Preparing for the Journey to SASE | Juniper Global Summit

0:02 [Music] hi mauricio thanks for joining us

0:10 hi samantha great to be here so we hear a lot about sassy and there's certainly

0:17 a lot to talk about what are you seeing and you know let's just start with how do you define it

0:23 that's a great question because we've seen the term since it came out in mid-2019 goal over

0:30 the map especially at rsa which was the last time we saw

0:35 many of each other and over the course of the last year it started to settle out and

0:42 here at the laurel we're taking a very pragmatic view in terms of how to define sassy we don't see it necessarily as a

0:48 completely new technology coming out of the blue we see it as an integration between a number of technologies that

0:54 have been around for a while in some instances uh but the

0:59 brass tacks is it it's the the combination of security technologies coming in from the firewall

1:05 side coming in from the secure web gate side coming together with a networking side

1:10 with the tip of the spear being a software defined wan so sd-wan and and these technologies coming

1:18 together in service of providing an integrated platform to provide an enterprise connectivity

1:26 and security on that top of that unified platform and so that's for us the the basis of of

1:33 of sassy and the emerging sassy market that we're starting to track no that makes totally that makes sense

1:40 and that's been what we and juniper kind of see it as as well right this this convergence

1:46 of existing technologies to to kind of give way to a new more extensible

1:51 architecture for customers so what are you hearing from your clients

1:56 when they call you talk to you about sassy what is driving their journey

2:03 great question again a year ago i was the one educating customers in terms of asking them

2:08 have you heard of sassy and probably eight out of ten times i was the person defining it for them

2:13 and telling them look this is the way the emerging technologies around sas here

2:19 are coming together that has changed substantially and the number one factor here has been

2:24 the pandemic and i hope you all are doing well in in this year in

2:30 and the pandemic has accelerated two enterprise trends that aren't necessarily new but really got to

2:36 kick with the arrival of the pandemic the first was the teleworking i don't know about

2:42 you but i've been here at home now for the last year and it's everyone has been at home right so enterprises had to pivot

2:49 from workforces in the office in a corporate setting to now having to support them somewhere

2:55 else predominantly at home so that that has really been the first inflection point about how to deal

3:02 with the uh this new uh style of of uh of corporate setting that as we

3:08 look towards the future it's really going to become the the new normal so the new term is hybrid work

3:13 and and being able to split between a corporate setting in a non-corporate setting and so sassy is one of those key

3:19 things that that has come into the conversation the second factor again going back to the pandemic has been the acceleration of

3:25 digitalization of the enterprise so going into the pandemic a fair number of the enterprises

3:30 were already far into their into their uh digitalization becoming fully digital mobile friendly

3:36 being able to do things on the internet and with the pandemic everything basically went online right so

3:42 everything had to be conducted online via zoom via mobile phones via an internet transaction

3:48 so that's been another um big kicker is now that the application infrastructures

3:54 as they move to the cloud it's really causing a re-thinking about well how does the networking and security

4:01 architectures need to evolve in support of now the internet being

4:06 part of the backbone being where the data lives where the applications live so those are the two factors that

4:11 have really kicked into gear why people are thinking about sassy and how that's now going to become part

4:17 of their long-term i.t um uh conversation and and samantha let me

4:22 let me uh from from now's perspective obviously i've given a pretty uh general

4:28 perspective but let me turn it turn it around and ask you the same question so you just you just gave your sassy

4:33 strategy in your keynote and i know juniper has a wide customer base that includes service providers

4:39 enterprising and in the cloud uh customers what are you hearing around sassy we'd love to

4:44 i'd love to hear what what uh your perspectives are well um okay i guess it's my turn to be in the hot seat um

4:51 so so you know what we're hearing a lot about transformation and i love that you use that word because that's really what

4:57 it's about and it's the transformation of an experience and for us when we're when we're talking

5:05 to customers when we're hearing from them what their care abouts are it's about how do i engage how can i

5:11 have a better experience for my customers let me give you a perfect example when you think about how we used to share

5:18 documents started off we shared documents with one another with a usb stick then it went to we started sharing it

5:25 over email and then it shifted to applications like dropbox and now we're using o650365

5:33 and using you know the google suite of applications and so the technology the idea of a

