Defending Across the Ditch: Navigating New Zealand's Tech Landscape with Daryl Isaac

Join the conversation with Daryl Isaac, the tech wizard behind Liquid IT, as he shares an intricate tapestry of tales from the IT frontline, tracing back to the dawn of desktop as a service in New Zealand. With a career that reads like a history book of technological advancements, Daryl brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and a 'fail-fast' philosophy that is as refreshing as it is enlightening. We navigate through the hallways of his professional life, from the early days at Saturn Telecommunications to the strategic expansion of Liquid IT, where cloud, connectivity, and security converge in a harmonious dance of innovation.

Saddle up for a ride through the undulating landscape of New Zealand's tech scene, where the internet is as fast as the ideas that travel through it. This episode peels back the layers on how New Zealand's broadband services are sculpting the future of cybersecurity and cloud services. Plus, we're examining the ripple effects of AI across various business sectors and digging into strategies to combat the global tech talent drought, with a special focus on nurturing homegrown cybersecurity expertise.

As we round off our techno-savvy expedition, we examine the influence of tech titans planting their data centers on New Zealand's soil and the nation's journey towards hybrid cloud bliss. Daryl shines a light on the murky waters surrounding Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and cuts through the jargon to reveal the true essence of this cybersecurity approach. We're not just stopping at the present; we're peeking into the crystal ball to forecast the tech advancements that will shape New Zealand's future. From the promising horizons of 5G and private LTE to the pivotal role of satellite connectivity in remote areas, this conversation is your first-class ticket to understanding the forces driving innovation in the land of the long white cloud.

Transcript

Daryl Isaac: 0:02

I think there's a huge element of trust as well that goes along with it. So people being comfortable to go out and try things and you know a little bit of that fail fast mentality and go hey look, it's okay to try that, that's the only way we're going to learn. It gets them comfortable with going out and looking at new technology, or even comfortable with coming to us as leaders and suggesting things that we could try.

Michael van Rooyen: 0:22

Today I'm catching up with Daryl Isaac, cto of Liquid IT. We're going to catch up and have a chat around all things cybersecurity, things happening in New Zealand, with customers and just a general chat. Welcome, Daryl. Welcome to the podcast. Do you mind just taking a couple of minutes and telling the listeners a little bit about your journey in the tech industry and your current role as CTO at Liquid IT?

Daryl Isaac: 0:41

Thanks MVR, thanks for having me today. So my journey in IT started back in 1999, a company called Saturn Telecommunications. So I worked there doing desktop support, very much an engineering role. There was lots of opportunity there, I guess, up and coming in that sort of telco industry. So I very quickly moved into a project role, being kind of the sole IT guy down there in projects. So I got into a lot more consulting and as part of an outsource with Telstra Clear at the time, which it was Telstra that came into the country and bought Telstra Saturn Telstra Clear, so went through a couple of those acquisitions and then moved into a role at Unisys as part of that acquisition. So from there, I guess just through contacts, moved to a role at Axon Computing in New Zealand. We actually did one of the biggest projects virtual desktop projects at Ax, which was a very cool introduction to my time at Axon. I think it was actually APAC. We did one of the biggest virtual desktop deployments around APAC. From there, I guess that business got acquired through Datacraft in New Zealand, which soon then got rebranded to Dimension Data. So hence me meeting the current team that I work with.

Daryl Isaac: 1:40

Dimension Data was certainly a lot of learning. Guess, you know, I led certainly in a very technical role again. I was part of the team that built the first desktop as a service in New Zealand as well. So we built and deployed that and actually went on to manage that platform. So that was probably one of my last roles at Dimension Data before we decided to leave and, you know, start something new with Liquid IT. So the four directors obviously started Liquid IT myself and two other colleagues. Three other colleagues actually joined them very quickly afterwards to essentially start up the lines of business. So me in particular, I built the cloud business for Liquid IT.

Michael van Rooyen: 2:13

So, yeah, something I'm pretty proud of Fantastic and how many years has Liquid been established for.

Daryl Isaac: 2:20

This will actually be our eighth year running.

Michael van Rooyen: 2:21

Eighth year running right.

Daryl Isaac: 2:22

It was initially a five-year plan. I guess we said hey, let's get together and do something and see how the next five years go.

