Is the Network Dead?

0:00 well it's great to see everyone again

0:02 I'm Mike Toussaint I'm an analyst at

0:05 Gartner I'm the lead author on the wired

0:08 and wireless magic quadrant and I'm here

0:09 to deliver the message that the network

0:12 is dead

0:13 now that's an interesting message to

0:16 bring that I'm at a networking company

0:19 with an audience full of networkers but

0:21 I wanted to really Express the gravity

0:23 of where we are today it is so great to

0:26 see everyone in the faces

0:28 um back in person after all that we've

0:31 all been through and but everything has

0:33 changed and covered the pandemic has

0:36 been

0:37 both the worst thing and the best thing

0:40 at the same time and we're going to talk

0:42 through that because it's changed our

0:45 expectations of everything

0:47 it's been bad because most of us have

0:49 lost loved ones it's affected us but in

0:53 the same token it's been the most

0:56 prolific driver of digital

0:58 transformation for business and at that

1:01 core transformation is the network and

1:05 ultimately the network as you know it

1:08 can't support the way forward the

1:11 network is dead

1:13 and for those of you who admitted to

1:15 still have 3650s and 2960s on your

1:18 network

1:19 this resembles a lot of the networks we

1:22 see today

1:24 it's interesting I've always been in

1:26 networking throughout my entire career

1:28 and if we look at the state of the

1:30 network it's manually configured

1:33 it's hard it's going to do one thing

1:38 it's going to give you connectivity and

1:39 you think about it the network was

1:41 really made to do a lot of other things

1:43 besides provide connectivity

1:45 so it's always interesting anytime you

1:46 do a network project at the end of the

1:48 network project you get everything

1:50 connected

1:51 and you can ping everything and you're

1:54 done and your CIO or your CFO or your

1:58 CEO may ask well hey is it optimized for

2:00 my new Voiceover IP system

2:03 probably not

2:04 okay

2:05 um is it going to support my new

2:07 application well I'm not really sure

2:09 okay what about all of our users do we

2:12 do capacity testing do we know

2:13 everything we need to know

2:15 probably not and ultimately we see that

2:18 the way it's built

2:20 most of you are afraid to touch your

2:22 network

2:23 during non-maintenance windows and it's

2:25 funny because if we look at how the

2:27 network is built it's pretty brittle one

2:30 thing one setting one IP address

2:34 you plug in the wrong cable into the

2:37 wrong port on the switch and you can

2:38 bring down your entire network matter of

2:41 fact

2:42 for all of you engineers in the audience

2:43 who here's the question who has not

2:47 brought down their Networks

2:50 right exactly because I was going to

2:52 tell you if you raise your hand and you

2:53 have not please leave

2:55 because you are not a network engineer

2:58 it is a rite of passage for you to

3:00 destroy your entire network during

3:02 production hours

3:05 so your network moves packets

3:07 it doesn't really do much with

3:08 applications you can say well Mike Mike

3:10 Mike

3:12 we've done qos

3:14 have you now

3:15 you have because it's funny because

3:18 Cisco office order qos

3:21 you've probably spent a lot of money

3:22 trying to optimize your your

3:25 applications and your users voice has

3:28 got its own VLAN your printer's got its

3:30 own VLAN you've got a maybe a servicenow

3:32 VLAN you've got a uh a cloud VLAN and

3:36 it's all just there it doesn't

3:39 dynamically move if somebody wants to

3:41 change

3:42 talk about change right if you want to

3:45 change your network you're not going to

3:47 do it on the Fly because like I said

3:48 you'll probably break something so when

3:50 you get to the point where you want to

3:52 change something just to put a printer

3:54 on a network you got to change you got

3:56 to add vlans you've got to change IP

3:58 addresses in many cases you may have to

4:00 add another routing protocol you have to

4:02 do all kinds of crazy things and

4:04 ultimately we see that this means that

4:07 you as Network Engineers become very

4:09 inward facing you've heard it mentioned

4:12 that network teams are putting out fires

4:14 you come in at nine o'clock you're

4:16 putting out fires you leave at five

4:18 o'clock you're putting out fires you go

4:19 to training you can't even do training

4:22 because you get a call on your cell

4:24 phone the network is on fire

