HN840: How to Make a Technology Buying Decision

0:00Welcome to Heavy Networking! If you've ever had feelings about the color and brightness of the LEDs on the front-facing panel of the network device you just racked. You found your tribe. I'm Ethan Banks with Drew, Conrad Murray, follow us on LinkedIn, and chat with us on the Packet Pusher's Community Slack Group which you can join for free. Just visit PacketPusher.net slash community, read the rules, and then click the join button we would love to see you there. Fonsor Itentials Flow AI delivers agentic operations for infrastructure, meaning easily build AI agents that actually work the way engineers need them to, governed, and build for production. Add intelligent automations to your network operations without the usual AI chaos, find out more at itential.com slash flow AI, that is itential.com slash flow AI. Our guest today is Sean Morgan, a Sean as a research director at the Delouro Group. Sean offers razor sharp insights about the networking industry and I've been running into her content off and on for a very long time.

1:00Drew and I have met Sean a person at industry events several times over the years and thought an interesting conversation would be around how to make a technology buying decision. So here's where I'm coming from. As engineers, we tend to look at equipment specifications and throughput and packets per second and port to port latency and is it non blocking and and support for the protocols that we care about all that nerd stuff. We might also think about things like APIs and CLI management playing interfaces and whether or team can make the thing go and we're operationally focused right we're detail oriented but there's more to a technology buying decision than features and functionality and that's what we're going to get into with Sean today the broader perspective, the perspective that will make you more valuable to the business because the business doesn't care about Q and Q and BGP features and port buffer sizing. So Sean Morgan welcome to heavy networking and would you tell the nice people out there who you are and what you do. Thank you Ethan. So I first of all, I want to say that I'm a big fan of you guys I follow you and that's really because I'm an engineer nerd at heart inside.

2:07But right now I'm an analyst at the Loro group. If you in case you don't know who we are, we're a boutique analyst firm privately owned based in Silicon Valley. The firm focuses on enterprise IT data center and telecom sectors and most importantly, we're quench based. And so what that means is that our customers are really interested in accurate numbers about market share about unit shipments about revenues and most particularly about where the market is going. So what are the projections going forward. So so that's what I do in my time now at the Loro. So you're so who's reading the reports you might write with that data. Yeah, so vendors that are selling equipment component providers that are, you know, supplying those vendors. Anyone who's investing in the market like, you know, a private equity or investment banks. So anyone, you know, there are a lot of different players. Sometimes we didn't get regulators. So but there are a lot of different parties out there that really want to understand the dynamics and then quantitatively what a market's worth and where it's going.

3:15And do you also like to enterprise buyers work with Delora as well? We talk to enterprise buyers systems integrators and channel partners, but I they're not our primary customers though. So basically a lot of my customers are interested in what those guys are going to do and how it's going to look on an aggregate aggregate quantitative basis. So that's really why we're in contact with them to understand. And we we have a lot of great exchanges with buyers and systems integrators as well because we'd like to share insights. Here's what we're seeing. They tell us what we're what they're seeing and that that sort of how we get an awful picture of the market. So you mentioned you were an engineer geek at heart. So what were you doing before you went into the business of being an industry analyst. The last job I had. So I would say like five years ago, I didn't know what an industry analyst was. And in fact, when I was talking to Delora about about, you know, this job and explained to me, I was like, are you sure this is a real job because it doesn't like.

4:22But I so I'm an engineer. I my last job I had was I ran an engineering department at a service provider. So we acquired the technology. We integrated it. We we tested it. We configured it and all that stuff. So the so I had it apart like a random department like that at a service provider. And then four years ago, I decided I wanted to see something different. And I was really interested in the business dynamics, the financial aspects, the accounting aspects. And that's how I ended up with the lower growth. So what now that you've got this job that you you were questioning, is that is that a real thing? What is your role? What do you do day to day and week to week? So I would spend like I spend my time in like three buckets. I'd say one is developing mathematical models, which take the data that we collect from the industry and, you know, analyze it in all sorts of different ways, we'll predict events. So if I can take an example like the supply crunch that we had during COVID. So I do a lot of analysis on how that impacted the market that informs me. Maybe if we have a supply crunch now with with memory prices, I can be informed by by mathematical models based on what happened in the past. So I spend some of my time doing that.

