Heads in the Cloud: Strategies for Continuous Improvement and Competitive Edge

Unlock the full potential of cloud services and shatter the myth that migration is a one-and-done deal as MVR sits down for an enlightening chat with Jonathan Plaskow and Nathan Wright. We delve into the dynamic landscape of cloud technology, where businesses must stay ahead of the curve or risk being left behind. Our guests, with their extensive backgrounds in cloud services and IT security, shed light on why continual upgrades and a robust strategy are essential for staying competitive.

Throughout the conversation, we unpack the complexities surrounding cloud adoption, revealing that the promise of cost savings is just the tip of the iceberg. Performance and compliance are the real game-changers here. By listening to our experts, you'll gain a fresh perspective on how a meticulously planned single-cloud strategy can sometimes outperform a multi-cloud setup. The strategic acquisition of NW Computing by Orro is also on the table, showcasing how such moves can significantly boost a company's capabilities in cloud enablement.

As we wrap up this insightful episode, we emphasize the need for a foolproof cloud strategy, one that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to your digital transformation. Guests, Nathan and JP, highlight the importance of selecting a knowledgeable partner to navigate the intricate web of cloud services, networking, and security. Join us for this critical discussion that could reshape your approach to cloud computing and safeguard your company's future in the digital domain.

Transcript

Nathan Wright: 0:00

They could have 100% of their workloads in the cloud. Very often they will have 100% of their workloads in the cloud and that's where, as JP has alluded to, they'll say oh no, we've moved to cloud.

Jonathan Plaskow: 0:08

We're done.

Nathan Wright: 0:09

But that's an elogist to someone saying we've done IT security, it's done, we're secure, we've done it. And certainly anyone in IT security hopefully anyone in IT will say well, no, you've done what you need to six months ago and the landscape has changed fundamentally.

Michael van Rooyen: 0:27

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. In today's discussion, we are catching up with the director of cloud at Orro, Jonathan Plaskow, known as JP. I'm also very excited to be joined by Nathan Wright from NW Computing, our latest acquisition into our cloud business. Gentlemen, welcome.

Jonathan Plaskow: 1:06

Absolutely. I'm really excited that you're here, nathan. It's been a bit of a journey for Orro over the last number of probably the last two years. We've been developing out a Microsoft practice and we actually felt that NW was a great fit for our organization. So thank you for coming on board. We're excited that you're here, thank you. Excited that your team's here.

Nathan Wright: 1:27

Excited to be here and excited to be part of the Orro group Great.

Michael van Rooyen: 1:31

Well, again, welcome from myself as well. For the listeners who don't know either of you, could you give us I'll start with JP first, and Nathan, you probably have a bit of a longer story. Start with a bit of a glimpse of your journey, what led you to be director of cloud services and your role today.

Jonathan Plaskow: 1:49

Absolutely so. There's no hidden secret, but I started in the UK. I've been in Australia now for 20 years, so my career started in the mid 90s, having studied a computing degree in university and actually what was interesting is that I started working on a number of customers who had to extend shared computing, and that probably was the precursor to clouds. It wasn't as sophisticated as cloud is today there's a lot of green screens going on but it was definitely a precursor to allowing organizations to benefit from well get the scale benefits of a shared environment. Rolling on, I don't know 25 years or so, unfortunately. Here I am at Orro looking after the cloud services. So over the last I would say 10 to 15 years, I have been in the managed services market. Previously I was a COO of an organization that focused on managed services to banks across Australia, and today Orro we focus very much and very much in the cloud business on retail, finance, logistics and staffing organizations.

Nathan Wright: 3:02

So that's a bit about my journey.

Jonathan Plaskow: 3:04

No worries.

Nathan Wright: 3:04

Nathan, you've beaten me by 10 years or so. I have a mere 15 years. So NW computing I started NW computing in Melbourne from about 2008. And so initially very pre-standard managed services, but then focused very much on cloud. So that was as cloud was coming to Australia. Aws opened in Sydney in 2012. Microsoft opened Azure regions in Sydney and Melbourne in 2014. And so the business was really focused on cloud from day one.