4:26 so it's like wait a minute this can't be

4:29 the way and this means that the network

4:31 teams can never face outwards you can

4:34 never talk about the business you can

4:36 never talk about the applications or the

4:38 users because you're busy trying to

4:41 manage the network

4:43 and ultimately we see that this costs

4:47 and this is real cost right this is not

4:48 just Mike Tucson saying well you should

4:51 be looking to transform your network

4:54 digital transformation

4:56 is sub-optimal or fails to the tune of

5:00 900 billion dollars per year

5:03 because in depart the network is not

5:06 ready to support that

5:08 so if we look at well what's expected

5:11 now

5:12 all of you have a new way forward a new

5:14 mantra it's a to deliver consistently

5:18 business value from any place at any

5:22 time on any device that's what you have

5:24 to do it's not a matter of well you know

5:27 I've got my land running well what about

5:29 your win well I got my Wan running what

5:31 about the wireless LAN well I've got

5:34 that running well what about security

5:35 you've got to do it all you've got to do

5:38 it from anywhere and we know that

5:39 ultimately if you don't what happens

5:42 well

5:43 if you don't have pervasive Wireless

5:45 people will leave

5:47 if you don't have a capability to have

5:49 people work from anywhere they will

5:52 leave your customers will leave

5:55 your profits will tank it's it's bad

5:57 trust me I work for Gartner we know

5:59 these things

6:03 um it's funny because one of the ironies

6:05 to all of this is that because of the

6:08 way we've always been doing things for

6:09 the last 30 years

6:11 we do things through maintenance windows

6:13 and I always laugh when it comes to

6:15 maintenance Windows you've heard me harp

6:16 on this maintenance windows

6:19 does your CEO know that he or she is

6:22 waiting for a maintenance window for a

6:24 change that's going to affect the

6:25 business your customers

6:28 work with maintenance windows

6:31 do your end users wait for maintenance

6:33 Windows they don't and then we can't do

6:36 this anymore so this we look at the

6:37 state of the network it's not just about

6:39 connectivity it's about visibility it's

6:41 about everything else and to do that you

6:44 have to have the ability to understand

6:46 what the network is doing what's on your

6:48 network you can't do that with the

6:49 existing tools so if we look at

6:52 everything you've been hearing about

6:53 today AI ML and everything else

6:56 automation

6:58 we look at a survey we had and one of

7:02 the top reasons to do this

7:05 is to improve customer experience

7:08 and at the end of the day this is what

7:09 we're all here for

7:10 the network is not about the network the

7:12 network is not just providing email and

7:14 all and all of that stuff the network is

7:16 about the business and the role of the

7:18 network is to get the hell out of the

7:20 way

7:21 so that you guys can do business so

7:23 Amazon could be Amazon so Tesla can make

7:26 EVS so the rest of you can do your

7:28 business that's what it's all about so

7:30 you have to be able to automate those

7:31 tasks you have to be able to have the

7:33 tools like Ai and ml that can look into

7:35 the network and correlate data at a

7:37 level that we cannot

7:39 we've been doing this for 20 years 30

7:41 years you're good as Network engineers

7:43 and Architects we get it but at this

7:45 point Ai and ml can do it better and it

7:47 can free you to do other things that you

7:49 should be doing

7:51 so we look at netops 2.0 as the way

7:54 forward it's an automation first

7:56 approach it's about deep Network

7:59 visibility application the ND user

8:02 analytics it's about using Ai and ml to

8:05 quickly correlate and fix those those

8:07 fires that you keep trying to put out

8:09 that you never do

8:10 I speak to so many customers

8:13 that have especially Wireless Right

8:15 Wireless is like doing voodoo it could

8:17 be anywhere at any time you know that

8:20 channels and channel widths and rssis

8:23 and everything else it could be anything

8:25 depending on floor and everything else

8:26 if you look at Ai and ML and those

8:28 capabilities

8:30 to really troubleshoot and deliver the

8:32 most optimal Network this is where you

8:34 need to be and then finally and this is

8:36 really important

8:37 we've been talking about technology it's

8:39 also about moving from network teams to

