 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey, everybody. Welcome to our podcast, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Cutia, CEO and founder of JSA. And along with my fabulous co-host, obviously top B2B social media influencer, I'm sure you know him, as well as I do Mr. Evan Christel. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, hey everyone. Welcome to Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading telco and data center world, supporting the network infrastructure requirements of this new normal. But Jamie, before we dive into our first guess, let's talk about trade shows and events. We're well into January at this point. We had CES. I know you're attending in-person events this month. And I read a kind of disturbing article that CES, which just passed, 70 plus members of the South Korean delegation tested positive for COVID, which means they can't go home. They have to quarantine. Big disruption in their lives. And when they go home, they have another quarantine period back to Korea. So a little disturbing, what do you think? Are we ready or prepared to do big in-person events at the moment? What do you think? I think it's a scary time. I think we need to understand our risks and to assess according to each person's lifestyle, family, et cetera, who are we putting at risk when we go back home? But I guess business also needs to move on and we need to adapt to this new normal. So it's an interesting balance to try to seek out and walk. I'm not sure what it means. I don't know what's a black or white question answer. It's a very gray area. My big show of the year is Mobile World Congress, which I haven't been to in two years, but a dozen years before that. And it's hard to imagine at the peak of Omicron, that proceeding, but who knows? Maybe Omicron will peak and then start to quickly fade and we can get back to meeting again, but it's gonna be interesting to watch. Yeah, and I know Channel Partners shows, they don't stop. I don't think they ever took a break from COVID and that kind of brings us right into our fabulous guest here. We have Jay McBain. He's the principal analyst for Channels, Partnerships and Ecosystems at Forrester. Jay, welcome to Data Movers. Well, thank you so much for having me. And you kidding me, right? With what, 5,000 in the audience? That must have been kind of a shock to the system for Stay Back from COVID world, I guess you could say. Yeah, that was in November, so late in the year. And it was controversial right up until that point of running it. But they're part of Informa, which also runs Black Hat and some other 5,000 plus events. They had some success without the Korean story or any kind of super spreading story. So I break down the 150 major events in our industry. Obviously the major vendors, the fortune style vendors have all pushed off most of them till 2023 at this point. But the companies that rely on events for funding, for monetization of their business model, associations, media companies like Channel Partners, Channel Futures, looking at peer groups and user groups, and all the way down the list of people that run events that aren't major vendors are reconsidering and trying to do it in the safest way possible and trying to push audiences back in person. So it's going to be interesting to watch. It is. Well, let's shift gears to you. We're connected on LinkedIn and Twitter, and I just refreshed my recollection of your bio and background, and it's super impressive. I can't even start to recall all the awards and recognition you've got as one of the top influencers in the channel space. And I see things like 40 under 40. Let me ask you, are you aware of any 60 under 60 awards that might be out there? Because I'm asking for a friend, but I heard there might be something like that. But in all seriousness, how did you get into the channel space and what's been your secret to your visibility and success and thought leadership here? Yeah, I've spent every day of my career in the channel. So at IBM, which I joined as an intern at the time in the PC division, we were selling 80% of our products through the channel. So I got a very early view of it, and I've spent all 27 years, either managing channels of big companies. I started a channel software company around AI and mobility and social, and built that company over seven years. And then for five years now, I get to wake up every day, get paid for connecting the dots of all these different big numbers that we'll walk through and everything else and what it means and what people should be thinking about not only next year, this year, but 10 years from now. How is this all gonna shape up? Yeah, and it goes without saying that the world's really been turned upside down over the past years, particularly, of course, just the pandemic. We touched on it a little bit on the event side just a few minutes ago about what challenges and opportunities have you been observing in the channel during this time? And what are your thoughts in the future? Yeah, the interesting thing about the pandemic other than the remote topology, the residential style networks and the security and all these pieces, the more technical pieces, a lot of the major, what we'll call Uber trends that we've been watching around new buyers, new business models, moving into marketplaces, all these things that we're watching before the pandemic basically all got put on