On this episode of the NTP podcast we chat with Mark Boswell & Alek Patsouris from Strategic Group. We discuss Mark & Alek’s career to date and what they are currently working on as well as their teams focus on building strong relationships with employees working remotely. Hope you enjoy the interview!

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Show Notes

Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Mark’s LinkedIn
  • Alek’s LinkedIn
  • Strategic Group’s Website

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

00:00:20:08 – 00:00:28:22
Dan Farthing
All right, Great, guys. Welcome to another episode of the New We Take People podcast. I’ve got Mark and Alec from Strategic Group with us. Welcome, guys.

00:00:29:11 – 00:00:30:14
Mark Boswell
Hi, Dan. Great to be here.

00:00:30:15 – 00:00:31:12
Alek Patsouris
Great to be here. Thanks for having.

00:00:31:12 – 00:00:38:03
Dan Farthing
Us. All right. Well, to get started. Well, introductions. What do strategic group do?

00:00:39:01 – 00:01:17:09
Mark Boswell
Yeah, thanks to Enzo. I’m the director of operations and co-CEO at Strategic Group. Strategic Group is a managed service provider that helps our small and medium businesses with their technology needs. So we do outsourced I.T. support, I.T. project management, cloud computing, private and public cloud security services, and cloud voice telecommunications, that’s that type of thing. So we try and offer a one stop shop for our customers to take the hassle out of I.T. and really help them manage end to end.

00:01:18:00 – 00:01:18:09
Dan Farthing
Awesome.

00:01:19:14 – 00:01:37:05
Alek Patsouris
Alec on the infrastructure team laid at Strategic Group. So I look after a lot of the behind the scenes of our private cloud stack. So we run a fairly large on prem stack that helps our clients to live a VDI like solution. Yeah.

00:01:38:01 – 00:01:45:10
Dan Farthing
Awesome. It’s good to have you guys. Strategic Group been around the Newcastle region for quite some time now.

00:01:45:10 – 00:01:46:11
Mark Boswell
A long time, yeah.

00:01:47:00 – 00:01:54:14
Dan Farthing
A little bit of a tidbit for the listeners. I actually started my career in I.T. at Strategic Group, so way back in the day.

00:01:54:14 – 00:02:08:20
Mark Boswell
So yeah, absolutely. Stories about how you started Strategic Group and you were relentless in knocking on the door saying you know, you wanted to work at strategic planning. Yes. Back to have lunch back.

00:02:08:24 – 00:02:16:17
Dan Farthing
Back in the days of was seek not much LinkedIn and I think a lot of hitting paper resumes.

00:02:17:23 – 00:02:19:01
Alek Patsouris
Then was king Yeah.

00:02:19:13 – 00:02:19:21
Speaker 4
That’s.

00:02:20:13 – 00:02:21:02
Alek Patsouris
That’s it.

00:02:21:14 – 00:02:22:14
Speaker 4
So yes yes.

00:02:22:18 – 00:02:28:11
Dan Farthing
Kick the door down and forced my paper résumé on a few desk strategic group and eventually got a callback.

00:02:30:00 – 00:02:31:23
Speaker 4
But yeah, so glad that yeah.

00:02:32:05 – 00:02:34:15
Alek Patsouris
How the world is changed. Yeah. Do that anymore.

00:02:34:15 – 00:02:46:14
Dan Farthing
Yeah, it’s. It’s coming. Coming full circle. So it’s good. Good to have you guys. I guess giving people a bit of a context and strategic group. Where did it come from? Tell us a bit about it and where do we start?

00:02:46:20 – 00:03:09:15
Mark Boswell
Yeah, my father’s out of the business in 89. Um, it started out as doing sort of Scot and monitoring systems for power stations and eventually the power stations. One of the clients that that that had at the time said, you know you guys must know something about I’ll tell you, can you look after our servers and and take on the support and management of it.

00:03:09:15 – 00:03:43:14
Mark Boswell
And that’s kind of where, you know, it evolved from way back when. And the business has really grown from there. Know, we’ve grown pretty organically, but we’ve done much the same thing and that’s to help businesses with the technology needs and then offer a fully managed solution so that they don’t have to think about it too hard. And so now, you know, we have technologies or services, I should say, that are a bit more sophisticated and keeping up with with the technologies that that are, you know, in today’s age.

00:03:43:14 – 00:04:11:20
Mark Boswell
Yeah. Um, you know, we do, we still do our outsourced i.t support for our customers. We still do i.t project management, but we’re doing a lot more public cloud services like mach software 65 and helping customers with that. We’ve got our own fully owned private cloud solution. Yep. So we’ve got lots of customers using that we’re doing. We’ve moved into security consulting and services as well and telecommunications and cloud voice.

00:04:12:01 – 00:04:24:05
Mark Boswell
Yeah, as well. And I guess while you know, the technology’s changed, the objectives the same, that is to be a one stop shop for our customers and really help them in that in that technology needs. Yeah awesome.

00:04:24:05 – 00:04:28:07
Dan Farthing
Fantastic. And I like your role in the business.

00:04:28:17 – 00:04:54:02
Alek Patsouris
I’m a jack of all trades master non as they say but I’m formerly our infrastructure team lead so I help look after our private cloud stock but also act as a bit of a top level kind of tech escalation for some of the guys that need a sounding board or Robert, as we like to call it, come and have a bit of a chit chat and just help with some of that really nitty gritty tech stuff behind the scenes to help how that private cloud and a lot of the cloud based solutions that we.

00:04:54:02 – 00:05:02:22
Dan Farthing
Have. Yeah awesome So very infrastructure base role. Hmm. And how did you how did you land in that? How did you come to that place in your career?

00:05:04:02 – 00:05:11:24
Alek Patsouris
I fell into it entirely by accident, So I started back into I flute my entire career. Let’s be honest, we.