5:40 document hasn't changed it's how we interact with it it's how we exchange it and it's that

5:45 overall experience so for us you know one of the things that we hear most about is how do i manage this how do i

5:53 you know take this transformation um to throughout my organization and so for us

5:58 it's about anchoring it in that experience and that management experience specifically because we're not talking necessarily

6:05 about new technologies to your point right it's taking what's primarily been on premise and and delivering it to the

6:12 cloud but what needs to change and what must change what's guiding our strategy

6:17 is that experience is providing that bridge to what you've been doing currently and frankly will continue to

6:24 do in that hybrid world on premise and kind of bringing that together

6:29 with your transformation to how you are going to interact with your customers your users

6:35 and really that's what i'm seeing that's what i'm hearing and that's why i'm really excited about what we at juniper

6:41 can do for for our customers and partners um today and in the future so i'm gonna put you back in the hot

6:47 seat now [Laughter] i had a chuckle there samantha when you said that you used to share things over

6:54 usb see i'm old enough to share over floppies right so i'm not going to do punch cards but hey i i i

7:00 my first computer was floppy based and that's how i exchanged games with my friends at school it was a here's here's a set of floppy disks so

7:07 there you go i won't confirm or deny that that was also my first experience

7:12 but let's just say we'll start with usb okay very good fair enough um

7:19 okay so we know there's a transformation we know we are talking about how we interact

7:25 with it with the technologies so thinking about market adoption what should we be expecting

7:31 over the next 24 to 48 months in terms of sassy growth that's a billion dollar question and

7:37 literally is a billion dollar questions because of the fact that that in our modeling so here at the lower we love our our numbers

7:44 uh we see the opportunity growing very quickly here in terms of the integration

7:49 of those three sets of technology baskets that i enumerated so again firewall secure web

7:54 gateways and sd-wan networking technologies coming together to form a sassy solution or being able to

8:01 service assassin architecture so in the bigger scheme of things in 2019 those three markets

8:08 consisted about about 15 billion dollars and and that's what i tell my clients is

8:13 that well if these three technology baskets came to in service of unified network and security connectivity

8:19 we're looking at an opportunity at the at the top end of nearly 15 billion dollars but i think

8:25 uh the integration and the rate of adoption is a key factor in our modeling that is

8:30 tel as says to us or told us um and where we concluded that where

8:36 things will land in the next uh three to four years is probably a thirty to forty percent in

8:42 the um in that fifteen billion dollar figure so in terms of enterprises truly developing and

8:49 integrating and deploying an integrated networking and security solution we're probably looking

8:55 north of five billion so somewhere in that five to six billion dollar range is the value of the technology the

9:02 sassy solutions that will will get deployed and longer term the we expect consolidation

9:09 another question that comes up is do are all of these three technologies going to integrate and always and become into this massive

9:15 chassis market and the answer is is that i don't believe so right so there will still be some

9:20 some customers who may choose to not deploy sassy in this unified

9:26 networking and security style and so the sd-wan the firewall markets and secure webgate markets will

9:31 will continue to to exist perhaps in long-tail dynamics but in terms of sassy it's gonna it's

9:37 quite hot and growing from um the tens of millions to probably uh uh hundreds of millions and low

9:45 hundreds of millions today to north of uh five to six billion in the next uh several years yeah i can totally see

9:52 that i mean and i think there is going to be a phased approach and into your point right you're always going to have that that on premise

9:59 um instance it's not a it's not a one or the other it's it's definitely has to be an and that's

10:05 something we talk about here it's like it's an and strategy it's not an ore um so as we kind of think about what's to

10:12 come um in terms of this kind of convergence what are some of the uh

10:18 kind of strategic you know top of mind things i.t organizations should keep in mind uh

10:24 related to sassy well i think you hit at the top level

10:29 use the word that i want to reuse which is the the notion of transformation and and the fact that the workflows

10:36 are going to change and the way that different teams interact with with one another will need to change

10:42 because predicated and tasky is the fact that it's it's a much more uh user-centric

10:48 application data centric model to be able to deploy networking and security and so that means that that the the

10:54 teams uh the networking teams the application teams and the data teams and the security teams will have to