8:43 cross-functional teams we've been

8:45 talking about the end user and we've

8:47 been talking about business and we've

8:50 been talking about security those all

8:52 need to come in to that to build your

8:54 end-to-end solution because you can't do

8:55 it with just a network team working

8:58 alone now the security team working

8:59 alone or the application team working

9:01 alone

9:02 so this is what we want to we want to

9:03 build here this is the network of the

9:05 future the future State it's managed

9:08 from the cloud now it's funny

9:10 I get a lot of calls Mike you know that

9:12 that Cloud's scary it's it's very

9:14 dangerous

9:15 it's not

9:17 um moving to the cloud frees up so much

9:19 res so many resources

9:22 um and reduces Opex Ai and ml absolutely

9:25 a part of the network and we've been

9:27 talking about this we're not talking

9:28 about bandwidth we're not necessarily

9:30 talking about routing protocols Ai and

9:32 ml at a at this future state will be

9:35 able to automate the network at all

9:37 levels now granted I know I think

9:39 Tesla's in here somewhere

9:40 there is no true autopilot and if you

9:44 try to do it you know on you know just

9:46 automation no one has reached that point

9:48 yet

9:49 but it's coming we wrote a note a couple

9:52 of months back on the on the levels of

9:55 AI and ml automation

9:57 so we came up with a scale it's very

9:59 similar to self-driving cars zero

10:01 meaning no automation

10:04 to three meaning full automation the

10:06 truth is where the industry is today is

10:09 about two

10:10 and a 2 means that it can troubleshoot

10:14 it can do root cause analysis it can

10:16 understand patterns it can take really

10:19 obscure patterns on things going on in

10:22 the network and correlate it and really

10:23 give you good data so it does that well

10:25 we also see the the the way the network

10:28 is built

10:30 we want to start looking at the network

10:31 as a holistic end-to-end fabric not just

10:35 a bunch of things connected together not

10:38 just a router connected to another

10:39 router at layer 3 or switch connected to

10:42 another switch at Layer Two now we're

10:44 talking about listen do deploy your

10:46 layer through underlay and don't touch

10:47 it anymore

10:48 work with your the the layer 2 overlay

10:52 and that's where your automation that's

10:53 where the magic can take place so start

10:55 looking at your network in a different

10:57 way and that also gives you that that

10:59 capability for agility to move between

11:02 um uh automation for vlans and you no

11:05 longer need to be locked in for static

11:07 connections uh connections and

11:09 separations but that is the future of

11:12 networking

11:14 but there's a there's there's definitely

11:15 a trap

11:17 new skills are required you've heard

11:21 a lot of talk about apis and it's true

11:23 apis are required understanding python

11:28 understanding

11:29 um rest understanding programming it's

11:32 coming

11:33 as a network engineer all of my career I

11:36 don't know how to program and that will

11:38 make me obsolete

11:40 so ultimately this is the way forward

11:42 you're definitely going to have to you

11:43 know retrain reskill but that means that

11:46 you're freed up to do other things

11:48 and makes you more valuable so

11:51 conclusion

11:52 the network I'm talking about today in

11:55 2022

11:56 is the network that you should I'm going

12:00 to rephrase that not should must

12:04 have

12:05 by 2025. if you're going to survive and

12:08 it's going to be sink or swim so

12:10 ultimately the network Renaissance is

12:12 here this stuff really works it's not

12:13 back in the day when you're trying to

12:15 glue stuff together or it really wasn't

12:17 real networking this is real and that

12:20 means that you have to start procuring

12:21 things now

12:23 you want to begin with the business use

12:24 case I wasn't really talking a lot about

12:27 the you know role of our sleeves let's

12:28 talk about technology because we're not

12:30 there yet let's talk about your business

12:32 requirements let's talk about why you

12:35 need it then we can build the technology

12:37 use case after that that's where you

12:39 define the technology use case and then

12:42 what's most important when you get this

12:44 all together

12:45 a robust proof of concept is absolutely

12:48 mandatory don't take my word for it that

12:52 this stuff works don't take sujay's work

