 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome, welcome, welcome, guys. Hey everyone, I am your host, Jamie Scato-Cotaia, founder and CEO of JSA. Joining me on our podcast series, Data Movers is my fellow co-host, Mr. Fabulous Social Media Influencer extraordinaire, Evan Christel. Hey Evan. Hey everyone, and as you might be able to tell, I'm live here for an opening day at Fenway. This is an Esports talk show. It just happens, we have an event here, so you have to make do with what you're given. So this is a fabulous real background, and I'm super excited to broadcast live from Fenway Park and Boston, Jamie. This is so cool. It's like we're Data Movers podcast and a little ESPN today. We're getting our sports fix in right as we broadcast live here. Yeah. So what are your favorite rights of spring? Do you have any particular spring activities besides baseball that you're looking forward to? Does spring cleaning sound really, really cheesy? I get to clean out my closet. No, ITW. Oh gosh, I sound like such a geek. I can't help it. I am a geek. I am a geek. But yeah, it's all those spring events kicking back up. It's the refresh, renew, fresh energy, getting outside, doing some more walks with the family, etc. All that is what I think of when I think of spring. How about you, Evan, besides baseball? Well, baseball and apple pie and all that big stuff, but also more telecom. We need more telecom guests, and I think we have a good one today if I recall correctly. You know it. Talk about a great intro too. Hey guys, this is what we're here, right? With Data Movers, we want to talk to our Data Mover, and there's no finer guest today than our very own Mr. Brian Flynn, President of Xtel. Welcome, welcome, Brian. Hello, Jamie. Hello, Evan. How are you doing? Oh, so great. So great. Happy spring. Yeah, it's about semi-grease outside. I'm inside here doing this, which is great. And we're hearing from our live chat already. They're cheering for the sports. It's what is it? It's the Red Sox versus the Phillies? It is the Pirates versus Red Sox, yes, in the bottom of the second inning. So the game's just started. But let's talk about telecom games. The games are really... And you know it. And Brian is a wonderful, long history in our telecom industry. You've been in telecom for over 20 years, my friend. You've seen the industry absolutely evolve. Tell us about how you got started in this industry and what are some of the biggest telecom breakthroughs that you've witnessed so far? Sure. Yeah, my dad actually, Don Flynn started. He was co-founder of Xtel in 1994. At that point, I was still in college. Practically I was a freshman in college. And then when I graduated, I was in finance for a couple of years. Kind of came to realization that was not gonna be the career for me, at least long-term. So I spoke to my dad a little bit. He's like, well, you know, we have a sales position open. If you're interested, why don't you come over, see if you like it and figure out what you wanna do. And I did that. And well, that was 23 years ago. So I guess we figured it out. That's a lot of customers over 23 years. How have their perspectives changed over the 23 years of dealing with those amazing customers you're working with? Well, there's, I guess there's been a lot of, well, we used to have just telecom, telecommunications companies. You had NSPs, you had internet access, ISPs, internet service providers. And now we've had so much consolidation through the years that they really wanted, as the saying goes, one throat to choke, right? So they don't wanna have five separate vendors. They wanna have one vendor. So as a telecom company, we're seeing services blend with MSPs, with MSSPs, all under one service umbrella. Yeah, and that actually leads to our big news really, that you of course, Excel, a leader in cloud services. Most recently, your company announced expanding its managed cybersecurity solutions portfolio. Can you give us a little more insight on that? Yeah, absolutely. And like I indicated, there has been so much consolidation that a few years ago, we sort of recognized that we needed to get involved in cybersecurity. That's what our customers were asking. They don't really care about the voice services if they're under attack, right? So we sort of split up into three main sections. That's training, testing and detection and response. The training would just be cybersecurity awareness training. That's very important because the vast majority of attacks are still employee initiated, meaning that they open up the wrong email, they might be a malware attack, or they just careless with their longing credentials. So we trained them on essentially how not to do them and how to avoid those threats. Then get testing, we're just like penetration testing, where we scan the entire network and we look for vulnerabilities to that network and then we make the customer aware of those vulnerabilities and we suggest ways of strengthening the network and eliminating all of those vulnerabilities and weaknesses. And then detection and response. We went directly to XDR. XDR is extended detection and response and it's sort of, it's the end of the evolution with EDR and MDR. EDR, as you may know, is endpoint detection and response. It has limitation. It was really only focused on one thing, usually a desktop computer for instance. Then you have MDR, which is managed detection and response. That was a little bit further. You had other elements of the network that were being managed and managed 24 by seven. But in today's market organizations have disparate networks, they have disparate technologies. And that's really where XDR comes in, where we're able to analyze all those disparate data streams and consolidate everything and just make it easier for organizations to oversee their entire cybersecurity infrastructure. Yeah, I'm finding a lot of customers are looking for one step to choke when it comes to cybersecurity, because they're really confused