>> From around the globe, It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm John Furrier host of the CUBE. We got a great guest here. Brian Bouchard is the co-founder president and CEO of Alacrinet. Brian great to see you remoting in all the way from Puerto Rico to Palo Alto. >> That's right. >> Great to see you. >> Thanks for First of all, thanks John, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. >> Yeah, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. First of all, before we get into what you guys do and and how this all ties in to Think. What do you guys do at Alacrinet? Why the name? A it's good you're at the top of the list and alphabetically, but tell us the, the, the the secret behind the name and what you guys do. >> So, first of all Alacrinet is based on the root word alacrity which means a prompt and willing, a prompt a joyous prompt to, excuse me, to achieve a common goal. So we ultimately are a network of individuals with the traits of alacrity. So Alacrinet. So that's our name. >> Great. So what's your relationship with IBM and how you guys have been able to leverage the partnership program in the marketplace? Take us through the relationship. >> So, well, first of all Alacrinet is a platinum IBM business partner and it was awarded recently the 2020 IBM North American partner of the year award. And we were selected amongst 1600 other business partners across North America. We've been actually a consulting, an IT consulting company for almost 20 years now. And we were founded in 2002 in Palo Alto and we have focused specifically on cyber security since 2013. And then as part, go ahead. >> What are some of the things that you guys are working on? Because obviously, you know, the business is hot right now. Everyone's kind of looking at COVID saying we're going to double down on the most critical projects and no time for leisurely activities when it comes to IT. And cloud scale projects, you know mission critical stuff's happening what are you guys working on? >> So we're, we're focused on cybersecurity, our security services really compliment IBM's suite of security solutions and cover the full spectrum from our research and penetration testing, which helps identify vulnerabilities before a breach occurs. And we also have managed security services which helps prevent, detect and remediate attacks in real time. And then finally, we also have a security staffing division and a software resell division, which kind of rounds out the full amount of offerings that we have to provide protection for our clients. >> What are some of the biggest challenges you guys have as a business, and how's IBM helping you address those? >> Well, as you know, John, we all know the importance of cybersecurity in today's world, right? So it's increasing in both demand and importance and it's not expected to wane anytime soon. Cyber attacks are on the rise and there's no there's no expected end in sight to this. And in fact, just this week on 60 minutes, Jay Powell, the chairman of the federal reserve board he noted that cyber attacks were the number one threat to the stability of the US economy. Also this week, a public school in Buffalo New York was hacked with ransomware and the school you know, this, the school district is just contemplating you know, paying the ransom to the hackers. So there's literally thousands of these attacks happening every day, whether it's in local school district or a state government, or an enterprise even if you don't hear about them, they're happening In adding to the complexity that the cyber attackers pose is the complexity of the actual cybersecurity tools themselves. There isn't a single solution provider or a single technology, that can ensure a company's security. Our customers need to work with many different companies and disconnected tools and processes to build an individual strategy that can adequately protect their organizations. >> You know, I love this conversation whenever I talk to practitioners on cybersecurity, you know that first of all, they're super smart, usually cyber punks and they also have some kinds of eclectic backgrounds, but more importantly is that there's different approaches in terms of what you hear. Do you, do you put more if you add more firefighters, so to speak to put out the fires and solve the problems? Or do you spend your time preventing the fires from happening in the first place? You know, and you know, the buildings are burning down don't make fire fire, don't make wood make fire resistance, you know, more of a priority. So there's less fires needing firefighters So it's that balance. You throw more firefighters at the problem or do you make the supply or the material the business fireproof, what's your take on that? >> Yeah, well, it kind of works both ways. I mean, we've seen customers want it. They really want choice. They want to, in some cases they want to be the firefighter. And in some cases they want the firefighter to come in and solve their problems. So, the common problem set that we're seeing with our that our customers encounter is that they struggle one, with too many disparate tools. And then they also have too much data being collected by all these disparate tools. And then they have a lack of talent in their environment to manage their environments. So what we've done at Alacrinet is we've taken our cybersecurity practice and we've really specifically tailored our offerings to address these core challenges. So first, to address the too many disparate tools problem, we've been recommending that our clients look at security platforms like the IBM Cloud Pak for security the IBM Cloud Pak for security is built on a security platform that allows interoperability across various security tools using open standards. So our customers have been responding extremely positively to this approach and look at it as a way to future-proof their investments and begin taking advantage