Michael van Rooyen: 2:28

And time flies, yeah, of course, of course, and obviously Liquid is now a part of the Oro Group. Probably for people listening to the show is do you mind just a quick couple of minutes on just Liquid's capabilities, what you guys cover, what you guys cover obviously very New Zealand focused and you're in Wellington, but yeah, give us a little bit about Liquid. Sure yeah.

Daryl Isaac: 2:45

So we set out, I guess, to do cloud connectivity and security.

Daryl Isaac: 2:48

You know, when we started out we probably didn't know that, like any new business, we knew what we were good at and those were probably the three things we were good at. So in that first year we very quickly settled on those three towers and then essentially went out to build services based on that, now out to build services based on that Now in Wellington in particular. It's very government focused, obviously. So a key thing for us was getting onto those government panels, so telecommunications as a service, for instance. You know we put a lot of time and effort into getting onto that panel, which is really just, you know, a way for government agencies to transact easily with us. So I think that was probably one of the key things we did was spend that time and invest in getting onto those platforms which made selling our services really easy.

Daryl Isaac: 3:26

So probably for the first three to four years I'd say you know we had a strong focus on network and security and that was, I guess, the time where we started seeing a lot more cloud and a lot of professional services in cloud. So not so much the managed services but really people migrating to the cloud. I mean then probably in more recent times. Obviously we've got services, managed services on the cloud side as well.

Michael van Rooyen: 3:45

And numbers you're like, I think 50, 50, around 50 people, yeah, about 48 at the moment.

Daryl Isaac: 3:50

Yeah, that was another thing. It was a very conscious decision, I guess, around we use this word intimate right, even with clients and we say you know, we set out to do something different and to be a little more intimate with clients. So that number was really just, I guess in line with that, saying hey, let's stick to 50 people. But what it also did was drive efficiencies for us. So I guess the mindset was not constantly hiring every time we want a new client or wanted to do a new service. It was more around how we could do things more efficiently with the people that we've got and the tools that we've got.

Michael van Rooyen: 4:18

Yeah, nice, nice and focusing on all things New Zealand and focusing on all things New Zealand. There's been a lot of global challenges more recently we had the pandemic and obviously there's lots of issues around the world. Today Everything's getting more expensive and technology and cyber. But how would you characterize the current landscape of both networking and cyber within New Zealand from your point of view?

Daryl Isaac: 4:42

Yeah. So the current landscape I guess what we see a lot of is obviously a lot of clients have moved to using cloud and SaaS and things like that. So what we see with our towers of business network has certainly very much become commodity and the focus really is around security and the cloud business. So not to say that we don't have those conversations around network and it's still really important but it's really very much shifted to fast, reliable internet. Everything else is kind of the layered approach in terms of what can we do over and above from a security point of view and securing the cloud and securing the applications.

Michael van Rooyen: 5:15

Yes, because I think from memory is new zealand was quite early in adopting really like a broadband services fiber in the ground. There's quite a bit of work from memory. I've never lived in new zealand but from from what I understood, you guys were well ahead adopting really like a broadband services fiber in the ground. There's quite a bit of work from memory. I've never lived in New Zealand but from what I understood, you guys were well ahead of us. From an Australia point of view, we did the NBN, of course, but you guys kind of did that many, many years before that.

Michael van Rooyen: 5:32

So connectivity has been a big part of New Zealand for a long time Good, reliable connectivity, high performing connectivity and I do like very focused on cyber today and how we're going with the cloud. But the network is still such an important part of the digital plumbing that stitches all that together and it's just become so reliable that people don't even think about the network anymore. Right, it's important, it's there, correct, yeah, but yeah, that's interesting. So, from that, what do you think are the most significant trends that are from a technology point of view, that are really shaping businesses in New Zealand today that are really shaping businesses in New Zealand today.

Daryl Isaac: 6:03

Yeah, look, I think the obvious one is probably AI. We're hearing a lot of it, where clients are talking about it and, equally, for us, it's really around how do we use the technology to drive those efficiencies that I talked about? Right, so we're still 48 people, you know, and we intend on keeping the same mindset in terms of driving those efficiencies. But from a client point of view, I think it's really around education. You know it's good that clients are asking the questions now. So it's around. You know what is AI, what are the different types? You know talking about things like Copilot with Microsoft and understanding all the different variations, understanding what it actually means for their data. So we're certainly seeing and hearing, I guess, a lot of those conversations and I think that's shaping what the near future looks like anyway.

