VMware, Broadcom, and What IT Leaders Need to Know Now: A Conversation with Brian Bensen

Surprise drop! We're giving you an extra episode this month because this conversation is too important to sit on. 

VMware didn't just change — it changed fast, and more than once. Since Broadcom's acquisition, organizations have watched licensing costs climb and options narrow, often without much warning. In this episode, Sales Engineer Brian Bensen walks through what happened, why there's no simple replacement, and how to think through your virtualization strategy before you're up against a deadline.

Brian Bensen is a Sales Engineer at High Point Networks with expertise in on-premise and cloud solutions, servers, storage, virtualization, backup, and business continuity. Since 2018, he's helped organizations architect infrastructure that actually fits their environment — and their budget.

✨ In this episode:

→ What made VMware the industry standard for over two decades 

→ What Broadcom's acquisition changed — and how licensing costs shifted 

→ Why no alternative is a straight swap for VMware 

→ The discovery questions worth asking before you make any moves 

→ Why six months of planning runway changes everything 

→ When staying with VMware might still be the right answer

🗨️ Mentioned in this episode: VMware | Broadcom | ESXi | vCenter | Hyper-V | KVM | HPE | vSphere Foundation | Cloud Foundation | AI data center infrastructure

Connect with Brian: brian.bensen@highpointnetworks.com

_____

🕑 Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction & welcome 

2:10 - What VMware built and why it mattered 

7:30 - Broadcom acquires VMware: what changed 

13:00 - Pricing increases and the licensing squeeze 

17:45 - Alternatives: what's out there and what to consider 

25:00 - The discovery questions HPN asks every customer 

30:15 - Real-world timelines: why six months matters 

35:30 - Closing thoughts & listener takeaways

New episodes every other Wednesday.

Connect with us: 🌐 highpointnetworks.com 📱 LinkedIn, Instagram & Facebook: @highpointnetworks

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Get to the Point is produced by High Point Networks for informational purposes only. Guests include High Point Networks professionals as well as subject matter experts from across the industry, each speaking from their own experience and expertise. Content shared is intended as general information and should be evaluated within the context of your specific organization and circumstances. Views expressed by outside guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of High Point Networks or its affiliates. High Point Networks assumes no liability for decisions or actions taken based on content discussed in this podcast.

Transcript

Andy: 0:00

Welcome to the High Point Get to the Point podcast. Action.

Brandi: 0:09

Oh my, it's been a day. Welcome back, Mr. Middlemiss.

Andy: 0:14

Well, thank you. Welcome to you.

Brandi: 0:17

Yeah. Yeah. I... You keep, you just keep things interesting, and I appreciate that about you. Thank you.

Andy: 0:22

It is. It is. This is we're... With this technology thing, it's like watching a dubbed movie where your lips are moving but I don't hear the sound at the same time. It's kind of interesting.

Brandi: 0:33

Yeah, it is very interesting. Well, let's dive in here.

Andy: 0:38

Let's get her, let's get her done. Yeah, let's kick us off.

Brandi: 0:42

Well, for years, VMware, how random, based on what we've just been talking about, but for years VMware has been synonymous with virtualization. Recent changes have IT leaders asking questions and exploring new strategies.

Andy: 1:00

This is a great topic. I think it's gonna be fun. So today on Get to the Point, we're gonna dive in to what is happening with VMware and related server, cost escalation, and what leaders need to know to make smart decisions in this space as they evolve. This is... Get to the Point. Welcome to Get to the Point podcast. This is a podcast where we talk to real IT people about real IT issues, and we try to dig into the why behind the tech that's all around us all of the time, and try to make it a little bit more human. I'm Andy Middlemiss.

Brandi: 1:52

And I'm Brandi Mentele. Today we're joined by Brian Bensen, a sales engineer at High Point Networks. He's been here since 2018, and Brian specialize in helping or specializes in helping organizations architect and understand their on-premise and cloud solutions, servers, storage, virtualization, backup, business continuity, oof, I'm really struggling on these today, and more. When the infrastructure conversation gets complex, Brian is the person in the room who makes it make sense. Brian, thank you so much for being here. Tell me something good, sir.

