Josh Rubens
Good morning and good afternoon and welcome to episode 55 of the Leading IT podcast hosted by Tom Leyden the CEO at Longview and me Josh Rubens CEO at Empyrean which was formerly Cloud Solutions Group. If you’re new to our podcast welcome and if you’re returning listener thanks for joining us. The purpose of our show if you’re new is for IT leaders to discover unique and valuable insights into current trends from both sides of the uh vendor and client paradigm and we tackle relevant and time sensitive topics around AI, Cloud, cyber security, strategy, and Leadership, and how to deal with emerging threats and opportunities. Now this show it’s becoming our annual special as we’re going to talk about our predictions for 2024 so welcome Tom how you doing?
Tom Leyden
Yeah good thanks Josh um looking forward to predicting the future again yeah how did we go last year, mate? You looked at it
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah so let’s uh let let’s have it very very brief because people don’t want to hear about last year everyone knows but I’ll I’ll give you the top five chat GPT will disrupt the tech industry and Market in general
Tom Leyden
nailed it
Josh Rubens
I think
nailed it AI will receive the most net new Investments by the end of 2023 not bad not bad people will develop a unified data management architecture such as data lakes and single data protection platforms definitely on the agenda
Tom Leyden
yeah we’re working on it we’re working on it
Josh Rubens
uh Cloud migration will take a backseat to cost optimisation
Tom Leyden
yep
Josh Rubens
I thought that was pretty good vendors will will face increased pressure to adopt stronger security practices so that was all the you know those supply chain supply chain issues we had and tight budgets will compel software democratisation there you go so we’re talking about low code platforms and AI and all that sort of stuff so not bad not bad
Tom Leyden
I think we I’ll give it 7 out of 10 I reckon, for that one.
Josh Rubens
Yeah okay well not bad for you know Crystal balling um you know for looking into a crystal Ball we can’t it’s not not too bad could be worse all right um
Tom Leyden
but do we got any news Josh you
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah there’s lots of news lots of news so the big one is the that came out the other day was about the M365 copilot yes yeah so exciting stuff so uh Microsoft removed the 300 user minimum for M365 co pilot so it’s you can start with one yep uh it’s annual subscription only so you’re looking around 560 – 570 per user per year so it’s not it’s not um not cheap um sucks for the organisations who bought the 300
Tom Leyden
yeah yeah right um and yeah anyway look I mean it’s a good way to get into it right because everyone’s got the itch to scratch everyone wants to try it no trial as you told me Josh there’s no trial but I think everyone’s hopefully everyone gets one or two to get it going and see what buzz it creates um so we’re using it as you know Josh um it’s it’s interesting I don’t think it’s for everyone though I have to say I don’t think it is it’s not a broad roll out I think it’s useful for people who want to engage with it
Josh Rubens
so what do you say do they have to be particularly tech savvy or what what what what do you where you go with that conversation?
Tom Leyden
They’ve got to want to engage with it I think I think a lot of people just get on with their work and they don’t think about how AI can actually help them do their job but if they go oh you know what I’m gonna try to do this I’m gonna I’m gonna actually do that instead of just banging out another email I’m gonna try to let the copilot do it I’m gonna I’m gonna actually try try it so it works well with people who are really curious got an open mind to it, want to see how it goes um its initial results can be a bit over like underwhelming frankly like it doesn’t amaze off the you’ve got to use it a few times to get used to it um so it’s interesting so what I’d suggest use it with a small group get some feedback work out where the value is work out where the real like the real use cases are but not for everyone I suspect
Josh Rubens
is it is it are you noticing anything around you know um age or does that make a difference or is it more type of type of role
Tom Leyden
Not really I mean well there’s always a bit of that right there’s people just stuck in their ways they do the same old thing they come in at the same time the same job they got home probably not for those people it’s people who want to yeah probably jobs require a bit more variety or there’s a bit more creativity in their work or they’re more research type people but if it’s just you know the accounts receivable person who just does this thing day in day out, it’s not it’s not for everyone that’s okay that’s cool it doesn’t need to be for everyone but if you’re doing a lot of research or different things all the time I reckon that’s where it really helps um but I mean if you know what you’re doing if you know how to put the email out out you’re just going to do it anyway right you’re not going to ask HR you’re not going to ask copilot to help you ~ HR that was a bit of a slip ~ but you’re not going to get it to do all your job straight away so you got a bit of patience with it I think to get the value from it I did notice it’s a bit cheesy like when tries to write emails for you it’s like well just turn it down a bit it’s kind of funny are you using it Josh at all what are you seeing?