Michael van Rooyen: 6:43

So cyber was the precursor. Ai obviously came out in 2023. Oh, it's been around for a long time and depends who you talk to. People in the industry have been very familiar with AI for a long time, but it's now. It's out in the wild, as they say, and you know that's really front of mind. We'll talk a little bit more about your government involvement and I'll be keen to understand what they're doing in those spaces. But before we get into that, as a technology leader in your business, how are you, with your team, really fostering culture of innovation within Liquid in relation to the development generation of leaders?

Daryl Isaac: 7:13

look, I think that's really around involvement right and it's. You know, we talk about us in new zealand being early adopters as well, but I think it's, um, equally about us as leaders getting involved earlier and getting getting people, I guess, involved early, so taking them along the journey. So, rather than you know me going out and finding some cool tech, for example, and sort of coming back and saying, hey, this is what we're going to do, it's really about bringing the resource in and and having those conversations, having letting people have a play. I think there's a huge element of trust as well that goes along with it. So people being comfortable to go out and try things and a little bit of that fail fast mentality and go, hey look, it's okay to try that, that's the only way we're going to learn. But it gets people thinking, I guess, and gets them comfortable with going out and looking at new technology, or even comfortable with coming to us as leaders and suggesting things that we could try.

Michael van Rooyen: 7:58

As you said, fail fast. You let them have a bit of freedom, so to speak, to work it out, to fail if necessary. Support them, of course, but really foster that way of helping others. What about how things in New Zealand from a technology point of view, looking from a skill shortage? There's a big global shortage of skills in particularly cyber and others. How are you guys dealing with that? Are you looking at like an apprenticeship? How do you capture people in New Zealand for the skills shortage?

Daryl Isaac: 8:23

Yeah, and I think it's as real as you know, probably, as in Australia, we're seeing exactly the same thing. What we did in the early days, and we continue to do, of course, is, yeah, look at graduates. It's really a win-win for the business because we're giving them the opportunity. There's just so much learning and the ability, I guess, for them to learn and grow with our business, and so we've done that. We've actually probably got, I'd like to say there's about still four of the original graduates that we had come through that are still with the business today and, yeah, a really key part of the business today. So we try and foster that, you know, bringing people through from the polytechnics and universities.

Michael van Rooyen: 8:56

It's interesting. You talked about AI. I don't know what your experience was, but we certainly saw it in Australia, where cyber became the hot topic. You know, many years ago, kind of doing technology for a long time but having your real network certification was a big thing then. Then there's the Microsoft certification and if you follow the journey over many years, there's been these life cycles and then everybody wanted to be a cyber person, but not really thinking about that. You know the network space. My opinion's always been that be a good cyber person, you should really understand the fundamentals. You do networking or cloud or all the other infrastructure. Is that the kind of methodology you're using as well for attracting talent?

Daryl Isaac: 9:29

yeah, definitely. Look, I think you know it's very hard to work in a silo and, to your point, you can't just be a security guy without understanding the network, without understanding the infrastructure. So it's really more about being. I guess we're seeing a lot more of generalists. Yes, we do still have subject matter experts when it comes to a particular product, but I think to be successful is really about sitting across those towers and having fundamental knowledge of those towers.

Michael van Rooyen: 9:51

I guess my thinking is are we going to see, we ever wanted to be a cyber person? Everyone's been an AI person. Now, right? Or is that really not going to be a thing Because you know the technology is developing so fast and it's so well constructed and so easy to use, you know, are there going to be people that are going to be, you know, related to that? Or you think it's more data science in the back end, the big end of town, the Microsoft and the open AI, you know really developing that, and then we just have users. What do you think? I think so.

Daryl Isaac: 10:16

It's probably the latter right, Because it feels like it's going to become the norm, and certainly things like cybersecurity and AI are really just overarching. You know everything that we already do anyway, so you know the security is really sitting across all the data and the applications that we already had, and now we're just seeing the same thing with AI. It's with AI. It's really taking the data that we already had and doing something smart with it. So, yeah, both seem to be overarching concepts and, from what I see in the market so far, seems to be just becoming more of the norm.

Michael van Rooyen: 10:45

Yes, customers are probably experiencing the same thing as we do in the technology space, which is, if you're not adopting AI, using AI extensively, you're going to be left behind substantially. Is that the biggest topic that customers are talking about to you?