11:00 collaborate in in new ways that that perhaps um they haven't historically had to work together so as enterprises

11:09 jump into this into thinking about sassy they need to be thinking about well how is it that then my workflows

11:15 and my teams are going to be able to uh are going to interact to be able then to as you pointed out be able to deliver

11:23 that experience the outcome that that or we're looking to to

11:28 to provide with the sassy to be able to support users and applications that may be

11:33 anywhere distributed across the internet and be able then to create this virtual corporate

11:39 set of controls to provide connectivity and security so that's what i would say is to to any

11:46 organization is is think ahead and think holistically as you approach the question since there will

11:53 be a lot of ripple effect across the teams and to the workflows wholeheartedly agree well thank you for

12:00 joining us um marito it's always a pleasure uh for you know the discussion and continuing on the topic of sassy i do

12:07 want to turn it over to you though and introduce a couple customers that we have joining us today

12:13 i have dennis doing from the city of philadelphia welcome dennis and we have

12:19 jason philp from beeline both of our customers here would love to get their

12:24 perspectives as well and so i'll turn it over to you hi dennis hi jason thank you for joining me today to talk about

12:30 your own journeys as they may be unfolding around sassy

12:36 i've got a couple questions to be able to go through and be able to hit on hot topics that i

12:41 think our audience would like to hear about as you uh are on this journey starting with you

12:48 dennis i'd like to ask you what's driving your journey to sassy and why is it that you're

12:54 looking to make this transition now sure it's a great question the pandemic

12:59 over the last 12 months has really pushed us to think about

13:05 what services we can provide to remote users that are not necessarily connected to our network all the time

13:11 and we're not in a position today to have an always-on vpn with the roughly 30 000 users that we have currently

13:18 working so for us you know we have a immediate need for a cloud proxy solution so we can

13:26 have not only an auditing trail but also provide you know endpoint protection to what

13:31 these individuals are doing uh remotely while they're working on city-owned hardware and could be

13:36 interfacing with city networks that you know are essentially applications that are not tied directly back over the vpn but

13:42 are are cloud-facing that is our main concern right now i see

13:48 so definitely pandemic has kicked everything into gear how about jason how about you jason how

13:53 about on your side what's what has been driving you to uh embrace and start this uh sassy journey and why

14:00 now sure i mean pandemic was obviously a pretty big one for us

14:06 but on top of that we seem to be growing a lot more internationally so it's that ability to get the end user

14:14 exactly what they need that similar experience from being within an office uh when they're working at home or

14:20 internationally or or pretty much wherever um that's what's really been most important to us

14:28 i see well both since it seems like a pandemic uh kicked things into gear and i'm sure you

14:33 both did heroics at the beginning as things overnight shifted dramatically

14:39 at least what i hear now is that people are coming up to to um for breather and being able to

14:45 think about the long term and so i'd like to ask a question and again starting with you dennis what's your time frame

14:52 right i'm sure that you know you're thinking about what's the long-term implication what's this journey uh look like and so help us understand

14:58 what's your timeline and how long do you estimate that it'll take you to get to the end state sure

15:04 realistically we have a need today so our goal is to have

15:10 these solutions rolled out to majority of our remote workforce hopefully within the next six months and ideally we would

15:16 like to transition as much as we can within 12 months to you know provide these better services

15:23 i see so that's the full 30 dollar or not thirty thousand dollars but thirty thousand um count employees that uh are

15:31 uh on this part of this journey in the next year yes wow that's a that's a that's amazing

15:38 to go on that accelerated pace and i guess uh switching to you

15:43 jason what does end state success look like for you and and what are the roadblocks you see

15:50 that need to be overcome i wish i could tell you what the end state fully looked like at this

15:55 point right um i think uh right now it's primarily about feature parity

16:01 um you know how do we get that same feature set uh that we offer to our users in the

16:07 office wherever they are um be it ids inspection data loss protection that

16:13 sort of thing things that we've taken for granted for a year because somebody's always sitting in a in a single seat um has now kind of been

16:21 hooked on its end and and pushed out to the end user where we don't have that same sort of control as

16:28 we would in an office definitely some of the roadblocks we're running into is is sort of finding that those pieces

