What’s the cloud? Is it safe? Where is information technology headed? To find out, Springfield Business Journal Editorial Director Eric Olson sat down with local IT leaders Rob Clements of Northern Summit Technology, Wayne Dipper of KPM Technology LLC, John Horton of Layer 3 Technology and John Kelsey of Losh Network Services.
Eric Olson: If you could describe the IT industry in one word, what would it be?
John Kelsey: Watershed.
Wayne Dipper: I would say the industry is fluid.
Rob Clements: I would say confusing.
(group laughter)
John Horton: I would say managed. I think that’s where IT is going in the next 5, 10, 15 years. I think that today’s in-house IT guy is going away. I think managed services for IT firms are here to stay.
Olson: Do you see the cloud prevailing? Is it safe?
Kelsey: It is. I think it’s in most ways more safe than having your infrastructure on-site. When you’re dealing with companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon, they do a good job of securing their infrastructure. I think when you have infrastructure on-site, one of the disadvantages is that you have a physical server there that can be stolen, that can be burned down.
Dipper: I think it depends on the vendor you choose. Do your homework if you want to move to the cloud in any situation. The great thing about the cloud is that it makes your workforce a lot more mobile. You have students graduating that almost demand that kind of mobility. They want to work from anywhere, use any device, and when you’re locked into your own infrastructure, it is hindering in that aspect.
Olson: What are the costs associated for a small vendor moving to the cloud?
Horton: In my view, it depends on what level the cloud is that you’re looking at. Certainly, in Office 365 it is cheaper just to host your own email in the cloud because it’s got your own structure. But at the same time, your infrastructure in the cloud is more expensive. The advantage I think is more considerable. You know, you don’t have to back it up anymore. You have that accessible from anywhere, from any device.
Clements: One of the biggest things, in my opinion, is that all the purposes are the same if they’re on premises or in the cloud, it is enacting them differently. So, if you move stuff to the cloud, then you have to have stronger Internet coming in. What are those costs? I’ve seen clients move back on premise because the cloud, the monthly recurring fee, has become so expensive. One thing that people don’t keep in mind, once you get to the cloud. That cloud’s cost is there forever. You’re shifting costs. The cloud’s been around for a long time. One of the examples that I use is when people start talking about the cloud, I just ask them, “What is the cloud? Have you ever used an AOL account?” Well, of course. That’s email, that’s cloud, that’s a service that’s hosted on a different place than in front of you.
Olson: Do you find most of your clients today understand the cloud?
Dipper: The conversation I’m having is, “What is your definition of the cloud? What do you know about the cloud?”
Horton: Consumers have different levels of knowledge about the cloud and I think it’s our job is really to sit down and educate them to make sure they know if the cloud is right. You’re right, I think the hybrid is probably in 99 percent of the situations the right solution. Not everybody really understands the hybrid cloud. One of the things the cloud really does for a lot of businesses is allow you to scale up and down very immediately.
Kelsey: Predictability is an important thing as well. Typically, with cloud infrastructure, you have less up front, less initial expense and then you have a predictable expense throughout your time. I think you’re right that you may see more expense in the long run, but it is safer.
Clements: It’s also the comfort level. I don’t care what business you’re in. They all like to give options. The quotable example is that it’s like buying a car. It’s the difference between driving a Lexus or a Hyundai. They both drive, they both get paint jobs, they both get you there, they both look decent, but you want what’s more comfortable with tons of options.
Olson: So the ideal cloud client is the company with multiple locations? Is there anything else to that?
Dipper: Yeah, I think it’s that expensive entry into market for a small business to start up. The Super Bowl is a great example. Think of those company’s advertising in the Super Bowl. They needed all those resources to be available for their website at that particular time because they’re driving people to their websites. Well, you spin up a bunch of data on your cloud and then, in a month, when you don’t need it, you just spin it back down and your expense are monthly, maybe two months’ worth of expense instead of building an infrastructure you keep forever that depreciates.
Olson: Is it that difficult to hack into a cloud network?
Clements: Typically, yes, because they have more controls put into place. They have these big data centers with tons of physical security in place and they have a much higher level of security protocols. From a security standpoint, moving to a cloud solution is safer than having it on premise. Are they vulnerable? Yes, everyone is vulnerable and I don’t think any of the folks in here would say, “If you go here, you’re 100 percent protected,” because the thing I remind folks is that code is written by people, so people can break it.
Olson: What would you say is the temperature for jobs right now?
Horton: We grew about 22 percent this last year, 20 percent the year before that, so we’re almost always looking for that next person. As far as quality, we really have to start interviews for these positions early because we’re looking for quality resumes and we get few of them.
Clements: I would agree, I would say we’re also around the 20 percent growth figure. I’ve got one position open right now that I could hire, but I’m being a little more protective of who I bring in.
Kelsey: I think things are going nice in IT overall. We had our biggest year in 2014 and beat that last year. We also have two positions open that we’re trying to hire for.