Nathan Wright: 3:40

As JP said, the precursor to cloud gave opportunities for businesses to use scale and cloud certainly just accelerated that. So there are certainly a lot fewer options with cloud than there are now, but from the start, looking at how Australian businesses could take advantage of cloud and how we could support that. So it was originally just me in Melbourne. I used we when it was me. But the team grew over the years and we opened up in Sydney, in Brisbane, in Gold Coast, in Cairns, in Darwin, in Perth, so certainly expanded, but always with that focus on cloud.

Nathan Wright: 4:15

So certainly a lot of MSPs have cloud as a portion of what they do, whereas for us it is what we do and everything else essentially supports that ability for organizations to use cloud more efficiently, more compliant, more securely. And so, as we've grown. We're a team of about 60, now 65. And we've been looking at how we can expand those capabilities. We know we do cloud exceptionally well. We're one of the leaders in Australia in the Microsoft Azure space with certifications, with customer references, with what we're achieving. But we've been looking at how we can expand that capability really. And so when we started talking to Orro, that was that exciting opportunity that we were looking for, that Orro's expertise in security in networks and in what you're doing.

Nathan Wright: 5:02

cloud already was a really good fit for what we do, and what I'm most excited about is that it will let us focus on what we know we do really, really well, which is cloud enablement, cloud compliance, cloud security, with the backing of the rest of the Orro group. Yeah, correct.

Jonathan Plaskow: 5:19

It's exciting for me, even when you tell that story. It's exciting for me to know that we've now got an organization as part of Orro who really understands how to bring a customer on their journey, on their cloud journey, understands Microsoft, how you can get benefits not just from the infrastructure, the service from Microsoft, but from the past piece as well, and for me that's great. That's a journey that Orro's been on. We're now realizing that journey with you guys coming on board. So, again, that's why there's a big smile on my face.

Michael van Rooyen: 5:48

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and for me as well, a welcome, most interesting look into your history. I saw on your history. You know you started on your motorbike right from what I remember, and many years later looking after customers across the country. So again, welcome, jp on that point. So that was one of the reasons for the acquisitions really to really supplement and strengthen our go-to market in those areas.

Jonathan Plaskow: 6:14

That's exactly right. I mean a training organization you can actually look at doing one or three things you can buy. Well, four things, do nothing. Or you can buy, buy, build or partner. Building yourself actually takes time and the challenge there is actually the credibility, not just with the customer base, but it's the credibility of Microsoft. So we looked in the market and there's not that many players in the market with the right standard that we needed for our customer base and for our prospects and that's why for us, the NW computing was an absolute, correct fit for us, having that Microsoft expertise as essential.

Michael van Rooyen: 6:52

Yeah great, great. And a lot of people have the word cloud, right. It can mean many things to many people, right? You kind of defined what your real key strength is, nathan, but what do you define your cloud services teams as a collective group? Now? What's the core mission and focus for customers, For our customers and any potential future customers?

Nathan Wright: 7:19

So we, I suppose, have taken a leaf out of Microsoft's book in a number of different ways, but Microsoft's vision for the last five years or so has been to empower every person and every organization around the world to do more, which is pretty cool vision.

Nathan Wright: 7:34

But the vision that we have enhanced that one that one with, I suppose is that we empower Australian organizations to do more in the cloud, and that's a pretty simple premise, but there's a lot to it and it involves a lot of different moving pieces.

Nathan Wright: 7:50

You mentioned before JP about IaaS versus the other components of cloud, and certainly I think that was something that I hadn't realized for quite a while was how much some organizations are not using the cloud technologies that are there for them, because it's what we play in every day.

Nathan Wright: 8:10

We have great exposure with the different PaaS components, with how organizations can use automation, with how to do things right, but very often I do see companies that feel like they are using the cloud very effectively will have conversations and they'll say, yeah, we're pretty far along on our cloud adoption strategy. We're working with a partner that knows exactly what they're talking about with the cloud and will go in and have a look, and there's half a dozen IaaS workloads and very little else, or there's a total lack of security or compliance. And it's just from that skill set, really, that cloud is now such a large area of IT that you need a team with a lot of breadth and depth to be able to make use of it in an efficient way and to be able to enable the functionality that organizations will benefit from. And so, yeah, we do look at those companies that are using IaaS workloads and say let's take you on that next path of the journey.