16:34 and how they fit together and interoperate with each other and a single source or maybe

16:41 one or two different sources that work well together within the industry and that will be

16:46 compatible as we move forward with things i see i see and that mirrors uh what

16:52 i've been hearing from some of my conversations with and customers the the end users of this

16:58 technology is how do you go from something that may be of on-prem and that

17:03 you can touch and feel and i call it the sheet metal era to now it being kind of knobs and levers that

17:08 are on the website that may feel very foreign to the network administrators that uh again coming from

17:15 the era of being able to um touch the equipment be able to manipulate the

17:20 knobs and leverage and get a lot of rich functionality so i don't think you should count yourself being an exception to this and

17:28 more so part of the larger group um next question again um for you jason

17:34 is how do you ensure that your applications are as secure as possible as you as you

17:40 move to the cloud you noted that that some of the challenges that you'll receive and and so what's the strategy

17:46 that that you've been embracing the scale to scale out uh on that cloud-based architecture and to make sure that

17:52 that uh you know the security and and all the trends on the connectivity to those applications

17:58 are preserved yeah you know it's really uh a matter of picking off

18:06 uh small enough chunks that we can digest in in kind of one bite right be it uh you know one day we might

18:13 be well we we'd be looking at an idea solution um and then you know the parity between

18:20 is this going to be the same when you're dealing with a data center versus cloud is also important to us

18:26 um so we've been shifting a lot of things from a traditional centralized point out to one or multiple

18:33 clouds to provide these services and you know some of the challenges we've run into

18:39 around that is where is the data actually stored within a cloud because when you're working with

18:45 the decentralization of it a user in the united kingdom needs the same services

18:50 but that data can't necessarily come back to the united states and then back out to the internet and

18:55 vice versa in order to to make that happen it has to stay regionally in a lot of cases

19:02 you're absolutely right that adds a whole new level of complexity to that that uh almost a pandora's boxing some

19:09 regards from a regulatory compliancy perspective and and the sovereignty rules that may

19:14 come and come into play so again very echoing a lot of the things that i've been um hearing that

19:22 people have overcome them so i don't want folks that i don't think i think even you would say that that uh slowly

19:28 but surely like you said it's incrementally and this being a journey

19:33 that it's not going to be us it's not a slam dunk it's not a question that that you can go from

19:39 overnight addressing all the all the all the things that need to come into play

19:44 um switching back to to you dennis and uh i'd like to understand how you

19:50 planning to address the unified policy management for both the networking and security and

19:56 how is it going to work across cloud and in the on-prem environments sure ideally with um security director

20:03 being in the cloud we could import all our existing infrastructure even some of

20:08 the firewalls that we necessarily didn't have a security director import them all in also intertwine that

20:15 with our jims environment so that we have you know the authentication not only based

20:20 off you know the old-school source and destination but we can tie everything back to active directory and then also have the advanced services

20:26 like skytp and ips and for us possible corsair is key in trying to run that all for one

20:32 centralized location so it brings everything together so we have true visibility into everything that's going across the

20:39 wire well great answer and i say that great answer because you hit on a number of

20:45 things that that were under the hood to when i when sam samantha was asking me about the changes

20:52 and the prerequisites for um assassin's deployment so you hit on the fact that it is

20:58 unified policy the fact that the identity side needs to be thought of and being able to stitch these various

21:05 walls together that may have not been stitched in the way that they need to in order in service of a this distributed

21:10 disaggregated environments that we find ourselves in so kudos to you that you're

21:16 on you're on the tip of the sphere on uh on figuring things out uh

21:21 now let me switch it here a little bit to uh the vendor side and and being able to

21:28 find that part right because i think i think when people enterprises undertake these sorts of of

21:34 journeys they lean heavily on their vendor base and so uh i'd like to ask both of you

21:41 starting with you dennis how do you find an assassin provider to partner with you on the sassy journey

21:47 sure it's not a great question for us our relationships are key and we already have a great relationship

21:54 with with juniper not only from you know the the harbor side but also from professional services

22:01 and support side now i can't really think of any instances where they haven't you know

22:06 gone above it and beyond you know our needs so that's really important and i have a great relationship with my

22:12 upper management so when we when we make a recommendation or i want to introduce a new technology or a new