12:54 for it don't take sudir's word for it

12:57 pocket lab this up make them prove that

13:01 this stuff works whether it's it's

13:02 Juniper or Cisco or anyone else you want

13:05 to make sure that they're showing put

13:06 their money where their mouth is but

13:08 ultimately you've got to start on that

13:11 road today this is your North Star and

13:14 by 2025 you're going to be there

13:16 um but it's it's hard right we've all

13:18 been trained in a certain way we've all

13:20 come to certain expectations but we

13:22 think that ultimately The Way Forward is

13:25 the network at the core of business and

13:27 this means I'll end this on the note

13:30 that finally as Network Engineers we can

13:33 hold our heads up high now we're no

13:36 longer or you shouldn't be relegated

13:39 down to a room in the basement we are

13:41 actually at the core of business we

13:43 should have the funding that shows that

13:45 we're at the core of business because at

13:47 this point if you don't you're going to

13:49 run into all kinds of issues

13:54 thank you Mike

13:59 how many of you uh your companies are a

14:03 Gartner client raise your hands

14:05 wow only maybe uh maybe 10 15 of you so

14:10 those 15 people know how much it got it

14:13 costs to actually get access to Gartner

14:16 I don't get it yes Mike doesn't get paid

14:20 on that so unfortunately but this is our

14:23 opportunity for one of the most

14:25 Brilliant Minds in the market the

14:27 thought leader in our industry the

14:30 primary author for the wired and

14:32 wireless LAN 21 billion dollar magic

14:35 quadrant this is our opportunity to ask

14:38 questions for free right so uh we

14:41 intentionally left about 10-15 minutes

14:43 for us to ask questions of Mike so for

14:47 every question

14:48 has to be good maybe every question will

14:51 give away Marvel speaker plus a couple

14:54 of other charge keys so if you have a

14:56 question please come up to the mic and

14:58 and stand up uh for everybody that's uh

15:00 uh that's not tired and sleeping uh

15:02 please walk to the bike uh and we'll

15:04 have a few questions uh but Mike I'll

15:07 start with uh maybe a couple first of

15:09 all your closing slide Vision 2025

15:12 phenomenal you said the network has to

15:15 be about user experience has to have ai

15:17 and um you know we have to upskill and

15:20 start with API and we finish with the

15:22 park sounds great

15:24 where do people start yeah when what do

15:26 you tell people

15:28 God I have all this existing Network

15:30 that I can't wave of wand yeah where do

15:33 I start yeah and this is why it's really

15:35 important to understand what you're

15:38 trying to do

15:39 I get a lot of calls at Gartner and they

15:41 send me of a bill of materials hey I've

15:43 got 100 switches they're all you know 10

15:44 gig

15:45 um I'm you know it runs ospf is this the

15:48 right bill of materials

15:49 I have no idea if the right to build

15:51 materials it's like saying that hey I've

15:54 got a I've got a recipe here I've got a

15:56 bunch of things can I make a cake well I

15:59 don't know what is it you want so the

16:01 first thing is to understand what the

16:04 core drivers are what are you trying to

16:06 do what are you in business to do then

16:08 take a look at your current Network

16:10 where's the gap or your computer or your

16:13 end users complaining about Wireless

16:15 you know um are you do you know that

16:18 your your core Network can't support any

16:20 growth what can't you do today

16:23 understand the gap between business and

16:25 technology and go there and it's always

16:28 if you're going to talk to a consultant

16:29 you're going to talk to Gartner which

16:30 you absolutely should you know Shameless

16:32 plug

16:33 um you definitely want to come to us

16:36 with a business case I can't tell you

16:37 how few customers have a mature business

16:40 case done they're still building this

16:43 out as a technology Endeavor when again

16:46 the remember the role of the network

16:48 is to get the hell out of the way of the

16:50 business so they can do what they need

16:52 to do so let's let's come with a

16:54 business case let's understand where you

16:55 are today and then let's build a walk

16:58 run fly

17:00 um path forward let's start walking

17:01 today it doesn't make a difference that

17:03 you're still running 36.50 I'm not even

17:06 running that at home so you got wow um

17:09 but you you

17:10 it's best to say that listen we're