5:37I spend a lot of my time talking to different industry players at conferences and also my customers, but we talked about systems integrators. And then I spend a lot of my time writing. So I write it about this year, I'm going to write it with 90 reports, I write blogs, I write client notes. So it's really a way of disseminating the information we're gathering from both mathematical models and from the different discussions we're having with industry players. So what goes into a report, say versus like a blog, how do you differentiate those? What's the deliverables for each? Yeah, so the report is quant based at his core is really huge tables with history of equipment, this being shipped all the way back to them from the 1990s, all the way up to present. What market share, like what, you know, what companies have the highest market share? How's that change? How that's changed over time? You can get to see mergers and acquisitions and how that. And so at its base, it's a big Excel file. And then over top of that, there's like this written report that says in this quarter, this is what stood out to us. This is what, you know, and then we'll have graphs saying look at this, like look at how software prices are changing compared to how they were last year. And this is what's happening or look what happened in Europe, because when this happened, you know, when they open this X gigahertz, this is what, you know, so we do some the quantity, the qualitative analysis around that and that goes into the written report.

7:02And then for a blog is that slightly we lose or just sort of like a summary of what you've done for the report. Yeah, it's looser. It'll be just a way of reaching out in between reports. So this interesting thing happened without that whole big mathematical depth, I'd say to it, because also people's attention spans are short, right? They don't want to be reading. So they need like a short little, so they're more designed for, you know, little little bites of information. Do AI has changed the supply chain economics in a variety of ways for a whole bunch of different verticals in the technology world. Can you see that in the numbers in some way or another? Not yet. I think I feel it in the sentiment. I won't be telling you the thing you don't know to say that there's a lot of formal out there, right? So it comes up in every conversation that we have, everybody's concerned about how it's going to impact things.

8:05And the fact that maybe their competitors are going to take, be able to take advantage in the way that they can't or they don't or they won't, you know. So I think that in the numbers, it is really too early, in my numbers, okay, I'm going to say it's too early to say because I really focus on campus networking. Now we have a division that looks at data center data center infrastructure servers, you know, optical networks that are connecting those data centers. That stuff is on fire, you know, like you, you've seen the trillions of dollars of spending that has gone into that, that industry, that's crazy. But in the campus, it's too early to tell, but I would say it's the big question that everybody's asking what is going to happen to the traffic on my land on my when how should I be adjusting today to prepare for that. Okay, Sean, I want us to help engineers broad in their perspective on how to make a technology buying decision. And I would say, you know, coming from this background myself that we engineers tend to focus on capabilities, my familiarity with the product.

9:12I know what that is and what it does. I've worked with it before I've worked with its close cousin before. So it makes me feel good. Okay, that's a place to start maybe, but, but give us some perspective on what's right and what's wrong or maybe incomplete about that engineering point of view. Yeah, I would start by saying that's very important. So this view that you like that capabilities and the understanding is very important. So not to minimize that. But I would say that the most important thing if you're when you're an engineering or an IT director is really to make sure that your job is aligned with the broader business objectives. And that capability that you understand that that blinking capability that feature that function how it links to the to overall. Business objectives and so that means answering questions like if the wireless land stops working in my company, what revenue is going to be impacted. Right, it's very important to understand that kind of thing. If this switch goes down, what is going to happen to the business, right.

10:16So to understand who your clients are, who is most impacted and how that's the now. And then for the future, what are my internal clients looking at now, what what what business can I unlock for them? What what, you know, how can I T unlock opportunities for them? What future clients? Well, my business, you know, internal clients in my business may exist in the future. It's so important that I see as seen as an enable or in business outcomes and not a gatekeeper of business outcomes. And I think that the way to make that happen is really to put that deep technical knowledge into context about of how it impacts the broader business objectives. So how does an engineer begin to connect those dots? Yeah, see if you've got to take on this. It's really easy. Like you said, it's really easy to get lost. I would say in in the complexity because it is complex of the features, but linking that back to what the what the business objectives are is so critical.

11:20And I would say and really to understand so spending a lot of time with your internal clients, your stakeholders, understanding the link between what you do and what they do is so critical. And I would say, you mean I'm going to have to talk to somebody. That's right. You will have to talk to your clients. And I think that seeing the corollary of this is you get to see it as a whole solution, right, and not just a connection of individual products. Right. So interworking solution wide functionality becomes really important because that's what your customers are looking at. That's what your customer see. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm curious what you mean by solution wide, meaning the sort of end to end delivery of an application or service or because vendors always talk about, you know, their product is a solution. So I'm trying to assess that out. Yeah, I would say across technology, technology domains, as well as like vertically like application level all the way down. So the real like seeing seeing IT as a connectivity and the applications that run on it as a solution to their customer to your customers.