22:18 platform you know the proof is in the pudding right they already have you know the experience from our current

22:24 vendors and see how well they perform and how we were able to mitigate some you know risks in the past or some

22:30 vulnerabilities and you know specifically what policy force or what that's done for us so it's not difficult for me to uh convince

22:37 management that this is the direction we should go and they usually buy in pretty quickly i see i see

22:45 and um what about you jason what what's what's your thoughts on how do you or have you selected a

22:51 assassin provider to help you on your sassy journey you know we kind of echo what uh dennis

22:57 said um with the addition that what we find with the vendor is it's very important

23:04 uh that they're willing to work with us and listen to kind of the issues we're running into within our deployment

23:12 right it seems like there's always somebody that's got something different happening and and to be able to have

23:18 that back and forth that we have with juniper has been a huge advantage um the willingness to

23:27 acknowledge that a feature is necessary and and many often times we'll see it in

23:33 probably a few weeks to a couple months that'll be rolled into one of the releases

23:40 that's great to hear so that that definitely echoes what uh leadership vendors need to do which is listening to customers right

23:46 and i i don't think vendors who uh force um their technologies and solutions on

23:52 their customers necessarily when in in the long haul it's the people who listen and interact and treat their

23:58 customers as as true partners so that's good to hear um let me shift it yet again

24:06 to a more of a technology almost philosophical question in terms of organizational structure and

24:13 and this question is for you dennis is in um i'm sure that sassy is starting to um

24:20 feel like change in your organization and they may be facing uh obstacles and people

24:27 refusing to embrace that change so what is it that you're doing to evangelize the shift away from a static perimeter

24:36 which has been with us for decades and the and the architectures relying on

24:42 a heavy branch to go into this new style that is much more cloud-centric more much more

24:48 amorphous distributed and what are the what are the key things that you've been undertaking to to make this change

24:53 sure so operationally um consolidation and integration into more of the cloud

25:01 service that can touch more of our environment more easily more accessible and also for these remote users

25:08 for us it saves a lot of time so know operationally instead of us

25:14 having to touch individual devices or knowing the different environments you know having that one centralized location not only for

25:20 you know configuration and policy management but also for auditing you know and then integration back into our existing sim

25:27 you know it just makes us more streamlined so we can be more uh proactive instead of reactive all the

25:33 time and you know my team being you know the network side and the security side and

25:38 inner workings between them now you know you don't have to jump between multiple paint and glass

25:43 everything's in a single point so you know the information is more readily available to us when we actually need to you know look at something

25:50 i see so it feels like it boils down to a um almost a productivity

25:57 argument that the it teams become more productive

26:02 and so you with the same set of resources you could do more and be able to address a larger um

26:09 environment and so i guess that has been the primary

26:15 way have there been any other things that that come to mind beyond the the

26:20 um the productivity argument uh or has it been primarily just that no and it's

26:27 it's also you know the feature set so you know there are products there or services are available to us today

26:33 with these you know sassy platforms that we didn't have you know yesterday or six months or a year ago right we didn't

26:39 have that ability to touch and control some of these remote endpoints without having other

26:44 infrastructure in place so ultimately you know budgetary-wise we're going to be able to provide better

26:50 services for less money which is always you know key tougher management yes

26:55 and again it all goes back to how do you raise the bar in that user experience and make sure that at the same time it's a it's a win-win

27:02 if you're able to reduce costs right and and do more with less capital or

27:10 other expenditures i guess same question for you jason is that then i i i assume that you've been facing the

27:17 same sort of of headwinds if i can call him that that dennis has so how is it that you've been

27:22 able to get by and from your management and across your organization

27:27 you know pandemic did a lot to removing a lot of those roadblocks for us um there's obviously a

27:35 financial aspect to it right um we are seeing cost savings and increased feature sets

27:42 similar to dennis one of the problems we're actually having is uh slowing things down slightly

27:49 because of the demand to move so quickly and to get everything out there at once um we have

27:55 big concerns within the organization um that things will get missed and

28:01 sort of that uh rapid uh deployment uh and that maybe a feature that was

28:07 critical to a subset of users won't exist right so we have concerns such as those i know i

