 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity. Good morning, Cube Land, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Carl Holzauer. He is the supervisor of Infrastructure, Shoemaker, Loop, and Kendrick. Based in Toledo, Ohio. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Carl. So tell our viewers first of all a little bit about Shoemaker Loop. So Shoeloop is a top 200 law firm in the U.S. We have seven locations across the country, most of the East Coast, and we service anything from litigation to environmental, to legal, and things like that. Okay, so you, and you are the supervisor of Infrastructure. Yeah, my role there is to make sure everything with plugs and switches keeps working. All right. All right, and so Carl, tell us a little bit about, you said you've got multiple locations. What's that span, and do the lawyers tell you everything and how it must be? The lawyers definitely have a say in the way things work. We have most of the locations in Florida and the Carolinas, and two in Ohio. Okay. And, you know, with the locations, you know, what are some of the business drivers that you're going on? When I talk to most companies, you know, there's the constant change. Is there M&A happening? Is it, you know, growth? What are some of the drivers of your business? For sure, it's growth. You know, obviously as time goes on, there's more and more cases, more and more legal things that have to happen. Lawyers love documents, so we have to store documents and index them and make sure they're always available for their use. And then, of course, as part of that too, there's legal holds on things. You know, so if the case is stretched over, you know, five, 10 years, we need to keep that data safe. Yeah, so I would think that the word compliance is, you know, one that you know all too well. Yes, exactly. Bring us in a little bit inside as some of those, you know, what do you have to be concerned about? You know, how many petabytes, exabytes of things and years of activity? Well, that depends on the kind of case it is and what it involves. Some cases, as long as you have the data in some form you're okay, other cases, the data can't change. So we have systems that might be a little older because it has to be as it was when we actually had the case come into us. That's challenging too. So data, when we talk to so many companies, it's, you know, how can I monetize data? How can I do that? Data has to be a slightly different role inside the organization. How's that thought of? We have to be careful obviously because it's kind of like of interest. You know, we have to keep data separate in some instances and internally, not everybody can see the same data because there's issues with privacy or HIPAA or you know, or so on and so forth that they can't see this stuff. So for us we need to keep it safe more than monetize it. So as you said, the lawyers have a big say in how things happen. So how would you describe the approach and mindset of Shulup toward technology and toward cloud-based and new kinds of ways to store and keep data safe? We, our goal is to make sure things are always online. And so we kind of tend toward the more tried and true methods of doing things. The bleeding edge doesn't always work for us. So, but we also can't afford to lag behind. So we need to, you know, find that balance in between somehow to keep things moving but at the same time make sure that things don't go down or offline for attorneys. So protecting and backing up your data across a hybrid environment isn't easy. So Todd, and I know you were on a panel here at Ignite about backup disasters and how to avoid them. So I'd love to have you talk a little bit about about how you think about this and how you interview vendors and decide what's the right solution for your Shulup. So every different, I guess, a practice inside a law firm has different ways of getting data. They like their programs this way or that way and they're all different. The hard part for us is how do you keep that data always available to them in different systems? So whatever we do has to encompass making sure these, all these things work, you know, kind of as one. So we use Cohesity to do backups. We use Zerdo to do DR, make sure it always aligns. Okay, and how long have you been using those solutions? How did you reach kind of those decisions? Those were brought in just as I joined the firm about a year and a half ago. Our vendor who we're using is very tight with Cohesity and Zerdo and said that might be a good idea and the more I use them, the more I agree that, and they're a good fit. So you're saying it's your channel partner. The channel partner, yes. That does that. Correct. They're trusted, they provide your gear, they advise you on the software. Because that's to be honest, as time goes on you can't know everything. So you need somebody that you can trust to bring in and say, hey, do it this way. Well yeah, Carl, I mean, I don't know if you caught the day one keynote, but even those of us that watch the industry know there's no way any of us could keep up with those. So that's really important. How do you make sure that that's a trusted advisor? What's kind of the give and take between them? I think a lot of that comes down to a gut feeling, right? If you feel slimy when you meet somebody, they don't have your best interest in mind. And that's what you want, not my best interest, but the interest of the firm and of the company. So once you've established those guidelines, you usually can trust what they're saying. And I guess every time you meet them too, you have to reevaluate, is this still a good fit? So when you come to backup and recovery, I'd love to hear more about this panel and how you and your colleagues came to conclusions about