 Yes. Paxa does adapt. Kelly Uyoka, he's the chief executive president of Paxa. And we're talking about Think Tech Talks this morning here at the 11 o'clock clock on a given Tuesday with Kelly. Welcome to the show, Kelly. Hi, Jay. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Paxa is an important company. It's a local company. It's a subsidiary of a local company. It's really all local, even though I read that you somehow wangled your brother into coming back after a hiatus on the mainland. The family is back together at Hawaii Day. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So anyway, so you've had an interesting career and you wound up in a place where a lot of people would envy you. Paxa, it has presented itself as the largest IT company in the state, local company. Anyway, is it still? Yes, I believe so. Still the largest systems integrator locally based to the state of Hawaii. That's great. And you represent, what, medium and also large local companies and probably large national companies, huh? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we represent small, mid-sized, large enterprise, state government, Department of Defense, et cetera. Yeah, well, that's great. We need that. We need to have an industry of companies that have the sophistication and the knowledge base not to represent companies of all sizes, you know? Especially now, because you talk about the defense. Now is a time when the Department of Defense is focusing more resources as it should in Hawaii. And so we need to be able to assist them with local companies and contractors. And they're trying to help us do that. But we have to push back. We have to develop our own expertise is really important. Yeah, absolutely right, Jay. Absolutely correct. So anyway, I wanted to talk about COVID with you, because COVID affected everybody. And it's funny, COVID affected the technology industry in a pretty profound way. It wasn't all bad. It was like, all of a sudden, you could see clearly. All of a sudden, you could see what you were missing. You could see what you needed to do. You could continue to operate, but you had to change the way you were operating. And you could develop new systems by new creativity. That's what I have heard. And I'll tell you the truth, that's what we have experienced at ThinkTech. We learned so much. And a lot of those lessons are permanent lessons. So tell us about the Paxa experience with COVID, Kelly. Sure. So Paxa as a systems integrator focused on digital transformation and remote work kind of falls into that paradigm a lot of times. You've heard of the concept of a VPN, a virtual private network where people can work securely from anywhere. And COVID just really pushed a lot of organizations to the forefront of adopting full-blown remote work. I mean, literally working from anywhere available 24-7. And Paxa has a lot of experience in that arena. And we saw that some of the larger organizations, and I credit to them, they had made investments in these types of technology years ago and probably brought the systems to capacity, but not exceeding capacity. So it really did work and help push the workforce forward, I think, by being able to adopt remote work. And now, I mean, one of the key things, I mean, absolute paramount topics in IT is cybersecurity because it's become so easy for these bad actors or quote unquote, the bad guys to compromise systems, to pose as other even directors or senior executives inside of companies and have money wired out, et cetera. So to do this securely really was the challenge for Paxa and the partners and customers that we serve. That's interesting. So you get on to virtual, and then you find that virtual has its own challenges, not only historically, but now, worse and worse every day. I mean, it struck me that I saw an article recently about how we have more ransomware, we have more hacking, we have more cyber attacks now than ever before, and the rate of increase is higher than ever before. And nobody knows where that goes. And you're in a position where you have two competing elements. One is your customers look to you to protect them. Sure, that's natural. But the second is you have more to protect them against. It hits a real challenge. Yeah, absolutely. And so when you think about it and you allow people to work from home in a myriad of different ways, right? I mean, you could have a different device connected to your home network versus the, quote unquote, corporate or company-issued devices that are secured via some fairly stringent security policies. It's a totally different, it's a totally different while game at that point. And protecting these consumer-grade devices that are connected to networks that are fairly unsecure, we're using consumer-grade devices to provide our internet access. And a lot of that has to happen before you can even work remotely. I mean, if it doesn't pass certain security checks, companies won't even let you access corporate resources. So there is a lot that goes into enabling remote work just for one person when you think about it. Well, we have that experience too. I mean, we connect for our shows by Zoom. That's our connection program. We have other options, but that's the one we use. And some people, including guests and hosts, not like you, because you're an IT expert, but a lot of people are not IT experts and they have spent a dollar-half on their equipment. And it's a combination of things where it doesn't work. Video fails, the audio fails. And of course, it's not secure. We don't actually care much about security, but we care about broadband and we care about video and audio. And so we find that a lot of our guests have no clue on how to do it or even how to take instructions