17:12 beginning to walk and we're walking in

17:14 the right direction then not walk at all

17:16 so it's a hard journey the longest

17:18 journey begins with the first step in

17:20 that first step is the hardest awesome

17:21 and I think the next one oh sorry

17:24 question yes yes sir please stand up

17:27 question to ask is related to that

17:29 migration you know actually the slide

17:31 you showed at the very beginning you

17:32 know up is not good

17:34 a lot of senior leadership on the

17:36 business side consider up to be good

17:38 yeah absolutely

17:44 yep

17:46 yep

17:54 how do you present that in such a case

17:56 you know so that you can you know

17:58 convince the business that you can do

18:01 this business better yeah you know just

18:03 so you don't think okay please introduce

18:06 yourself that's a great question

18:07 introduce yourself though introduce

18:08 yourself oh I'm sorry I I'm Jeff

18:10 actually I'm with the cosmos resource

18:13 and Resident engineer awesome thank you

18:15 so again the question I have is you know

18:18 in the past what I've done is what we

18:19 call share the pain you know I'll make

18:21 it hurt for the business folks and then

18:22 they want me to fix it uh but what's a

18:25 good strategy going forward yeah

18:26 absolutely so so again let's start with

18:30 a non-technical conversation I mentioned

18:32 that the way you have to go forward with

18:34 this

18:34 is that up while it while it used to be

18:38 good enough because that's all we could

18:39 get you were happy if you could just

18:41 ping things we're beyond that at this

18:44 point so as I said look at the great

18:47 resignation if you someone if the users

18:49 come in the office and your network

18:51 sucks they're going to quit

18:54 how much is that going to cost you if

18:56 you're if your customers can't

18:59 speak to the customer service reps or

19:01 your system is down and they go

19:03 somewhere else how much is that going to

19:04 cost you

19:05 the the point here is we need to stop

19:08 being Pennywise and pound foolish we've

19:11 got to start playing the long game it's

19:13 not just about little green uh blinking

19:15 lights and that's our definition of up

19:18 what's the definition of up now is is

19:21 that you're providing a great end-to-end

19:24 experience and you're supporting the

19:26 business the way it's supposed to be

19:27 supported anything less

19:30 it's not it's not the future and matter

19:33 of fact it's not even current so where

19:34 you're going to end up is you're going

19:35 to end up spending more in the long run

19:37 because of a failure of insight on the

19:40 short term

19:41 make sense and Jeff uh you know without

19:45 actually making the Shameless plug to

19:47 Gartner absolutely speaking to Gartner

19:50 there are two ways that we we bring

19:52 customers your leadership to understand

19:54 that there is a better future either you

19:57 speak to Industry analysts or to other

20:00 customers who have done this before and

20:02 and have soon seen the light in the

20:04 transition right and and so uh either

20:07 way absolutely whoa we have actually

20:09 several questions yeah uh there you go

20:11 please how are we doing I'm George

20:12 beckmezia and I have a question do you

20:15 provide the same recommendation to OT

20:17 manufacturing customers as you do to

20:20 Enterprise with regards to Cloud

20:22 management and fabrics because those

20:25 networks are much more

20:27 sensitive right to outages and they

20:31 oftentimes need to work in isolation

20:33 right yeah so that's a great question so

20:36 the the advice we're giving is not just

20:39 for the Enterprise now granted

20:40 Manufacturing vectoring networks have

20:42 different requirements there's different

20:44 bandwidth requirements but there's going

20:46 to be more security requirements right

20:48 because if I can take over your PLC and

20:51 do all kinds of crazy things I can do I

20:52 can pretty much take over your network

20:53 so if you look at the security

20:55 requirements on a manufacturing Network

20:57 they're actually more stringent because

20:59 you've got a lot more headless devices

21:01 so if we even look at adoption for iot

21:03 it's even more so on your side of the

21:06 house than it is on the Enterprise

21:08 because in the corporate space we see

21:10 far less iot devices you got a

21:12 thermostat here but you see more so on

21:15 yours

21:16 building out of fabric I'm really