of interoperability with, and, tools integration. >> How about where you see your business going with this because, you know, there's not a shortage of need or demand How are you guys flexing with the market? What's the strategy? Are you going to use technology enablement? You're going to more human driven. Brian, how do you see your business unfolding? >> Well, actually really good. We're doing very well. I mean, obviously we made the, the top the business partner for IBM in 2020. They have some significant growth and a lot of interest. I think we really attack the market in a, in a with a good strategy which was to help defragment the market if you will. There's a lot of point solutions and a lot of point vendors that various, you know, they they spent specialized in one piece of the whole problem. And what we've decided to do is find them the highest priority list, every CSO and CIO has a tick list. So that how that, you know, first thing we need we need a SIM, we need an EDR, we need a managed service. We need, what's the third solution that we're doing? So we, we need some new talent in-house. So we actually have added that as well. So we added a security staffing division to help that piece of it as well. So to give you an idea of the cybersecurity market size it was valued at 150 billion in 2019 and that is expected to grow to 300 billion by 2027. And Alacrinet is well-positioned to consolidate the many fragmented aspects of the security marketplace and offer our customers more integrated and easier to manage solutions. And we will continue to help our customers select the best suite of solutions to address all types of cybersecurity, cybersecurity threats. >> You know, it's it's such a really important point you're making because you know, the tools just have piled up in the tool shed. I call it like that. It's like, it's like you don't even know what's in there anymore. And then you've got to support them. Then the world's changed. You get cloud native, the service areas increasing and then the CSOs are also challenged. Do I, how many CLAWs do I build on? Do I optimize my development teams for AWS or Azure? I mean, now that's kind of a factor. So, you have all this tooling going on they're building their own stuff they're building their own core competency. And yet the CSO still needs to be like maintaining kind of like a relevance list. That's almost like a a stock market for the for the products. You're providing that it sounds like you're providing that kind of service as well, right? >> Yeah, well, we, we distill all of the products that are out there. There's thousands of cybersecurity products out there in the marketplace and we kind of do all that distillation for the customer. We find using, you know, using a combination of things. We use Forrester and Gartner and all the market analysts to shortlist our proposed solutions that we offer customers. But then we also use our experience. And so since 2013, we've been deploying these solutions across organizations and corporations across America and we've, we've gained a large body of experience and we can take that experience and knowledge to our customers and help them, you know, make make some good decisions. So they don't have to, you know, make them go through the pitfalls that many companies do when selecting these types of solutions. >> Well congratulations, you've got a great business and you know, that's just a basic search making things easier for the CSO, more so they can be safe and secure in their environment. It's funny, you know, cyber warfare, you know the private companies have to fight their own battles got to build their own armies. Certainly the government's not helping them. And then they're confused even with how to handle all this stuff. So they need, they need your service. I'm just curious as this continues to unfold and you start to see much more of a holistic view, what's the IBM angle in here? How, why are you such a big partner of theirs? Is it because their customers are working with you they're bringing you into business? Is it because you have an affinity towards some of their products? What's the connection with IBM? >> All of the above. (chuckles) So I think it probably started with our affinity to IBM QRadar product. And we have, we have a lot of expertise in that and that solution. So that's, that's where it started. And then I think IBM's leadership in this space has been remarkable, really. So like what's happening now with the IBM Cloud Pak for security you know, building up a security platform to allow all these point solutions to work together. That's the roadmap we want to put our customers on because we believe that's the that's the future for this, this, this marketplace. >> Yeah. And the vision of hybrid cloud having that underpinning be with Red Hat it's a Linux kernel, model of all things >> Yeah. Super NetEase. >> Locked in >> It's portable, multiple, you can run it on Azure. IBM Cloud, AWS. It's portable. I mean, yeah, all this openness, as you probably know cyber security is really a laggard in the security in the information technology space as far as adopting open standards. And IBM is I think leading that charge and you'll be able to have a force multiplier with the open standards in this space. >> Open innovation with open source is incredible. I mean, if you, if, if if open source can embrace a common platform and build that kind of control plane and openness to allow thriving companies to just build out then you have an entire hybrid distributed architecture. >> Yeah. Well, I think companies want to use the best in breed. So when we, when we show these solutions to customers they want the best in breed. They always say, I don't, when it comes to security they don't want second best. They want the best it's out there because they're securing their crown jewels. So that makes sense. So the problem with, you know having all these different disparate solutions that are all top in their category none of them talk to each other. So we need to address that problem because without that being solved, this is just going to be more it's going to compound the complexity of the problems we solve day to day. >> Awesome. Congratulations, Brian, great story. You know entrepreneur built a great business over the years. I think the product's amazing. I think that's exactly what the market needs and just shows you what the ecosystem is all about. This is the power of the ecosystem. You know, a thousand flowers are blooming. You got a great product. IBM is helping as well. Good partnership, network effects built in and and still a lot more to do. Congratulations. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. >> Thank you very much >> Brian Bouchard >> Made my impression. I appreciate that >> Thanks for coming on theCUBE Appreciate it. I'm John Furrier with IBM thinks 2021 virtual coverage. Thanks for watching. (outro music plays)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you >>by IBM. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm john ferrier host of the Q. We've got a great guest here brian Bouchard, co founder president and ceo of Allah credit brian, great to see you um promoting it all the way from Puerto rico to Palo Alto. >>Great to >>see. First of all. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. >>Yeah great, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Um first of all, before we get into what you guys do and how this all ties in to think what do you guys do? It Alex Burnett, Why the name uh is good, you're at the top of the list and alphabetically, but tell us the secret behind the name and what you guys do. >>So first of all, a crochet is based on the root word alacrity, which means a prompt and will prompt a joyous prompt itude excuse me to achieve a common goal. So we ultimately our network of >>individuals with >>the traits of alacrity. So eloquent. So that's our name. >>Great. So what's your relation with IBM and how you guys been able to leverage the partnership program in the marketplace take us through the relationship >>so Well, first of all, L. A. Quartet is a platinum IBM business partner and was awarded recently the 2020 IBM north american Partner of the Year award. And we were selected among 1600 other business partners across North America. We've been actually a consulting an IT. consulting company for almost 20 years now and we were founded in 2002 in Palo Alto. And we have focused specifically on cybersecurity since 2013. What is >>Right, what are some of the things you guys are working on? Because obviously, you know, the business is hot right now, everyone's kind of looking at Covid saying we're gonna double down on the most critical projects and no time for leisurely activities when it comes to I T and cloud scale projects, you know, mission critical stuff is happening. What are you guys working on? >>So we're focused on cybersecurity. Our our security services really complement IBM suite of security solutions and cover the full spectrum from our research and penetration testing, which helps identify vulnerabilities before it reach occurs. And we also have managed security services which helps prevent detect and remediate attacks in real time. >>And then finally, we also have a security staffing division and a software resale division which kind of rounds out the full amount of offerings that we have to provide protection for our clients. >>What are some of the biggest challenges you guys have as a business and house IBM helping you address those? >>Well, as you know, john, we all know that the importance of cyber security in today's world, so it's increasing in both demand and importance and it's not expected to wait any time soon. Cyber attacks are on the rise and there's >>no >>Uh there's no expected end in sight to this and in fact just this week on 60 minutes, uh, the Jay Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he noted that cyber attacks were the number one threat to the stability of the US. economy. >>Also this week, >>a public school in Buffalo new york was hacked with ransomware >>and the school, this uh, >>the school district is just contemplating you're paying the ransom to the hackers. So there's literally thousands of these attacks happening every day, whether it's in a local school district or state government or an enterprise, even if you don't hear about them, they're happening. And adding to the complexity that the cyber Attackers pose is the complexity of the actual cybersecurity tools themselves. There isn't a single solution provider or single technology that could ensure a company security. Our customers need to work with many different companies and disconnected tools and processes to build an individual strategy that can adequately protect their organizations. >>You know, I love this conversation whenever I talked to practitioners, uh, cybersecurity, you know, first of all, they're super smart, usually cyber punks, and they also have some kind of eclectic background, but more importantly, is that there's different approaches in terms of what you hear. Do you do you put more if you add more firefighters so to speak, to put out the fires and solve the problems? Or do you spend your time preventing the fires from happening in the first place? You know, and you know, the buildings are burning down, Don't make a fire fire uh don't make would make fire resistance, you know, more of a priority. So there's less fires, not firefighters. So it's that balance. You throw more firefighters at the problem or do you make the supply or the material, the business fireproof? What's your take on that? >>Well, it kind of works >>both ways. I mean, we've seen customers want to, they really want choice. They >>wanna, in some >>cases they want to be the firefighter and in some cases they want the firefighter to come in and solve their