Brian: 2:28

Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me to this, so my good news for today is gonna start off with something bad, but turned good. Just recently in Bismarck, which is where I'm from, we've had, like, a series of fires. So there was a big, a fire comp- or apartment complex that was on fire last night, and ended up crumbling to the ground, and there's been multiple house fires around here. Not sure if it's just from the dry weather, people leaving grills on, whatever. I'm happy that when I went home for lunch today, my house is still standing, so I'm very happy to see that. I'm very, you know, saddened and everything for the people that have lost their homes here. It's kind of a travesty for, tragedy on the fires and everything that are going on, but, I'm feeling pretty good about just having my house right now.

Brandi: 3:25

Wow. You know. Yeah. Well, our hearts go out to those who are affected by that there in Bismarck, and we certainly hope everyone's safe and, gets the help that they need. Thank you for sharing that, Brian. Yeah, you know, today, I, do wanna start off, Brian, just for our listeners, that our job today, our goal today is not to bash VMware. I, need that to be known. Our job today isn't to tell you which way to go. Our job is just to kind of, you know, obviously there's some things out in the industry right now and some uncertainty, and our job is to try and clear up some of that uncertainty for our listeners. And so Brian, you know, obviously VMware has been the gold standard for virtualization. I think it still is. But can you kinda just talk a little bit about VMware, what it built and why it matters?

Brian: 4:16

Yeah, for sure. So an interesting note, VMware started in 1999, so that was two years after I graduated from high school. So it's been around for a while, started as just VMware workstation. So this was something you could load on your computer, you could spin up little virtual machines, probably more commonly used for test labs, development stuff, evolved into the server realm couple years later, where they came out with ESXi and GSX at the time. And then it just blossomed from there. So really what made this popular back in that day was everybody had a physical server for everything, so you were buying a server when you needed to have an application that had a web server, a file server, a database server, a this server, a that server. Everything had to have its own physical presence. So not only was the cost for servers gonna be expensive for whatever product you're looking at. But think about the, all the rack space, the power, the cooling, and the cabling, just everything around the data center that you would have to supply, to also host that, in such a physical format. So what VMware did to the world is they said, "Hey, let's invest in servers, but let's utilize those resources better." You know, now on a single server I can have a few virtual machines running on there. I can split the resources up, and I can have them running in a fashion where I'm getting better purchase of hardware, better utilization of resources to where I'm not having to have two racks full of servers to run things anymore. I might maybe just a half a rack now, so it really kind of condensed the architecture of infrastructure for environments. And also management, I think management took a huge step, to manage your infrastructure. Again, when you had all physical servers before, it was individually addressing each one, and making sure that everything was good on that. When you had everything under that one umbrella, it made it easier to manage. I saw all my virtual machines. I could manage them from this single pane of glass. I could just handle things so much better. So I think from the IT administration perspective, VMware just took a huge step for not only condensing that footprint in the data center, but management as a whole just became so much better and easier.

Andy: 6:49

Very cool. Yeah. Interesting. I remember back in, I guess, probably early 2000s when people really started adopting, adopting this virtualization strategy and you'd go into a data center that, all of a sudden, it's half empty just because of all of the rack space that they would save. It really, really was one of those pivotal, you know, revolutionary, kinds of technology, swings. So that's cool. So more recent history, VMware was acquired by Broadcom, and they have made some very specific business decisions about how they wanted to go to market. And I think they were even very just public and very upfront about, hey, not everybody is going to take this ride with us, and that's okay. But they made some business decisions around their pricing models and et cetera. And it's really shaken things up in the industry. And so there's a lot of competing technologies trying to figure out how they can be the path forward and capture some of the share that people are not going to take that road with VM. Talk a little bit about what happened, what was the impact, what's the fallout from all of that and those business decisions that they made with the acquisition.

Brian: 8:21

So it was right at the end of 2023, Broadcom purchased VMware for right around $69 billion. So very large purchase, and what they did was they really changed the footprint of what VMware offered. So I guess prior to Broadcom, VMware had over 160 different types of products and licenses that they offered to their consumers, 160. Now, I would say a lot of the customer base that we deal with, we deal with such a very small subset of those products. But I think that also speaks for the majority of probably the world, right? There weren't as many, unless if you're the larger enterprises that would invest in a lot more of the VMware products out there. So what happened is when Broadcom bought VMware, they significantly shrunk that footprint down to, I think it was four. So they had four offerings, and we went from 160 down to four. And again, so those started with an essentials, a standard, and then they had a couple different foundation platforms. And really what that was trying to do is just have a subset of licenses that would apply for small business, medium business, and maybe more your enterprise. But it also changed on how you purchase that too. You know, so we went from kind of a perpetual type license structure to now subscription, which follow the suit of everybody,

Brandi: 9:58

everybody today. Yeah, everybody's doing that. Yeah.