Josh Rubens
No I’m going to get one of the other guys the other guys are using it um I’m going to get one for myself and yeah see what it’s like I have had customers balk at even the per user cost so
Tom Leyden
oh it’s too expensive for everyone
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah even even you know for one or two users um yeah but it’s you know it’s it’s a big deal Microsoft are pushing it um pushing it pretty hard uh the other thing is that um they they’ve announced a product called copilot Pro so it’s confusing that that’s not for business that’s for consumers who want to have a more higher end experience so um and the cool thing is it’ll go across all your devices so it will travel across all your devices in context it will allow you to use it with some of the some of the office apps um you know you get the best models some image creation stuff the ability to build your own co-pilots so that’s about I think um about 350 to 400 bucks a year for a person for that one
Tom Leyden
yeah okay
Josh Rubens
um but that’s not for that that’s not for business um and the other things yeah they’ve announced a mobile app and a and and the copilot is now available in the M365 mobile apps as well so yeah so some interesting um yeah I I think it’s pretty big and yeah it’s going to grow
Tom Leyden
yeah oh for sure I think it will find a home in the business yeah I’ve got some news so um speaking of Microsoft did you read about their hack their email hack recently
Josh Rubens
I did hear about it
Tom Leyden
yeah so they um there was a hack uh they they Russian Russian hacker Russian State lead team hacked into Microsoft senior leadership team um looks like they got into um they got access to all the emails but they got in Via Legacy test test platform once again using a test platform or Legacy test system uh using a password spraying approach uh Legacy test accounts blah blah blah just goes to show you that every everyone’s got weaknesses of vulnerability right Josh
Josh Rubens
even Microsoft.
Tom Leyden
Even the big boys so yeah it’s huge um yeah I mean but just yeah everyone …I guess like they limited the the damage is what they’re saying they say like oh we just limited it but mate, you’re selling security platforms you’re not allowed to get hacked you’re not allowed to do that
Josh Rubens
I know but they all do everyone everyone gets it so yeah it’s uh it’s difficult it’s difficult uh I don’t know if you saw but the ah – Australia has announced personal sanctions on a gentleman called Alexander Ermakov
um did you hear about this
Tom Leyden
no no
Josh Rubens
so he’s the guy who was responsible for the medi bank for the medi bank hack so it’s so it’s personal sanctions so Financial sanctions and travel bans so um yeah it’s the first time the government’s ever put sanctions on an individual
Tom Leyden
yeah right yeah,
Josh Rubens
because it was the worst attack in in in Australian history where all those you know Medicare numbers and medical information was posted on the dark web by by this guy and have you seen – if you see a picture of him he just looks like a you know like a handsome dude with blonde hair sitting in his office with a nice business shirt clean cut
Tom Leyden
yeah
Josh Rubens
doesn’t look like a criminal
Tom Leyden
yeah yeah
Josh Rubens
um so you know maybe he’s that the future they now now they’re going to target these guys individually
Tom Leyden
well could you something right I mean I’m not sure how effective that will be or I’m sure it won’t stop stuff but you’ve got to you’ve got to try everything you’ve got to throw everything at these people right you got to sort of create some sort of deterrant otherwise it’s a free-for-all
Josh Rubens
yeah he may well be sitting in you know Moscow laughing I don’t want to go to Australia anyway so I don’t care but l so who knows um
Tom Leyden
and then the other one I had his loss his loss my friend um the other one I had was correct correct the other one I had was the uh the C CES you’ve been looking at the consumer electronic show this year it’s probably one of the best ones I’ve seen it’s probably definitely one of the best ones I’ve seen for ages so ah finally like it got really boring for a while now now it’s interesting again because well guess what AI they put AI in pretty much anything anything with a pulse has now got AI in it um and uh TVs like transparent TVs look pretty awesome you can’t buy them yet but they’re showing these like glass that turns into TV that was Unreal home robots that look like they might actually be useful in the near future not quite now but there’s little robots running around and doing stuff and then the other one is this um this rabbit R1 which is like a little device like a mobile phone device but it does stuff for you so say hey look can I can I get some pizza please and it’ll go it uses Ai and blah blah blah but actually goes and gets the pizza and and get orders it for you and gets it to your door and takes your money and lots of stuff so this AI driven app that’s what they call it’s an action large action model so instead just giving you information actually goes mate I’ve got it sort it out yes the pizza is coming don’t worry about it give me give me an Uber and just it does it for you so their big deal is that they’re going to replace all the apps and you just speak to it and it knows what to do
Josh Rubens
wow I I that is one of the predictions I saw was these autonomous agents which is essentially what you’re saying it’s a it’s an agent that basically does stuff for you using AI like it all that’s pretty interesting yeah
Tom Leyden
yeah yeah yeah so rabbit R1
Josh Rubens
all right cool do you want to get into some predictions Tom you want to start do you want me to start?