Daryl Isaac: 10:54

Yeah, I think people are certainly nervous about that substantially. Is that the biggest topic that customers talking about? Yeah, I think people are certainly nervous about that. Right, customers are trying to understand what it means for them in their data. So there's certainly a little bit of nervousness around. If I don't do this, what does it mean for my business?

Michael van Rooyen: 11:03

but as we have those conversations and as people start to understand, I think it becomes a lot clearer yeah, I think the first time I put a prompt into you know, chat, gpt or any of the the tools you know, the response that you get is phenomenal. I guess the question I was leading to was you know, people were really seeing AI as a scary tool. You know, job replacement. You know they were considering the output of these tools, thinking, wow, this is really going to replace my role. And I think over the last six to 12 months, people are realizing that it's really, you know, augmented intelligence or assisted intelligence, and really is a help to them, and they're starting to realize that they could actually use it for better purposes and free them up to do other activities. Are you seeing the same thing?

Daryl Isaac: 11:41

yeah, exactly that right. I think it's people just getting comfortable with it and once they they realize that it's actually there to to help and complement what they're doing, they're certainly getting a lot more comfortable. I think people are using it at home now. You know you see people using things like bing chat at home and, to your point, asking questions and getting a more contextual answer, using it for image creation. But then in the corporate environment, it's really understanding what the limitations are around corporate data and you know any data loss in relation to those tools, yeah, what are your thoughts then?

Michael van Rooyen: 12:07

there's also been a lot of discussion in the cyber space around. You know red and blue teams, good actor, bad actor, using AI for both sides of that. You know attack and defense.

Daryl Isaac: 12:16

It's evolving so quickly, I guess. So as much as you know AI is doing good for us, you can equally see how very quickly it can be used for the bad actors, I guess. So it's good on both fronts. It's really just using it to our advantage, I guess, at this point.

Michael van Rooyen: 12:28

Diverting from that topic a little bit, given Liquid IT's involvement government accounts I know you guys are quite heavily involved with government, being in Wellington and just your customer base, you know. Could you share some insights into the unique needs and challenges of that sector in New Zealand?

Daryl Isaac: 12:43

Yeah, I think with government. You know, like I said, a lot of it for them is about consuming through these panels and standardised services. So I think the first thing for us is really making sure that our services are fit for purpose. You know we're on the right panels that they can consume from. And then, secondly, it's about staying close. You know I talked about being intimate with clients earlier. It's exactly that. You know it's staying as a trusted partner, understanding those requirements and then solutioning in relation to that. So, rather than, I guess, just creating services and then trying to sell them into government and I think that's probably the theme across New Zealand in general you know we certainly see clients already know what they want. It's not us building services and then going out and trying to sell them. It's really them saying, hey, this is what I want, how can you help?

Daryl Isaac: 13:25

me implement or get this outcome. Yes, yes.

Michael van Rooyen: 13:29

And off the back of that, you know what are the specific cyber security and networking challenges that New Zealand government faces.

Daryl Isaac: 13:36

You know it's very similar across New Zealand in terms of government and private sector is my take on it, the only difference being obviously depending on the type of agency or the type of government agency. You know, they're probably targeted a lot more. There's a heightened awareness from certain agencies, but in terms of their requirements, I think across New Zealand it's probably very similar.

Michael van Rooyen: 13:55

I think you and I were just chatting the other night around some of the vendors, particularly Microsoft as an example, building a local presence in New Zealand.

Daryl Isaac: 14:07

How's that paradigm? What are customers or government thinking about that? That change a lot of activity in that space at the moment. I think it's certainly got you know current cios thinking about you know, what does it mean to the new data center coming into new zealand? Do they look at moving data back? Equally, we've still got some that held back move into the cloud, believe it or not. So you know we've still got a few of them holding waiting for new zealand to arrive before they actually move into the cloud. But there's certainly lots of activity in that space at the moment.

Michael van Rooyen: 14:28

So you're saying that some customers are actually waiting for a bit more sovereign capability before they move to?

Daryl Isaac: 14:33

cloud Correct, yeah, and they're either waiting, you know, all out, or they've done, you know, a little bit of a lift and shift into Australia, but held back on certain applications that they feel either for you know, specific data sovereignty reasons or even things like latency sensitive they want to have something in-country.

Michael van Rooyen: 14:48

And are you seeing still a large hybrid type scenario as customers from an architecture and design and the discussions you're having, is it more still supporting very much a hybrid on-prem and cloud or are you still seeing traditional data? What's the landscape?