00:05:11:24 – 00:05:16:15
Speaker 4
Think as an actor or anything like that.

00:05:17:06 – 00:05:34:20
Alek Patsouris
I started following the contractor that helped my high school out around basically like a bad smell. Yeah. And then when I finished high school, I kind of said, Do you wanna come and work for us? And I’m sure that sounds fun. Let’s start there and see where we go. And then I fell into a role with a company called That Registry.

00:05:34:20 – 00:05:55:15
Alek Patsouris
Back before that, I had multiple acquisitions and grew in through the web hosting space. Yeah, so I became quite familiar with hosted infrastructure and assets and how they can help shape, you know, web based technologies and hosted technologies. And then I did that for nine years and then eventually I actually got a call from the strategic group guys saying, We like the look of what you’ve done.

00:05:55:15 – 00:06:01:23
Alek Patsouris
Would you like to come and have a chat and see if we might be able to see if you might be able to help us, you know, So I.

00:06:02:04 – 00:06:02:14
Speaker 4
Looked at.

00:06:03:20 – 00:06:13:01
Dan Farthing
The tenacious at the beginning as a bit of a theme here on the people getting started in careers with the, you know, tenaciously following people around and eventually getting a job.

00:06:13:08 – 00:06:13:15
Speaker 4
Well.

00:06:14:02 – 00:06:27:24
Mark Boswell
I think got to something that good people attract. Good people are in your you know, you want to bring good people into your business and good people like Alec and the other people that got in the business, no other good people. So just, you know, that’s a really easy way to to find talent.

00:06:28:05 – 00:06:33:09
Dan Farthing
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. How is that motto affected your retention?

00:06:33:21 – 00:07:01:05
Mark Boswell
Has it affected retention? We we have a really good retention rate. I mean, a lot of our guys have been with us for a long time. We had a we had our project manager retire last year and he’d been with us for 30 plus years. We’ve got guys that have been ten, 15 years that that stability really helps us being able to deliver the products and services that we do, but also, you know, it helps attract other good people as well.

00:07:01:05 – 00:07:06:01
Mark Boswell
Yeah, you know, they’ve got the network and the people that we can leverage on.

00:07:06:06 – 00:07:07:03
Dan Farthing
Yeah. And us, it’s.

00:07:07:14 – 00:07:26:19
Alek Patsouris
It’s weird coming in as an outsider to the strategic business too, because it is such a unique culture and it’s made up of those people who are really detailed. They care a lot about why they’re working for us and start to bring all of that together. And the first couple of weeks can be an absolute shock because everyone is just so happy to help.

00:07:26:19 – 00:07:30:00
Alek Patsouris
They’re so detailed in how they do it and it’s almost like a cult.

00:07:30:11 – 00:07:30:24
Speaker 4
It’s a way.

00:07:30:24 – 00:07:34:13
Alek Patsouris
To say that. But you hear that a lot because people like.

00:07:34:14 – 00:07:35:15
Mark Boswell
You drank the Kool-Aid.

00:07:36:01 – 00:07:38:10
Speaker 4
Yeah, Yeah. It’s good for life and.

00:07:39:09 – 00:07:57:04
Alek Patsouris
It’s just building our community. And that does help the retention because everyone does start to form these really strong bonds with each other. And I’ve made some really good friends working for strategic as well that we catch up with outside of work. And, you know, even when people like yourself move on, we still keep these close relationships with them and pick up effectively where we left off.

00:07:57:04 – 00:07:57:10
Dan Farthing
Yeah.

00:07:57:17 – 00:08:23:22
Mark Boswell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like it’s something that we work really hard on. It doesn’t happen by accident, but it also happens. It’s not just something that Chris and I do, it’s something that everyone’s got to be a part of in that world. Community is, you know, sticks out in my mind. That’s what we’re trying to create is, you know, is a community based on shared values and, you know, a place where people can come and feel safe to, you know, be vulnerable to have fun.

00:08:24:02 – 00:08:27:07
Mark Boswell
Yeah. And find those those connections with people, you know.

00:08:27:20 – 00:08:31:01
Dan Farthing
Really build that sense of community and yeah, same for sure.

00:08:31:06 – 00:09:00:18
Mark Boswell
And then that’s, you know, that’s gotten harder post COVID, I think, you know, as people have moved out of an office environment and working more, more remote, I think people have been more isolated at home and they don’t have the opportunity for those everyday interactions that you did in an office. Yeah, you think about going into an office and meeting people down the hallway or going out for lunch with someone or even, you know, after a meeting, you know, just spending 5 minutes and catching up.

00:09:01:08 – 00:09:02:10
Alek Patsouris
The water cooler, the.

00:09:02:10 – 00:09:21:03
Mark Boswell
Water cooler chat. Well, yeah, yeah. There’s less opportunity now post COVID, I think, because, you know, in that remote, remote work place and that’s, you know, part of our challenge is to try and find those opportunities and and bring people together. But but it can’t be forced. Yeah. You know, I think we’ve played around with things and things haven’t worked.

00:09:21:03 – 00:09:40:23
Mark Boswell
But, you know, I think things like Zoom drinks and things like that as a really challenging for people. If you try to force people together. Yeah, you can, it can have the total opposite effect. Yeah. So yeah, it’s about finding those opportunities and giving people those opportunities to come together and interact and connect.

00:09:41:04 – 00:10:01:20
Dan Farthing
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. You guys have gone from being a single location business to being a multi-location business, and some of that’s been through acquisition and other things. But how’s the transition gone from managing a single location workforce to managing a distributed workforce and once again maintaining that sense of, you know, family and community and team?

00:10:02:07 – 00:10:02:19
Mark Boswell
Yeah.

00:10:02:24 – 00:10:03:15
Dan Farthing
How’s that been?