Tom Leyden
yeah definitely there you go for it mate.
Josh Rubens
So we’ll start easy so a lot, most organisations are going to trial M365 copilot and there’s going to be a lot of work done around preparation for AI so I think that’s going to be that’s going to be a big thing there’s been a lot of uh you know laws uh you know regulations have been released the EU the EU has done one the UK has done one the US we we’ll get there everyone’s going to be preparing for AI so I think there’s going to be there’s going to be a lot of that a lot of AI uh AI Readiness assessments um Tom I I predict you’re going to get spammed with with AI Readiness Assessments in fact I’m sure I’ve sent you one
Tom Leyden
so your your point about being ready is that you’ve got to be you’ve got to make sure your data is secure otherwise if you turn these things on it starts to expose information that you perhaps thought shouldn’t be exposed it’s one of the big risks right
Josh Rubens
yeah exactly so things like M365 co-pilot and can connect to systems of record in your organisation so that and um so if your – and they will honour as Microsoft keeps saying your in place security posture but if your place security posture is correct is not is not uh you know you know not done correctly um you know you people are going to be able to see things that they wouldn’t normally be able to see so that’s one of them and the other one’s more from a compliance perspective where you’re going to have to you know particularly if you’re in financial services or local government where you’re going to have to comply with you know with different checklists and policies in place to be able to use AI so um I know the the local you know the Victorian government released a whole you know a massive list of things to all the local government agencies and health um Health agencies in Victoria for things they have to do before they use it so I think yeah I think it’s going to be big there’s going to be a lot of AI Readiness work done for sure um this year what do you what do you what what do you think about that one?
Tom Leyden
The risks are real around exposing data you know if you just turn these things on you can start to ask questions like how much does my coworker actually get paid and it might go oh it gets paid this amount is that what you wanted it’s like you shouldn’t know that information or where does this guy live what’s his personal address right so you’ve got to be really mindful about the personal and sensitive data that this thing will access because it can right it won’t need to understand that sensitivity around it
Josh Rubens
yeah and that sort of ties into one of my other um points predictions is around which we’ve discussed on the previous podcast is around the new privacy legislation in Australia that’s going to drive spend particularly around data governance and data loss prevention um but AI you know can be a big a big uh you know part of actually breaking that so if you don’t have your don’t have your um you know the correct things in place like purview and all your policies and know where your data is um you know could cause a lot of issues for you
Tom Leyden
yeah definitely absolutely um
Josh Rubens
so so that was that was my first we got two we got two in one
Tom Leyden
your first one’s really good and I think um I I I think that sort of goes into one that I’ve been talking about a lot is that people start to really work through how AI enables their business so speaking about just turning it on to enable boring corporate but really the the real value I think people goes how do I AI or supercharge my business as opposed to how do I just make administration tasks better so how does AI build into my business model and that’s where like I think a lot more fun will be had so how can I generate more revenue how can I make new new markets available through AI what how can I grow the business through AI. That’s hopefully going to be the focus of of the CEO world and therefore the IT world right so i’ I’ve got a sense that CEOs they’ve played with it they got it they’re over the gimmick now they’re going shit how does our business grow with AI and that is far more interesting than just going right well we need to expose some documents and to make I think every IT guy is going to have to be ready for that conversation right Josh they’ve got to and they’ve got to work out how does what what have we got in IT that’s going to make AI special for us and that speaks to a few things. It speaks to having your data ready to go your your IP and data in a in a spot where you actually extract value from it so I think it’s going to be a big race around harnessing AI and and getting your data behind that into a spot where it actually adds value
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah so you don’t want to be in the way of progress where oh we can’t do that because we haven’t got our you know governance set up correctly or our security policy so wait six months before we catch up.