problems. So >>the common problem set that we're seeing with our our customers encounter is that they struggle one with too many disparate tools and then they also have too much data being collected by all these disparate tools and then they have a lack of talent in their environment to manage their environment. So what we've done at Lacqua net is we've taken our cybersecurity practice and we've really uh specifically tailored our offerings to address these court challenges. So first to address the too many disparate tools problem, uh We've been recommending that our clients look at security platforms like the IBM cloud pack for security. The IBM cloud fax for security is built on a security platform that allows interoperability across various security tools using open standards. So our customers have been responding extremely positively to this approach and look at it as a way to future proof their investments >>and begin taking advantage of >>interoperability with >>hand tools integration. >>Talk about what you see your business going with with this because you know there's not a shortage of of need um demand. Um How are you guys flexing with the market? Uh What's the strategy are you going to use technology enablement? You're gonna more human driven brian how do you see your business of unfolding >>Well? Actually really good. We're doing very well. I mean obviously we've made the top business partner for IBM in 2020. Um we have some significant growth and a lot of interest I think we really attacked the market in a good strategy which was to help defragment the market if you will. There's a lot of point solutions and a lot of point vendors that you know they they spent uh specialize in one piece of the whole problem and what we've decided to do is find them the highest party list. Every see so and see IO has a tick list. So >>they have that >>you know uh first thing we need we need a sim we need a E. D. >>Are we need a >>managed service? We need um what's the third solution that we're doing? So we need some new talent in house. So we actually have the added that as well. So we added a security staffing uh division to help that piece of it as well. So to give you an idea of the cybersecurity market size, It was valued at 150 billion in 2019. And that is expected to grow to 300 billion by 2027. >>And Akron is well positioned to consolidate the many fragmented aspects of the security marketplace and offer our customers more integrated and easier to manage solutions. And we will continue to help our customers select the best suite of solutions to address all types of cyber security, cyber security threats. >>You know, it's such a really important point you're making because, you know, the tools just piled up in the tool shed, I call it like that, It's like, it's like you don't even know what's in there anymore and then you've got to support them, then the world's changed, get cloud native, the service area is increasing and then the CSOs are also challenged. Do I have any clouds? Do I build on? Do I optimize my development teams for AWS or Azure? Now, that's kind of a factor. So you have all this tooling going on? They're building their own stuff, they're building their own core competency. And yet the sea so still needs to be like maintaining kind of like a relevance list. That's almost like a stock market for the, for the products you're providing, that it sounds like you're providing that kind of service. >>Uh, yeah, as well. Right? We distill all of the products that are out there, there's thousands of cybersecurity products out there in the marketplace and we kind of do all that distillation for the customer we find using, you know, using a combination of things we use uh Forrester and Gartner and all the market analysts to shortlist are, are solutions that we offer customers. But then we also use our experience. And so through since 2013, we've been deploying these solutions across organizations and corporations across America and we've gained a large body of experience and we can take that experience and knowledge to our customers and help them make some good decisions. So they don't have to make them go through the pitfalls that many companies do when selecting these types of solutions. >>Well, congratulations, got a great business and uh you know, that's just a basic, starts making things easier for the sea. So more so they can be safe and secure in their environment. It's funny, you know, cyber warfare, you know the private company have to fight their own battles, going to build their own armies. Certainly the government's not helping them and they're confused even know how to handle all this stuff. So they didn't they need your service. I'm just curious as this continues to unfold and you start to see much more of a holistic view. What's the IBM angle in here? Why are you such a big partner of theirs? Is it because their customers are working with you? They're bringing you into business? Is it because you have an affinity towards some of their products? What's the connection with IBM, >>all of the above? So >>I think it probably started with our affinity to IBM P radar products and we have a we have a lot of expertise in that in that solution. Um, so >>that's that's where it >>started. And then I think I B. M. S leadership in this space has been, Yeah, >>remarkable. Really. So like what's happening now with the IBM compaq for security, building a security platform to allow all these points solutions to work together. Uh that's the road map we want to put our customers on because we believe that's the that's the future for this, this uh, this marketplace >>and the vision of hybrid cloud having that underpinning be with red hat, it's a Lennox Colonel model of >>all things you can you can run it on. Sure. I've been plowed uh aws it's portable. Yeah. All this openness, as you probably know, uh, cybersecurity is really a laggard in the security and the information