00:10:03:17 – 00:10:40:09
Mark Boswell
Yeah, look, it’s a great question and it’s, it’s, it’s challenging. It’s something we’re always thinking about. It’s something that we’re really conscious of, is to make sure that the staff that are remote feel part of the family, feel part of the community still. Yeah. How do we do that? It’s about thinking the person and I think just caring for the person, you know, and what are the what are their individual needs in the situation that they’re in trying to think of that person and care for that person not just as a strategic group employee, but holistically.

00:10:40:17 – 00:11:03:13
Mark Boswell
Who are they, where they from? What are their values? Who’s at home? You know what I like doing on the weekend. Yeah. And and connecting with them in that way, in that more holistic way. Yeah. But it’s also about, you know, providing sort of tailored support and coaching for, for those people to keep them engaged and to keep them interested and on the career path that they want to be in.

00:11:03:16 – 00:11:03:24
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00:11:04:15 – 00:11:22:16
Alek Patsouris
I think that happens a lot through the everyday stuff that we do through work as well. We we are very careful with our culture to make sure that it doesn’t become the head office in Newcastle delegating things out. So when we work with projects, for example, we make sure that we get the best person for the role effectively.

00:11:22:16 – 00:11:52:03
Alek Patsouris
You know, one of our guys over in Perth, for example, he’ll have a great level of detail with a specific piece of software. Okay, let’s get you on to this project because they’re using that piece of software, whether that’s a resource or running the project or whatever. So we make sure and as those cross-functional teams that come together for these projects that build up and then get broken down to the project completion, help build those relationships, and we start to get a lot of the communication going backwards and forwards as sounding boards and things like that to include them.

00:11:52:23 – 00:12:18:21
Alek Patsouris
But it’s also when we have want to change policy, for example, or change templates being in our company, it’s important to us that we keep standards, especially being an MSP. We don’t want to get to a place where every client’s got a completely different set up and it gets hard to manage. So when we do start to go, okay, let’s, let’s standardize this, we bring everyone’s views into the fold and give everyone a chance to have an opportunity and a saying and be completely transparent.

00:12:18:21 – 00:12:27:03
Alek Patsouris
I think through those interactions that happen in the every day, we still manage to keep that even though the remote, the workforce is spread across a lot of different sites.

00:12:27:03 – 00:12:27:16
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.

00:12:27:22 – 00:12:46:14
Mark Boswell
Yeah. I guess that’s where the transition’s been. It’s been like, what do we what do we need to support the customer? What do we need to support our employees, you know, regardless of where they are. Yeah. You know, so it’s just that shifting that mindset from everyone’s in the office to know what everyone’s anywhere at any time. Yeah, Yeah.

00:12:47:19 – 00:12:56:11
Mark Boswell
But, you know, that shouldn’t matter. It should be bringing the, bringing people together as Alec mentioned, to do whatever needs to be done. Yeah. You know, together.

00:12:57:05 – 00:13:04:23
Dan Farthing
Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. And from a customer point of view, customers are we’re all over Australia.

00:13:05:13 – 00:13:32:11
Mark Boswell
Yeah. Yeah. So all over. So I mean most states in Australia and we’ve got hands of feet on the ground to support them in those areas. So you know, um Queensland, Victoria, I mentioned Chris over in Perth, Adelaide recently, so yeah, all over the place which, which has its own challenges as well. When got staff or I wish I would also cause a lot of shock.

00:13:32:12 – 00:13:43:01
Dan Farthing
Yeah, Yeah. I guess it keeps that bit of continuity when there’s staff everywhere, clients everywhere, everyone’s kind of servicing everyone. Yeah, a little bit of that.

00:13:43:05 – 00:13:56:02
Alek Patsouris
I keep pushing our sales team, Not that they’re particularly pushy, but I’ve got a big map of Australia with all of our clients on it, monitoring everything. I’m waiting for them to fill in the missing gaps, fill it in and have one interest I can.

00:13:56:02 – 00:13:56:23
Dan Farthing
Yeah, so we’re.

00:13:56:23 – 00:13:57:09
Mark Boswell
Working on.

00:13:58:20 – 00:13:58:23
Speaker 4
It.

00:13:59:08 – 00:14:01:04
Dan Farthing
Some dots up there on the pit in the Pilbara.

00:14:01:05 – 00:14:03:18
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00:14:03:18 – 00:14:05:05
Dan Farthing
Who gets to draw that short scroll?

00:14:06:08 – 00:14:07:13
Mark Boswell
Not really. Internet slog. Yeah.

00:14:08:15 – 00:14:12:03
Dan Farthing
That’s good. That’s good. From a from a technical point of view, I guess.

00:14:13:13 – 00:14:14:09
Speaker 4
How.

00:14:14:10 – 00:14:39:03
Dan Farthing
How do you how do you keep techie people engaged? There’s obviously a pretty high turnover, high churn in the tech industry. It’s probably, I guess depending on the industry, I think some software industry, software sectors, it’s like 0.9 of a year is there is the general churn rate on employees. I didn’t I didn’t check the data on infrastructure before before we started this.

00:14:39:03 – 00:14:45:24
Dan Farthing
But what you’re you’re generates like years. Yeah average would be multiple.

00:14:45:24 – 00:14:47:15
Mark Boswell
Years what the average would be but it’s.

00:14:47:18 – 00:14:49:15
Dan Farthing
Yeah how how do you keep tackling.

00:14:49:15 – 00:14:50:15
Alek Patsouris
It’s about five.

00:14:50:15 – 00:14:51:15
Dan Farthing
Years five years.

00:14:51:15 – 00:14:52:16
Alek Patsouris
That’s ice storm.

00:14:52:20 – 00:15:04:11
Dan Farthing
Which is pretty considerable. How do you how do you keep those tech staff engaged for that long and and still give career progression opportunities?

