[0:36] If someone asked you to rename the cloud to something else, what would it be?

“Money pit.” There’s a misnomer that the cloud means you don’t need people to maintain it, but it’s expensive. Maybe not to the general consumer, but for running a business it adds up quickly.

[2:32] If you could hire a celebrity into your IT department, who would it be?

Mark Cuban. Just because he has a lot of money, he was in IT—there’s a secret formula there that I want him to share with me.

[8:19] Let’s talk about the money pit.

We’ve a complex organization—some of these business units are designed as one, some are truly independent. Some of them have legacy systems and solutions, and not everything is a fit for the cloud environment. Getting an accurate inventory of everything you’re running is part of it along with understanding the life cycle of the product.

[15:23] Let’s say I’m a business leader and I want to start migrating stuff up to the cloud. I can offset that cost by dropping internal IT. Is that going to work?

You’re shifting cost, that’s how I look at it. Left pocket, right pocket. Whether I have this large data center investment, you’re going to depreciate that over five years. But you also want to make sure you have high redundancy in relation to the cloud.

[22:31] Did you start with security designed into your program, or was that an afterthought?

Well, we know what the marketing team will say. I’m weary of solution providers who say “we have it all.” That’s an all-eggs-in-one-basket mentality, because cyber companies get hacked themselves. I’d be mindful of spreading solutions across different providers.

[30:00] Explain to me global talent development.

I’m not in the IT business per se, I’m in the people business of those who happen to do IT. There are some soft skills in IT teams you can’t train. They have it or they don’t. My big thing is having IT being a partner to the business. I don’t want my team to be looked at as a support function. Every single corner of an organization has an IT element. We are entrenched in the business.

[35:57] In IT I feel like we get really creative with our titles, and there’s a lot of overbleed.

I also feel like titles in this day and age don’t adequately explain what we do anyway. I see titles all the time and I still have to ask “what do you do?”

[37:35] Let’s take a minute to talk about what you do at Protective Industries.

At a very high level I’m responsible for the technology we use, the processes around it (and that includes ERP, CRM, MES), the people who are on the team to support it, and what we develop internally versus adding another subscription and more cost to the company. I’m also part of the strategy team for the organization.

[44:07] IT crystal ball, the future of IT, where do you think we’re going to be five years from now?

I’ll be all over the map here. I foresee the abandonment of your operating system as a product. 3D printing is going to reach the next level. That technology is rapidly improving. And ChatGPT, to be able to sit there and type out “I need an essay on ABC” and it gets spit out for you, what are we going to do about that?

[49:09] I think we’re going to have hybrid cars where they do part of the driving for you, but you still have to pay attention.

This push for all electric, but there’s only so much lithium in the world. I feel like the push for electric cars is a practice run for something else. What that is, I don’t know.