Dipper: I think all of us here always have an open position. When it comes to hiring I’m a hunter not a fisher. I like to find the right guy rather than him find me. I think (Ozarks Technical Community College), ITT (Technical Institute) and Bryan (College), are doing a good job, while five or 10 years ago they maybe were not giving their kids hands-on training. That’s been the biggest problem, but finding a guy with a working knowledge of all the academics. Our philosophy is that we always have an open spot or two, but you hire slow and fire fast.
Olson: As you’re hunting, what qualifications are you looking for? One knock I’ve heard locally is they churn out people with academic knowledge, but no employable social skills.
Clements: I don’t think that’s local, that’s international. There’s just a certain person.
(group laughter)
Dipper: I think that is changing. I’ve got these two guys coming out socially ready. Are they ready to apply that social skill in an IT setting with the customer in a friendly and kind way? We’ll see.
Kelsey: When I think of my nerdy self in the 1980s with my computer, I didn’t have a lot of friends at school. I think as we hit the late ’90s, everybody has a computer and everybody has a broader range of social kills.
Horton: I think we had that stigma, but it has really been going away the past five to 10 years because so many people have technology now.
Olson: What I’ve heard is everything from unkept clothing to talking down to the client.
Horton: I think that guys like ours, companies like ours, aren’t hiring guys like that. If I see that, I’m not going to tolerate that. If you’re a 50- or 60-user network, you may end up having to hire because that’s what you afford. That’s why I think our service is going to have double-digit growth for years.
Kelsey: It used to be with the break-fix network model. You maybe had one technician every six months come in and maybe look at it and figure it out rather than maintaining [the network]. You really are getting away from that and not building a relationship with the customer that way. [The network] is getting touched in some small way every week or even every day.
Dipper: I think the IT staff in those days were really doing nothing 70 percent of the time. If he’s doing his job well, he’s got the network running. There’s not many things he’s got to fix on a day-to-day basis, just a few upgrades every now and then. Then 70 percent of his time, he’s done. Ten years ago, that was the model. In 2008 or 2009 when the market dived, we saw a lot of big firms let go of their IT guys because they couldn’t afford them. Now we can do it more efficiently, so a lot of those guys left the industry.
Olson: What’s the type of company that needs in-house IT support?
Clements: It comes down to the cost and comfort level. If that person is sitting there and only working 30 percent of the time, and you’re paying them, that’s why you outsource. We actually have two clients where we have technicians go out on site and sit there for four hours or eight hours or whatever the customer wants. It really just depends on the comfort level and the folks. The older generation likes having someone there on site and they pay for it, but the younger people are comfortable calling somebody to come in.
Kelsey: One of the advantages of having an in-house IT was that you had them right there and they could go look at your printer. We can remote into most of those things now, and the networks managed. The computer can check and, in some ways, the remote access can be quicker than the in-house IT guy.
Olson: Do you see your wages increasing or decreasing in 2016? The Bureau of Labor Statistics places mathematical and computer jobs’ annual salaries around $57,000, how do you compare to that figure?
Dipper: To John [Kelsey’s] point, if you hire a guy to handle your network, that guy needs to know firewalls, printers, software, he needs that broad knowledge. Where, in our industry, we can hire specifics. An environmental guy, a systems guy, a security guy and whenever we hire those guys they’re not going to be at the top range of that salary. They’re going to be somewhere below that. Then we can leverage that. We can be the perfect company for a client and they’re paying a fraction of the cost per year. Look at the numbers: If we’ve got five guys versus their one guy, we bring more knowledge to the table than one guy possibly can. And if that guy has it, he’s going to be expensive.
Olson: So, that $57,000 number, they’d be making less than that as experts in one or two things?
Dipper: You know we take phone calls. The first thing we get is printers. “What’s wrong with my printer? I can’t print. I can’t get my email to send. I can’t find the driver.” That’s pretty entry-level stuff, and then he escalates it to get paid that higher figure.
Horton: We have a little different model than that. We tend to have more high-end guys who have the ability to do a number of things. We want that first person who takes the call to do it all for the customer. With that said, we pay a little more than average and do a lot more profit-incentives because we want to motivate our employees for company success. My guys often get a raise of 10, 15 percent a year compared to 3 or 5 percent for other area businesses. It’s just one of those things that, as skills grow, you’re both getting a cost of living raise as well as your skills being 20 percent better than they were last year.
Olson: What are some of the gadgets that have come out recently that surprised or impressed you?
Clements: I’m real excited about virtual reality. I think there’s some really cool possibilities here. Microsoft has a virtual headset called the HoloLens. You have this headset and you put on this mask and you can see everything around you, but it overlays graphics on top of that. So you might be playing a game sitting at the table, but there’s a monster running down the table.
Dipper: One I think is really cool is 3-D printing. The prices are dropping and I think from a creative standpoint it opens the world. It’s changing manufacturing and impacting our lives, and we don’t even know it. The other thing is home automation. There are so many companies coming out with blinds that can go up and down, automatic doorbells.
Interview excerpts by Features Editor Emily Letterman, eletterman@sbj.net, and editorial assistant Barrett Young, sbj@sbj.net.