21:18 understanding you know what those uh

21:19 those those devices are doing that's

21:21 even more so and even and yes to your

21:24 point it's even more sensitive to

21:26 outages but remember

21:27 the point here is moving away from doing

21:30 reconvergence if a if you're

21:32 reconverging your routing protocol or

21:35 just spanning tree or those other things

21:36 being able to go to a fabric will give

21:39 you more flexibility more security and

21:41 it gives you a central point that you

21:43 can manage from a policy standpoint so

21:46 all of the reasons that you should be

21:48 doing this is even more Amplified in

21:50 your in your neck of the woods

21:52 thanks Verna

21:55 Robert Eubanks I thank you for your

21:57 presentation today a couple quick

21:58 questions I'm curious Gartner's stance

22:01 on the global ramifications of the

22:03 supply chain and how that affects the

22:05 future growth into new networks that you

22:08 talked about today yep wow and then I

22:11 asked this to sit here all the time

22:12 what's the status of the supply chain

22:14 you you can't make this up it couldn't

22:16 get any worse for for Network vendors or

22:20 for for any technology companies right

22:22 because if we look at

22:24 um even though covid you know

22:26 technically originated in you know the

22:28 APAC region what we saw was that China

22:31 I had you know only so many cases so

22:33 they were still open while we were

22:35 closed so that was something that when

22:37 we got back up we're saying well look

22:39 China is able to support us and and that

22:42 whole region can support the supply

22:43 chain well they came into where now

22:46 they're closing down and we're opening

22:48 up so all of those resources is

22:50 problematic then you you add to and

22:53 again you can't make this up you look at

22:54 the war in Ukraine and the two leaders

22:56 of rare medals fighting each other that

22:59 too is going to is going to slow it down

23:01 so whether it's pricing whether it's

23:03 supply chain the new normal for us take

23:05 Ukraine out of the equation what I would

23:08 have told you if you had called me prior

23:10 to the invasion in February was The New

23:14 Normal will be be happy with 92 you know

23:18 120 days with the current state of

23:21 supply

23:22 with the war in Ukraine now we're saying

23:25 look you know six months a year

23:28 that's probably the new normal until

23:30 those two stop fighting and then we can

23:33 bring

23:34 um and we can bring the supply chains

23:36 back online so it's going to really

23:38 pretty much be nasty

23:40 for at least another two years three

23:42 years before it gets better so plan

23:44 ahead and to that point I just wanted to

23:46 add

23:46 Gartner advice on supply chain and we

23:49 wrote we just wrote a note what to do to

23:51 the long lead times on wireless on

23:53 networking

23:55 plan ahead plan I had planned ahead

23:57 those of you who do your budgets yearly

24:00 you better start thinking 18 months 24

24:02 months down the line I'd rather have you

24:05 and I'm sure would rather have you buy

24:07 the stuff now stick it on the dock you

24:09 call Sadir and say look I don't want to

24:11 put maintenance on this thing he'll

24:12 probably say fine I'm not going to

24:14 charge you maintenance just buy it put

24:15 it there we'll put it in production and

24:17 we'll worry about that then then to be

24:19 in a situation where you don't have the

24:22 equipment you have a new site opening up

24:24 people are moving in and you're getting

24:26 another call from your VAR telling you

24:28 what it's probably going to be another

24:29 six months so plan ahead uh on the

24:32 supply chain out um there is a secret

24:34 word if you tell us you're ditching a

24:37 rubber or shooting Cisco in the head we

24:39 will ship your APS tomorrow so that's

24:42 the secret handshake so uh um uh where

24:45 is ml uh from University of Washington

24:47 he's in the building he said if you got

24:49 me a thousand there he is a thousand

24:52 WiFi 60 APS by the end of July sorry end

24:56 of June you know we got a deal and he's

24:59 got 500 of them coming this week and a

25:01 few more later we have magic we can work

25:03 work with us please

25:06 Ah that's where yours went we didn't

25:10 tell you that

25:12 so I have kind of a comment

25:14 to what you're talking about the fabric

25:15 my name is Ross I'm from data endure

25:18 um

25:19 and I want you to kind of comment back