technology space as far as adopting open standards and IBM is I think leading that charge and you'll be able to have a force multiplier >>uh >>with open standards in the space. >>Open innovation with open source is incredible. I mean if you if if open source can embrace a common platform and build that kind of control, playing and openness to allow thriving companies to just build out, then you have an entire hybrid distributed >>architecture. Yeah, well, I think companies want to use the best in breed. So when we, when we show these solutions to customers, they want the best in breed, they always say, I don't, when it comes to security, they don't want second best. They want the best that's out there because they're securing their crown jewels. So that makes sense. Um, so the problem is having all these different disparate solutions that are all top in their category, none of them talk to each other so we need to address that problem because without that being solved this is just going to be a more, it's going to compound the complexity of the problems we solve day to day, >>awesome, congratulations brian, great story. Um you know entrepreneur built a great business over the years um I think the products amazing, I think that's exactly what the market needs and it just shows you what the ecosystems all about. This is the power of the ecosystem. You know 1000 flowers are blooming, you got a great product. IBM is helping as well. Good partnership network effect builds in and and still a lot more to do. Congratulations. >>Absolutely. Okay thank you very much >>brian thanks >>for coming on the q appreciate it. I'm Sean Fourier with IBM thinks 2021 virtual coverage. Thanks for watching. Mhm.

okay we're back here live at IBM iod this is the cube our flagship program about the advances in there from the noise i'm john furrier the founders look at an angle enjoy my co-host David on to the co-founder Wikibon or go to SiliconANGLE calm for the reference point in tech innovation Kotobuki bun or for free research research analysts they're putting out free content and of course you always come by the Cuban see where we are in the events wouldn't be at Amazon Web Services event with all the events extracted sniffle noise and share that with you our next guest is Tom de Klerk CIO of superior group welcome to the queue thank you Dave you and I'd love to talk about CEOs because you know maybe we get the real scoop on things so first why you here at IBM iod let's get that out of the way to talk about some of the things you doing here and what you're seeing here sure so we something with the company three years we're a staffing organization why I'm here I was actually here last year and we've implemented three major systems in the last three years one was SI p and embrace the ERP system second being IBM connections and the third being IBM cognos and so over the course of the three years you know trying to roll off these projects so I'm here to to learn more about you know the capabilities of cognos and the biggest one for me is that with cognos and SI p SI p when they bought their in iowa city i'm sorry when IBM bought cognos it was 881 they had a report pack specifically for SI p customers so when they went to 10 1 and 10 2 they didn't offer that product so there they just started developing a year ago I sat down with some senior executives if the IBM organization and said you guys are losing an opportunity here customers that have an implementation of SI p and trying to get information out other than using SI piece product business analytics so they over the course of the year have been developing a rapport pack that they can offer the customers so we were part of the beta testing program for IBM and so that's I'm here to actually talk to some other people and understand something listen to you see how they impact on product development that's good well yeah there's there's the continuous improvements even I'm even on the well you look at the report pack now it's still in my mind and I fed this feedback back night there's it's a do list oh absolutely but that's not any type of a rollout of any product you can expect that so tell us a little bit more about superior group you guys your staffing company would yes we're a we're a company that's headquartered in Buffalo New York and we started back in nineteen fifty-seven it's a privately held company we have a total of 400 staff employees and roughly anywhere from seven to nine thousand contract employees so we provide workforce solutions as well as outsourcing and primarily in three areas people process as well as the outsourcing project outsourcing so on the people side it's your traditional recruiting for staff augmentation executive Research recruiting as well as direct placement and then on the process ID we offer managed services program we also offer vendor managed services independent independent contractor compliance and then on the outsourced and we have IT outsourcing HR outsourcing so that's pretty much our companies make up and tell we were talking off-camera about sort of the role the CIO and you'd like to everybody would like to be more strategic if they had time but a lot of the cios especially mid-sized organizations she doesn't don't have as many you know people to to be able to sit back and do some of those more strategic things but so a lot of CIOs talk about transforming their organization you've kind of transformed it with three huge projects in the past what would you say this was two years yes sir yeah the solicitors perspective SI p was started in july of 2010 and then started last year with the IBM connections and the Cognos reporting okay so but still over sure yeah let me that's that's some major disruptions to talk about how you manage that so it was extremely challenging especially given the number of resources that we have were a mid-sized company and when I came from a manufacturing organization