Jonathan Plaskow: 9:07

So why do you think that you just went to just pure IaaS? Is there a rush, because that was the buzz of the time, to rush to move to the cloud and not consider really what it means? Or is it a case of have you seen those customers saying, well, let's just do a lift and shift and then we modernize along the way? What do you see in the market during the moment?

Nathan Wright: 9:26

I think it's a bit of both. It's also being comfortable with what you know, and so for MSPs that have that have always focused more on on-premise infrastructure or a traditional approach, it is a logical progression to say, okay, we can run these workloads in the cloud. Instead of having a server on-premise, we can have a virtual server running in the cloud, which is true and gives you some benefits. And there's certainly workloads where that is appropriate. But to reimagine how those workloads run, to optimize rather than just migrate you have a whole lot of other tools available to you I guess I was trying to look for.

Michael van Rooyen: 10:03

Is there a customers you do engage with that have kind of done a 20%, a 60% somewhere in their journey, or is it really they engage with because now they're stuck, they've got this adoption happening and there's many reasons. You know the life cycle, you know new services and that's really the engagement I'd help them with that journey, as opposed to this traditional siloed approach to dop things, leave things you know not architected correctly, not secured properly and visibility Is that the real premise?

Nathan Wright: 10:32

Yeah, I think we'll normally be brought in when the customer has identified that there is a need that isn't being met. Right it's if they feel that everything is perfect. Regardless of whether that's accurate or not, they're probably not looking for a new partner or for a partner to assist them. So we'll come in because they feel that there's a gap. It could be in the wake of particular issues that they're facing. There could be cost that have skyrocketed, there could be reliability issues, there could be experience issues, it could be security, and so we'll come in and we'll look at what those drivers are and how to address them. But typically, regardless of how far they think they are on that cloud migration journey, we then will build out a new roadmap with them, and so that will be. They could have 100% of their workloads in the cloud. Very often, they will have 100% of their workloads in the cloud where, as JP has alluded to, they'll say oh no, we've moved to cloud, we're done.

Nathan Wright: 11:30

But that's an allergist to someone saying we've done IT security, it's done, we're secure, we've done it. And certainly anyone in IT security hopefully anyone in IT will say well, no, you've done. You did what you need to six months ago and the landscape has changed fundamentally.

Nathan Wright: 11:48

Every six months you need or more frequently you need to revisit what you're doing from a security perspective, and it's the same in cloud. They're different drivers, but if you've done the best you possibly can at one point, you can't sit and rest on your laurels for too long because there are advantages to find and if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.

Michael van Rooyen: 12:08

Absolutely, absolutely. So, of the back of that, what challenges are you seeing companies face during the cloud adoption and migration to cloud services? How have they constructed and how can they navigate them? What are some of your advice at a high level for the challenges, as well as how you help navigate that way forward?

Jonathan Plaskow: 12:33

Well, we had this discussion a bit earlier on today and one of the things that Nathan was talking about and I'll let him go into a bit more detail is actually understanding the motivation of why they want to go to the cloud. For a lot of organisations and everyone sees that it's a bit of a cliché they think they're going to save money in the cloud is for cost savings, and that rarely is the case. It's the benefits of the cloud, the other benefits of the cloud, be it compliance and so forth that's really drive the out of the motivation. I don't know if you want to elaborate on that.

Nathan Wright: 13:03

Yeah, you're exactly right that understanding those motivations is key to the success of a cloud adoption process that if you're speaking to a customer that has five-year-old kit sitting in a data centre that they've fully paid off and they say we want to move to cloud because it will save money, it won't save money. And so if that's their motivation, then that needs to be really talked through Because, regardless of the other benefits that come, there will be much greater security, there will be much greater performance, you'll have all sorts of other benefits. But if the driver is cost, then that won't be achieved. Of course there's plenty of situations where cost is a significant driver or significant benefit that's achieved, where organisations have got racks full of equipment that is used a couple of times a year because the rest of the time they just don't need that level of compute. So we'll regularly work with organisations that we can help understand how much those savings will achieve, because they need to be particularly resourced during peak periods and at the rest of the time those resources can elastically scale down.