28:12 brought up sort of the data protection concerns right here um there's you know different legal and

28:18 contractual issues around compliance are are kind of always at the top and the forefront of uh everyone's minds

28:25 but you know to to sell it to say hey we need to do this um you know it's kind of selling itself

28:31 right now yes i i heard the other day a great tagline that uh

28:37 no one should let the crisis go to waste right so the pandemic's clearly a crisis that has

28:43 provided uh air cover to uh be able to infect a lot of change that

28:48 everyone's probably been or a lot of people have been thinking about but now it's perfect time to to embrace this change

28:55 and so continuing this theme of change and changing the organization i

29:00 want to get a little more tactical and question to you dennis isn't uh are there particular things that you're

29:06 doing to prepare the team for this transition and and can you hit on anything that that

29:12 uh you're doing to to make this easier for the team yeah i think that the um integration of

29:20 more of our devices into security director is definitely assisting and uh you know when we make

29:26 that transition to put it in the cloud it just be more streamlined so it's really getting the the network team

29:33 to more work with the security guys uh just to get a better understanding of where

29:39 things need to be you know restricted and uh you know i always felt that the the best security people were network

29:45 people first so now there's a little bit of cross training going on so both guys are getting

29:51 a little bit of experience on you know what the other teams are up to so it just at the end of the day it's going to

29:56 provide a better experience for our constituents and our users i see i see no i'm just laughing because

30:03 at least i i've been in networking 20 years and most of those in security and i would say to myself or

30:08 introduce myself as being the networking geek with a security bent right because like you i think a lot of people

30:15 that i run across in the industry did do networking at some point in their career and then pivoted to

30:20 to um jason same question for you in terms of preparing the teams

30:25 your teams uh what are you doing to prepare for this transition

30:30 oh we we throw our teams under the bus pretty quickly right um yeah you know they're always

30:36 kind of chomping at the bit to improve and make their own lives easier um so they're willing to

30:42 to take that sort of guinea pig role in the transition and and really deep

30:48 dive into the technology and learn what it's about i find it helps a lot even when we're rolling it to the end users afterwards

30:56 um because uh you know my team's familiar with the underpinnings and how things are actually working the networking firewall

31:03 sites um so being able to have that that confidence as a team

31:08 to explain it to uh who's who's actually receiving and using the

31:13 technology as part of the rollout uh really assists in making things go

31:18 smoothly i see i know i think that's a very good approach to to be able to eat your own dog food

31:25 before you um and get it get all the kinks worked out before you push it out to the wider

31:30 community next question is for you dennis and i'd

31:36 like to understand this how do you see your sas implementation affecting the user experience

31:41 for administrators and end users sure i i think that for the the users on my

31:47 teams uh operation things will be a lot easier because it will be centralized there's this one you know

31:54 pane of glass that they have to access for a majority of tools that today are for the most part separate and maybe not

32:00 the same vendor uh proceeds for example ultimately the the better we can do our job is going to

32:06 make the constitutional life easier uh specifically for the you know i keep going back to the webber

32:13 cloud-based proxy today our environment is a mix right we have some legacy

32:19 gear from a different vendor and then we have our ewf and uwf works fantastic but again you have to be dependent for

32:25 that to function right and a lot of the complaints we have from individuals are you know when they connect to our vpn

32:32 yeah maybe the pac file's not working correctly or something else somebody on checks you know the proxy so they

32:38 have to toggle back and forth when everybody is on the same platform you know uniformly across the enterprise

32:44 then that goes away so ultimately they have a better experience and you know the advanced features like dlp and stuff that will come in the

32:51 future we just provide a safer environment so at the end of the day you know our data that we have to meet these

32:57 compliance standards for we feel better to safer and ultimately you know we're just providing you know

33:02 services to the constituents or you know assistance so that anything we can do to streamline

33:07 our operations provides a better product for them i see no that that uh that makes sense

33:14 and and i think you would agree that the last thing you want is people figuring out that if they dislike

33:20 the solution how to get around it right and so that being able to get to a user experience that

33:25 that meets our expectations while at the same time meeting corporate networking and security policies is

33:32 paramount um jason the next question i have is uh how do

33:39 you plan to deploy a sassy strategy while attempting to remove complexity from your environment