Brian: 9:59

Yeah. So, I mean, it was just a matter of time before something changed there. It just kind of all happened at the same time with this. So we went now we're subscription based, which, in the long haul, generally you're spending a little bit more when you go with subscription based. But the A lot of people saw increases year one. There was, and again, it's because you're likely seeing a subscription, you're not doing an investment in a perpetual with renewals anymore. So I mean, there was just a flat-out increase no matter how you price, whatever it is that we have. But people did their one-year, or three-year commitments on year one, but then as we got to year two, VMware shrunk the license set .. Now we don't have that small business one anymore. We're not offering that anymore. We're just gonna have standard and, the foundation classes, your enterprise plus type, type deal. So shrunk them again, so if they came up for renewal in one year, another price increase for them, right? Now you can't get the one that you had, we're gonna make you have to buy these other ones, which cost more, but again, you sign up for a one-year, maybe a three-year if you got lucky, and then we go up to year three, shrunk it again. Now we only offer the foundation. This is kind of where we're at today, right? We're in the mode where we really only have the two license models that they offer, their Cloud Foundation and their vSphere Foundation. So both are their foundation set licenses. Real quick on those, basically they're called that because they include a set of products. You know, so again, remember we talked about 160 products. They did kind of divide things out in these foundations that if you got this one, you get this, this, this, and this. If you get this one, you get everything that one had and this, this, and this. Of course, price higher, because it's multiple things inside of their subscription base. But again, we saw a lot of the small businesses continually see increases, not just because of market increases, but because of, again, limiting down the licensing. If you took the low-hanging fruit when it was available, it wasn't there the next year, et cetera, et cetera. so that's where we continually saw price increases for some of our customers, and that's definitely some of the pain points around the VMware, conversations that we've had with some customers.

Brandi: 12:31

Very cool. Yeah. Thanks for running through that, Brian. That really helps me kinda understand a little bit about some of the changes. And I think, the word we used earlier was uncertainty, right? It's caused a little bit of uncertainty. From what I understand and, I'll have you get into this'cause I know virtualization isn't going anywhere. It's kind of evolving. But f- from what I understand, there really isn't a one-to-one replacement for VMware. It's not like if I go to the grocery store, and they don't have the brand of ranch that I want, I just buy a different kind. At the end of the day, it might taste a little different, but I'm still getting ranch dressing at the end of the day, right? And so can you talk to me a little bit about just kinda the, again, where it's evolving to, maybe what people might want to look at as alternatives or how they might start that conversation, when they should start that conversation. But again, it's just not a one-to-one. I just can't take something else off the shelf and replace it. I think there are some different considerations that I'd love for you to walk through for us.

