- [Brad] It's lunch time, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Two of my favorite things about Microsoft are the smart people that constantly visit campus and the great fleet of shuttles. Whenever I can, I try to take advantage of both of these things and grab lunch with some of the tech industry's best and brightest. This week, I'm meeting up with one of the planet's foremost cloud experts, Ben Kepes. He's also an ultra-marathoner and part-time firefighter. - Hey man, so I ordered an Uber Deluxe. You send me a shuttle? - You know, this is like the top of the line shuttle here at Microsoft. - So you know I come from New Zealand, and not only do we get slow internet speeds, but we get the dodgy car as well. - [Brad] In addition to owning your own industry consulting analyst firm, you write for Computer World, you're one of the leading experts on the cloud, but you also run ultra-marathons and you're a volunteer firefighter? If there's ever a forest fire a hundred miles away, you're the man to call. - You're fun. I was actually a paramedic, - Oh, so you dialed it down a little, you said. - If we have an accident while we're driving, I've got you sorted. (laughing) - [Brad] Okay, so when you consult with businesses that are in the process of modernizing, what are the characteristics of the companies that really are able to make that transition successfully? - Yeah, so like I've already said it's about culture. So the culture being adept probably would change. - I think so many of us overlook that. - Yeah, and it's pretty interesting. I mean, if you look at an organization I find, 'cause I do a lot of consulting with these large organizations. I can walk into an organization and pretty much I can get a sense of what it's like. I look at the torques they use, I look around, I look at simple things like what it's like to get into the building, what it's like, you know, if they've got a receptionist there who's kind of about blocking access to people, you know, those things. - That's old school. - Yeah, it's really those things. And those things, you know, people would say that has nothing to do with my technology adoption. - [Brad] Your company invested in a lot of startups. Okay, so we're gonna play a game that I call Startup Game. Okay, so I'm gonna give you some names some are real startups and some are fake. Okay, so the first one is Thundera. Thunder with an A. Real or make believe? - Fake. - That is a fake one, you got it right. Okay, the next one is Foodler. F-O-O-D-L-E-R. - Yeah, that's gotta be a Sunken Valley true company. - That is a true company. Okay, the next one, WubbaLubDub. - See, that's too many letters for a URL, so that's fake. (laughing) - You are a hundred percent right, and I think your logic is probably right as well. Flingr. - Yeah, now that works, that's true. - That's a fake one. But it could've been a legit name, right? - Yeah. - BlaBlaCar. - I'm pretty sure that's actually a real company. - That is a real company. - But it's a bad URL. - Man, you did, by far, the best anyone's ever done on that game. - There you go. - [Brad] If you were talking to an organization that really is kind of a little bit hesitant to enter into the cloud, start using the cloud, what would be your biggest piece of advice to them? - So I think the first piece of advice is that this is happening. This change is there, you don't have any option. It's kind of this carrot and stick. So the stick is you have no option, you have to change. The carrot is, there's ways that you can damper with this, there's ways that you can do some other little things, and just showing people what you can do with things like, you know, Help EI, when it's in the cloud, for example. Just showing people the value that that unlocks. In a small way, in a discreet part of their business, we'll get them to kind of develop the muscle memory, like it's getting to feel a little bit more comfortable, until they can start moving more or mass into the cloud. - [Brad] You know, one interesting thing I was thinking about as you were talking, you know, we made the decision as we were building what I oversee in Enterprise Mobility and Security, back in 2012 they were going to do it entirely from the cloud. And I remember in 2014, you know, about one out of two customers would tell us, "Hey, I'm not comfortable doing this from the cloud." 2015 it was maybe 20 percent. Now, it's rare that I ever hear an organization say, "Hey, I'm not totally comfortable with my management security coming from the cloud." - You know, it's totally funny. I mean, just the awareness. I've been doing this for, I guess, ten years since the cloud's been around. And four or five years ago, I was at a function, I was introduced to an elected member of parliament in New Zealand, and someone introduced me as this global cloud expert, and this dude said, without a word of light, "You study the weather, do you?" Fast forward to today, only a few years later, and there's no one that doesn't have at least a vague notion about what the cloud is. And it translates into organizations who understand it, are starting to use it, to some extent. And it's the ridge, right? We're kind of midway up the angle of the ridge, and it's only getting lighter. It's the reality. - And there's literally no limit on where this can go. - And it's cool for those of us who have been kind of, you know, saying, "this is the future," for ten years. It's so cool to kind of be vindicated. - [Brad] Next time, on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break: - I think it's really disrespectful for the pandets who say, "Public cloud is the only way and private cloud isn't real." Because at the end of the day, that doesn't respect the reality for a number of organizations.
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