let's start with. I guess the first thing that I found, you know, stepping out of Cisco into the world Especially, I thought, with startups was, let's just say, they're selling. Prowess need a lot to be desired. So there was a lot of work to be done and still is to be done and I'll speak about Australia, but the same applies elsewhere where they may have good product and technology but they're a little bit bereft of how to sell Right. And if there's one thing I can say about Cisco, it's a selling machine, Absolutely. They really teach and put their money where their mouth is.

Kevin Bloch: 5:18

And they might sometimes not have the best products and yet they continue to hit their numbers. So I learned a lot from that and I've sort of been spreading that around into some of the startups. But then what I found was a lot of the companies needed help, and even larger companies with their strategic direction. So I've been like you have in many, many strategy sessions two, three days you're on writing 400 pages of slides which the day after nobody ever looks at it Correct. So I decided to compress all that knowledge in terms of what's worked into, and so I've been also doing a lot of strategic planning for small and large companies. So that's kind of more on the non technology side. It's just more on what I've learned about running small companies, large companies and in particular, those companies who are either building technology or selling services based on technology platforms. Yes, and I think the the market opportunity for that is huge.

Kevin Bloch: 6:22

Absolutely you know I'm here to tell you how very busy have been, busy, still busy, and it keeps giving. So it's a fascinating world.

Michael van Rooyen: 6:30

It would be. And out of the ones you are engaging with, kevin, both in country and externally, are there the common themes about what they're chasing? Is it you know?

Kevin Bloch: 6:41

Yeah. So it was kind of interesting because I didn't sort of say, hey, you know, I just I did build a website and then spoke to people, but there was a trend, and the trend three years ago was almost half of my clients were in cyber security, so it was sizzling hot. I mean, cyber is not getting better, it's actually getting worse and it's getting, you know, the actors are getting smarter and it's actually a shocking state of affairs. So, clearly, demand for mitigating risk is gonna only escalate and has escalated. I'm here to tell you that's where most of my clients have been. So that was the first one I would suggest, but then I think probably the second theme is around managed services.

Kevin Bloch: 7:27

Lots of opportunity for companies like Orro to succeed, but I've also seen some really fail badly, and that's been again another fun place, because I spend most of my life in.

Kevin Bloch: 7:39

You know how do you deliver managed services, how do you make profit out of it, and things have changed there a lot as well. You know, if you look at cyber security, for example, a lot of the themes nowadays are, first of all, around cloud, cyber in the cloud, secondly about automation, and probably now the big one is GenAI. And what do you do with the billions of you know bytes of data that you're getting out of the network, telling you stuff, and just you know? Siem and SOAR is not sufficient any longer. I think we've kind of stepped over that now, and so a lot of the companies nearly every technology company now, is really looking at AI and how to leverage it, and so that's now become a pretty big part of my life and a big theme, if I can put it that way, and that's not just software, it's hardware as well, and I think I highlighted that in one of my newsletters a couple of months ago. I told them it's not just about the software anymore. Hardware is a very, very important component in all of this.

Michael van Rooyen: 8:47

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because people went through the hardware first and then software, but the blend of the two are so important, right, and there's so much happening in that space. You know, micronization, still of power. You know, I think Nvidia is a really interesting organization for what they're doing in relation to digital twinning and all these bespoke companies that people don't commonly see, and I see that trajectory happening that way and, of course, a lot of discussion this year around GenOIA and the Gartner Conference Racing. They talked a lot about that was kind of the fundamental discussion all around what to do. If you're not in it, you're gonna get eaten.

Kevin Bloch: 9:24

So well, I think you know some, some people are even calling it cloud 2.0. Yes, where we're having to reimagine the data center as in the cloud, and there's some really interesting things going on here, besides just the sheer demand for Nvidia chips, yes, which is which is out of control, which is why they hit a trillion dollars, yes, not so long ago, and there's good reason for that now. But but it's the waves of that are now spreading to. I think. Google, microsoft have already proven themselves. Google with deep mind and acquisition some time ago. Microsoft with its 10 billion investment in open AI. I mean, these are really clear statements of of of intent.

Kevin Bloch: 10:07

Now, where's Amazon and all of this? Well, guess what? They just announced a four billion dollar investment in Anthropic Right, which is really interesting because just over a year ago, google put 200 odd million for less than 10 percent. Then a few like. A couple of weeks ago, amazon, in catch up phase, said we'll put four billion and guess what happened? Two days later, google came back with another two billion Wow Valuing them at two, what's a 20 to 30 billion dollars.