33:45 or trying to introduce even more change right so what are the what are the things that that you're undertaking

33:52 yeah so when we uh select a specific piece to migrate it usually is based on uh

34:00 can we take two or three divergent products uh that we're using now and make that consolidation on on the cloud

34:07 platform and then from that aspect you know what are we gaining with that consolidation are we just consolidating because

34:14 uh you know it's a single point of failure or or support or you know are we actually

34:20 gaining additional features and i think kind of what we found um most recently with our deployment of a

34:25 lot of the miss solution is with the the deployment of the centralized management and the cloud

34:31 solution we can get our help desk and and service people into those systems and get them that

34:37 visibility that they need as part of the deployment um kind of bring them in up front with

34:43 what's what traditionally has been a networking role within the organization and then they're

34:49 able to service the the users the customers and the clients much quicker without having to

34:55 necessarily escalate every issue up to the network team or the security team for investigation initially

35:01 so we're really seeing that that improvement of ticket quality uh information and

35:09 time to resolution as part of the transition process wow so it almost sounds like then this

35:15 change is having that benefit in making your your environment and like

35:20 you said meantime the resolution is improving those those metrics so

35:26 that's quite impressive that it's already having that positive side effect because usually i think when a lot of enterprises

35:33 embrace new technologies or new workflows it usually has the opposite effect right is that that all of a sudden you find

35:38 yourself um chasing bugs and and your ticket time start to get quite quite long so um kudos to

35:46 you as well to being able to to uh knock two birds with one one stone uh so we're getting here to uh the final

35:53 question and the end of our time together and and the final question starting with with you dennis is

35:59 um do you have current investments that you're looking to leverage as part of this transition

36:04 and are you taking inventory of your current network before making a sassy investment

36:09 absolutely yeah so yeah our full plan is to utilize our existing security products

36:15 so you know our 300 so srx's that are deployed and then you know also intertwining that with um

36:22 our national issue and moving that policy out to the other cloud you know using the srx's

36:28 as you know the enforcement point for the network and um yeah absolutely and uh it should

36:34 just help us provide a better service to our customer let's see and same question for for you

36:40 uh jason are you do you have current investments and uh that you're going to leverage and

36:45 are you taking current stock of your environment before making an investment

36:51 yeah absolutely and uh you know we made the decision a while ago to go primarily juniper for

36:56 our edge uh within our data centers and offices so it's really made that sort of transition

37:02 to the sd-wan pieces a lot easier on us just because of the the capabilities and

37:09 such that are built into the platform we're also you know looking as dennis is to start moving some of our

37:15 uh like security director pieces and such into that cloud management

37:21 to sort of centralize that or you know in a way decentralize it out of a single data center or multiple data centers

37:28 into the cloud solution um help with that availability and logging and such

37:35 i see and and i think both of you are echoing that there's a lot of technology that's

37:40 already deployed that in in the um ideal cases to take advantage of as you move into

37:47 these new architectures in the sassy style i think that's a very prudent and pragmatic move

37:52 because the last thing that your management probably wants to hear is like we need to do a forklift upgrade and rip

37:58 and replace and everything that we deployed isn't going to get used it tends to not go down well

38:04 with the uh financial folks let alone your um the the the ceos uh so kudos to give to you guys

38:10 that uh already thinking about how to take advantage of what's what you have there and being able to bring it into this new

38:15 style of of architecture and and networking and security connectivity

38:21 uh well with that i want to thank you for um taking my questions and uh hopefully

38:28 you will have good luck in continuing your sassy journey and we hope to again see you here before long to get an update about

38:34 where you are and and uh how things have gone so thank you again so i too want to thank

38:40 uh dennis and jason for joining us today for your candor for you know just being open and

38:45 transparent with us about how you are viewing the sassy journey what challenges and how you're thinking

38:50 about things moving forward i certainly um learned a lot from from your discussion and maurizio thank you

38:57 uh for facilitating the discussion i think you're touching on all the right questions i

39:02 know that i'm hearing from customers as well and and you know just from our conversations that you and

39:07 i have had previously so again thank you everybody and i hope everybody tuning in gain a little insight as well and we

39:14 look forward to continuing the conversation with all of you