00:15:04:12 – 00:15:31:05
Mark Boswell
Mm hmm. I think it comes down to nothing to do with tech. It comes down to like what we were talking about before and and bringing people into a community that feels safe and valued, but also giving them some purpose around helping other people and with with big in our community partnerships and, you know, and the things we do for for our community partners like Ronald McDonald House and Randeep J.

00:15:31:05 – 00:15:51:04
Mark Boswell
And those guys. And that really helps, you know, and and I guess helping them feel like they’re part of something bigger than just the tech. And I know that not that it’s just a tech, like it’s funds it’s not a staff. Right. And that and everyone that comes to work is is you know is passionate about technology. Yep.

00:15:51:16 – 00:16:21:17
Mark Boswell
But I think that is the key element to keeping people is about you know that community but also about that bigger purpose. Yeah sure I know from from a tech point of view and keeping people engaged with technology, I mean we have, you know, individual coaching and and training plans for individual is about keeping them up to date with the latest skills and, you know, marks of certification or other certifications that we do.

00:16:21:17 – 00:16:47:01
Mark Boswell
But I think it’s about, you know, when we’ve got new products and services just getting people involved as well, trying to get them involved in that and and helping build those things. Um, we come together pretty well, I think, as a group and we’ve got a problem to solve. Yep. You know, we’re very flat structure so we don’t, we, we really encourage anyone in the business to come and contribute.

00:16:47:04 – 00:16:58:23
Mark Boswell
Yeah. If there’s a, if there’s a problem that the business needs to solve. Yep. Then, then let’s get everyone involved. You know, two heads are better than one and 45 heads are better than two. Yeah, I think so.

00:16:59:06 – 00:17:00:09
Alek Patsouris
Sometimes.

00:17:00:09 – 00:17:05:21
Speaker 4
So, yeah, it’s good to manage that a little.

00:17:05:21 – 00:17:13:19
Mark Boswell
You know, I think that, I think that’s the concept that, that anyone can, can come and contribute, you know, to almost anything, you know, um.

00:17:14:11 – 00:17:33:19
Alek Patsouris
From a tech perspective, specifically as a company, we’re very culture first making sure people fit our values and that helps to build that community. But obviously there’s still a niche there that our techs need to scratch. Yeah, and it can be hard because it is such a wide world. You know, you look at it 20 years ago, it’s a very narrow field of you almost.

00:17:33:19 – 00:17:57:17
Alek Patsouris
You didn’t have a lot of room to move. Nowadays you’ve got so many different areas, you know, you’ve got to pick a track and kind of do want to specialize in something or do you want to stay? Being a generalist? I think being an MSP helps as well because we are asking our guys to be general, so they get to jump between a lot of different things and that kind of help keeps them engaged, gives them the opportunity to build their skills in a lot of different areas.

00:17:58:07 – 00:18:20:16
Alek Patsouris
And even though the world’s kind of becoming small or things like M365 and Google Workspace, those kinds of tools where it’s becoming everything is a service, there’s still this element under the surface that a lot of people are forgetting and leaving exposed in a way through sort of security where they are forgetting those fundamentals. You know, everything’s kind of just become it’s just a service.

00:18:20:23 – 00:18:49:00
Alek Patsouris
So Algar specifically gets to bounce around a lot between those different areas, between software as a service on prem, product cloud and then the fundamentals behind the science. Yeah, So they get to jump around and we encourage sharing that knowledge through what we call knowledge share. So every two weeks we’ll have one that comes together. Someone will pick something that I’ve been working on that’s interesting, spend 30 minutes just presenting it to the team and help build those skills and you kind of hear people afterwards.

00:18:49:00 – 00:19:02:22
Alek Patsouris
They’re like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. I’m I can have a bit more of a look at that or the client that I’m looking after. They’re not quite ready to do that yet, but I’m going to go away and start talking about it. So it’s kind of jumping between a lot of those different areas. Helps scratch that itch.

00:19:02:22 – 00:19:24:17
Dan Farthing
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Well, that’s awesome. That’s it’s certainly. Yeah. Bucking the trend generally across the industry that’s it’s cool to get a bit of a insight into you know what what makes that work for you guys and that’s a highlight when I think about the kind of companies that people like to stick around. Yeah, yeah, that’s cool.

00:19:25:00 – 00:19:53:19
Dan Farthing
In terms of some of those advancements, you mentioned security and things like that and some, you know, higher tech areas that you’ve like to let let guys have a bit of a foray into. Keep interested in guys and scratch that itch. As you said that you’ve had had a few areas that you’ve you’ve done that with recently. You mentioned earlier ISO certification or check is audit is coming up.

00:19:54:00 – 00:20:17:06
Dan Farthing
So obviously tech’s not something that play second fiddle. You guys are on the front foot and kind of doing things to best practice. How do you find developing those skills or where do you find those skills? Like is it homegrown, you know, growth into being at the forefront of the technology? Have you had to hire a specialist in to kind of deliver that, you know, best best in class tech?

00:20:17:07 – 00:20:39:02
Dan Farthing
Yeah. How do you get there with lucky Cybersecurity, obviously a major I think for you guys you you you delivering private cloud services to national companies. Yeah, that’s a big it’s a big thing. It’s a hot topic at the moment, you know, how do you guys stay on the front foot with that stuff and make sure that you’re delivering best practice and looking after clients?

00:20:39:13 – 00:21:02:13
Mark Boswell
I think I think in terms of, you know, how we address it through talent is a combination of whether we need a specialist role. You know, and we don’t have it at the moment. We like likely recruit or the alternative is that we upskill, you know, and, and I think particularly in the world of cyber, I mean, cybersecurity security in general is such a hot topic right now.

00:21:02:13 – 00:21:29:03
Mark Boswell
You know, it’s almost every day that you’re picking up the phone and saying in the news feeds that there’s been another breach or there’s been a security incident. So talking about security specifically, I think it’s everyone’s role. You know, it’s it’s not just specific cyber engineer or consultant role to to be mindful and be conscious of those security elements because it’s it’s it’s all about all their roles.