12:27And understanding how that whole that whole functions and delivers capability, right. So not not pulling it apart and saying, oh, well, this AP does this and this switch does this. But what your customers really want to know is that whole picture all the way to the applications as well. And I think that the advantage of this is, first of all, it's easier to sell projects when you're, you know, when you're looking at this. So when you're aligned with the high level business objectives, it's the ROI is easier. So it involves calculating that ROI, understanding what revenues are enabled by your products, understanding the payback, etc. So the real advantage to thinking like this and the other advantage is it is the business will listen to you more, right. Instead of saying, oh, I need, I need to upgrade the power on that switch. If you say instead, well, our environmental plan means we're selling, we're saving 25% energy costs.

13:29So the savings comes from smart buildings. I can't, we can't deliver smart buildings without a higher level of POE on our switches. And you're linking right the cost of that to the business objective that it's driving. And, you know, in the end, the business will listen to you more when you talk like that. Does every engineer need to play that role? And I say that because one of those a shop I worked at where it was, we had, I would describe him as a liaison. He was the IT manager for the department that department had. And he was so good at sitting with the business stakeholders, the folks on the business side, funding projects and needing to understand what did what. And he was tasked with turning around an IT culture that was that gatekeeper mindset, that was the culture of no and so on. And the business didn't want that. And so he became the go between between the business and us as a department in IT to figure out what the business needed speak to them on their terms and then translate that for us.

14:36Okay, we're going to invest in this. Here's the next project. What I do this and the business outcome is that we didn't have to talk to anybody because he did that. So, so do you, is it every engineer you think would benefit from these skills? Do you pick a person or people? I think it works best if everybody on boards this is a skill and it doesn't mean that everybody needs to see the big picture and everybody needs to go and talk to all the business stakeholders, right. But whatever your role is to be able to integrate that view into it. So, I'm the engineer that looks at that blinking lights. It's really important that I understand what that blinking light how it links to the business objectives. Maybe I don't have the full picture, maybe I don't, but I really think that a culture where that kind of reflection that kind of links to the business strategy isn't everybody's role to a certain extent and will really help smooth decisions and make, and like you said, make it in a neighbor and not, you know, and not not not a gatekeeper. So, it has this criteria for buying decisions. The business may have its own criteria for buying decisions and ideally you want them to align. Do you are there places where they tend to diverge or are there places where it's easier to align them.

15:50I think that the business doesn't understand the complexity of IT, right. So, really the IT leaders job is to explain and to achieve that alignment. So, where there is that misalignment, it's really important that IT is able to clearly explain why their objectives are such and such and how they link to the business objective. So, I think, you know, obviously it's going to vary from vertical to vertical and from case to case, but I would see it not alignment as a priority for IT leaders. Well, that's interesting for networking. In that networking more or less just works most of the time. You don't really think about the network until it's down or it's really slow or there's something strange going on. Networking upgrades are incremental. There's little bits that happen that the vendors get try to get really excited about or try to get you excited about because they got product to move. They got to meet sales targets. So, they're always going to hype up the new however insignificant the upgrade might be.

17:01So, how do you get alignment there? How do you get past the vendor who really wants you to buy the new thing versus buying what you actually need? Yes, I you haven't really good point there because you know most of the vendor stories are like this is the greatest newest best feature. Oh, it's always a game changer show. Yes, always and the I see the whole market data and I can confidently say that it's like you describe it's incremental instead right with the exception of one or two like really you know inflection points like I would say maybe opening of six gigahertz for wireless land might be like a really important inflection. But in general, I would say it's it's an incremental always just an incremental improvement over the last version. I think that understanding where your costs lie and especially in this day and age like the latest greatest thing is AI ops right if you're if you're an IT today. You have vendors come to tell you that you know AI is going to revolutionize your job. It's going to make everything easier.

18:05And the way to cut through that is to really understand what your costs are and this is something that we know that often enterprises don't have a solid view on. So when we're talking about IT costs are talking about hardware software, but we're also talking about human resource cost right like hour spent and where those hours are spent. Because without that full understanding it's very difficult to tell whether the vendors trying to pull wool over your eyes right but if if the vendor tells you they would never. If the vendor tells you I can see you 90% on your troubleshooting bill and you happen to know that you spend two hours a month on troubleshooting you know that kind of just just obvious that they're argument right but if you know on the other hand that like it's a big issue and that you know you have a lot of staff that are they're spending a lot of time on troubleshooting when the vendor comes to you and tells you that that's something that might be interesting to look into. Do you because you see so much market data do you feel like there's a gap between what vendors are selling or pushing today and what enterprises have actually implemented or what they actually need to get things done.