25:21 on it so you're talking about the fabric

25:23 and what the Network's doing what the

25:24 business needs are right the way I've

25:27 always approached it is more what's the

25:28 application and moreover what's the

25:31 workflow within the application for the

25:33 certain departments right so how does HR

25:35 use CRM versus accounting sure right

25:37 because those are in two entirely

25:38 different things and that's that's how I

25:40 design fabric is saying okay what's the

25:43 expectation of that application and

25:45 build requirement from there because

25:47 nobody has business requirements they

25:48 think they do by saying I wanted to do

25:50 these six things that's a wish list it's

25:52 not requirements requirements are how

25:55 does the application have to perform for

25:57 your specific case even though it's the

25:59 same servicenow is a great application

26:01 to talk about that right because it

26:03 could do a thousand things yep so that's

26:06 kind of the way I approach it and I'm

26:08 kind of wondering you know when you're

26:10 talking about the fabric and you're

26:11 talking about I think you were going

26:12 here a little bit the business part of

26:15 it what's your comments on pulling those

26:17 workflows out and pulling those

26:19 individual needs of the application

26:22 versus thinking about the fabric and the

26:24 overall business need absolutely great

26:26 question and we are violently in

26:27 agreement because ultimately workflows

26:30 people applications that's all your

26:34 business right so if you looked at the

26:35 business plan that's what you'd be

26:37 talking about because you didn't buy an

26:39 application because well we just bought

26:41 an application you didn't move from

26:42 on-prem Voiceover IP to Cloud voice over

26:45 IP you didn't put a new call center just

26:47 because you you had nothing better to do

26:49 so to that point you know when I'm

26:51 talking about business requirements it's

26:53 a macroscopic point but absolutely that

26:56 business plan should be should be

26:59 totally broken down into each contingent

27:01 parts and that's exactly what you're

27:03 talking about now you're talking about

27:04 workflow now you're talking about

27:06 applications now you're talking about

27:07 user requirements now you're talking

27:09 about application requirements

27:10 absolutely so we're in agreement just

27:12 top down

27:13 awesome last question thank you they put

27:16 me on the spot so it's like so Marriott

27:19 International you are influencer for for

27:23 the other businesses so Gardner as as a

27:26 product I have like a personal question

27:28 how do you know that you are

27:31 thinking outside of the box and what is

27:34 your control to making those

27:35 recommendations yeah

27:37 you know as as an analyst and I thank

27:39 you for that question

27:41 we sit and we look at current States and

27:46 what can be what should be and it's

27:49 interesting because as a network

27:50 engineer I'll tell you how I ended up at

27:52 Gartner

27:53 I was a network engineer and we were

27:54 having this really deep conversation on

27:56 bgp timers

27:58 and I had this out of Body Experience

28:00 bgp timers we just spoke about a throw

28:04 an hour about that that's not what's

28:07 important right so if we look at the

28:09 constant the contingent parts

28:11 I was I was thinking listen this is what

28:14 it should be doing these are the things

28:16 that are needed and these are the holes

28:18 and if to the point we had earlier

28:21 constant thinking about the way we've

28:23 always done things that's always driven

28:26 me crazy when people say hey Mike but

28:29 that's the way we've always done it I

28:30 get like hives and I break out and start

28:32 scratching so so from a Gartner analyst

28:35 perspective we get to think outside and

28:38 even so we're encouraged to think almost

28:40 too unconventionally we have research

28:42 that's called um Gartner Maverick we're

28:45 pretty much

28:46 I can I can really go outside of the box

28:48 so it's about really understanding the

28:51 currency of the market when I feel that

28:53 I've captured

28:54 something that it's just not googleable

28:56 it's something that's over and above

28:58 that then I hopefully have done my job

29:00 and when I speak to you guys and and you

29:03 know I get wow you know we didn't

29:05 consider that we'll add this to our list

29:07 and I know you know we've done right