on it. And you must have the same problem. Do you ever tell them, look, you gotta get a better machine. Look, you're gonna learn about this program of that program and you have to change your ways. Do you ever tell them that? Yeah, all the time. And what in the past, I mean, prior to COVID, traditionally we would want to take the headache out of having to explain technologies, having end users have to learn the modern way of using these more modern technologies. But that said, now it's unavoidable. We have to train everybody that's connecting to a corporate or business system because the attacks have gotten so sophisticated and so simple that it's impossible to ignore. Also, it's even difficult for us at times when there has been a compromise, you know, these quote unquote, again, bad guys have gotten so good at covering their tracks that it makes it hard for us as a provider to find out exactly what happened. And by that time, you know, it's damage done, right? I mean, by the time they're coming to us saying that or our customers coming to us saying that there's been a breach or that, hey, somebody asked me to wire, you know, 100K out of this out of our bank account to pay somebody. And we find out that was fraudulent. It's a little too late. And so our mission really has been to prevent those types of events from happening. I don't know why, but that reminds me of the situation where the guy probably in a red state, probably a member of the GOP, he's in a hospital ward, he's dying of COVID, and he says to the doctor, can you give me a vaccine? I changed my mind. I will now take a vaccine. And the doctor says, too late for you, buddy. That's very interesting because, you know, a lot of times to shore up or, you know, to secure these legacy IT systems, it comes at a fairly high cost and the industry shifted towards a different model. Now, very much so, pay per use. So you pay as you go, you don't pay for everything up front anymore, kind of like how consumers, you know, get services like Netflix and the SPN plus, et cetera. So the IT industry is headed that way. And I think it's made it a little bit more palatable, but also still a lot of education to your point about how to acquire systems and then secure SED systems. So, and if anything I asked you is a problem for you in answering, just tell me you can't. But, you know, have any of your clients, any of your clients had ransomware demands made on them? And what has happened in those scenarios? Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, it's, you know, again, traditionally, our response was to pay the ransom because some of these things, again, were so sophisticated. And then again, the immaturity on, you know, on some of our partners not investing in technology caused the ransomware to just completely overtake their entire network. I mean, it's happened to my family. It's happened to, you know, my friends and my advice traditionally has been to pay the ransom. Now it's a little bit more dire because you could pay the ransom. And then, you know, again, the bad guys will say, well, we'll give you some of your information back, but if you want that other stuff, you gotta pay us another ransom. And so again, our mission really is to prevent those types of events from happening, especially to, you know, of course, to PAX's customers for making a foremost effort to prevent those types of things from happening. Well, once the ransom transaction happens, if you will, then there's a matter of doing damage control going forward. In other words, setting things up better protected. So what kind of, you know, again, if you can't discuss this because it's confidential or proprietary or anything, just tell me, but what do you tell your client who's just had to pay a ransom to do to prevent that from happening a second time? Yeah, so there's a myriad of technologies now to prevent against ransomware. And, you know, PAXA has three very close partners. Microsoft is one of them. And, you know, Microsoft has made a concerted effort to really, I mean, the world, especially the corporate world, you know, runs on Windows. And it's kind of good and kind of bad because, you know, when it goes unchecked, these types of events are, you know, fairly common. And so we tell them, hey, there's a bunch of tools that you could acquire. And of course, PAXA has the expertise to help implement, monitor and maintain the platforms so that when there's a suspicious event, perhaps not a full blown ransomware or a full blown email compromise, PAXA has automation behind it where we're watching. And we probably know before anybody else that there's a suspicious event and that we need action taken. Yeah, wow, scary. On the other hand, you know, I would suppose that IT companies like yours will proliferate in the years to come because what else can the customer do? He's not going to be able to solve this problem himself. He'd be reading books all day. He has to rely on an expert. And so the experts, you know, take a larger role just as the black hats do. It's a spiral, but the customer is in the middle of it. He can't prevent being in the middle of it now. Yeah, precisely. Well, so I want to talk about the other thing that's happened recently. I don't know if it affects your wheelhouse, but we have Pegasus from NSO in Israel, which was intended to go to governments and somehow it leaked out and it got into the environment. And now apparently everybody in the world has it. You can get it if you really want to and you can hack anyone's phone in the world by a silent no-click grab door in everybody's phone. So how is that affecting things? How is it affecting, for example, virtual communication through cell phones? Yeah, I mean, I always say