00:21:29:03 – 00:21:57:22
Mark Boswell
And we’ve had as you mentioned, we’ve gone through our ISO certification internally. We’ve got our assessment external services coming in next week. So we’re preparing for that again. But yeah, that’s been a real journey for us. And you know, we started that journey because we wanted to be the best and best in class and know we didn’t necessarily know what it was going to entail initially.

00:21:57:22 – 00:22:24:11
Mark Boswell
Yeah, but we’ve had to learn and have to adapt and that hasn’t been through external sources, That’s been through trial and error, a lot of it, and through upskilling internally. So I think that’s really made us a better company. Yep. Um, you know, I think about our how our internal processes have changed, you know, not just and not just the technology, but, you know, the people and the processes as well.

00:22:24:11 – 00:22:48:07
Mark Boswell
You think about hiring a new staff member that goes through a whole different security process now. Yeah, you think about going out there and evaluating an external supplier, that’s a whole that’s a whole different, you know, process now. So, you know, it’s it’s more than just that technology. Space security touches everything. It’s and it’s almost like a consciousness for for the organization.

00:22:48:07 – 00:23:20:13
Mark Boswell
So yeah, I think we’ve had we’ve been on a learning curve and a journey with our with our internal security. And that’s going to continue. And that’s most of all just trying to think that now all the all the time we’ve had to upskill we haven’t got external hired externally for that, for that role. Yeah we have produced a couple of security services this year for, for customers.

00:23:20:13 – 00:23:41:23
Mark Boswell
Yeah. One being aligned to the essential model which is you know the Australian government said all businesses should, should belong to a central eight. So we’ve, we’ve created a service around that for our customers. Yep. And again that’s more we’re focusing on the technology and the management of that and what’s in place. So again, we haven’t hired externally for that.

00:23:41:23 – 00:24:10:24
Mark Boswell
That’s, that’s been a conscious effort from our, our goal is to upskill in those areas. The, the other service that we’re that we’ve just launched is a managed information security service, which is more of a consulting service, you know, helping customers assess this overall security risk. And again, moving outside just the technology space, you know, the people, the process and provide it, providing that governance and strategy around general security.

00:24:11:04 – 00:24:29:06
Mark Boswell
Yeah, in that case, we have hired externally and we’ve brought in an information security consultant to help us deliver that service. So, yeah, it’s it’s a real combination of upskilling, you know, internally, but also hiring externally when we need it.

00:24:29:09 – 00:24:30:02
Dan Farthing
Yeah, Yeah.

00:24:30:12 – 00:24:52:23
Alek Patsouris
I think we’re fortunate as well where a lot of the clients that we tend to work with, we build a lot of strong relationships with that will last a very long time. Some of our clients have been with us almost as long as the business has been around as well. And when we think about those kinds of clients and the relationships we build, they’re very stable track kind of clients, then not rapidly evolving.

00:24:52:23 – 00:25:15:02
Alek Patsouris
They’re not bleeding edge kinds of businesses. They want stability, they want structure. They want that kind of consistency that we can offer them. And that’s part of where we come into the picture to deliver that. And as Mark kind of said, it’s about taking that holistic view. And we hear from a lot of the customers that we work with our clients, they don’t want to know about the tech.

00:25:15:07 – 00:25:33:08
Alek Patsouris
They they trust us to take care of that tech piece of it. But where this world is starting to evolve is that there’s so many different tech options now. You know, you kind of death by options. It’s almost becoming a little snake oily with some of the solutions being pushed out there to create this false sense of security.

00:25:33:12 – 00:25:57:02
Alek Patsouris
You know, and as Mark said, it’s about creating that holistic view of security. Everyone’s involved. And that’s where that information security piece comes into it, because businesses get lulled into this false sense of security of of just bought a thing off the shelf, saw it ticks all the boxes. It’s a case when you start looking at how you actually storing your information, how you dealing with your employees, how you secure in your business premises.

00:25:57:02 – 00:26:07:04
Alek Patsouris
And that’s where it starts to become that holistic view. And when you kind of walk into a boardroom and talk to these clients about it, you kind of go, Well, have you considered this? And I go, No, I haven’t.

00:26:07:10 – 00:26:07:17
Mark Boswell
Yeah.

00:26:07:17 – 00:26:17:13
Alek Patsouris
And then that starts the wheels turning and that’s where that real change starts to come into it. And you build that kind of culture of security inside each of the businesses. It helps contribute to it.

00:26:18:13 – 00:26:19:02
Dan Farthing
Yeah. Cool.

00:26:19:10 – 00:26:54:13
Mark Boswell
Yeah. Interesting point that you raise about, you know, customers not caring so much about the technology. That’s that’s our job really. And we care, you know, we care about the partners that we have. And but I think that’s, that’s 100% right that the customers they’re looking to do their work you and they’re looking for us to ensure that they can do their work, you know, better faster, automate some of it, you know, make sure that they’re able to achieve their objectives, but they’re not worried about what the technology is.

00:26:54:13 – 00:27:21:20
Mark Boswell
You know, it does it doesn’t matter if it’s HP or Dell. You know, it probably doesn’t. It matters to us. So we’ve got to, you know, really find the solutions out there. Now, like mention it. That’s getting harder for us. Yeah, but we’ve got to take the feature set that the customers are asking us for and really find the technology solution that that helps to deliver that and helps us to leave that to the customer.

00:27:22:00 – 00:27:48:11
Mark Boswell
Because another important point is around, you know, us being able to support whatever technology solution that we that we select. So, you know, a lot of our the majority of our partnerships that technology partnerships are the bigger enterprise of town like your VMware, you, Dell, we Microsoft. Yeah. Because we know that they have to be we got the best product, they’ve got the most R&D, the biggest R&D budget, they’ve got the biggest support teams and development teams.