Tom Leyden
Also you’ve got to know what your secret sauce is you got to know what you you do that’s better than everyone else and then get AI to to move forward with that one right so otherwise you’re gonna get lost in the race pretty quickly
Josh Rubens
that does tie in so one of my next ones was that gen AI is going to move from proof of concept into Enterprise this year and there was a a an e an EY CEO Outlook pulse late last year that said 99% of CEOs are planning to invest in AI this year
Tom Leyden
yeah right there you go that’s it
Josh Rubens
so um so yeah so the business you know every business is going to be coming to IT saying right let let’s get going and if IT doesn’t do it they’re just going to do it themselves it’s going to be the old the old Shadow IT yeah.
Tom Leyden
Or worst case scenario you have so that’s that’s yeah you have an IT department and you have an AI Department Department as a separate organisation like that’ll be a disaster right
Josh Rubens
yeah that’ll be that that’s not going to work um so keeping my next few are about AI so I’ll apologise up front a lot of these around AI because that’s where a lot of the action is so there’s going to be I think growth this year in something called an SLM so there’s the large language models like chat GPT and SLM is a small language model so there’s going to be growth in SLMs and Industry specific models so the only difference is they’re trained on smaller and more focused data sets so it’s focused on more high quality data like journals webites authoritative content which means you don’t need as much storage as much memory um you can run it on on a local computer so I think there’s going to be some more a lot more use cases uh that are going to sort a lot of businesses around doing things um that are specific to their business where they can run locally if they want uh they can run it in the Cloud uh so we think this is going to be pretty big the two most promising SLMs are Microsoft’s Phi-2 and Mistral 7B so you know they think that’s going to be that’s going to be the next thing so I think these SLMs um things on mobile devices which even we mentioned before that you know the M365 co co pilot things that you can download and use on your local device to help you with your job without having to have massive infrastructure costs to run an LM
Tom Leyden
yeah nice
Josh Rubens
so yeah what do you think
Tom Leyden
yeah it’s good uh I think it just what can you do to use those to incorporate what’s special about your business right so instead of having a general one you’ve got a specific one well that’s that’s where your IP is and then I’ll go into my one right we getting about AI but I think AI is going to be used massively this year for IT operations I reckon a lot of people are going to start to work out how to make it run really really efficiently with AI behind the scenes so what used to be an army of five IT administrators maybe that’s one or two now you know maybe maybe those IT administrators become really really efficient at working out and getting all those various systems you got behind the scenes to to work seamlessly so AI becomes your knowledge yeah and you can just get stuff done it can produce the code for you it helps you automate and um it removes that you know like a lot of IT
administrators live on the knowledge that they’ve got in their head like they’re the smartest guy in room the but that’s changed that’s not that’s not the case anymore
Josh Rubens
yeah
Tom Leyden
so IT operations you can really look at that closely and perhaps retrain and redirect some of those resources into the AI space right and get it back in front of the business
Josh Rubens
yeah I mean that we are yeah that was my next too so we’re definitely you know aligned in our long planning meetings Tom that we have have for these but um yeah the AI Ops are definitely and I also mentioned around cyber resilience so you know the the criminals are using AI to attack so we need to use AI and all the big vendors as we’ve spoken on previous episodes Microsoft and all the other vendors are baking AI into their into their Solutions whether it’s Palo Alto um VMware so now you know the ability to you know be more um more secure using AI but yeah definitely automating different tasks and using AI to make that a lot easier than having to code um and the other one is around coding so coding democratising coding even more complex coding not just low code using using AI as well so yeah yeah that’s going to be interesting so so you think there’s a lot of scared developers out there
Tom Leyden
not developers I think developers need to they kind of move up the value chain a bit so you know the programs just sit there churning out code become software engineers and Architects uh because the coding the coding becomes a lot quicker
and faster and better. The quality of the coding gets a lot better. But you still need humans to design the app right, you still need the engineering part.