Kevin Bloch: 10:36

This is amazing, right so? And what's going on here is is the whole sort of landscape for cloud is changing Definitely, and I think net and Nvidia set the pace. By the way, nvidia isn't just hardware, it isn't just software.

Michael van Rooyen: 10:50

They've actually got cloud. As well. Yes, they do. They do A lot of people. You know what? One of my favorites annual you know key notes is to listen to the Nvidia, nvidia CEO founder.

Kevin Bloch: 11:02

It's quite an amazing story when you look at the things that do, is I mean?

Michael van Rooyen: 11:05

even the driving cars. You know what they do with the auto manufacturers. It's a brilliant, brilliant. You might, you might appreciate this. I always see him in his leather jacket. He was presented in the jacket and I do always vision the gentleman from Terminator who created the chip to create the robots. Right, yeah, kind of draw that parallel.

Kevin Bloch: 11:22

Yeah, I saw him speaking not so long ago. It was really interesting because he's a Chinese, you know origin, yes, but basically built his whole business and almost his life in the US, yes, and speaking in Taiwan, yes.

Michael van Rooyen: 11:36

Think about the geopolitics around that one. Absolutely. That was interesting, Very, very and I think I saw that as well.

Kevin Bloch: 11:42

And he changes into Chinese every now and again, and then he goes back into English.

Michael van Rooyen: 11:46

He's a fascinating individual. He's very, very fascinating, very fascinating.

Kevin Bloch: 11:50

By the way, the other thing, too, that I guess people sometimes don't appreciate is that, because they think of video, it's all about GPUs and the chips, and they're going there 100, etc. But don't underestimate CUDA. Yes, they're software. Yes, they're development software. Yes, they've got over four million developers today running. You know who know how to use CUDA. So that's CUDA, right, yes, yes. So the interesting thing there is again they are some yards, if not miles, ahead of a lot of other people, and that set the pace. I think they've actually set the place, and not just for AI, but for cloud, cloud 2.0.

Michael van Rooyen: 12:25

Yes, 100% agree with you. You know it's interesting how quickly you've seen a no doubt a lot of hockey sticks in your time, right with adoption, and just seeing I was reading a book the other day. You probably know the statistic. You know five days to get to whatever 100 million users or whatever the number was of AI or chat GPDs is phenomenal. How do you see that playing out with skill shortage?

Kevin Bloch: 12:48

you know, because it's different tactic, right, it's an interesting question because, on the one hand, you know, the new programming language is English. That's true. That's true, everybody can program.

Michael van Rooyen: 13:02

Yes.

Kevin Bloch: 13:04

And if you look at what Microsoft's just announced with Copilot, it is amazing. You can put some numbers in, generate a spreadsheet and say so what? And it'll pop out of graph and you've done nothing right. You just spoken to it. It's amazing. So, on the one hand, it will make a lot of jobs easier. Yes, and quicker and faster and improve productivity, but on the other hand, I always use the sort of lawyer intern.

Kevin Bloch: 13:31

It's going to wipe them out. What do you need? A legal intern? Yes, chat, gpd is going to do it far quicker.

Michael van Rooyen: 13:37

Yes, and more accurate.

Kevin Bloch: 13:39

So I think there's going to be winners and losers, and I think the key thing is I've always said this you know, whether you've got kids at school, whether it's you and you're looking at your career is, let's say, you want to be in psychology, or if you want to be an artist, I think it's still important to understand what this new technology can mean in your particular chosen field, because there's no doubt it's going to impact everything.

Kevin Bloch: 14:05

You know, I can't think of any profession that is not going to impact. So I'm not saying you shouldn't be a psychologist. I'm saying, if you want to do psychology, think about how some of these tools will enable you to be a better psychologist, because a lot of what was done in the past is no longer necessary. And rinse and repeat for law, rinse and repeat for CTOs doesn't really matter.

Michael van Rooyen: 14:29

That could be the same thing, and you do touch on a good point there. People who get grasped their head around. It's actually a supplement or a complementary service to yourself. Fundamentally, it's going to really enhance it, and I can't remember the four quadrants. Gartner at the symposium recently talked about AI, of course, in detail, and they talked about exactly this front of office top services. They're broken into two categories and then there's a back. So it was interesting how they even seeing the market turn that way in relation to adoption of AI.