00:27:48:11 – 00:27:56:15
Mark Boswell
So we know that, you know, when we put a solution in place that we’re going to be able to support it really well as well. Yeah, it’s yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:57:06 – 00:28:25:02
Dan Farthing
It’s I guess the industry as a whole has gone through a massive journey of the past 15 years of like cloud becoming a thing and then public cloud becoming the norm. Um, I noticed recently that Basecamp announced that they’re leaving the cloud and going back to managing bare metal as a pure SAS business that’s, that’s proposing that never has been a little bit rogue in their approach to business based.

00:28:25:08 – 00:29:01:00
Dan Farthing
And they’ve got some 37 signals, but I think they’re there. In their announcement I sort of flagged a few sort of financial things that sort of fit their their business size. But I think it’s a really interesting some interesting points that got that get raised there because from from a from a business point of view over the last probably five or seven years, we’ve seen a lot of infrastructure engineers sort of move or not have much to do when it comes to bare metal in those businesses because there’s not a lot of bare metal in those businesses anymore.

00:29:01:00 – 00:29:19:18
Dan Farthing
It’s all Google or IWC or Azure and you guys have maintained that level of infrastructure, managing that, that bare metal infrastructure. Do you have any comment on with where things are going? What do you think of that, that sort of things? Do you think that’ll be harder and harder to find people to manage the bare metal and, you know, is it.

00:29:19:19 – 00:29:40:23
Alek Patsouris
It’s already getting harder and harder to find them. So we recently decided to add a head to my team that looks after the infrastructure stack that we’ve got on prem. And admittedly we tried to recruit through COVID, but we it still took us two years to find someone and that’s that’s hard to find someone that has those skills now that are becoming more niche.

00:29:41:01 – 00:29:41:08
Dan Farthing
Yeah.

00:29:42:05 – 00:30:10:20
Alek Patsouris
How harder to find and you getting only the bigger end of town like it banks and unis and stuff that have got those skills that are still running it. But it’s an interesting point that you touched on with people starting to leave public cloud. People are getting sick, or at least that’s what I’m hearing about about Bill Shock, especially when they’re like, Oh, I projected it was going to be this march, but it ended up being this march and it’s just absolutely annoying the heck out of them that there’s so much less density in it, which is good for one end of town, horrible for another.

00:30:11:11 – 00:30:23:21
Alek Patsouris
But even in Australia, look what there’s so many new data centers popping up. There’s a new one this month alone. I think there’s one that’s opened in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne. Yeah, they’ve all opened brand new data centers and someone’s filling them.

00:30:23:24 – 00:30:24:12
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.

00:30:24:12 – 00:30:48:03
Alek Patsouris
So there’s so many of those businesses now that are coming back out of the cloud, but I think it’s getting easier to manage that through the rise of things like DevOps as well, where those skills that happen in public cloud start to translate into on prem infrastructure as well. Yeah, a lot of that software. So it is starting to become a lot more like an elastic environment.

00:30:48:03 – 00:30:58:19
Alek Patsouris
It’s just you own the team that it’s all Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’re starting to see developers interacting with hardware more, which is really interesting because it’s coming full circle back to where it was 20 years ago.

00:30:58:19 – 00:30:59:03
Dan Farthing
Where.

00:30:59:11 – 00:31:21:06
Alek Patsouris
They’re having to think about things they haven’t thought about for a while, memory management and process management and all those kinds of fun things. Yeah, but yeah, it is interesting and we have stayed on prem with our private cloud stock that we do sell on to our clients and it’s partially because our clients are both stable track kind of clients that I mentioned before.

00:31:21:06 – 00:31:42:06
Alek Patsouris
They’re still quite afraid of public cloud or they don’t want that elasticity that they don’t need it. Yeah, but some of them are just generally afraid of it, saying these kind of news reports and they don’t know where their data is. They don’t trust those companies to kind of do what they say they’re going to do because there’ll be some footprint in the terms and conditions that allows them to change it at any time.

00:31:42:15 – 00:31:49:05
Alek Patsouris
And it’s weird, we still get some of our clients going. Can we come to your data center? Yeah, right. Okay, sure. No problem.

00:31:49:06 – 00:31:50:02
Speaker 4
You go.

00:31:50:02 – 00:32:06:18
Alek Patsouris
Let’s do too. And they kind of rock up and they go, Well, which one’s mine? You go, Well, one of those disks has your partner on it somewhere, so that gives them that confidence that they can see it, they can touch it, they can have gone in and seen it. Yeah, this is what it looks like. This is where the cloud lives.

00:32:07:00 – 00:32:08:01
Alek Patsouris
Yeah, it’s crazy.

00:32:08:07 – 00:32:14:24
Dan Farthing
Yeah. Yeah. Genuinely is in a secure facility. It’s not somewhere up on the Google.

00:32:14:24 – 00:32:15:12
Mark Boswell
That’s right.

00:32:15:20 – 00:32:16:02
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00:32:16:22 – 00:32:36:14
Mark Boswell
So, so yeah. Look where we like. Of course we can control it. We can manage it. Yeah. You lose that control soon as you partner with some of the cloud the public cloud providers were talking about before. I think the clients are just looking to to run their business, know it’s an accounting firm or, you know, a manufacturing firm.

00:32:37:05 – 00:32:52:19
Mark Boswell
You know, the the less they’re not worried about what the technology is underneath so much anymore. You know, they want to know that it’s going to perform. It’s going to help them in their role and it’s financially viable within their budget.

00:32:52:20 – 00:32:54:20
Alek Patsouris
Yeah, And it’s consistent.