and there's so many threats, so much misinformation and also choices. So are you not one throat to choke when it comes to all cyber thing, cybersecurity? The most definitely? Well, I was glad on niche plays within cybersecurity. So I'm not gonna say that we really do everything, but I think those three main areas we have covered pretty well. I mean, again, it starts with training, right? The employee training, making sure that they understand the threats and how to avoid those threats is extremely important. And if you get that down, you avoid 80 to 90% of the stuff in the back end. But then you have testing. You really need to take a look at that network and make sure that it's sound. And then of course, when things do happen, you need to have a sound detection or response system. So yeah, I think we do a pretty good job in covering the main points of cybersecurity. Yeah, absolutely. The people, the testing, the training, the resolutions, I love it. And I love when I also have such a thought leader in our hot seat. I like to pull out the crystal ball. Where do you see the industry in five years from now regarding next-gen cyber and cloud solutions? Right? Yeah, it's hard because it's evolving so quickly, but probably just more of everything. More attacks, attacks which are more advanced, more financial damages created. I think you're gonna see companies having to go through more rigorous qualifications in order to get business insurance where we're gonna qualify as cyber security plans are concerned. You're right now, it's usually like five or six questions. You have this covered and they can get their cyber insurance. I think that's gonna become extremely a bigger, a much bigger process in order to get that insurance. And then with AI, artificial intelligence, meaning that's kind of a buzzword right now. Everyone's talking about it, it's a chat GPT and chat GPT-4. I've been very excited about it. I'm also excited about it. But you know, you get AI in the wrong hands and the cyber criminal stands reason probably use image and you don't have to need to get prepared. It was seen in massive shortage of cyber security skill sets and personality. That must be one major reason why clients seek your help with that defectable piece in there. Are you seeing that as well? I didn't quite catch the question. Can you repeat that please? Yeah, we're seeing a massive shortage of cyber security expertise. I'm wondering if you're seeing that as one of the many reasons your clients need your assistance is just getting that skilled expertise and experience in health. Yeah, massive shortage of cyber security expertise available. Yeah, yeah, it's true. So absolutely. So I didn't talk about the SOC as a service of security operations center. In order to take a security operations center is essentially a knock and network operations center, but the service security. And it's very difficult to find talent in order to create your own SOC. And that's why SOC as a service has become so popular because you're outsourcing that and allowing another company such as X-Tel to oversee your security. Yeah, it's difficult to get talent. It's difficult to maintain that talent. And most companies that's outside their core competency. So it's difficult for them to reasonably continue maintaining and also feeding that talent stream within the company. So I agree. Absolutely, absolutely. And I want to make sure we get to all of your hot news as well. X-Tel, you had several recent announcements including the launch of your third geo-redundant data center in the New York Metro market. So sorry, Boston, we're going to talk to New York right now, but tell us more about how this edition expands your X-Tel footprint of dedicated internet access, DIA and DDoS attack mitigation options. Yeah, so we have New York covered now. Compliments, that's 165 holesy, that's four-limit broad and also filled out. And then we have a data bank data center just outside, in Plano, Texas, just outside Dallas. And also one down in Baltimore. It's actually, it's four. Oh, four? Look at that, we're growing. Yeah, what that does, those additional points of presence just allows us to get closer to those end customer points. When providing dedicated fiber internet access, you gotta provide quality routes and you have to have low latency, low latency is the function of how far away you are from those customers. So we are, by being in Halsey, we've opened up the entire New York Metro market, part of New York State and Connecticut. So that's very exciting. And then with DDoS mitigation, now that we're providing the dedicated internet access, we layer DDoS mitigation on top of that. And we do that proactively, meaning that if there is an attack going towards one of our customers IP addresses, we mitigate and we filter out those affected packs before they even get to the end customer. So it's another value add that we'll be able to provide to a whole new set of customers in the New York Metro area. Do you think customers are looking for a one-stop shop when it comes to all of their IT, telecom, security needs? Is that sort of the trend you're seeing with your peers? Yeah, I think it is, Evan. That is absolutely the trend. I mean, they just want to have one person they can talk to who sort of controls all elements of their telecommunications and cybersecurity game plan. It gets difficult when you have multiple vendors because systems need to be engineered so that they work cohesively together. Sometimes that doesn't happen when you have more than one party involved. And then there's obviously the finger pointing game on whose fault it really is. So if you have one vendor that sort of eliminates a lot of variability. You know, I can't help but to think about this whole spring theme that we have going on and growth being a big word that I associate with Excel. We have growth in services, growth in pop locations. And also we haven't talked about Maryland-based Sulek Global Telecom, GTB, being a new