19:18Oh of course yeah like you know there and it starts in the standards right so the IEEE when they standardized like a new and I'm using wireless and as an example here there's a lot of features that on paper look great but never get implemented. So I think that if you're not or never you know they're half certified and one vendor will decide to do it one way and it won't interoperate you know so I've heard discussions you know MLO is an interesting example I you know I've been following that and listening to interviews you guys have done on this topic in in park publishers. So I think that there is as Ethan mentioned a vested interest for vendors to you know highlight those features and functionalities. But at the same time I it's a double edge sword I turn it flip it over and see that vendors excel at looking into the future like you know some of the conferences I've been to and the events that they hold where they are really you know taking a look at the vision in the future but what's going to be required. They have a very solid view and and enterprises can learn from from that as well so it's a matter of listening to them and in pulling what applies to your particular case but the only way you can pull what what applies to you is if you really understand what your costs are what your total cost of ownership is.

20:34This quick break is courtesy of sponsor potential now if you follow network automation you have seen AI change how automation is done automation is not just about sources of truth and infrastructure as code and nor orchestrating scripts and playbooks and repositories and testing and and yeah it is still about all those things but AI ads even more capabilities and so then the question is how do I fit AI into my toolbox because you don't you don't just start throwing data into an LLM and expect to get back these production quality results that's not how that works. Net up seems require that AI behaves like an engineer and that it's bound by the security we use to cover any technology that touches our beloved routers and switches potentials flow AI is all about that it's deterministic so for the same input you're going to get the same output it's bounded by security constraints and it is. And this is a gentick now and agenda is interesting agenda AI is a set of agents each with a capability that can be dispatched to gather information or perform a task make a VG agent like a specialized tool so flow AI can securely dispatch agents in response to network events or because you asked at applying English prompt.

21:42And then once dispatched they can bring back a deterministic result and then recommend next steps and then you control what happens after that you can approve the action or deny it or refine it whatever is appropriate in the moment flow AI is technology that makes you a more efficient and capable network engineer find out more at itential dot com slash flow AI they have a white paper there about flow AI that is worth reading you don't have to give it be contact information to read it again that's itential dot com slash. Flow AI and please tell them packet push you sent you could we try to tease that out a little bit more because my perception is that vendors might have a vision to the future but that vision also tends to strongly align with you know their financial incentives and. The number of units they need to ship so where are they getting this vision that is so perceptive versus we need to sort of convince the market to go this way because we two years ago made this investment in you know product X or software X and now we need to sell it yeah there's no doubt that it's that there's a strong sort of capitalistic element in there right where they're looking but I think just if you look at the like who has time and enterprise today to spend that much time looking into the future right like most IT leaders are not going to be able to do that.

22:59So just focusing on what they need to do on their business on their you know on their delivery i think that you know and especially with this AI and what it's going to do. And if you want to know like these big companies is big vendors they're all using AI to the maximum internally right and so they are an excellent example of how companies use AI with it today and where they're going. So I think just by the nature of where they focus what they're doing it and there's no doubt that they're focusing on on trying to deliver value and make money in the end but but they do have that that focus and that expertise that I think that you know most enterprises can learn from. So so there's a balance there it's not reasonable to be entirely skeptical of vendors especially when you know the end of the quarters coming up and you know they got their numbers to make. Because they really do have the expertise on staff that so you can treat them like what's the right word partner consultant something like that yeah I would say an arms length partner right so you have to be able to filter what they're saying for sure but I would definitely use them to the maximum in terms of.

24:13Vision and you know and then always test to verify right especially in this you know we talked about whether AI is showing up in the numbers but it's so much faster to develop a product these days right with AI like it's crazy whether the levers that developers have to be able to to develop and introduce new products and so that is something where enterprises need to be doubly careful because products can come out very rapidly. Without maybe having the full operational aspects you know fully baked and so I would also say you know listen to the listen to the cool aid or whatever listen to the vision and then test before you buy. Take a small sip. That's our take a small. Very good. I'm just one more question on this vision thing I think it's interesting I hope other people think it's interesting but what what's a good outlet for enterprises to keep an eye on to get a sense of their vendors vision is it you know sort of the annual show keynote is it.