00:32:54:20 – 00:33:27:12
Mark Boswell
And one of the one one of the one of the issues that that public clouds brings in that consumption model is that it’s a consumption model, right? Yeah. So the way we package the solution is, is just fixed price. So it’s consistent. You know, they know what they’re going to get every month and it does its job. So yeah, yeah, it’s an interesting space and certainly it’s it’s getting harder and harder from a recruitment recruiting point of view on a talent point of view to, to, to bring in those skills.

00:33:27:12 – 00:33:32:17
Mark Boswell
Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes in the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:32:20 – 00:33:58:08
Dan Farthing
Oh yeah. It’s hard to adjust how to predict the future on that though. I can remember way back in the early mid thousands, the accounting industry in particular went through. We started to go through a fairly started to go through a bit of a shift of you know, on prem, off prem, you know, that technology started to ramp up in what it was capable of.

00:33:58:08 – 00:34:29:15
Dan Farthing
And yeah, strategic group really led the way into kind of cloud based across that industry and across that financial services and particularly the accounting industry. You guys are pretty prolific and and a seen as somebody who does a pretty good job in Australia especially. But having led the industry through that change a lot in a lot of ways from a technology point of view, you had had a run, had to run your business on servers or you know what to use and in what, what’s what things are capable of.

00:34:30:13 – 00:34:37:05
Dan Farthing
What do you reckon the next big innovation is going to be around that space? Predictions, Wild, wild predictions.

00:34:37:19 – 00:34:37:23
Speaker 4
In.

00:34:37:23 – 00:34:38:20
Mark Boswell
The accounting space.

00:34:39:00 – 00:34:47:12
Dan Farthing
I reckon. Yeah. Finally it’s coming up to 20 years. We’ve got to say another big, big change or something. Come, what do you reckon? Away.

00:34:47:18 – 00:35:11:00
Mark Boswell
I’m not really sure. I think, you know, it’s hard to predict the future, as you say. I think the technologies that are out there that that, you know of are interest of interest to us. I should say things like we’re seeing, you know, more and more i.t devices come in how they’re going to apply in the professional services kind of industry.

00:35:11:09 – 00:35:47:19
Mark Boswell
You know, there’s there’s this list, there’s limited options right now, but I think I think that, you know, as i.t you know, is kicking off, then that’ll come in more and more. Certainly automation and integration services to automate work and make that easier is is a big thing right now, particularly for accountants that are looking to automate some of that busy work, you know some of that compliance type work I guess like applets in that kind of space to to to help with that that need to integrate with everything and I don’t know I mean Zuckerberg’s bringing the metaverse right.

00:35:49:00 – 00:35:53:19
Mark Boswell
How do we how do we getting that involved in that and that’s it as a workspace. Yeah.

00:35:53:19 – 00:35:59:10
Alek Patsouris
It’s going to be great sitting down with my accountant in the metaverse.

00:35:59:10 – 00:36:02:00
Dan Farthing
What, what tech’s got you excited at the moment now.

00:36:02:17 – 00:36:04:05
Alek Patsouris
Oh that’s a good question.

00:36:04:11 – 00:36:07:06
Dan Farthing
Either available or not yet. Not yet available.

00:36:07:15 – 00:36:17:04
Alek Patsouris
I don’t actually know. I’ve been I’ve had my head quite in software defined networking for the last six months, doing a fairly large upgrade. So I haven’t had a lot of time.

00:36:17:04 – 00:36:17:20
Speaker 4
To explore.

00:36:17:20 – 00:36:43:11
Alek Patsouris
That stuff. But I think even that’s quite interesting and I don’t think it’s been fully realized yet just exactly how that’s going to change, how a lot of our networks work, a lot that security that comes together. I think I think that it’ll be interesting to see how that comes together. Yeah, it’s got me a little excited. Yeah, it’s nice to play with something new that’s changing you and it I think if you look at it in ten years time, a lot of this stuff will become bread and butter in a way.

00:36:43:16 – 00:36:50:07
Alek Patsouris
Yeah, sort of interesting. I’m going to call it now, but with the accounting space, I think the idea and I’m going to get it wrong, like.

00:36:50:12 – 00:36:52:16
Speaker 4
I’m going to watch this five years ago.

00:36:52:24 – 00:37:12:22
Alek Patsouris
So I think there’s a lot of fragmentation happening as well. We’re starting to see a lot of these business suites that are not doing the job that they need from one stop shop. So it’s becoming quite fragmented where you’ve got your document management system over here, you got your email system over here that’s not linking with your document management system.

00:37:13:05 – 00:37:31:17
Alek Patsouris
So I think there’s going to be a little bit of consolidation in that space and we’ll start to see the return of these kinds of one stop shops. But I think this online model that a lot of the software is kind of playing with and trying to bring that convenience to end users is not fully working for them.

00:37:31:17 – 00:38:00:21
Alek Patsouris
I think it’s starting to get there. Yeah, but I think on and I hate to say it, someone’s going to have some kind of big break because I think it’s not if that’s when unfortunately nowadays. And I think that might send some shockwaves through that industry that’s probably going to bring things back to their roots where they maybe even return to on prem kind of client server traditional models because they’re going to get quite fright of just realizing just how much their daughter has become fragmented.

00:38:00:21 – 00:38:12:22
Alek Patsouris
And a lot of those things, I hope I’m wrong. I’m going to put that. I actually hope I’m wrong because that’s scary being a consumer of those products. Yeah, but, you know, you said, give me your wild guess. That’s my wild guess.

00:38:13:01 – 00:38:34:10
Dan Farthing
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s always interesting to kind of have, you know, where could things go? I think it’s as you say, it’s hard to predict, hard to predict. There’s plenty of crazy, exciting things going on. I mean, the things that that have got me interested in a little bit exciting are things like the Jasper A.I. Yeah, platforms and things like that.