Brian: 13:31

Yeah. Yeah, for sure, and this is where it definitely dives into conversation, right?'Cause there's so many things that have to kinda line up to make things work correctly for customers. I guess to touch base, let's just talk about hypervisors altogether, and I'm just gonna go back a little more history, for everybody. So we said VMware kinda came into the market in 1999. Linux had a KVM hypervisor that came into presence around the year 2006. Hyper-V, another popular one, that's Microsoft's hypervisor. That came in around 2008. So you can see they're a little bit behind on when they came out, but those, systems have been around for quite a while as well. How did they evolve? So KVM being a Linux-based hypervisor has been kind of more an open source type thing. So that worked well for places like that wanted to do more of an open source development, of some form of hypervisor that they could come out with. It would... I, would say it hasn't been as popular, as VMware, throughout that duration up until today, right? I mean, it's gonna gain popularity now, and we'll get to that, but I would say during that mainstream VMware run, nothing could compete with it. I mean, nobody had the... Again, we can go back to that, how easy it was to manage, your environment. Everybody loves vCenter. I don't know if I've ever heard- Yeah ... one person say, "I absolutely hate how that is." Today everybody's like, "I love how that is, but can I justify the cost around it?" and... no, no KVM really had what VMware was, you know? So there was definitely... It's been around, it's just never established to what VMware could be. Hyper-V's kind of in the same suit. Hyper-V is Microsoft's hypervisor. It's been around since 2008. It's had some revisions, and it can do virtualization, but you just can't get the same thing that you can out of VMware with that, you know? So that's always been a little bit of a limitation. Some people though said, you know, "We only need some limited features, and this is gonna work for us," and they stuck with it. They're probably patting themselves on the back right now, but so it nothing has really evolved to date that can really compete with what VMware offers or is what most people are familiar with. And that's the other thing too, because VMware's had such a long run, everybody's familiar with that product, and that's kinda what they use to gauge against a lot of the other products out there too, just because that's what is and was great, is, was that product. Definitely a lot of time and effort being put into things today. there are-- HPE has a hypervisor that they've been working, very diligently on, and they are trying to improve what it can do to try to match certain levels of what VMware could do, and same with a lot of those other KVM-based programs. They just evolve, evolve, evolve. But I think one of the other complications with that is support, and that's where one of the questions we look at when we do talk to customers about alternatives is definitely, "Is this gonna work with what you have?" And when I say that, it's not necessarily just saying, "Does it work with your servers?" It's, "Does it work with your backup strategy? Does it work with your business continuity? Do you have managed services that only support certain types of hypervisors, and are you gonna go outside of that?" If you look at one of these other platforms, they may not be able to manage that for you anymore. Or even virtual appliances or applications, they may only support certain types of hypervisors. Phone systems, and again, like I said, virtual applications like firewalls or different appliances, it's all vendor-supported on what? You know, that's dictated by the vendor. So those are definitely some discovery questions that we ask when we look into that. I think understanding time is an important factor. So I think really when we have a conversation with the customer, it's really understanding when is that VMware license for you due, because that might be the timeframe that we have to work against to get you off of that, if that's what you wanna look at. other things that we need to look at would be hardware compatibility. What is the state of your hardware? Are you looking at any type of refresh cycle in the near future? Because that can also dictate when you might wanna look at a hypervisor change. It's when you get the new hardware, stage everything up on that. On the new platform, there's still a migration. You'd have to go from the old, virtualization effort to the new, but you don't have-- You can do that in parallel, with the new hardware, but is-- when's the budget cycle around that? When is that coming due and what does that look like? You know? So, I mean, there's lots of things to digest and look into when we have calls with customers, timelines, and everything. And everything just, time has a cost on it, I guess. So, I mean, that's... It's just really understanding where you can do what- whatever you need to do and make sure that you can do it, is really what all those discovery questions are gonna kind of answer.

Andy: 19:15

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, I guess that's really the place to start if you're a customer. I mean, this is probably one of the more complex evolutionary things that customers have to deal with today. It's not "Hey, I can use that brand of camera or that brand of camera or that brand of network switch or that brand of network switch." There's a lot of impacts around any decision that you make here because it's not just to the ranch dressing anam- anomaly. It's not just, "Oh, well, Hidden Valley's out. I'll grab this other brand." It's basically the same, right? We just don't have that in this space, so it takes a lot more, a lot more thought to get there. So I guess any other just advice to our listeners, advice to customers in general about if you are evaluating where you go with your virtualization strategy, what are the first few things that you... that are most, most critical to consider before you start heading down a path?

Brian: 20:16

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's kind of what we touched base on, just, previously. It's really understanding the timelines of everything that you have, licensing costs with VMware, when does that expire? What is the current state of your hardware? Because if that's something you just bought two years ago, I don't think most CFOs are going to allow another purchase of something new if that's what was needed. You know, they're gonna say,"Well, that's a five-year expenditure. You should have three years left on that." Well, what can I do now? go and, you just kind of keep pushing down the playbook, you know? So it's really understanding timelines around everything that you have, whether that be applications, licensing, or hardware, and then kind of see what makes the most sense. Sometimes, with some customers, what makes the most sense is continue with VMware. We know the cost is X amount of dollars for your environment, but that might just be the smarter way to not only utilize the investment you have, training, some... I've had lot a lot of feedback from customers who, you know,"If I switch to something else, I feel like I gotta start all over. There's gonna be training. I'm gonna be unfamiliar." and, they just- they don't wanna go through that. So there is the, some, efforts there, too, for the customers on their side that they might have to also invest in themselves and time and money, to try to keep up with an alternative. So all things factored, you just have to kind of value out in what period of time and what I'm dealing with, is that really worth switching? And, that's not always true for every-- for the customer. So we've seen it kind of go both ways, so.

Andy: 21:59

Yeah, interesting. So play a little game with me for a second, Brian, just so close your eyes for just a second 'cause I wanna make an analogy here. So, and picture you're standing in front of a little pond, and it's just glassy, smooth water, and in your hand you've got a stone. Just toss that stone out. I didn't see you toss it. Oh, there you go. There you go. Good. Toss that stone out into the wa- What happens when the stone hits the water?