here's some big ones and here's how you can avoid them. So I think for us, it was just what worked and what didn't work. You know, all three of us use this stuff day to day. So we found the pitfalls, we found what you should and shouldn't do. And when we share that with the community, we get some good feedback on that. All right, so Carl, a year and a half there. Any specific advice that you'd share for people as to what you've learned, say I heard pitfalls in there as was it a configuration issue or something went wrong? Because we know best intentions and best products out there, things can get in the way. Definitely. We've learned to keep support close. I mean, they're awesome and they know their stuff. There's some things we've had issues with that I wanted to do that wasn't a good fit or we've ran some bugs here and there, but they're really responsive and they'll put all the specialists for you in weeks and things just end up working. All right. So here at the conference, what are some of the conversations that you're having because you are in the legal industry and so not necessarily communicating all day with people in the high tech industry. So bring us inside a little, tell us about the conversations you're having, interesting people that you're meeting, things that are sparking your interest. It's neat because I've met some people through the panel I was on yesterday and they're asking questions that don't even title legal. They have the same interests as we do, but they are just either applied to manufacturing or applied to natural gas or whatever it happens to be. And then when meeting some of the vendors here, it's interesting to, I'm in a legal mindset now and they say, hey, what about this? And you go, oh, that's a game changer. And all of a sudden you can apply it to your field and make some more sense. How about this is your first time attending Microsoft Ignite, give us a little bit of your impressions, the good, the bad and the interesting. It's really big. I walked through here Sunday night when nobody was here, I was like, oh, this isn't too bad. And then I think I walked 10 miles the first day getting places and it's usually pretty well laid out and unless there's beer or food and in that case everybody kind of goes to it and it's hard to move around. But other than that, I think it's pretty cool. So what are the kinds of things you're going to take back? You said you are sometimes talking to people who are in a completely different industry with you and they are saying things that spark your interest and spark new ideas. What are the kinds of things you're going to take back to Shulup when you arrive back in Toledo? So we're trying to look at all these new buzzwords like new, but like blockchain or AI and how they can help us do our jobs better and serve the attorneys better. Is there something that I haven't thought of that blockchain can do this for us better than we're doing it now? Yeah, so Carl, one of the things we've noticed there's a real growth in some of the developer content here. As an infrastructure person, I'm curious your view on that side of the world. That is not my strong suit, obviously. I came from a world where that was a big deal and I could learn some things but as far as my background goes and learning about it, it's kind of over my head. I can get it behind the stuff to automate processes and make things better. But as far as the dev side, I'm kind of going, hey, hey, no, I don't think I get this. But there is such a push here for citizen and for citizen developers and to sort of democratize this and say, even you can do this. Which is awesome in a way because the more eyes you have on something, the better they go. Even if I don't understand anything, I can ask the question, hey, why is this work this way? And you go, oh, it shouldn't work this way. Let's fix this and make things better. Yeah, anything more about kind of your firm's relationship with Microsoft, so many announcements here. Not sure if Teams is used in your environment. We are using Skype right now, but we have a push to go to Teams. So that's going to be a big push for us in Q4 this year and being next year. And then we're looking and moving to Azure at some point, getting our stuff up there and making, to be more effective, faster, better. How do you stay up to date with all of these new announcements and not just here at Microsoft but in the larger technology community? You can't stop learning. You can't stop reading. You look at the slash dots of the world and you just keep looking at things. And some things might make sense. Some things make, oh, it's kind of cool. I'll read it later. All of a sudden it goes, oh, that's a big idea. We should look at this some more. But again, it's having those trusted people that you know or colleagues that say, hey, I saw this. I saw that. Take a look at this, too, what you think. So I know in your off time, you are an efficient of a number of different sports. I'm curious to hear how you bring what you do as an efficient into your job at Shoe Loop and how the similarities, the differences. In my help desk days, it was a lot easier because I could take the end user ratings a lot easier because, oh, okay, it's nothing personal. But it's neat to, I mean, when you're an official, you have, there's a way things work. There's a set of rules you have to follow. And in IT and even anything that's technology-based, it's all logical progression of things. This is the way things work. And not really blinders as much but as much as just follow the process, which makes things a lot easier. Great. Well, thank you so much, Carl. This is fantastic. It was great having you on the show. Thank you, guys. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage, Microsoft Ignite.