Video: Gotham Technology Group CTO on Provisioning Clients in an Uncertain Economy

hey Channel insiders welcome back to another episode of Channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso my guest today is Ken felin CTO of Gotham Technology Group Ken is a founding member of the company which started in 2001 and for my Dark Knight fans out there yes Ken is the hero that Gotham deserves Ken and I spoke about a variety of topics today including how he prepares his customers and their it environments for the future even during uncertain Economic Times as well as what catches Ken's attention when he's approached by a prospective vendor partner do you want to be Batman and do you want me to be Robin or can I be Batman for this particular interview I'm not going to admit to being Batman but I will say that he and I are never same at the same time so right right nobody knows nobody knows so tell me about Gotham and tell me how long have you have youve been in business and talk to me a little bit about what you do for your customers sure so we formed Gotham in 2001 and I started it with uh for the gentleman who I'd worked with previously so we had a good you know Heritage going into this we started the company kind of knowing what we wanted to do we started in New York just like approximately 2 weeks before 9/11 so we started sort of in a tough period bringing company along but because of our heritage in that space you know you know having another company before that we grew the company organically I think that's been part of the process right as individual owners we wanted to make sensible decisions for our customers for our employees and grow the company in a way that you know sort of serve those constituencies right you I think this business is about it's about relationships it's also just about value right it's about going into your customer site and creating customer success and making sure that they're okay as companies and as people so I think that's that's really at our core and tell me about your customers what verticals do they typically operate in to be in the New York metro area uh in the sense there's obviously a lot of great businesses a lot of big businesses a lot of Highly regulated businesses which sort of helps us as a cyber company um in big financials you know they're more Tech than you would think you know there's there's the jokes is a lot of the big Banks they have more developers in a fortune 10 Bank than Microsoft has you know they spend a lot of time and energy on Tech as a differentiator so um that space has been very good for us but just selling in the New York metro area you sell to a lot of global companies right so fundamentally we end up working with Pharmaceuticals with you know Global financials even with small hedge funds those people but I I say we sort of sell local and deliver Global you know so I might wake up with engineers in Budapest or engineers in Singapore or jobs around the world so I think we're trying to service our client needs but we just sort of emanate from the New York space um and there's just a lot of great companies right here it's manufacturing companies it's retail companies I mean it's a great you know it's a great place and that's it's very lucky for me as technologist because I get to deal with all kinds of Industries right have like a hospital in the morning and a bank in the afternoon and all you know all kinds of different things so it's it's it's it's the same elephant with lots of different pieces that you get that you look at right oh that's a good way to put it especially in New York City like you said it it really truly is the the center of business of the country if not the world how are you investing in security this year is there anything you're doing differently or any Technologies you're keeping a particularly close eye on to make sure that they're not causing uh an extended threat throughout the year if you're working with with global Banks you're seeing people who are attacked almost on a nation state level right if we're work we're working with these Global banks on their structures and they're seeing what they're saying they're very uh Progressive Forward Thinking about this space because they have been living under siege you know for a decade and more right of constant threats from very very sophisticated techs MH and as that sort of kind of flowed downhill to the rest of my organizations now hospitals are seeing that all all seeing that same sort of structure so I think what we're seeing is this world where um you know I think the things I say on my customers is you know we have to acknowledge that as individuals in this space we need the right tribe we need the right friends right so I think more and more Outsourcing so my manag services are growing all those things a lot of the services we're selling are sort of customers are rightfully asking for more value in the stack from the oems and from us because they can't cover that if you've got a cyber security staff of 20 to 30 people which is a lot for a lot of these companies you really can't fight against sort of uh you know adversaries that you're stacked up against right that run 247 socks so you need to have the right things have the right sourcing models the right the products that give you data do those things so I think that you know rather than look at as a specific Tech I think that's part of it I think the other thing that we're seeing a huge growth in is um you know this is a board level issue like everyone's watching this on 60 Minutes new outages saw yesterday the Pharmaceuticals no one's coming after us trying to break the supply chain they're just accidentally breaking it because they hacked this company and didn't even know that they were you know what I mean so I think we're seeing a lot of people say okay you know what really has got to get better we have to get better on certifications regulate regulatory issues so more people looking for sock 2 certifications and that so they can communicate and I think that's you know this this old school of like well you know we've got a guy you know a cyber genius named Bob and we trust Bob and I'm like well that's you can't go to the board and talk and that might be right or wrong but the truth is I need some kind of regulatory approval that I can go to my board go to my insurance companies and do that so I think I think it's maturity right and it's sort of it's sort of a growth area and it's it's it's bringing those pieces together right of value poor Bob I'm thinking about this one person that is aware of everything coming down on him he has an uler so Ken as CTO how close do you sit to the customer experience and what's important to you that the customer comes away with from those initial meetings with Gotham the challenge for me at initial meeting is really to get the customer just start to talk about what they're seeing how they're operating what you know what their tool sets look like so you know I