Brian: 22:28

Ripples.

Andy: 22:29

Ripples. You get ripples. So if you think of that stone as a decision, decision or a path that I'm gonna take around this virtualization strategy, no matter what I do, including staying the course, I've got these ripples to deal with. It's gonna impact all kinds of things. So this is just a really complex, really complex, problem for customers to deal with and look ahead far enough that they can anticipate, "If I do that, what else is... what's, what are the ripples gonna be?"

Brian: 23:03

Yeah, exactly. And, that's why I would say, I mean, again, we're, open to talking to customers at any point in time. we understand some of them are short term, and we really gotta move on this. We can definitely do what we can to make that work. but it... I would say best case scenario is start trying to tackle this, if it is something you wanna look at, with a little more adequate time for planning, you know, and especially if we look at hardware, as another option that you need, have to invest in, we've got that also that we're dealing with, right? So there's delays on hardware in today's world, with the current state of AI data centers being built and everything like that. So there throws more factor into, again, time, right? So time is really a key factor to how this could or may end up working for somebody.

Andy: 24:00

And nothing's getting cheaper over time either these days in, in tech. So very interesting. Thanks for playing the game. I, never did say open your eyes

Brian: 24:11

Well, if I would've left them closed for a little bit longer, I was worried they might not ever open up, so.

Andy: 24:15

Okay, that's fair. It'll be nap time.

Brian: 24:18

I did have quite a few cups of coffee this morning, so I didn't wanna take that risk.

Andy: 24:23

Fair enough.

Brandi: 24:24

We should've caught you this morning.

Andy: 24:26

That's wise.

Brian: 24:26

Yeah.

Brandi: 24:27

You know, Brian, are there any sto- You just crack me up. I just can't even. Do you have any stories, or maybe you can share a story of somebody that maybe did it really well? How much time did they give themselves? Again, I'm sure you've seen all kinds of things. I'm sure you've seen people stick with it. I'm sure you've seen people migrate off it. But is there anything that sticks out to you about someone who did it really well? Again, we don't need to name names, but just somebody who did it well, you know, how much time do they need? Whether they should consult an outside firm when considering what their options are. Again, just kinda give us a little bit of real-life stories about maybe something that you've seen that's worked really well.

Brian: 25:16

Yeah. Yeah. I think it- I mean, knowing that we have, I would say, over six months, to plan something, I think generally seems to work a little bit better. And we've definitely come across the ... We've been put in the position where we've had less time, as well. But I just, I think if you have six-plus months to, to kind of start and try to have something finished by that timeframe, I think that's a lot more easily doable than some other scenarios where we've only had 30 days, and unfortunately, sometimes what happens is, the customers see their renewal.'Cause again, we talked about, how those just kept going up and up and up for some of the customers that started at the smaller licensing. This is gonna be ... It was the third time that they've seen an increase, and they're just substantial increases. And it's subscription, so it's reoccurring, and they're just seeing this and they're just thinking in their heads, they're like, "I just, I can't do this. What can I do to get off?" And it's just kind of a panic mode. And you don't find that out until that time of renewal, you know? And that's where we'll try to be a little more proactive with some customers and just try to see if we can establish at least a six-month, if not longer,"Hey, just FYI, this is kinda what this has been looking like. Maybe we can get ahead of this, and we can start planning if you feel like that's the right thing. Not saying it has to be, but, all things considered." Again, time is really kind of the killer in everything at this point because it's, just gonna be procuring hardware or resources, making sure everybody's got the availability to do what we need to do or you have what you need to do. It takes time to figure a lot of that stuff out. There's ... And it's not stuff that all we can really figure out. There is some stuff we have to kind of push back on the customers to help out with, too. You know, a lot of customers use specific applications that we may very not, we not, we're likely not very versed in. I can't say we're an expert on engineering applications or such. So it's almost like we have to kind of have them do a little homework too to make sure, hey, is there anything with this application that wouldn't work in the new hypervisor? So we're all kind of doing our part, right? We'll look at the system, we'll look at the hardware, we'll look at the resources, and we'll try to make sure we can account for as much as we can as far as here's what strategies you might need to look different towards or, include in this, type of migration. But we also would, need to understand support from the applications, which we may have to have the customer help out with that, you know? So I mean, it's just, there's a lot of checking and making sure and just aligning to make sure everything works, and just again, I would say six-plus months is generally gonna be the best way to tackle all that.