25:27The other things that you can sort of glean directly about where they might be going how do I understand what the vendors vision is and assess it so I see if it aligns with what I need yes I would start with the vendor the annual users conference most of these vendors have they have put a lot of work into them and there you know in consolidating and distilling the message. And then the vendors have had a I related summits for instance you know that even if you don't want travel to go there online you can you know you can watch the videos online there been some really interesting discussions through those and then there's the blogs and you know the email campaigns the news letters from these vendors as well that they're sort of re iterating these messages. What's that about ROI for a minute Sean and when we want to frame the conversation this way I think it auto con for auto con being a conference put on twice a year by the network automation forum Jeff Gray CEO a gluer delivered a keynote about it was about accounting and numbers and calculating ROI how do you demonstrate to business stakeholders that network automation has an ROI has a payback that was part of what his talk about.

26:46He got into he got pretty heavy into it exactly how to perform those calculations it was quite a talk what are your thoughts on that about how to demonstrate an ROI for for the business. So I would start by saying by picking up what we said before about if you're already aligning your you know your function your IT function with the broader business objectives you've developed some credibility. And I think that if you come in with an ROI calculation but you have no credibility in terms of the fact that you understand what the business objectives are it's very difficult to sell that. So it starts with having a credibility that you know IT is someone who understands what the business objectives are and is focused on them and you know and is aligned. So once you have that credibility credibility I think that ROI has to include the human caught a human element which is sometimes very difficult to truly grasp but there's an opportunity cost to having people troubleshooting for instance right so when they could be developing new products or helping you know the business further their objectives and Ethan you don't look like you agree on that.

28:00No I don't disagree it's just that hadn't. Sean I live in the nuts and bolts and the ones in zeros world so I tend to to think about things like an ROI calculation as a more of a math problem and when you're talking about things like whether there's a human cost is an opportunity cost which is a little fuzzier to assign a number two by brains like oh yeah that counts. Interesting how would I actually define that so it was more like yeah yeah you're right I don't know how I do that. Well it sets with okay my IT department has 10 full time employees I did the math and they spend 10% of their time troubleshooting and this new feature that the vendor it's going to you know it's going to reduce that in half so do the math and and I can release though that hourly rate and apply it to helping you know operations digitize there or you know and whatever so I think that that element of of of internal costs is important it's important because there are options out there where you can completely outsource right so you can completely outsource your network and so that should be one one base case right like if we completely outsource this what we know what would happen all the way to you know know our our requirements to to complex and we need to you know keep everything in house and and this is why.

29:27With an ROI calculation could you do you happen to be familiar enough with what the business might be looking for so that they would take the presentation of ROI seriously yeah there's so many different approaches that it probably doesn't the technical aspect probably doesn't matter it's more the credibility of do you have the revenues like what revenues is is enabling that's the key thing like what revenues is is enabling what savings is it enabling. And are you able to actually measure those afterwards because you can say well i'm saving half half of my department is like saved but if you're not going to lay them off and you're probably not because IT people are so and so such a great demand today and you're going to apply them to other projects. You need to be able to track that and then track the value right that they're providing so. Well you said revenue and enabling which sounds like it would be net new but could it be revenue that's being protected yes yes it could different like preventing loss of revenue is also is sometimes a little bit harder to prove but net new revenues are or it could be savings like we spoke about energy savings but.

30:36And this is where like if you're aligned with your internal customer departments like if an internal customer department is is trying to implement a new process like a new digital you know to automate a factory or some floor something. IT is a critical piece of that right and if you don't get it right we can't recognize those revenues right so to be able to link. Linking you know those the revenues those projects back to to what IT is doing and delivering is a is a critical aspect of the ROI. That's interesting because it to my mind IT is often looked at through the cost perspective as opposed to the revenue perspective so that seems like kind of a mental mind shift yes and I mean if you think about it and this is why I like the idea but if it goes off okay IT they don't show up on the whole thing dies like tomorrow there's no IT. How many how much revenues are going to lose right probably all right like so much like it used to be that no I just can't send emails but that's okay I'll I'll write a letter instead but now it's like you it's going to have a big impact.