steroids. And what we were predicting in terms of some sort of linear growth just become exponential. And for the channel, it's put at just a degree of urgency on some things. So one example I'll talk about is just the flow of money. In our industry, if you look across all telco and tech, it's a three and a half trillion dollar market globally. And that's what businesses and governments spend in those areas where 64% of it today, all the money flows through the channel. And that's one of the major changes. That's $2.2 trillion and two thirds of every dollar that's reliant on this channel. The interesting thing is that doesn't decline, there is no death of the channel, but that number actually doesn't grow. Our industry is doubling in size this decade. By the end of the decade, we'll be looking at $7 trillion of tech and telco spend, hardware, software and services and emerging tech. And that 2.2 will still be there but it's not gonna grow a nickel. Marketplaces are gonna be about a third of the market and direct is gonna be about a third of the market. So in the way money changes hands is something that the pandemic will forever have accelerated and changed. And the channel for the future needs to think about disconnecting their very business model on a reliance on a margin on those dollars collected. And we're starting to learn more about what that means. Interesting. Wow, that's a breath of $7 trillion. Jamie, we only need 1% of that to thrive. So that's really a good news. But on the topic of looking forward, the networking network infrastructure market has evolved incredibly over the last few number of years moved from Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi 6, now 7 and software defined architectures and AI driven networking. It's really impressive. What do you have your eye on in terms of the future of the network? Well, the future of the network is kind of on a pendulum. And you saw it during a pandemic, talk about another thing that got on steroids. The move to the cloud, hyperscalers, Microsoft grew 51, 50, 50, 48, 47, all through the pandemic, all the six quarters inside the pandemic are growing a very big business at 50% each quarter year on year. Google Cloud's growing at 46. The head of AWS got a really nice promotion as his boss went into space. The fact of the matter is, this forklift into the cloud, the growth of SaaS companies, 175,000 SaaS companies that we watch are growing at 30% on average has been fantastic, but it's been a little bit unrealistic as well. When you look at compute and storage and what companies are trying to do, there's a hybrid approach. And so networking has been around this forklift to the cloud and how to make these new cloud, multi-cloud infrastructures work. You're starting to see some serious research now on how much should be delivered in the cloud, how much should be delivered at the edge, and in between those two things, how this network topology, what I talked about earlier, this remote topology, this new future of work, this new residential style network, how is this all going to work? And this is going to drive this industry into double digit growth each year for this decade. Yeah. Wow. It's incredible. It's incredible. And as we dive into you and your background a little bit, we were actually looking at your LinkedIn profile just like Evan here. We wanted to just talk a little bit about this golden nugget we found in your profile. You were, this is like a huge transition here, but go with it. Come and get me over here. You were a DJ for a college radio station, fill us in more there. What kind of music did you listen to back then? My God. So this is, that takes me really back, but I wasn't the college student that got straight A's. I was the college student that played on the hockey team. I was the college student that was in the student society. I was the college student that was on the, DJ of the radio station. And every DJ of the college radio station and have that little network of all the students that were in range of the station out competed themselves at how alternative they could get. They're all searching for these indie bands out of nowhere and trying to out duel each other. And I ended up a show with my co-DJ called D&J Mainstream. We just played like regular music. And at that time it was like Guns N' Roses. And we were playing like 80s, 90s music on this indie station. And so people would tune in that like, I'm not that alternative. Just give me some good music. And we broke every rule of radio stations in universities because we're not paying royalties. And here we are playing Guns N' Roses. And they're like, you can do that once in a while. You can't run a two hour show like top 40 type of stuff. But we did it anyway. And who's going to sue a small radio station in a small town in Canada? But that was my DJ story. Oh, I love that. Good times. So look back at- And we're in Canada, by the way. We're just, I'm interested. We have a lot of JSA Canadians. Nice. New Duda Buddha. So looking back, good times. College is always fun. There's been a lot of disruption in our space. What advice would you give younger people and let's say your younger self, yourself? What would it be if you could do things differently? Yeah, I mean, the first thing is every company in every industry is becoming a tech company. Yeah. So when I started out of college, I went to work for IBM. I had another job