spent 15 years working for manufacture Murray so going from that vertical into professional services vertical I was used to used to having a lot of IT resources to be able to support an organization so you highly leveraged the contractors and consultants both with sa fie they're implementing partner as well as an IBM it was critical for us to leverage IBM's knowledge and their skill set in order to be successful in rolling out our products so the SI p rollout was was the most complicated i'm sonia to me by far by far it took yeah we rolled out ECC six-point lead us with the full suite payroll sore we provide pay Rowling's one of our services so HCM which is human capital management the sales and distribution material management so a lot of the fundamental components of sa p we rolled out so it was it was quite a an interesting experience that was that core yes he went capital measurement or success factors no ms core we've looked at successfactors about it about a year ago and it just doesn't fit quite fit at this point in time as they start to develop in the product becomes a little more mature that may be a better fit for our organization and connections what was the driver behind bringing them in and talk about that a little bit sure so for us connections we did some analysis early this year breaking in january went a project strategy where we looked and discussed with some of our internal associates and interviewed about 30 staff employees and one of the only two fundamental things that came back out of that analysis was one we don't communicate properly our business goals throughout our organization so we're headquartered in Buffalo but we have over 50 locations worldwide so we have a lot of connect you know offices remotely and people that aren't sitting at our headquarters and that was another concern of feedback that was brought back to us was that we don't have the ability or the people with the remote offices felt like they weren't part of the the whole process or communicating properly with a corporate headquarters so we felt that this was the perfect platform to allow us to enable them so we did quite a bit of research we have a director of marketing and mobile strategy that went through a complete analysis and we looked at the SharePoint product but what's nice about the this product as opposed to the SharePoint is the the look and feel of you know like a linkedin the Twitter and that social media aspect of it so it really leveraged us leverage for us an opportunity to to collaborate and to reach out to these locations so the objectives were collaboration better communication so how is that being used how widely is it being used how did it change things it's really curious as to the outcome so actually it wasn't very positive outcome in it you know as you roll out of when you take a company you actually do a transformation into a social media type organization it's never in my opinion ever done it's a continuous process so we're still evolving as we go along I think the key is to be a front is that have the right adoption strategy so last year in january i attended the IBM connect down in florida and i actually participated an event with some senior execs with sandy sandy carter from IBM who heads up that part of the organization the social media and so it really it was about adoption strategy it's keith really not only is it just to implement it that's an IT thing and that's pretty straightforward but i've seen in the past it's always the challenge of not only just implementing the technology but then it's it's adopting and getting your users to use that and so because it had that look and feel that a lot of the people are familiar with you and your facebooks and that it's X have been extremely successful in rolling that out now that said we still think there's additional opportunities and we're looking at doing some enhancements social dashboarding looking at executive blogs a big value at four ization it's just when we roll it out not just internally to our staff employees but rolling it out to our contractors so we have anywhere between seven to nine thousand contractors working for superior and so they'll be working in our business there's a high turnover rate yoko and we'll place someone at a company but maybe work there for a month two months a week and that when they leave that now which goes away with them so we're really targeting our value add to be able to roll this out to even to our contract employee so when they go work on site they start to collaborate share information and invent that they do leave we still harvest that information that's bi-directional too I mean they're a representation of your company even though they are transient but so you can communicate to them like you say executive blogs what the what the corporate messaging is policies whatever it is that they can take it to as representing you essentially as an extension of your workforce and as you say you get knowledge back right oh absolutely and so one of the key values that we places that when we did that analysis I said earlier is that we didn't feel like there was a communication so now with the social media platform in place now we have people that are in our bangalore office can communicate and feel like they're in touch with our corporate headquarters and also their co-workers that are saying it on-site facilities that our customers so it really is improved that collaboration and communication it's really brought the organization together did you ever think at one point we just used you know publicly available social tools Facebook or LinkedIn just start a blog yet we and our organization has done that we have the Twitter count the facebook account but this was an opportunity for us to develop it and Taylor more customized it more for hours or specific names you've integrated those public network lots of little works right you if you go to our website you'll see