you know I used the metaphor sort of being like a doctor and I think sometimes customer in an effort to be you know commercially smart will oisc their true points of pain because they're so used to sales people coming in say well what's keeping what's notop let you sleep at night all these games that we played I like find out at the same time if you want to walk into your doctor's office and say I'm not going to tell you what hurts you you guess you know show show me a PowerPoint showing the last 12 diseases that you came up with and maybe I'll guess you know I'll pick which one have it's really not the right way to do a diagnostic so I think you know we work very effectively in situations where the customers you know can sort of share that Stu stuff and frankly we we want to earn that trust too we I I love it when I like well tell me what tools you have already and maybe I can find some way to solve this problem with a tool you already own it's always this this backup the bus problem like they they'll come to say we want to buy you know whatever this thing and I'm like okay but can we talk a little bit about why you want to buy it what you already own how what you because I want to be responsible for making sure that whatever you buy brings value right it actually does what you think it's going to do and and many times there there is a gap there and I think people again people have a tendency I think to over bu product and underestimate the process and people it's going to take to make that all happen that is something I was wondering if where you draw that line and when you step over it the line between repair or adjust those processes or rip and replace what does that conversation look like when you walk somebody back to say actually your technology is fine here's what you need to do particularly now in the down economy I think time devalue is so critical right so I think a lot people don't want to rip place don't want to make these moves because embarking on a 36 month program and telling people in a down Market that we're going to do this and not going to pay off for another you know three years it's a really tough conversation to have in a in a space where budgets are already constrained so I think you want to make the efforts to sort of do this unless you can truly leave frog forward some truly Innovative and you're setting yourself for the next decade it's a political problem right I was telling my guys you know hard on issues soft on people like you got to be careful because you're telling someone that their babies ugly so just you know let's let's find a way to you know manage this and and you know make small incremental gains see if we can get them to the places they need to do and show and show the client options a lot of times by the time we're brought in it's more of a use more medical metaphors it's more of a triage right like okay there's a real problem here like deflation breeding bleeding how do I fix the problems right now how do I create as much safety as I can in the next 30 days and then what do I think about the 90 days where I think about the year so bring some bring some operational uh you know Effectiveness to this to the problem and and and and treat the patient you know now and sooner and later how do you future prooof a customer's environment when they want new technology or want to update technology knowing that they are considering what the economic future is going to look like especially in a down year like we're seeing at the moment how far ahead are you thinking and can you plan that far out first of all I think that the the Hallmark of good engineering you know or good is great A good engineering solution solves a problem a great engineering solution solves a problem you didn't even know you were going to have 5 10 years from now right so for it's sort of taking that engineering perspective on how do we build growth agility you know we not we don't know everything we can be agile flexible en able to scale and scope right so it we look at the problem that way to me the optimal solution for a client um sort of tells two stories right one is sort of that triage thing like there's something that you really need right now that you absolutely have to have whether it's regulatory whether you've got it a knowledge risk you there's there's there's a problem that I need to solve right now let's define that problem and let's really make sure we're solving it but the thing that I'm doing should always have some form of cohesive platform strategy about what it's going to go on in 10 years you know so let's say you know there's sabath and cyber a lot there's like three guys in a garage and T who have solved this problem right who've just got the greatest widget to solve the one problem you have but if you do buy that maybe that's not the best future story so maybe we talk about okay well is there a way to solve this problem with something that one of the big platform company is the PA or checkpoint or you know Cisco somebody can solve this problem and maybe that's the way of looking at it or maybe this thing is going to get roll up with something else I think that's to me the the most effective strategy is make sure we understand the problem make sure we're solving for the problem today but then to think about this okay but this is our platform story here how does this how does this product grow move with me change with me meet future needs fit into all of the rest of my instrumentation you know is it going to be just a little little screen sitting in the corner of my sock 10 years from now or is it going to be one of the things that really guides me I'd love to hear a success story if you're able to share one with me that happened maybe in the last year 18 months in which you were able to kind of come in and be the hero and take a customer from being in a challenging position all the way through to being in a really good known State we had a a fairly large um bank that was getting regulatory pressure which is you know kind kind of real pressure so a lot of people are struggling with these uh sort of extreme but plausible scenarios of you know what if the ENT what if the entire bank got hit by Ransom where everything you know and every server was down in a situation like that it's going to be weeks if not possibly months to get everything back online right just Logistics the physics the structure of that having the conversation then what we were able to talk about was well look there there are some specific technologies that do a great job of immutable guaranteed backups and we could look but also using C our application expertise and understand the banking applications expertise like we we don't have to change your whole backup we could identify key critical systems get the right kinds of backups for them and basically develop a very agile sort of cloud recovery to manage that structure and so we were able to come in use of those you know recovery Technologies IM immutable