opportunity to meet processing plant. So I think I made the right decision. But if I was a younger person today, you don't have to go work for a tech company. If you've been watching all these car and truck announcements as that industry is moving all in electric by 2030, 2035, these are basically tech companies now, running on four wheels. If you look at banking and insurance, if you look at manufacturing, if you go across all 27 industries, the leading companies right now are tech companies that happen to sell you a bank account or car insurance on the side. And they're building out their own platforms. And this partnership world, this ecosystem world of software and all these relationships and everything else is driving the future. I would have never known that, you know, the world will completely become technology based in every company in every industry. 81% of accountants are tech services companies now. 78% of marketing digital agencies are now tech services companies. So you can go and work anywhere and disrupt anywhere. And that's the first thing. The second thing I would have reminded myself is 75% of world trade flows indirectly. You bought your last car from a dealer. You bought your last TV from a retailer. You bought your last jar of peanut butter from a grocer. You actually have to think in your personal life. What and if you've ever bought anything direct, you might have bought a computer from Dell in the 90s direct. You might have bought insurance from Geico, let's say direct, but it's few and far between. That's more likely you bought insurance from Geico through a broker. It's more likely now that Dell is 58% indirect for a company that kind of invented e-commerce and direct. They're now almost two thirds indirect. So that's more likely now that you bought your Dell computer from a retailer, from a reseller, from a marketplace or something else. I'd remind myself this idea of ecosystems and partnerships, which aren't all transactional. 80% of them are non-transactional. I would remind myself of the world becoming more technology based. And that's the intersection. That's probably the Venn diagram overlap of where you could make a very strong career and not only money, but fulfillment and kind of your version of changing the world and being your best self, I think is in that intersection of that Venn diagram. Yeah, yeah. And that's sort of what I'm feeling too, coming out of this pandemic, that there is more of the ability perhaps for us to hone in on what is our best self both from career and personal, that there is more space, more time. It's now okay that the dog is barking in the background and you're on a Zoom call. And there's a little bit more of a forgiveness for being human during a really crazy, almost inhumane time. And that's one of the parts of this pandemic that I'm happy about, very few parts, right? But that kind of leads us to data movers really trying to get insight more of who is Jay, the person. So we're up to our rapid fund buyer section where we just ask silly questions and think of the first answer that pops into your head. So, okay, I'll start. And I'm gonna start with one of our favorites. What is your most used app on your phone and why? Wow. Outside of obviously mail and text messaging and stuff, the ones that are preloaded, I would say the outside app I use probably the most is Mint, which is from a financial perspective, something that goes and connects to every bank account, retirement account. Every dollar, every cent of your net worth comes into one place, into one dashboard. And there's not a day that goes by that I probably click in there and just get a sense of what's happening. Oh, gosh. Wow, that's great. I have money flowing like a sieve through my bank account. I need to give Mint a try. What about devices when you go to work? What do you, what's your go-to device? Is desktop, laptop, tablet, you know, smartphone? Like where do you get real work done? I've got a wonderful like personal story. I sold PCs for IBM and Lenovo for 17 years. Wow. I was the guy, you know, in that Windows Mac battle, you know, the TV commercials that you remember that were so funny. Oh, I love that guy, yeah. I was the nerdy guy, you know, supporting that Windows environment. The day I resigned from Lenovo, I walked into an Apple store and I never will forget this sales person's face. When I say, I'll buy one of everything. When you walk into an Apple store and you think of the tables they've got, you got to buy a phone, you got to buy a watch, you got to buy an iPad, a MacBook, an iMac, Apple TV, you know, the laundry list of headphones and everything, I bought one of everything they sold and I converted my life at that point to the Apple ecosystem. And so all day long, all night long, I'm in front of an Apple device. I'm either wearing it or I'm in front of it. But when I write a note, when I put up to do, when I do anything on any device, my entire ecosystem is supported and it doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing. Now, I think I've caught you in a web of lies here because this is a company that sells directs. So what about this channel strategy and this channel vision you were talking about? It's absolutely, and their retail is 100% owned. It's not franchised. Right. And it's not a third-party. So that goes a little counter-intuitive to the importance and value of indirect. So Apple's a great company example