that, you know, if these black hats really wanted to hack someone or an organization or something that you would see a lot of suspicious activity ahead of time, but to your point, Jay, you know, for the consumer, I mean, they would have no idea. And so it has affected us in different ways. I mean, I guess our paranoia, so to speak, you know, in terms of monitoring systems, monitoring communication is just at a fever pitch. I mean, it's at an all-time high. You know, cybersecurity, a lot of it is predicated on trust. And these days we treat everything and I want to say almost everyone as untrusted, you know, even your phone. I remember an expert on surveillance, you know, talking about mobile phones and the only way to have it be useful is to rip out the camera and microphone. And so the phone is gone. Take that for what it's worth, but I honestly believe that, yeah, if there was, you know, really these targeted attacks, it's easier than we think. And to your point, if you wanted to get a hold of these, you know, dangerous tools, you could, it's fairly readily accessible. And Paxa is extensively testing against those types of attacks. And so, yes, we do have, you know, kind of like a lab where we're able to segregate off and test how these things would actually happen. And then we'll say, you know, if you're an IT, if you're an IT pro, you would be able to do it. And you would also be able to find instructions on how to do it. Yeah, these are very difficult times. That's the one of so many difficulties we face these days. So, but that, you know, that does offer to me a question. And that is, you know, in the modern time for an IT professional company like yours, you stand in between the customer and the cloud. And that's different than it was like 10, 15 years ago, I think. And so you yourself, that is Paxa, you could be the target of something. You could be the one they look for. Cause they, you know, your fertile ground, if they can get inside of Paxa, they can get inside of your clients. So, you know, query, am I right about that? And you have to be as hard or harder than your clientel. Yeah. So have you been making yourself harder and has COVID affected that in any way? Absolutely. So security hardening is number one for Paxa anytime we engage. And like you make a good point about us being the intermediary between our partners and customers and the cloud. You know, going to cloud doesn't mean that it'll solve all security problems, you know, immediately. It actually brings up, it actually raises a lot more challenges and concerns in terms of now securing the data that you put into cloud and then also controlling data from leaking out of cloud. So yes, we, it's a good point. We are sometimes a target. And like you said, our security hardening, our policies, you know, our partners are providing us with the technology to keep ourselves and our customer information safe. Yeah, one thing inherent in that point is that people may think that the cloud is invulnerable and then he puts your data on the cloud, no problem. It's somehow it's protected. It's not true, is it? Absolutely not true. And so it requires a lot of expertise to then, you know, secure the data that's been migrated to cloud. And one of the examples I bring up all the time is email, you know, consumer grade email has been readily available. I want to say for the last 25 years, 30 years, you know, hosted capacity and very similar to cloud. However, you know, I don't think of cloud as a place. I suppose I think about it as a new operating model. So customers will definitely still continue to have systems that run on premises but also have systems running in the cloud. And that brings up so many more challenges because especially for Hawaii, our entryway to the cloud is the public internet. And, you know, when you think about it, the public internet is the most unsecured place in terms of transmitting data in this day and age. So the end systems have to be very, very, very secure. And that's kind of what, you know, again, our mission has been to secure said systems whether they're on premises or in the cloud. If only we could go back to a kind of closed system in your office, never connects with the internet. You have a server in your office and you have this network that's only among the machines there. You'd probably go out of business pretty soon for the lack of functionality, but it is very, very secure thing. Correct, correct. And that's the challenge, finding the balance between security and function. Yeah, well, I wanna go to one of the thing as kind of the, you know, the title of our show is how COVID changed you. And I guess, let me start this way, you know, Hawaii, including Hawaii state government was really behind, I think, on business communication, video business communications quality. Zoom and, you know, all the other program, WebEx, whatnot. And what happened at least as far as I know is that in the business community, all of a sudden everybody woke up last spring, decided, well, we're not gonna be able to get together. That's terrifying. So we really have to find a way to use Zoom or the others. And we did, with us, it was a leveraged situation because we could do our shows just like this without standing up and without using our studio for the actual appearances. But clearly, and from, you know, our exchange of email before the show, clearly this applies to everyone and business has changed and so has the ID business has changed. And query, you know, when and how did this roll in for you and how have you implemented it? And what are you using if you can tell me? And furthermore, how permanent is it? Yeah, sure. So again, as a, you know, a strong Microsoft partner here in the islands, Microsoft