31:43I sort of in some way obviously it's a very obvious statement that without IT the business doesn't function but that also in some ways I think maybe complicates this notion of trying to align to the business because when you have such a broad statement that without us you don't have a business that. That is a particular mindset could be like well i'm done i don't need to justify myself anymore is there a way to get more fine grain in terms of aligning with business outcome yeah I think looking at it incrementally is is is helpful so new revenues that are adding on new traffic new you know like this is the base case if we all agree to keeping the lights on is the base case and it's a critical this is how much it costs to keep the lights on. And these days actually even that is very important you know we haven't talked much about security but an impact you know you come back to the impact of AI. But AI in bad in the hands of bad actors has really amplified security risks and so i'm sure that like every IT leader is looking at this today but it's a critical element of keeping the lights on sometimes evolves you know making sure you're on top of security patches and and changes and.

32:55So that can be costly is it just itself but understanding that is a base case and then on top of that incrementally well if you have this new product project or this. A. I use or this new processes is increasing traffic on the network or increasing POE requirements or and then you can actually make these incremental business cases with each one within ROI. You raise security which seems to be a product category that can more easily get funded within the enterprise oh security i'm going to be you know it's going to be could be better I got by the thing and people buy it is that feel correct to you as opposed to more boring network infrastructure like routers and switches. i think that the security is a complex area for enterprises right and there's a it's it's about process it's about so much more than just the equipment. And in the IT the routers and the switches and but i think securing the IT infrastructure is the base case right is.

33:59And and we hear from speaking with different channel partners that there's a lot of legacy equipment out there. That is not up to date and that's that's a risk fine. Yeah that that's true it used to be. You'd share a screenshot of your switch with the most up time it's been up for 14 years and three months and yeah then and then everyone's like and you haven't patched it in a long time then huh yeah yeah exactly. Okay so our our our always an interesting one you can put a number on it you had to think through what all the values aren't be realistic about it and potentially you can. Get it generate an ROI that business stakeholders will take seriously i'm i'm a small business owner um sometimes people want to buy a piece of software or do this or do that. And i don't need an ROI calculation i need to know that it's going to make their life better because they were you'll pull in their hair out or whatever is saying it generally speaking.

35:08Life's better because we invested in the subscription now that makes something easier and more wonderful does that play into enterprise IT or is that to. We we two numbers driven now Sean I think the larger the enterprise the harder that argument is to make so if you're just with your like it's a small company and every you have close proximity. It's easy to make that argument and make sense the other persons looking you in the eyes oh yeah you make a lot of sense. But trying to say that argument for levels above you right like it loses something in the in the in a translation at every level and that's where numbers really. Helped to underline any any any project. Because you have to make a financial decision you have to make a decision that seems based on data not the more. It feels like the right thing to do so i'm going to do it there's a lot of things that you want to know there are a lot of things that feel like the right thing to do so. We hit how do you choose between those.

36:08Well in our notes here there was some ideas we that we wrote down regarding that when network technology is since it is incremental one way I think to frame the. Should I buy this or not question is is it going to change my life is the technology leap so significant so advanced it's going to give us capabilities that we didn't have before or can we just roll along like we have been. For for another year do you I don't know how that would might percolate up through your numbers or what you see as as folks are making bonuses is that resonate with you Sean. I think that the real inflection functionalities are few and far between I mean they exist and we talked about six gigahertz maybe AI offices another one but generally as you said before. Maybe generally before it's incremental right it's small it's you know every like every technology decision is just that a little bit better. And so it's more of you know that incremental evolution of of the networks that you're going to that you're going to get if you you know by keeping current and keeping your projects to date.

37:19It's hard to justify sometimes even going to a switch that's capable of one 2.5 5 and 10 gigahertz per second as an edge switch or a closet switch because the one gigahertz per second switch that's been in there for eight years now doing great. Yeah it doesn't it's got all the POE it needs and it just does it why are we replacing this again I mean that new switch port port cost is a lot why are we investing in that could be hard to answer the question. Yes it can and especially since the answer often will often is based on future requirements right so. Okay so we don't need today but in the next five years for sure we're going to need it and so we're better to buy it now and I think that's really the trick is is putting those future requirements turning them into dollars linking them with future revenues. And you know and you know and that that kind of thing resonates when you're when you're lending putting the ROI to it but I under you know I mean never a slammed up right especially when you're talking about the future it's one thing if it's breaking today that's easier to explain.