00:38:34:10 – 00:38:56:16
Dan Farthing
And the ability to kind of feed a little bit of information and then out spits this in a whole article, you know, based on, you know, millions and millions of pages being read on the Internet and things like that. I think that Ispace is really interesting. And I think, as you say, that automation of of basic tasks is, you know, it’s you’re able to build some machine learning into that and make that happen.

00:38:57:00 – 00:38:57:09
Dan Farthing
But I think.

00:38:57:09 – 00:39:00:11
Mark Boswell
Task I mean, that’s what you’re talking about, which is really a complex task.

00:39:00:21 – 00:39:02:16
Dan Farthing
It’s as complex as works.

00:39:02:16 – 00:39:04:09
Mark Boswell
And you know, all the all that’s all that.

00:39:04:20 – 00:39:30:14
Dan Farthing
All of that really interesting stuff. So I think there’s it’s hard to say what the commercial application of those things is going to be. But I’m pretty interested to see for sure what happens in it. It blows my mind that those products aren’t being used more for university these days. Maybe they are not. I’m not up with what the what the undergrads are using to get their essays written, but if it was me, I’d be all over just by that.

00:39:30:15 – 00:39:52:07
Alek Patsouris
I come into the night of this and I it’s always kind of faded a bunch of words and it’ll spit out an image for you based on those. Yeah. Now project Manager absolutely loves it. So you’ll have, like, a meeting with him, and then after I do throw some words into it and send you a funny photo, and that was one they sent me with like a dog wearing a crown and scepter after the queen passed and King Charles was getting us.

00:39:52:07 – 00:39:56:12
Alek Patsouris
And it was just so funny to see that all the power is coming into that space.

00:39:56:12 – 00:39:57:07
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:57:16 – 00:40:09:12
Dan Farthing
Yeah. The general networks. Interesting. This is some getting round the internet of one of those AI artwork generators and they, they’ve drawn up what The Simpsons characters would look like in real life.

00:40:10:01 – 00:40:15:23
Speaker 4
It’s a hassle, it’s a surprise. It goes on to say that’s so that’s what it was.

00:40:16:02 – 00:40:37:11
Dan Farthing
It was pretty scary. Yes. Frankly, I was like, Whoa, what’s this? What’s this? It’s a movie that’s been made. No, no, it was all generated. So, yeah, that look that up. It’s an interesting one. Yeah. No, that’s cool. What’s it is? There’s a lot of ways, you know, things go, obviously where you ride the wave. You guys sound like pretty good at just evaluating technology on the fly.

00:40:37:11 – 00:40:43:03
Dan Farthing
That’s it keeps them it keeps the industry interesting and and then understanding how that applies to the business.

00:40:43:17 – 00:41:09:13
Mark Boswell
Yeah, well, I think, you know, what I see our role is, is to really help businesses in the technology space, regardless of what that technology is. And the technology’s always changing. Yeah, we’ve had a really good conversation around some of the examples here today, but businesses are always going to need assistance. So I think with, you know, which one’s right for them, you installing it, managing it and making sure that it’s working for the business.

00:41:09:13 – 00:41:11:22
Mark Boswell
And that’s what I say our role. Yeah. So it’s.

00:41:12:06 – 00:41:31:12
Dan Farthing
What, what tools and things do you guys love using from a business and productivity point of view? What stuff like gives you an edge. MM You got any apps or tools that you love using that you would recommend anybody out there in business or personally get around?

00:41:31:18 – 00:41:54:06
Alek Patsouris
So my, my team that I look after in the infrastructure space, we like to really understand and I think this is what sets us apart as well as we are just taken off the shelf product and go, Well, it can only do these things. We we take and go, how can we use it, How can we apply it can’t make it better but way because we’ve got an on prem stock, we don’t tend to lean towards a lot of cloud based solutions.

00:41:54:06 – 00:42:13:13
Alek Patsouris
So we wanted something like a monday dot com or a Trello and we went and found an open source. One called the Control and my team have become incredibly ingrained in that and I absolutely love it because they can get that those features effectively without having to have the data leave our data center or have it all in someone else’s cloud.

00:42:14:12 – 00:42:33:07
Alek Patsouris
And it sounds so simple, but that task management stuff is a lot of where it comes down to how we manage our workflows and stuff like that from a lot of business perspective. But obviously being ConnectWise partners got a lot of benefits. There’s a lot of integrations that happen that way and it’s fun seeing how that ecosystems kind of evolving.

00:42:33:07 – 00:42:36:05
Alek Patsouris
I think that’s kind of your side more your side of the business.

00:42:36:23 – 00:43:14:11
Mark Boswell
Yeah, it’s interesting, You know, having a product like Connect was in, in our business and seeing the marketplace that they’re trying to generate. Yeah, because it’s not, you know, businesses are typically they’ve got lots of different software products that they’re using to run their business and I don’t know what to talk to each other. And so I think that space is really interesting how, you know, APIs and integrations are really connecting different apps together so that you can push data from one app to another and get different reporting or or whatever it might be.

00:43:14:11 – 00:43:34:08
Mark Boswell
And, you know, I think talking about ConnectWise specifically about building this sort of larger marketplace where it’s sort of a one stop shop. Yeah. So yeah, it’s a tool that we use every day. It really helps us, you know, from everything from from tickets to invoicing. So, you know, Yeah, that’s what we use.

00:43:34:14 – 00:43:38:13
Alek Patsouris
Yeah, That was the one you wanted to talk about.

00:43:38:13 – 00:44:02:02
Dan Farthing
Yeah. Nice. That’s good. And that’s good. Well, right. Thanks for thanks for the time. So that’s been good to hear how another local Newey tech business has sustained over many, many decades and stays on the forefront, obviously is growing and continues to grow leading industries and that kind of thing. So it’s been great to have you. So just thanks.

00:44:02:07 – 00:44:13:08
Dan Farthing
Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having us down. Yeah, that’s going to stage an excellent.