now has a collaboration platform called Teams that provides, you know, businesses and enterprises with kind of like the security platform to, you know, push forward your remote collaboration strategy. And that's, you know, from, it's very similar to Zoom in terms of, you know, audio video, but then also the ability to share documents, share files and create applications inside of a single platform is very useful. And it allows people to work remotely, basically, you know, I mean, it's almost like you're in the office without being in the office. And these companies, you know, Microsoft, Google, Zoom, they're all making investments into what we call the hybrid workplace. And, you know, it will be for the foreseeable future. I think this model is gonna be a mainstay in terms of hybrid work. So you might come into the office, you know, one or two days a week and then work remotely for the remainder of three days. And then it also, you know, poses the challenge of how do you maintain employee satisfaction because now they're working, you know, anytime, all times you have access to the employees. And there's no reason why an employee could say, well, I didn't see that message. You know, with Teams and Zoom, et cetera, it's readily accessible from every device we carry. And so to answer your question, I think it's gonna, this model, hybrid work will be around for the foreseeable future. So, and that has happened with PACSA also. Oh yeah. Tell me about your experience. I mean, the last time I looked, you had something in the order of 80 staff. Maybe it's more, less now, depending. Have you increased staff and are they all at home or half of them are at home? How does that work? Yeah, so we've increased staff. We're upwards of about, I think, closer to 100 or 95 employees around that time, including our contractors and partners. But that's it. As soon as the pandemic happened, we were already equipped to just work from home. And again, you know, I wouldn't have made a decision so quickly if I didn't really know and understand that PACSA systems and customer facing information was secured and that we could do it in that way. So as of now, PACSA is in a hybrid work configuration where a majority of the staff is working from home and we have some people coming in and out as necessary. We also have planned to take advantage of this time by reconfiguring our office space to have a technology innovation facility, I'm sorry, a technology innovation and training facility built out of the space while everybody's working from home. Well, you know, in March, when we became aware, we were using first Zoom way back when, way back when like two or three years. And then we used Skype for a while and then our VMIX machine, our VMIX switching machine had something called VMIX call which began to take place of all of that. But we ultimately got back on Zoom. So we watched Zoom carefully through COVID and everybody knows that Zoom has done very dramatic things in terms of its customer base, in terms of its technology, its security and its functionality in general. And every time you look, every new version, there are things that are better and better and better. And so you say, hmm, if things are better then that offers greater functionality to the players in this hybrid new world. Okay, and what it means is that part of the hybrid which is on, you know, remote video audio could take a larger bite of the pie as we go forward because you can do more, you share documents, photos, what have you, have meetings, collaborating every which way. And so my question to you Kelly is do you think it's going there? Because hybrid suggests FF, but I know that's not exactly right in any case, but is it moving, is the dynamic to more of the pie going to virtual programs? Oh, absolutely, without a doubt. And we see the innovation around this technology in particular happening as we speak. I mean, there are, you and I are probably just connected on our PCs or iPad or whatever have you, but there are systems being developed and that are already out to some degree where you can actually have these hybrid meetings, meaning there's two groups of people or multiple groups of people meeting in different spaces using this same technology. And it's kind of has gotten so good that you feel like they're in the room right next to you, but they could be halfway across the world. So I really think it's gonna be here to stay and that the innovation and the pace of innovation certainly won't stop. I mean, to your point, Jay, Zoom is rolling out new features seemingly every other week. And that kind of excites me because it's gonna force everybody to continue innovating in the spirit of competition. Well, it goes to another step too, doesn't it? What it means is that, as you reconfigured your office in the time of COVID, other people have too. Downtown landlords are wondering where all the tenants went because the tenants have downsized their spaces and they're not necessarily coming back because they can do the same work and even more efficiently without all that space. I mean, this is a process that's going on a long time. As technology advances, the need for large offices declines and now it's going very quickly. And so I think it changes the real estate market, but it also changes, what do you wanna call it? The business efficiency market. And you probably see this among your clients, you can probably help to tune it. But if I'm a client, a small business or a medium-sized business or even a large one, and I don't pay attention to these changes, I don't understand the way Zoom and other such programs have allowed me to bring my organization together, to network the ideas, the minds, the thinking, the innovation, you