38:21But when you're talking with the future takes it takes a solid solid business case and it's all. Way back in the day I once got an antivirus purchase approved for the company because we got it with a virus yeah. Ram ramp it through the whole. All this budget approved true you got to take advantage of those events too because they wake people up people you know I like same with secured oh yeah to probably never happen when it does happen you're like okay these are the list of things I've been saying that we should have been doing for the last five years. I'm curious you focus on campus you've mentioned like one of the few major inflection points you've seen looking at data is the opening up of six the six gigahertz band. But the Wi-Fi industry is constantly moving to the latest and greatest where I think we're moving into Wi-Fi eight now. Is it going to be harder and harder for the Wi-Fi industry to come up with you know revenue positive reasons to buy the next version of the AP.

39:21So it is hard is becoming harder and harder I was at a conference the other day and someone said Wi-Fi 4 was like the best version ever right because that was the one that made the real difference and since then it's just been like these small these small increments. It has been it is harder and harder now that Wi-Fi is basically a utility we all take it for granted it works all the time practically it does become more more difficult for vendors to sell you know the next features on the other hand I could show your graph of the market things have not changed much over the years this is a five year cycle you know and it kind of peak to peak it's about you know five to seven years in terms of revenue I don't expect. That to change much and it's basically driven by end of life right keeping current and a support so that that will continue to be you know to be a driving factor. So that's the one we're trick that vendors have to get you to finally upgrade is yeah and it's percolate I mean it's not just vendors but it's component providers it's the whole industry and I triply like that it's the whole industry sort of created that way.

40:30To make that five year cycle happen. Okay so planned obsolescence yeah and the and the handsets and you know like right right right yeah it's it's not just one you know one segment the whole the whole industry sort of moves like that. Is it question about we've been talking a lot about money and in the context of money because that helps frame a discussion for for the folks in the business that need to make decisions. Do enterprises know how much their it costs them Sean do they actually have of that baseline to know what a change might even how that might even impact what they spend on it. So that's a really good question and that's something that we hear from different industry participants that there might be a lack of information there because it's a complicated question. Especially if there's a complicated license structure involved it's like sometimes really are to figure out how much those licenses are are costing you. There's the hardware we talked about that and then the software that's based on licenses that can be complex I think the most complicated part is what we're talking about for this the human cost behind it.

41:38And that's something that's often forgotten the and here I mean just human resources effort to monitor the network to you know to configure it. It's a critical piece of the part and I think that there is a lack of of knowledge right of of of that in enterprises overall. So we're saying enterprises don't know what they're spending on it and then it shows up it says we would like to spend more and they don't even have enough context. You think that it'd be broken out in the accounting systems in some way or another you could get a report that you okay break down all my expenses related to it but but not so you're saying you can have different budgets right this the op-x budget and maybe the software goes on that and it's really complicated and then there's a then there's a capex budget. Oh and then like sometimes marketing pays for a piece and it pays for a piece and many you know that many rational pays for a piece and so it can be I mean especially with large enterprises can be very complex to track all of that and then if you put the human costs on top of that which you know because maybe you know and it resources developing this new product at the same time as their troubleshooting and because of this air this problem on the network that product was delayed by six months and how much did that cost is anybody.

42:56It's a you know it can be very complex. A question about technology adoption because we've been talking about new and incremental improvements and stuff but the reality is some of the new stuff doesn't even work Sean so. How do you know that Ethan have you tested all that. I mean all of us on this call have been around and then the exactly feedback from the backup purchase community we know a lot of the new stuff's like it's it's it's mid at bastard to flat out that doesn't work as a disaster and they hate it. So when you're trying to get into a purchase decision there. Do we have some advice for folks we're we're hardened veterans who are admittedly skeptical but I don't know you got to take Sean. Oh for sure proof of concept is the way to go for sure because your environment and of course it depends on the complexity like if you're a very small company and you know it's you know limited like advanced features maybe it's not required.

44:01But anything complex I would definitely recommend doing a proof of concept especially if you and in every enterprise every large enterprise has particular configurations particular specialty that just they use that. And so all of those things are really it's a good idea to isolate those out and and use them to in in the private proof of concept right to test those to make sure that it's going to work as has advertised. And this skepticism that I have around new products isn't isn't just because i'm a bitter old guy it's it's it comes from it comes from experience that is part of it. But also it comes from knowledge that vendors are figuring it out you know they're looking for customers to adopt early so they can get that code into production is like is this is working is this good can we can we get this out the door. Starts particularly will partner with significant customers that are backing them potentially in some way or another to help bring a product to market and so you're actually working with the maker of the product to make it do the thing you wanted to do.