Kevin Bloch: 14:56

Yeah, I think there's a counter-member to quote exactly. But it's not always the answers that count, it's knowing what the right question is. That's right. And you know we've got these tools now and you know there's a lot of discussion around prompt engineering etc. And I think that's really where the front of the market's got to be, because we've now got these tools, in most cases, got the data, we've got the tools. What sits above that is really humans knowing which questions to ask of the tools.

Kevin Bloch: 15:29

so that they can get the answers to the questions right or to the problems, and I think that's where. So, if we look at anything let's take cybersecurity Nowadays, we'll know what these tools are. The question is what do you want those tools to do? Yes, how do you prompt them? How do you set them up so that you're making life easier, not harder? Yes, you are going to remove jobs. Yes, remove FTEs, of course you will. Of course, but then it will generate more jobs in other areas, right? So I think that the real sharp end and I don't just think it's in the technology industry now, it's the sharp end of any business, and that is how do you leverage these tools?

Michael van Rooyen: 16:10

Yes.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:11

To enable your business and to be more productive 100% agree with you, and you touched on prompt engineering, which we're just going to mention as well. It's amazing how a number of years ago that wording wasn't existent and I hadn't thought about it. But you've called that a very good point, which is we're back to English. Right, I mean, english is long as you know how to structure your query properly. There's enough documentation to show that if you ask the question properly, the outcomes is phenomenal, do you see? We had a chat to Juniper Mist, which is quite an interesting acquisition if you look at the history coming out of Cisco and all that sort of stuff and their drive from Bob Friday and stuff to really adopt Bob Friday.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:46

I know very well, I bet you do, I bet you do.

Kevin Bloch: 16:47

Great guy.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:48

He's done very well. He has, and you know, looking at their strategy and really driving that kind of chapeau early into it, did you really see from what you're seeing more vendors doing that? Yeah?

Kevin Bloch: 17:00

I mean clearly the leaders are. You know, as I've written up in this newsletter, you know there's a top sort of five that I've got here, you know Microsoft, openai, google DeepMind, tesla, xai which is spun out. Metametaai and Nvidia, which we've spoken about. So those are the leaders, right? What about people below that? You know, the Junipers, the Cisco's, Dell, a whole bunch of them. I think that's scrambling. Yes, I think there's a skill shortage here in terms of good people who know what to do about this.

Michael van Rooyen: 17:32

Yes.

Kevin Bloch: 17:33

I mean we can all have, you know, petty pithy little conversations. Oh, you know, chat, gpt is wonderful and all this stuff. But if you're a big corporation and you've got to grow at 10% and you're already doing billions, making a difference on that is hard. Yes, so you know, finding the right people to build the right product. So if you take a look at Splunk, which Cisco just acquired for $28. Good acquisition, but I question whether the two combined have got. I mean, you know, cisco Solid Company, splunk Solid Company, but Splunk had its heyday in Siemensaw, which we kind of already passed.

Kevin Bloch: 18:15

So, the big question mark on that acquisition. I'm not saying it was good or bad. I'm saying the question mark is going to be whether, combined, Cisco and Splunk can put together the tool set on top of whatever they've done in the past to make it easier for people to protect their infrastructure to lower risk.

Kevin Bloch: 18:35

So I think the jury's out on that and I think that's going to be the big question for most companies. It's going to be the big question for banks, for governments, for any business, because if you don't leverage these tools, you're going to get left behind 100%, big time, 100%. So, yeah, and it's up to us, you know, in the industry, to really communicate that and say you know, these tools are now available and, by the way, it's going to probably wipe out a lot of services that the oros might have given in the past, because people can just do it themselves Correct, correct and we just that. That's why we're kind of talking about this to highlight and put a spotlight on, you know, what is going to happen in the next three years, and if you think this is going to happen to you, do something about it or get out of the way, correct, and that's exactly what's going to happen, right, and you do touch again another good point from an arrow point of view.

Michael van Rooyen: 19:22

You're like all technology organizations we've really assessed that and obviously familiar with their OTC platform. We're doing quite a lot of work and development in that because, realistically, as you say, people are going to be doing it from somewhere somehow and we want to be able to you know, augment our service with some of these services, right, how we're spending a lot of time and effort to automate, improve, building integrations into some of the stuff. For that exact reason, right, and it's going to be expected by customers as well.