but the AI is not very good at that pace it’s great at chunking out code but someone needs to create the overall solution so uh I don’t think anyone’s nervous about it I think grads become far more effective though frankly they they go up
the value chain really quickly yeah um I think the other point about security really good about yeah security you know the threats just get better and better and I think what we’re going to look at this year is far more sophisticated social engineering issues so not just email phishing but voice and video phishing as well where people look like your boss look like the CFO you know call you up hey I’m stuck in Bangkok I need you to transfer 10 grand it’s like oh okay let me just call you oh hang on I’m already talking to you you know you to start off an SMS and then they okay you got to phone him well now you phone him and it sounds like him or her okay no worries so that’s just that’s just like a little example but those social engineering programs are going to get pretty scary I reckon
Josh Rubens
yeah the Deep fake videos yeah that’s going to be that’s going to be full on
Tom Leyden
I think um so now that everyone’s got the basics in place and it’s just a little bit harder for the average hacker to get the admin admin passwords for your router so they’ll they’ll look at I think humans are still the weakest link right you can’t you can’t really change humans that much I’ve tried you can’t I promise you um so I think the hacking are going to really look at human vulnerabilities right as is where they need to get into next
Josh Rubens
yeah so what’s that more training you have to be constantly training users
Tom Leyden
constantly
Josh Rubens
and and I think that goes into my next point I think the I think the you know that zero trust is going to come back it was around a few years ago with with hybrid work but I think this year I think it’s really going to be on the table and you know talking to a number of customers but I can really see people are going to are going to want that zero trust model and now you can make it a bit a bit easier for people so if you’re you know using things like conditional access so if you’re if you’re logging in on your device you’re in the office you might not have to authenticate five times but if you’re coming in from somewhere else and that that constant checking so using AI to constantly check to make sure that the the you know the authentication is is is you know is proper yeah I think that’s going to be um back on the table this year a few years ago it was a big buzz word but I think this year zero trust is is going to be a big thing
Tom Leyden
yeah that’s right I think that’s what you need to isolate attacks right so if you live in the world where you know what you’re going to be attacked then your job becomes how do I minimise my risk how do I minimise the actual blast volume of any attack I think it’s I think you’re spot on zero trust and zero trust should be a little bit easier than it was a few years to – a few years ago to implement should be a bit easier now
Josh Rubens
yeah it’s still hard because it’s an architecture there’s not it’s not one product but you know certainly I talk about you know Microsoft has the the most comprehensive but others like crowd strike and there are others that that that can help you with it but I think yeah that’s going to be a big one this year from a strategic point of view a lot of people I’m talking to and hearing is that AI sorry is that zero trust is back on is back on the agenda this year all right have you got do you want to go next?
Tom Leyden
um one bit a bit more techy ah Wi-Fi 7 I think it looks like it’s pretty good so the the speeds people are getting it looks like it’s real I think it’s going to be a big roll out this year Wi-Fi 7 across corporates uh I think yeah could be the end of cabled network maybe hopefully but it looks it looks really good wifi 7 I think it’s going to be big this year
Josh Rubens
and the other one uh that I think this year is on Prem file servers are dead they’re going to be dead they’re going to die right uh everyone everyone’s migrating everything to SharePoint right and similar platforms because 2012 ~ end of support support so people are thinking well I can either do a big upgrade or I can just migrate it into SharePoint and I’m going to get search and I’m going to get governance and it’s going to be good for my AI with with you know with copilot and and now Microsoft has archiving and backup and things like that in there so the cost is better and all those sorts of things are there so yeah I think I think and I’m already seeing that’s a that’s a big one for people that want they want to really get on top of their data to be able for them to use it so things like Knowledge Management doing things in teams uh for collaboration SharePoint for you know long-term storage and and and you know sharing data across the business and one drive and really looking at how they can improve collaboration um rather than sort of the old school old school file server
Tom Leyden
yep so the end of the P drive or the whatever finance drive that’s what you’re saying
Josh Rubens
yes yes yeah well Finance might be last but uh yeah seeing that everywhere already and and I think it’s going to continue and and uh you know Microsoft continuing to make it more and more attractive to to do that
Tom Leyden
yeah I mean you know I’m still amazed by the fact people still don’t understand how to work on a document collaboratively they still they still email the document around a thousand times like just despite the fact that says share – you can work on it together you can do this stuff now it’s like oh no we don’t do that here we email a document and then someone else merges a document and they update it and just get with the future people
Josh Rubens
yeah I mean unless you’re doing things like I mean it’s not not useful for you know large videos or CAD CAD cam or that sort of stuff or genomic sequencing or that that sort of Big Data I’m talking about normal business documents that sit on you know that sit on office files they should be you know up in a platform like SharePoint if you don’t like SharePoint you know choose your choose your poison but I think a lot of companies are going to move because it just brings so many benefits um yeah there’s not not many downsides to it I don’t think.