45:10And so the time it gets out to everybody else again proof of concept guys you gotta don't because the vendors tell you it's just all so awesome and wonderful going to change your life don't don't pull even to you've had a chance to test it in your environment against your. Your stuff if you're like me you will assume that it's going to do certain things and that assumption is foolish you should not have assumed that. That's not even burned before it's not a no I have scar shot I have scars. I would say to put like I don't you know I don't think vendors often are being deliberately dishonest either there is a huge variability requirements out there. You could have a new product that you've tested with a bunch of existing customers and you think it works great and then you take it into a new environment and you're like oh we didn't see that right. Yeah no and that that's a great point I do not also do not think that vendors are intentionally malicious to try to pull on over on you or anything like that because of exactly what you said the building a product for a customer that they haven't even run into yet on some level.

46:21Building it for a certain persona that they kind of understand but then there's all these other use cases that are going to pop up in strange corner cases that they had considered because you can't consider all of them. And no matter how much QA testing you do or how many features you prioritize or bring in there's always things you miss especially on the first round and it's going to take a bit for just oh okay I geez hadn't even thought about that that's okay let's dig into this and see if we can make the product do that and the dot one release. Very common and it's not again it's not malicious it's just it's just the way of it trying to especially with the complexity of networking and all of the interdependencies and interoperability requirements that come up you just can't foresee them all just isn't going to happen. Yeah and the same thing for your POC that's going to have those limitations as well you can't foresee everything and doing an infinite POC is going to be cost prohibitive so yeah you're I think you're right so knowing what your blind spots are is important once you're in the market. Or is important once you're doing the POC to like here the things that we couldn't test right is definitely very important and that's where the partnership comes in so you need to believe you need to have a good relationship with your vendor to know that they're going to step up if you know and things don't go well.

47:37There's a surprising amount of like human interaction in this whole conversation that many network engineers might find uncomfortable but it seems inevitable. So AI hasn't killed that yet that's a good sign. Not yet. Maybe as a wrap up questions Sean you came from the engineering world from the service provider world and now you're doing number crunching on global market data I'm curious if that change in experience has like. Change your perception on maybe what you used to do or does it influence what you do now how how does going from that one world to the other how's that change your view is a really interesting question for. One of the things so when I was when I ran this engineering department my head was down a lot like we had a lot of deliverables a lot of products projects a lot of things going on we were trying to meet those business objectives we. And now in my new job I have a chance to put my head up and look at what others are doing like look what in fact that's my job is to understand what's going on the market as a whole.

48:46And I wish that I now I had spend more time with my head up in my old job I wish that I had like reached out to more I mean it did a certain amount but I you know I wish I reach out more to other people just like me in different countries doing the same project with it you know the same. I think there you know the problems are similar that we're having that that are having all over the world in any in any area and we can all learn from each other right and when you look at the market as a whole you realize how much similarity there is in the different areas. So your problems might not be as unique as you think and having a community to bounce things off is helpful is that kind of what you're saying exactly and even like all the way down to oh I never heard of this vendor and they're helping this other company across the world maybe I should look at them or I didn't think about asking that question like if you are talking to a colleague and they've had this disaster like Ethan talk to Ethan because apparently he has lots of scars and is a lot of disasters he'll be able to recommend don't.

49:51Don't forget to ask about this because that part didn't really work. Well Sean Morgan has been a great conversation to very much enjoy having you on heavy networking get how do people find you on the internet Sean. So Deloilgroup.com is our website meet the team click on that go there read my blogs and my articles and then there's the email addresses there to please feel free to reach out. Again Sean great to have you and we were going to have Steven Schukard with us also today at the last minute he had to duck he's another analyst that hopefully will have him on a future episode and again Sean thanks for joining us and thank you for listening to heavy networking today open to find a wherever you are as you listen we appreciate your feedback comments and requests for topics you'd like us to cover you can send your thoughts to us and old fashioned web form you can find in your old fashioned browser at packerplishers.net slash follow up. You can please follow me Ethan Banks along with you can't remember on LinkedIn along with our guest Sean Morgan for our take on the networking industry along with the occasional nerdy meme find this show along with the entire pack of pushers lineup of fine podcast for engineers on YouTube spotify anywhere that you listen to podcasts like share and subscribe and tell your friends last but not least just remember that too much networking would never be enough.

51:16you