Daryl Isaac: 15:03

look like Certainly seeing a lot more hybrid. I guess these days and I think my take on that is the reason is we've had clients probably now two or three years in the cloud and really starting to understand, I guess, the performance but, more importantly, the costs associated with it and how those costs have, for lots of them, gone up. So we're seeing a lot more clients, I guess, asking for those hybrid implementations now, both from a performance and a cost point of view. So the cloud was easy. It was easy for people to spin workloads up, it was easy to add more resource to it. I guess it's just over time that you start to see the cost creep on that.

Michael van Rooyen: 15:38

Yeah sure we in Australia and apologies for New Zealand listeners I haven't been as close to activity around critical infrastructure. In Australia. You know government released a Securing of Critical Infrastructure Act. We've been quite active in helping customers from an OT and critical infrastructure point of view. Can you share some insights in what New Zealand's doing around critical infrastructure protection?

Daryl Isaac: 15:58

Yeah, certainly. So we've got things like, obviously, the New Zealand ICM. We've also got a great organisation, certinz, so we take a lot of guidance from there. So we've got I guess they release updates every so often which have mandatory requirements in there as well. So for us it's really making sure that our services are aligned with those baseline settings.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:17

And now you're having a lot of discussions with customers around operational technology, critical infrastructure. Is that a big thing for their considerations?

Daryl Isaac: 16:24

A little bit, yeah, so from a liquid IT point of view, and generally in the market. Yeah, a couple of clients with you know OT, and so again the big conversation there is around security, right. So historically it was isolated, it was siloed away. So, yes, people had thought about it, but it certainly seems to be a lot more front of mind these days, Right.

Michael van Rooyen: 16:43

Off the back of that. How is Liquid, you know, really contributing to transforming? You know the goals of New Zealand government agencies and what role do you see that strategy or that how you're helping them as part of the national tech strategy, right?

Daryl Isaac: 16:56

Right now, I guess in New Zealand, you're seeing a lot of, obviously, budget cuts with the new government and things like that. So I think the key thing for us is again talking to clients about, about you know what's still important, because obviously there's certain things that they still need to deliver on, cyber security being one of those things, as well as all the operational tasks that go with it. So for us again.

Michael van Rooyen: 17:13

It's back to making sure that everything we do is optimized and fit for purpose so that we can help with your government agencies going through that process what are in the discussions you've had, I guess, across all your customers and your industry discussions, what are the top cyber concerns that organisations operating in New Zealand are facing and how is Liquid helping in that area?

Daryl Isaac: 17:33

I think the biggest one is visibility. Right, I think people are concerned about have they actually got a complete picture of their landscape? For us, I guess that translates into the security managed service where we can complement their existing team or certainly a lot of our clients in particular don't have an IT team so we're able to go and provide that service for them from a visibility point of view. But equally, you know, the remediation is just as important. We find with some of the larger clients where we're able to go in there and provide that service, make them aware of, you know, vulnerabilities perhaps in the environment, and the next problem they face is really being able to go and remediate that. So you know the more we can help with that. I think it certainly goes a long way.

Michael van Rooyen: 18:12

What are customers, you know, thinking in the space of really blending cyber and network? For many, many years we saw a very, very solid approach to networking and cyber different teams, different skill sets. What are you seeing in discussions, or what are you seeing from a personal point of view, from those two blending together?

Daryl Isaac: 18:28

A lot more of that, a lot more of the skills being blended together, certainly in the network and security space, but, as we talked about earlier, I think it's almost blurred with cloud as well. So it's really having those engineers, but more generalist knowledge. So they've got context for what they're dealing with. But you're right, we're not seeing a specific network engineer. In fact, I think most of our roles are actually network and security engineers, so covering both parts.

Michael van Rooyen: 18:49

And does that really lead on to? You know, sase is a big topic at the moment. It'd be interesting to see what customers are saying and that you're engaging with around SASE Zero Trust. Is that what's really leading some of the conversation currently?

Daryl Isaac: 19:02

Definitely and I think that's another topic that's really we need to talk about the education, because obviously there's a lot of buzzwords and people are talking about SASE and Zero Trust and what we try and do is break that down a little bit and go you know what are the actual requirements here, because a lot of people, perhaps five years ago, started on the journey and have already got things like SD-WAN, they've already got web proxies. So it's really about you know, taking each of those components and going have you actually got a SASE? Have you actually got a zero trust architecture? We talked about things like identity, so making sure that all of those little bits of the puzzle are accounted for and then helping them saying look, we can actually put together an architecture for you and deliver an outcome here, and it's not really a product. We try and stay away from a product conversation and saying, look, we don't want you to go out and buy another product just to be able to achieve zero trust.