Tom Leyden
Not anymore not anymore um and then I guess uh my final one Josh and I’m not going to say this until it actually happens uh Quantum Quantum Computing I’ve got a good feeling about it this year it’s going to be the year Quantum Computing is going to be available they’re already talking about using it to drive you know password attacks or whatever and being being ready for the quantum threats that that that would be that will drive um yeah how how does the average person access Quantum computing I’m not sure yet I’m not sure but when it comes we’ll know
Josh Rubens
well the market leading vendor is IBM so I don’t think even you know the small to medium enterprises is going I think they see it as the next the next main frame where they can charge people millions of dollars for Hardware software and services but uh yeah there there was a fair bit of that out there in in in in the you know in the Zeitgeist about Quantum I did leave that one for you because I’m I’m still not there and I don’t think it’s 2024 maybe 2029 but uh um all right I’ve got a few more and you can and you can and you can you know throw throw throw rocks at me as well so drones the convergence of drones iot and 5G is going to really open lots of new opportunities um you know around you know smart cities monitoring building construction I mean it is already already out there but I think it’s going to continue to grow I think that there’s going to be more interesting use cases there I think
Tom Leyden
so in like the health and safety space I think drones are going to become really big where you know drones are either video monitoring or actually starting to do some of that riskier work um I think yeah it’s just going to get just more and more accepted into the into the corporate world
Josh Rubens
yes I mean obviously in in combat
Tom Leyden
it’s huge
Josh Rubens
it’s already there but yeah more more into more into the um you know into into the corporate world uh on a different note I think there’s going to be a rise in women in IT leadership roles and corporate boards in in 2024 yeah
Tom Leyden
it’s a really good point
Josh Rubens
so I don’t think it’s just around diversity and equality it’s it’s there’s definitely seems to be a lot more interest from you know um females in leadership in IT in IT
leadership so you know it’s great it’s good to see you know that diversity in in business is is great you get different ideas um so yeah definitely seeing that and and feeling that and you know and I think I think I think it’s a really that’s a really good thing um another one is that there’s been some organisations you know using the fact that they don’t use AI as a selling point so it’s the AI rise will will will increase demand for the human touch
Tom Leyden
yes
Josh Rubens
so people saying well you know we don’t use AI because you know you don’t want to have AI reviewing AI content um you know we’re going to get there time at some point so that could be something so I think we might be seeing might be seeing companies say we don’t use AI we’re we’re human human beings yeah
Tom Leyden
I mean we already know you already know when you’re talking to a bot right, that you’re talking to an AI straight away it’s like can I speak to a human please for the love of God it’s like
Josh Rubens
yes
Tom Leyden
have I not answered your – no.
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah yeah hopefully they’ll you know over time they’ll probably become less you know less blunt and and more engaging but this point yeah it’s not much fun all right and then the last one is the emergence of multimodal AI models so I think there’s going to be a lot more um models which allow you to do more than just text at the same time so mix of text audio video um so whether it’s GPT4 llama 2 mistral you know they’re making you know big strides so I think there’s going to be a lot of growth in in multimodal AI so that’s my uh that’s mine that’s what I have. What do you reckon, do you think we’re going to be as accurate as we were as we were last year
Tom Leyden
well I mean it’s AI and security right that’s uh like it’s what we said last year it’s more of the same for this year uh but I think we’re going to be more sophisticated and more pointed with AI. AI is going to um yeah people who work AI out will start winning in the business right people who get AI to make their business go faster will be rewarded through you know stock value or more Revenue or whatever it is but it’s it’s all it’s all going to be it’s gonna be the year of more AI
Josh Rubens
well maybe AI you know gets down of business rather than everyone talking about it like they did this year and
Tom Leyden
definitely
Josh Rubens
AI readiness as we’ve said
Tom Leyden
yeah yeah
Josh Rubens
yeah yeah it’s going to be the big the big thing this year um well alright I think that’s good Tom one little announcement from us so we we were invited over the weekend to the new broadcom VMware partner program which is great so uh lots of as as we’ve discussed a lot of news about broadcom and a lot of um concern around what’s going to happen to VMware partners and a lot of our clients are on VMware and work with us on it so they can relax knowing that, can continue to to work with us on that um so yeah that was the main thing any any last bits from you Tom?
Tom Leyden
No it should be a good year for our podcast too Josh I think if we’ll continue the formula hopefully get some really good guests on continue to talk about these topics but I guess the the practical implications of what we’ve been talking about we’ll focus on throughout the year right Josh
Josh Rubens
yeah I’m really excited for this year we’ve got some great guests lined up and looking forward to another uh great great year together with you Tom and and with all our our listeners
Tom Leyden
likewise
Josh Rubens
oh once again thank you for uh thank you everyone for listening uh if you want to reach out you can uh get to me on jrubens@empyreanit.com.au otherwise thanks for listening.
Tom Leyden
Thank you.