the links and connections right into that yeah so functionally it's obviously a more rich environment connections right so why don't we talk about that a little bit what sort of what additional value did that bring to you is paying for it well sure is you how to justify it what value did you get there several areas that we feel it brought value one is you can it's a platform that can accessed anywhere so you don't have to be on our internal network to be able to access and collaborate and communicate right so that was a huge value add for our organization allows us to connect and stay stay together it empowered our users to be able to contribute openly be able to collaborate to be able to innovate and be able to take calculated risks from IT standpoint we see a reduction in email I don't have the actual numbers to tell you what percentage reduction an email but I'm pushing very strongly that we have an opportunity to use and leverage connections instead of sending emails traditionally you know people send an email check this where with connections you put the hosts the content or you put the files upload the files in there and they'll send a notification so you're not plugging you know plugging up your email system with additional data so yeah there's a Productivity aspect of that absolutely I think oh god I was Christian and the other thing is that you know the time to market for solutions has definitely reduced and even the the increase in efficiency so I know we spent some time looking at like this ed brillz book on opting in and then there's his situation identifies in the book is the traditional product manager they find him in manufacturing is really moving more towards a social product manager leveraging the IBM connections or for superior we took an opportunity to do that so I got to ask you about the social software Dave and I've been tracking jive all these other companies amor the facebook for the enterprise is kind of what they've been calling it but the feedback we've been hearing from CIOs was that I just favorited I signed something is it's in the social media team is running it that other team and so we were talking about the metaphor that the social media teams are a lot like the web teams in the 90s oh yeah we need a website yeah the kids are doing it right like the new guys the young guys are putting a web pages searchable it grew obviously it's relevant the websites grew and became big business e-commerce social media is the same way it's like everyone can see that it's real they know it's gonna be important it's not a lot of budget associating there's not a lot of personnel so the issue is is that they get implemented these say if they get sold these software packages and then they got to implement it kind of like communities yet this other stuff happening twitter facebook linkedin events live streaming so a lot of other social activations going on so so i want to get your take on as a CIO do you look at get involved in levels like that on the app's side is those apps decisions made with that in mind of like the personnel costs and and and the actual to run it and i've got some guys just for the hey i bought that i don't use anymore why it's just too much hassle right so there's a hassle factor what do you take what's your to my taste first of all I'm very big on when i get an asset or acquire an asset as best you realizing that asset you know and i came to this organization i saw several situations where assets were purchased to your point and just sitting idle because maybe it was a head take additional initiative to implement that so in our situation i work very closely with a gentleman that really did most of the work and doing all the research and its name is Franco he handles our he's a director of digital mobile strategy and so he went out and did all the work for us came back and sat down with myself and our president reviewed what makes the most sense I came from a manufacturing facilities it utilized the SharePoint so I was big at SharePoint so I was kind of was pushing in that direction but when I actually sat down with him i we went through really the true value adds what we can gain from that it was really a no-brainer for us do you ever have a situation where you put you put your fist down so hey you know what we just got to abandon that right now let's cut our losses move on in physics for example is another use case where same same situation I won't name the vendor was an IBM it was another one where hey want to do some new things we don't the staff the guys making us drive this engine until we get an roi out of in other words they were like we're going to ride this Pony until either collapses or ROI comes out of it when in reality they just driving down a cul-de-sac yeah so at some point in an emerging market like we're in agile is the option to abandon right you got to know and to cut the cord right oh absolutely and I'm not you know I'm not in a position where I'd say absolutely one band if it made sense it's right it's got to be a business decision well altima tlie position has always been it's got to work with the business and let the business drive and not i.t i.t is there to enable the business so we can provide our input and on the day they let them make the decisions now we didn't talk about the Cognos implementation any kind of depth so tell me tell me what you're doing with with cognos we talked a little bit about the essay p extension but how are you using cognos so primarily we have as i mentioned before part of our businesses and the managed services programs we offer MSPs which we have a tool called work nexus which is our vendor management solution involves our MSP they our customers will use this tool for recruiting for looking at time clocks looking at the proving timesheets invoicing and so forth so we have some pretty strict requirements of pulling that information now in providing reports to our customers