Michael van Rooyen: 19:45

Let's break down the requirements and go from there what I've noticed is got to did a great story around sassy. You know it's really a framework. Are you seeing some customers getting confused about what sassy is? You know I've had instances where they think you know sassy's one thing like it's a product you can buy. Are you seeing that as well, from a perception?

Daryl Isaac: 20:00

point of view. Definitely yeah, both with sassy and with zero trust. We've certainly had lots of those conversations where people think it's a product you can go out and buy and take a box and away you go, yeah.

Michael van Rooyen: 20:10

I had one recently. We responded to a tender for some SD-WAN and the customer came back and said we need to uplift it to SASE and it was kind of hard to explain well which part of SASE do you want?

Daryl Isaac: 20:20

It's not just one thing.

Michael van Rooyen: 20:21

That's right, and they kept saying no, no, we just need SASE. Well, okay, and do you also see people in blurring? Sase and SSE? You know differently. Some categorize it as SASE, some categorize it as SSE. What are?

Daryl Isaac: 20:32

you seeing? Definitely yeah, and I think it's just understanding the differences. Well, not so much the differences, it's the components, right, and taking away the SD-WAN component and saying conversation. You know, just as you were talking there I was just thinking it's no different to again probably showing my age here. But you know, back in the day we had things like application whitelisting and again it became like ticking a box and people said, hey look, I need to do application whitelisting. You know, policies people were putting in were really going you know, let's allow all of the C drive and it was kind of defeating the purpose. But for all intents of and purposes they were going look, we've got application whitelisting, we've got it in place. So similar conversations where people are going hey look, I've got zero trust because they think they've got a product that does it.

Michael van Rooyen: 21:13

Yeah, off the back of SASE, ai visibility touchable visibility, which is a really important one. End user experience, no doubt, is front of mind. Developments do you anticipate in the tech sector in New Zealand in the near future? Have you got any thoughts on any up and coming major developments that you feel you know we've talked?

Daryl Isaac: 21:34

about it earlier.

Daryl Isaac: 21:36

Ai is certainly front of mind and I think that's going to influence a lot.

Daryl Isaac: 21:39

But around end user, it's certainly around, again, visibility and just being able to be a little more proactive. So I think we're starting to see a lot more around analytics and data. Right Again, back to we've always probably had the data. It's now about how we collect it and make use of it. So, from an end point, we're certainly seeing, you know, what can we do with things like Intune or other products out there that are able to give us the ability, I guess, to be a little more proactive and tell clients you know little things like it might be an update that's rolled out across a phone or a laptop, but being able to get the data back to say, hey, since that update, I can now see that your battery is discharging at 10% faster. So being able to go back to a head of IT or CIO and say, hey, from a fleet management point of view, here's the impact of what you're doing. So, yeah, I think we'll see a little more of that in the near future.

Michael van Rooyen: 22:27

Okay, great, and could you maybe just spend a little bit of time talking about other innovations that you're seeing? You know 5G. I'd like to understand. You know your thoughts around 5G and maybe private LTE. I don't know if you're really seeing much in that space and IoT can we start with those two?

Daryl Isaac: 22:41

Yeah, definitely. Again, they are topics of conversation. They do come up that probably go back to that conversation we had earlier around network being commodity. So there's a few conversations happening around, you know, do I still need switches, do I need access points? You know, because we've now got devices or 5g devices, and people are starting to buy laptops with, with sims and then. So I think it's early days, me personally, you know, not not having too many of those conversations, but they're certainly out there and people are starting to think about it and are you seeing customers?

Michael van Rooyen: 23:07

if we talk about 5g particularly or we just call it LTE at this stage, are there some discussions around private LTE? We see quite a lot in OT, resourcing, mining and even airports trying to solve that problem. About connectivity for devices, are you seeing any rumors, words or anything in that space in New? Zealand?

Daryl Isaac: 23:24

A little bit, yeah, and, I think, particular industries. So again, from a liquid it point of view and from what I've seen, wellington probably not a lot, but yeah, there's certainly conversations starting to be heard. Yeah, great.