know, out of the box kind of thing, then I am going to fall behind. And maybe it's okay if there was no competition, but there is competition. That means I have a huge disadvantage. Are you seeing that process happen? Yeah, and we do not as quickly as I think it's happening stateside and other larger geographies, but we certainly do see that happening. And I mean, I would say in the near or midterm future, I mean, if you don't adopt, if you don't innovate around what I mentioned earlier, digital transformation, then I think you're probably gonna be at a big disadvantage or completely left behind. Yeah, one more point I'd like to cover with you and that is, you know, on your website, one of the most significant things you do with consult and manage IT for government, government. And government is, you know, a big industry and our state especially, it's a big industry. And it's likely to stay that way. And, you know, we should all be concerned that it'd be efficient and manage itself and be managed well. And so a few years ago, I'm sure you were following this, a fellow named Sonny Bagualia was brought in by Neil Abercrombie to do an examination. He had been with GSA in Washington, knew a lot about computers, came in and did a big examination, which it was a public private partnership funded, as I recall, and it took a couple of years for him to examine the state systems. I guess Abercrombie already knew the state systems were way behind. And this was confirmation of that because Sonny Bagualia wrote this big report saying the state systems are way behind. And he made recommendations, but I don't think those recommendations have been implemented. And I wonder if you could comment on where the government is, where the state government is, in terms of those or other recommendations to advance it, and whether COVID has had an effect or should or will have an effect on bringing state government to a place where Abercrombie wanted it to be. I honestly see that it's getting there. I mean, credit to Sonny and what he found, but PACSA has helped a lot of government agencies to modernize infrastructure, to secure the infrastructure. And we continue to do so today. And I believe COVID has really, like any other organization has kind of forced a lot of agencies to look at hybrid work and the technologies behind enabling that concept. So, yeah, I mean, to answer your question, the successors have done a great job at the state to continue pushing the vision for digital technology implementation at the state forward. And we continue to see that trend not slowing down. I think it's accelerating. Good, that's actually comforting. One last question, and this sort of refers back to my comments at the front end of the show is this. We all benefit by the development of a tech industry here. And that comment has been in the air since John Burns. And every governor has, to some extent, endorsed that, embraced that. Some have done more than others. Others have done nothing. Sorry, but the bottom line is it behooves us to diversify, it behooves us to have a very Akamai, increasingly a national Akamai level tech industry in Hawaii. And you're part of that. But I wonder if we could comment on how much progress we're making and how much progress we should be making in the future so as to be known as a place where we innovate and we do technology and we're just as good as any other place in the country. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I have heard that before. And I think we're making a lot of progress. PAKSA has endeavored on creating a workforce development program that's meant to provide opportunity. And we're talking about commodity opportunity for really anybody to get into technology. And like we talked about earlier on the show, Jay, with what the defense market in Hawaii will be doing and the requirements for cybersecurity, there is going to be much opportunity now, I mean, even now and in the foreseeable future for technology, implementation, consulting, and engineering for a while, for years to come here in Hawaii. And so again, PAKSA is really trying to take advantage of the technologies that are emerging to help people get employment in Hawaii. And like you said, make us a strong player in the technology arena globally if you would. I think that's possible. We're certainly not there yet, but we're trying, definitely trying to get there. Well, it strikes me that there's a fair amount of conversation going on about how we ought to expand our local agriculture and the legislature ought to do something to incentivize or require the hotels and the hospitality industry to buy local agriculture. At the same time, to also follow through in some of those incentives that have been consented over the years to develop the tech industry. And I'm hoping, I guess, we're all hoping that that actually happens because even though they would be your competitors, you would be in a critical mass of IT knowledge. And it would help to have other companies across the street that had the expertise that were in the same market. You welcome that or is that something that troubles you? Oh, absolutely. I mean, PAKSA cannot, technology means a million different things to a million different people. And so we certainly can't do it all. And we certainly don't know it all. So I definitely welcome having any kind of expertise built out of Hawaii, as long as it benefits the local community and helps develop a stronger workforce, especially in the technology arena. Good for you. Kelly Uioka, president and CEO of PAKSA, an important IT company in the state of Hawaii and a part of our future as we go forward into hopefully a more innovation economy. Thank you so much, Kelly. Thank you, Jay. Hello.