Andy: 28:07

Yeah, and don't put yourself in a situation where you have to rush to a decision'cause you're probably not gonna make a good decision, right? So-

Brandi: 28:13

True.

Andy: 28:14

Yeah.

Brian: 28:14

For sure. Correct. Yep.

Brandi: 28:17

Is it that fun time yet?

Andy: 28:18

I think it's the fun time.

Brandi: 28:21

Okay. So Brian, I think you've given us a lot of really good information today. I've, again, I, for listeners out there, first of all, you're not alone. We highly encourage you as Brian mentioned, to get out there and do some research, stay ahead of it, and seek out advice and help where you can. This is the fun part of our conversation today, Brian, where we get to ask you... So if you were in the studio, we would, give you a question to read out loud. And so we want our listeners to get to know you, a little bit better, and so we're gonna ask you a non-technical question, and we would like you to answer it, and then you get to choose whether or not we answer that same question or if you just get to answer it by yourself. But we, Andy's got a question here that he would like you to answer.

Andy: 29:15

All right. This is a doozy. This is a good one. I like this. So Brian, if you could time travel to observe only, which historical event would you want to witness and why?

Brian: 29:33

I mean, the kid part of me says go back to when the dinosaurs were here, and just kinda, see what that's like. But now as the adult, I'm just like, "I would totally get eaten." Yeah. I'm not the fastest guy in the world. but it would be kind of cool just to see. But I'm trying to think of more of an of an event here. Let's see. What about an event? Oh, there's just so many events out there. I mean, one thing that did flash across my mind was maybe Woodstock would've been kind of cool to see. If you're into music and kind of live stuff, I think that would have been kind of a big thing. Not saying I'm necessarily-

Brandi: 30:12

That was a good answer.... Brian: part of the, you the, or anything, but I think it was just, it was a pretty... it would have been pretty cool to see, I think. Yeah. I like that.

Andy: 30:22

When I think flower child, I think Brian Bensen.

Brandi: 30:25

Yeah. That's, uh, absolutely what came to my mind, Brian.

Brian: 30:29

I kind of have that, yeah, that kind of face, right? So-

Andy: 30:32

Awesome.

Brandi: 30:33

Oh, shoot.

Brian: 30:35

Well, well, I am, I mean, I am kind of curious. I'd like to hear what other kind of events maybe people would like to visit. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna reverse that right back to you guys. Let's hear it. Okay.

Andy: 30:44

Okay. You pick who goes first. Yeah.

Brian: 30:48

Oh, let's go Brandi.

Andy: 30:50

Good choice. I'm thinking.

Brandi: 30:52

I was like pick Andy, pick Andy. You know, I agree with you. There have been so many things in history that would be really cool to see. I think for me it would be either... 'Cause I've never seen, like, when the first spaceship launched. That'd be k- you know, kind of cool. Or when they landed on the moon, that'd be kind of cool. I think about those events in history, but then there's so many, I agree, that, geez, where would you even begin? But I'm gonna go with those two.

Andy: 31:17

Okay. I like that. Good answers. I think-

Brandi: 31:19

All around space.

Andy: 31:20

I would... All around space stuff. Okay. Yep. I think I would want to go back and witness the invention of the dab. I think that's what I would wanna do. So there you go.

Brian: 31:36

I thought you invented the dab already.

Andy: 31:38

Well, yeah. I haven't claimed it yet, but...

Brandi: 31:45

Oh, Brian, if you only knew. If you only knew. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for tolerating our last question. I genuinely appreciate the insight that you bring to . And, I think listening to you, knowing you as a person, you really do take the time to guide people, or do your best to guide people in a direction that makes sense for them. And from what I hear from what you're saying here is everybody seems to be different and unique in their own way, and I think that's the key here is that there is no one size fits all. Maybe you end up staying where, exactly where you're at, maybe you don't. But you're not alone and there are options out there for you if you wanna consider that. So appreciate your time today just greatly and just your willingness to be that trusted advisor for people and us today. Mr. Middlemiss, do you wanna do the the final subscribe, do you wanna do that today?

Andy: 32:48

Sure. Let's do that. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it please follow us and subscribe. Just smack that subscribe button wherever it is, follow us on all the social media platforms, and watch on highpointnetworks.com for upcoming episode alerts. And we appreciate you being here today. And remember, we're always here to help you get to the point. Have a great day. Thanks for joining.