Michael van Rooyen: 23:35

And you talked a lot about ai, but, but iot are you seeing customers as well really focusing on adopting iot services? You know smart lighting, you know street lighting. Pick your poison. Are you seeing a bit of iot explosion as well?

Daryl Isaac: 23:48

farming, I guess, is another one, so you know a couple of clients of ours that we had own a lot of a bunch of farms around new zealand, so I think that's of particular interest to them in terms of how can they do things smarter and more efficiently. So yes, I guess, depending on the industry, we are starting to see those or hear those conversations as well and what about?

Michael van Rooyen: 24:04

obviously australia's got a massive land mass. We, you know, really saw revolutionary change with low-orbit satellites, starlink, oneweb and the likes. Are you seeing that better that in New Zealand as well, where regional areas or places where it's been hard to get connectivity to, is adoption of satellites becoming a pretty big thing?

Daryl Isaac: 24:24

Definitely yeah, and twofold for us, I think. So one to your point. It's around areas that previously haven't been able to be connected. Now I can take advantage of satellites and things like that, but equally we've seen a huge uptake or conversations post natural disasters. So we've had a couple recently in New Zealand around flooding and things like that and areas being cut off. So now the conversation is more around, you know, as a backup perhaps as well, you know, can we use this technology as a backup to provide services in those instances?

Michael van Rooyen: 24:48

Yeah, yeah, and we've seen a bit of that as well. Right, so A regional coverage. One of the customers we work with does medical emergencies using aircraft and one of the things they used to have to do was pick someone up and then bring them back to a hospital the closest regional hospital and try and communicate it over radio. But certainly with this low-orbit satellite they've been able to land, deploy that satellite and actually even do further diagnostics, telehealth etc. At their location. That's quite revolutionary and I think that we still haven't seen the full impact of that, you know, from an education and just connectivity point of view. Just take a moment to think about this week. You've spent a time at 40 nets 2024 accelerate conference in vegas. Are you able to summarize what you've seen, Just maybe your thoughts, if you were to wrap up kind of the week at?

Daryl Isaac: 25:33

a high level. I think my big takeaway is really the conversations around zero trust, right, and I think certainly the key themes from this week is again around how do we do that easily rather than being able to, I guess, overcomplicate the architecture? Certainly, if I was to talk about Fortinet in particular and I'm fairly new to the technology as well that's my key takeaway is that being able to roll that all up into the OS seems to be a nice way to be able to deliver that across. I guess the different components when we talk about proxy and identity and things like that.

Michael van Rooyen: 26:02

Yeah, it was certainly interesting to see some of the discussions and the vision and blueprint of end-to-end cyber really pushing it all the way through the networking connectivity Big SASE drive. For me, the big ones for me this week were a lot of discussion around SASE, a lot of discussion around operational technology and really pushing those two areas. But that unified fabric and security footprint is certainly something that I think is playing well together and this is something that I think is playing well together. As we wrap up, there's a question asked right at the end, darrell, which is you know, tell me about the biggest technology change or shift that you've personally been involved with in the time in the industry.

Daryl Isaac: 26:36

Yeah, I think for me it's got to be cloud. My time in the last sort of even five to probably 10 years, you know, we started to see cloud and we started to see people thinking about it, migrating to it, and so I spent a lot of time talking to people, educating people around moving to the cloud, but understanding the performance impacts, the cost impacts. Now that we've had people in the cloud, you know, for a couple of years or longer, it's really now looking at the optimization side of things and going, you know, how do we performance optimize and cost optimize? And that whole FinOps conversation is front of mind for a lot of people. But certainly conversation is front of mind for a lot of people. But certainly cloud, I think for me, would be one of the biggest changes I've seen, which is true, right, just a complete paradigm shifter.

Michael van Rooyen: 27:14

And now everyone's in the cloud, everything's led by the cloud, and now we're really pushing security into the cloud. It's almost back to the green screen. Thin client you're talking about thin client in early days. I know it's application based now, but it's kind of the same premise, right?

Daryl Isaac: 27:27

somewhere and utilizing it. Yeah, kind of just the phases you go through, right, and it feels like we're just um, yeah, heading back around. That's, that's correct, that's correct it always comes in cycles.

Michael van Rooyen: 27:35

Daryl, again, appreciate your time today. Great to chat with you and catch up. Appreciate it, emery, thanks for having me, no problem at all.