acquisition for you guys. So let's get the inside info there. What can you tell us about this and what it means for Excel? Yeah, that was really exciting for us. That's our first acquisition. GTB's been around for about a quarter of a century, a Sulek in Maryland looking into kids. Very similar to us, a lot of the same services, but a lot of different types of customers. So through that acquisition, we've really gone deeply to healthcare and legal and a few other verticals as well. So we've inherited a lot of institutional knowledge in those verticals. So we're excited to be able to expand upon that and continue going after those verticals. And then of course a lot of engineering and customer support talent we've acquired. It's like we just talked about, it's hard to get talent, we say. So we were fortunate to be able to retain almost all of the talent from GTB and we've integrated with the next help. So it's definitely gonna win. Health care is a big area near and dear to heart. We have the other company, Health Care, and what's your thought about the healthcare industry and the transformation that's happening there? Well, there's a lot going on, right? So you have the HIPAA requirements, which is always sort of the thing that people go back to, especially with cybersecurity. I think there's a lot of development with cybersecurity and make sure that the customers remain HIPAA compliant. And there's a lot of different factions within healthcare. You say healthcare, that means a lot of different things. You know, in patient facilities you have, you have hospitals obviously and several other ones as well. So it's a big, large, encompassing vertical. It's a vertical, which is recession proof, which we always kind of like, right? But it definitely requires some type of institutional knowledge, just kind of understanding the lay of the land within that vertical in order to service it appropriately. Nice, yeah. All right, so now it's time for the rapid fire section of our deep dive here with Brian Flynn of Extel Guys. So Brian, whatever first words pop into mind as we ask you some fun little, I get to know you type of question. So all right, being based in the Philly market, which clearly we have some Philly fans on our chat, we're all excited about your guest starring here on Data Movers. But being based in the very active Philly market, we have to ask favorite cheesesteak of course. Oh, cheesesteak, cheesesteak, cheesesteak. Geno's or Pat's? Geno's or Pat's? Cheesesteak, yeah, you have to do the cheesesteak question if you're from Philly, right? So between those two, the answer's Pat's, although there are several Ben-Rocke's out there. Oh, like an inside secret place. Is that what you're about to share? There's several of them that are, not as well known as Pat's and Geno's, but they make a better sandwich. Well, see, we're gonna have to get your endorsement and frame it on their wall or something then, huh? So I'm coming up, how about the Jersey Shore? I imagine that's one of your favorite destinations. Any favorite spots or restaurants on the shore? Well, as far as talents are concerned, Brigham team. For years it was Avalon, but we bought a place in Brigham team a couple of years ago and my family and I, we just kind of fell in love with it. So definitely Brigham team in Jersey. Nice, I love that, I love that. And one word that people like to use to describe it. Well, most of those words probably can't be used. That's the whole likelihood, but I'll go with consistent. I love it, I love it. I was gonna say charming for sure. And so Brian, you're a tech guy, are you Iowa Apple or Android or anything else? Mask, Windows, make your tech sense. Apple all the way, all right. Apple all the way, yeah, it's just easier. Yeah, I'm sending out my little heart right here because I can't get away from Apple. I love it too much, they're too innovative. Okay, so on your Apple iPhone, what app are you using the most? Pretty boring, just text message and Microsoft Outlook. Yeah, totally. Well, there goes that consistent, right? Or consistent. There you go, consistent. And you know what, with cybersecurity, that's what you want, you want consistency. So I love that. There you go. All right guys, I thank you, thank you, thank you, Brian, for joining us today. It's been such an honor. Well, thank you for having me, it's been great. And thank you for putting up with my spotty broadband service. Maybe XL, do you have any relationships to the park here? We'll be up our game, let's talk to Google. We might be on this LTE extension for you. We can spend like this LTE 5G backup service. We can talk about that. Yeah, definitely. All right, I'll put the word in with the socks here. So, great to see you, Brian. I know, and it was so cool to have you log it in. Our Evan Kirstel, of course, the king of Boston, logging in from Hanway. I mean, you can't get cooler than you, Evan. I'm so excited to have you again. Well, thank you for putting up with my schedule, I love it. And maybe, I don't know, it will do more from location shooting, you know, maybe when you're at Cannes and Monte Carlo and you're in the box, so all this fabulous event, you can be reporting from the field as well. Absolutely, absolutely. We'll absolutely do it. All right, guys. If you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, I hope you did. Be sure to check us out, jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes, released every other week on Wednesday. So go ahead and check that out. And of course, always follow us. Where are we at? We're on Twitter, of course, Mr. Evan Christel, Mr. King of Twitter, at Evan Christel, I'm Jay Scott-O. I put a lot about cloud communications and, you know, joining the conversation and, you know, tag me and Jay Lee, and we'll see you in the future of the industry. Yeah, absolutely. And check out Xtel on Twitter, LinkedIn, of course, their website. And thank you guys for joining us today. As always, stay safe and happy networking.