we use our platform developed on it's based on abdominal environment so we in order to give them the reports we create what's called ad-hoc reports out of Domino very limited capabilities so that was our first target area was to use cognos to provide more enrich type dashboards active type reports for our customers we're just about completed with that part of the project the next is really to pulp reports out of sa p and so the standard reports that that i have with that IBM has provided is really more in the SD area as well as in the MM area so for our organization we're so heavily on payroll and people we really need to have report start in that area so and the next year i'm trying to work with a partner local partner in our area LPA systems to help develop more reports tailored towards SI p to provide workers compensation but i need to run a report that pulls out the work of compensation to do an essay p is so much more costly than to do it out of out of the Cognos so that's our goal in the next year's really to pull more reports using cognos out of sa p okay um what if we could talk a little bit about cloud which you're sort of stance on that you know some cio say no way others say yes others get you know shadow I t he coming to the cloud what's the state of cloud from an infrastructure standpoint and even a SAS you organization sure so we're currently in the process actually I'm looking at our organization and a traditional IT become a cost center so I'm trying to actually move it into a profit Center by offering services so we're targeting in the Buffalo area anyways small companies we're offering hosting cloud-based service whether it be private or rather be a public cloud services I'm not opposed at all to using a cloud-based solution in fact I'm on my essay p side for my dr site i'm doing just that i have a contract with a where the company is providing me a a cloud-based solution for my dr ok so but so you use it for disaster recovery are you doing any sort of Production apps in the cloud or would you ever consider doing that or no because we would consider i'm not sure if i consider this company because our information is very this very controlled we fall under the ssae 16 because we house that we host data that has in the HIPAA regulations all the different regulations so we have people social security number in that so to offer that in the cloud not to say that's not secure but we have much better control and we have an infrastructure in our organization that has enough bandwidth has enough cooling all the normal environmental that you have for data center so right now for us it makes more sense for us but in three to five years from now maybe even sooner that will probably look at possibly what's the cost differentiation between doing it in house having the resources to a versus offering what about test endeavor you do any tested dev stuff oh yes we have in our SP environment have a traditional three-tier landscape so we've got a dev quality in the production all of which is housed inside the decision actually to have that to have that done was before I joined the company so we the decision was made at say in May of 2010 I joined in July had I been before and I really would have pushed to have that hosted somewhere else because my opinion for an organization mostly like ours we don't have the technical expertise to be able to you know the basis capabilities the architecture the hardware all that type of stuff so I think that's a better fit for most people in do an essay p implementations of looking at that may be the first second or third year if you trust me we don't have that experience if you're new to an essay p type environment no no no no use case for it right no using Bitcoin at all no you have a from Association last night about Bitcoin still look at the next to look crazy were down yeah PayPal's looking at is that in the news it's not mainstream enterprises yeah we loved we loved talking to see iOS housley Wikibon community we have a lot of CIOs with a lot of CEOs in our network and you know this is challenging opportunity but the days the good days are ahead i mean we're seeing huge investment opportunity growth new top line drivers that are changing the business where the CIO is kind of CEO like dealing with all the normal cost side but really drop driving profits so so i got to get the question before we end the segment is cost center versus profit center and you guys mentioned you guys are down pnl profit center right how does that change the game mindset wise and how you execute and what you can adopt and how fast well obviously the owners of the organization love the fact that we're offering that as a as an opportunity to generate some additional revenue i'm assuming you took the facilities equation out of your pnl yeah right what was it so good before i joined the organization write that down at her i keep track of that for sure okay go ahead but before join the our organization i joke jokingly say this we had more bandwidth in some banks I mean we really had the the infrastructure in place I fully redone it and so forth so we had long-term contracts so I've got five-year contracts with services with companies that I have to keep otherwise you can pay the penalty and get out but so we said you know why not leverage and we did a virtualization project when I first joined we recovered over fifty percent of our data center space so I have all this empty space I've all this band was sitting here I've got all the redundancies in the environment to be able to support that why not go after a small company i'm not going to be able to compete you know with the bigger companies and that but we're targeting some of the local companies and we're doing quite successful yeah why not that's great yeah awesome okay we're here live at the iod conference this is the cube we'll be right back with our next guest after this short break stay with us the q