of for 40 years who have gone in and out of the channel. They'll hire a bunch of channel chiefs. They'll get all serious about it. They'll think about the B2B channel. My boss at Forrester, the CEO of Forrester, at one point penned a blog that said, Apple should buy IBM. And when IBM's one of your biggest clients, that wasn't all that popular. But the fact of the matter is Apple never got serious about B2B because it had a vision that it stuck with that ended up being the right one. And it ended up being this idea that our lives are going to converge. And that overlap of personal and business and people that can build a fence between those things is all a lie. I remember when IBM a few years back and you were recall started supporting and even recommending Apple internally, that was a big C change too, right? And that was the, this idea that your company, your IT manager can enforce that everybody buys or everybody gets a think pad and it's all built in with the tech. Why don't you let people work the way they want to work? Work is what you do, not where you go. Work is what you want to do now, the great resignation. One piece of that now is technology. I said that everyone company is a technology company and every person inside the company is now a technology person. One of the interesting pieces of research is that the head of marketing in many companies now spends more money on technology than the head of technology. So you think about networking and things like that. Here are people spending more than the CIO. The second part of it though is line of business makes 65% of all SaaS decisions, which makes a lot of sense. If you're buying marketing tech, it should be the CMO. Sales tech, FinTech, operations tech, HR tech. Well, that's two thirds. It's not rogue IT, it's not shadow IT anymore. So here are people, but the interesting part about their lives when you ask about a day in their life, 51% of their time now is on tech. So their day job has become their night job and they're spending more of their time now on building out their tech stack and implementing employee experience, customer experience, partner experience, all these different things. And now the pandemic again, putting that on steroids, they're doing it via technology. So again, you don't even have to be a technical person in a non-technical company. You can be an HR person and you're a tech person. And I'll get right back to my rapid fire section, but it makes me wonder, what do you think about this whole age of resignation? How do you think it's going to impact us in the coming years? And is it gonna drive further automation or, and particularly, do you think it will impact our channel? It will. So a couple of weeks ago, there was a major survey that came out that 72% of US tech workers would quit or thinking about quitting this year. So that's everyone that works at every small MSP or every small sub agent. It's not gonna happen. Absolutely not gonna happen. People still have to pay their mortgages. People still have to, not everybody can be a TikTok influencer. So this idea though, is it's going to be larger than it was in 2019. In 2020, people had to kind of bear down. And from a human perspective, when things disrupt, you wanna make sure that you are set up. That's not the time to jump into a new job for most people. But as 2021 went through, now we went through five versions of this virus, we still don't have a light at the end of the tunnel. Now people are starting to think about work as what they do, more fulfilling and the opportunities for highly skilled jobs are out there. And so now people are thinking about this. And now companies have had to think about employee experience much differently. Your leadership styles, your technology enablement, and obviously automation became the number one spending area in technology during the pandemic. So it's not robots on the factory floor, RPA as an industry, robotic process automation software grew 81%. UI path went public and was worth $100 billion right out of the pandemic. This is automation, not replacing humans, but putting humans as parallel and doing some of the mechanical Turk work and letting humans become more creative, let humans focus more on relationships, which is the cornerstone of partnerships, and let humans do something that's more fulfilling than pushing paper or making decisions inside of workflows that can be better done at scale by technology. I think that as if you're a really savvy in-house salesperson and you're tired with this pandemic as we all are and it's been a tough go, the channel must be very intriguing. You have great connections, now you can be sort of an entrepreneur for yourself and go after some of the bigger deals. I mean, I don't know, would it almost spike up our channel? Yeah, well, if I'm in sales wherever I am in sales, I understand much more about my customer journey than I ever have. And I know whatever industry I'm in, my customer on average is gonna go through 28 moments before ever reaching me and a majority of them don't even want to reach me. They don't wanna go on that dealership experience where you sit for eight hours as they get you a deal from the manager. So this idea of a really empowered, smart, confident consumer or B2B customer changes for the salesperson where I'm gonna get obsessed over those 28 moments. Who are the people leading those moments? Do I know them? Do they know me?