Michael van Rooyen: 14:16

And the concept has always been or touted around by people. Multi-cloud is always an interesting one. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this. But the idea of being connected to multiple clouds of all different types and the ability to move workloads the original was all cost. People got stuck on. Cost like SD-WAN was all about saving costs. We know that's not necessarily factually correct. Today I'm curious to understand do you or what you're seeing in multi-cloud? Are customers deploying multi-cloud, or is it just a little bit of a vision? Or is it that certain services only provided out of different cloud environments and that's considered multi-cloud?

Nathan Wright: 14:51

There's not much. There are differences, certainly, between the different cloud platforms, but for the vast majority of customers the differences are not material to them that they could run all of their workloads in Asia. They could also run all of their workloads in AWS or GCP. They would do things in different ways but the workloads would still run. So the advantages they're looking for with multi-cloud are typically in the customers that we work with, not that they can only do one thing by doing it in a multi-cloud approach, but more that they're looking for either cost benefits or perceived redundancy and reliability, and so we certainly that's a conversation that we have- but, the perceived benefits that you get with redundancy are often not actually what they seem and can be achieved in many ways with a single-cloud approach by using different regions and

Nathan Wright: 15:50

by using well-architected design. There will be single points of failure in any system, so it's working out what they are and mitigating or minimizing them, often putting place in redundancies, putting in place business continuity plans and helping them understand those there. Certainly, it can be a bit of a misconception that if you're using a multi-cloud approach, that everything will work perfectly if one of those clouds goes down. But the reality is that so many systems are dependent on common points, on internet links and things like that, that your multi-cloud approach will absolutely increase complexity, potentially without any benefits, and you'll lose the benefits you get with, say, having that single identity management layer, that single security and compliance point of control.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:36

Yeah, I guess we saw it in the earlier days of data centers, right. So it'll be with one's hosted provider and I'll move to another one or split Malote on the same premise, right? But as you said, it's all down to the architect of the redundancy there's always, always. We know as much as these providers physically and other, you know, have designed this system for resiliency. We always still have adages of some source, right, we talk about mass scale.

Michael van Rooyen: 17:00

Just a little bit to you touched on cloud security and compliance of some of the real motivators. Can we just talk a little bit about that? So you know there's a lot of cyber threats. We know and certainly appreciate that, being part of the Orro family, how you get access to a large range of cyber security specialists can really help customers in areas that supplement what you're doing. But with cloud services evolving and the strategy, you know how we as a group now ensuring that you know security is high, particularly with more and more adoption of cloud, or what are your fundamentals around security? And then, second to that, it maybe can answer in the same time or separately is how you're then dealing with those issues around maybe different sovereign areas if customers are more globally focused. I lens on that.

Nathan Wright: 17:45

Okay, yeah, so I guess, from securing their environment. Some of the principles are the same as what they've always been. Some of them are quite different. If you're working, if a number of your workloads are in the cloud, then using a traditional perimeter based approach to security is probably not appropriate. Many organizations again without the cloud adoption strategy have moved to cloud without considering that they've got staff working from home on cloud workloads. No matter how good their office-based firewall is, it doesn't come into play in that scenario. And so, from a security perspective, yeah, that does open up risks that they may not have appropriately mitigated, and so the cloud adoption strategy looks at how those risks are addressed.

Nathan Wright: 18:35

And certainly there's a number of very thorough ways of looking at those, and so we make sure that companies are following that approach to secure both their users and then, certainly, their infrastructure. So the infrastructure in Azure as well. We want to make sure that it is designed with security as a core principle, with security as one of those key considerations.

Michael van Rooyen: 19:00

Yeah, look, it's going to be an interesting journey and if I think, from my point of view, we're just seeing more and more, even infrastructure services being provided to the cloud. I mean, it's been coming for a while, but we were talking about network access control. Nac traditionally ran out of the cloud today, which people would really freak out about before, because they want that local thing. The comfort levels continue to increase. We know lots of startups and newer businesses are all cloud-first. So again we have this legacy. Yeah, of course you still probably need some on-prem stuff for OT operations etc. Because you need that assurance. However, realistically, you have device cloud, a solid network, probably delivered by 5G, and whatever.

Michael van Rooyen: 19:41

And that's where it's going to be wrapped, with security wrapped around it as well as management and visibility.

Nathan Wright: 19:45

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. I think that the comfort with cloud has changed fundamentally and will continue to, and if we look at the different regulatory frameworks, if we look at ISO 27002, for example, iso 27001 was based on a presumption that you had infrastructure on-premise, and so for organizations that didn't, it's actually there's some hoops you've got to jump through to achieve the certification. Iso 27002 completely gets rid of that, and so it is now based on a presumption that you might not have any infrastructure on-premise, that you're only using cloud. The protected blueprint from the digital transformation agency gives a or prescribes a protected blueprint for government agencies that are cloud native, so there's now a totally accepted approach that government agencies would be entirely based in the cloud. Organizations are increasingly wanting to be cloud native and wanting to understand what that means for them and the benefit that it brings to them, and so I think the fact that there's that driver and that the regulatory framework has kept up with that is very exciting, because it means we won't be keeping that infrastructure on-premise for very long.

Michael van Rooyen: 20:54

And look, the next generation uses all about a screen, an app, and that they don't really think about. Right, just like the intents become so reliable in a freak out, when there's no connectivity. We talk about happy Wi-Fi. Happy Wi-Fi because that's what they expect and that's what they're just going to continue to expect. Right, we're just going to use an app or user service and not think about it. Right, but the reliability and security is going to be there. Just to wrap up on a couple of others at a very high level, to circle right back around for our customers' potential, current or future, what advice would you offer organizations just starting their cloud journey? Because there's still a huge market of people who haven't moved yet to cloud, and I know you've defined a bit, but what would you suggest as their way forward, as a starting point?

Nathan Wright: 21:39

I think, certainly as a first step, to identify what their motivations are for moving to the cloud, and then, as a second step, or even in conjunction with that first step, to identify a partner that is going to help them make that journey. Potentially, I mean, if they have internally a cloud services team with the right expertise that does it as well. But the vast majority of organizations don't have a 50-person strong cloud services team. And so to find the right partner who can give them that assistance, it isn't something, realistically, that one IT manager can know. You can't keep it in one person's head. There is so much to know and to me across, and to me continually learning that the right partner is absolutely key.

Jonathan Plaskow: 22:24

I would agree with that and I would augment that, saying the right partner is one who has that depth in cloud but has the depth in network, yes, and secure as this. And it's that intersection which is key and that's what takes on the digital journey. That's why I'm excited. Again, it's as an organization, we have those different Depth of capability.

Michael van Rooyen: 22:47

Yeah, correct, and I'll probably just go back to one point you made around the partner item and that's really important From a customer engagement point of view because it really makes that makes or break the success of the deployment and I use the word pox. So what you're saying is, you know, have a, have a go. I'm not talking about pox. Everyone in these three things of a pox is a concept. This is not a concept, but what I really talk about is proof of capability and proof of competence. I think that I think that those are the two that people should consider right. So so don't just try something to get. Get people who are competent and have the capability, I think, is the differentiator, and particularly with your, your team, joining us, I think we're really at that value. To wrap it up, what would you, either of you, want our listeners to take away as the most pivotal? You know, insight about the future of cloud and the journey that we talked about today.

Nathan Wright: 23:35

I think probably the key takeaway that the the question that I put to Organization that we're just starting talking to is is to think about their cloud strategy. Does does their cloud strategy cover everything that they feel it needs to? Or or daughter? It doesn't have gaps and it would take probably a very confident CIO to say yes. Our cloud migration strategy covers everything that it needs to. There's there's no, there's no gaps in that strategy.

Michael van Rooyen: 24:02

Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time today. Thanks for the insights. Again, welcome to the family, nathan JP. Thanks for your time. Oh, that was fun. Yeah, no, excited, excited to be here Great.

Jonathan Plaskow: 24:12

Thank you, thank you.