recovery Technologies identify the actual applications and what what what servers were required what all these dependencies were because again we understand all that stuff and basically create this structure and the and the regulator regulat love it are there any vendors in particular or solutions that are really working well for you right now whether that come from a support standpoint or just the fact that the technology is great or it's operating really well and your customers want it are there any vendors that you'd shout out at the moment rubric is that technology that we use for those immutable backups very strong does terrific you know s selling very well and very effective at this sort of ransomware resiliency thing I think a lot of people have some Solutions in the space but there's a lot of ifs and butts and ands around them asteris and and rubric has the least number of ifs butts and ANS and Aster so very effective on its base I think there's a lot of good Cloud technologies that I that I think are just great time to value the sense that they do analysis they tell you things right off the bat they help you so I would say like whiz in the posture management space is is doing very well for us the tech that I can put in get immediate value from and the customer is going to love and I when I call them six months later they're like oh I still love that stuff it's the best tell you know tell tells me things I don't know I love it so I think uh I think rubric and whiz would be two I think that that we're doing that we're very effective with for very good reasons being the CTO there's a lot that you have to consider how do you stay informed and how are you able to to take in information every day to process it to see what's going to impact your business the most I don't think there I don't think there's a magic way to do that I think I think the most important thing for me is really staying close to the customers I you kind said this before like knowing what you know where their pain points are what their structur like a very common thing that happens to me is I'll be sitting listening to a startup and they'll be telling me this whole thing they do and they do this they I'm you know kind of yawning so like everyone says this everyone says this everyone says this and then they'll say just one little thing and I'm like whoa whoa whoa what did you say like well we you know we do this and I'm like okay you're burying the lead like that's the one thing nobody does that all the customers need like like make that slide one like what are you talking about here if you can prove you do that one thing like that's the one thing I need their investors want them to build this giant story about total addressable Market which makes them have this giant you know need that they're fixing and I'm like guys I just show me one one thing one little thing you do that no one else can do that that that becomes that starting point show me your one thing you fix and then tell me your Plum story but I need that one thing that one one thing you do is that something that vendors should take away from this considering when they're doing that presentation or that initial meeting with you as a technologist start with the thing that you do that nobody else does really getting down to you know like this is particularly a down Market I say to everyone like time to Value time to Value time to Value how fast is this going to show by in this organization in what ways yeah right absolutely like like 30 60 90 like how fast one of the solutions that Gotham offers that I actually haven't seen before is Staffing and that just pequ my interest immediately can you tell me what that solution offering is a lot of our customers you know knew that that obviously as a technology firm we're growing we're hiring great people doing those things but that that one of their gaps is they don't have the right people on site so providing the people into these Solutions so they can be successful I think is a critical part of owning the solution wow yeah so if we're going to bring in you know the Technologies the socks whatever we we also have this great team of recruiters and Staffing people who can help fill in the right people on site whether it's temp or perm whatever to make sure that whole thing's working and then we can also as technical people vet the people we know the culture we know the stuff so it's it's I think we do a better job I we say that on the sapping side because we are able to make those fits you know interview the people with our TR staff like making sure that they're valid qualified you know know the tech really so I think it's just another sort of piece of the puzzle that makes you know customer success happen I find it so interesting because we do have an ongoing shortage of it professionals especially it's exasperated in spaces like cyber security too so it's so interesting to see that you're also providing the people which are a critical element of these overall it environments yeah it's I think it's one the bench Services businesses has blown up some much because I think people again people need the problem solved and when you step back and you see across a spectrum of potential Solutions like well we could do a man service or we could staff this for you or we could maybe get you going a lot a lot of the things we do we sort of set up automate and then pass to internal staffs for a lot of the engag for so again I you know I want to make sure that what we did really happens and that you know two three years from now you still like it because I want all the people that bought from me last year to buy from me again and make sure they have a continued success of the things I'm selling is the best way to make that happen absolutely so what are you keeping an eye on this year and is there anything potentially trendy that you're investing in for Gotham we're watching a new manag service just really covering sort of the asset management space and I know that sounds like kind of mundane but like no being as you move into regulatory certifications and structures what are the big gy FS people just don't know what they have they don't know how compliant they infastructure is it's a little basic walking tackling but it's not basic because no one's doing it right is we sort of get our clients ready to be more certified have these regulatory structures like what how can we help them Quick Step into that sort of maturity so I think you know we're spending more time on those processes about you know practices around how to get people into certifications we're spending more time on helping these Asset Management things other tools to kind of patch managing those things to get people set up to be compliant be structured and I think doing those things as Services is an investment we're making we're bringing on you know those most people in our sock to do that one of the very big concern for us is at you know the whole mess around broadcom and Citrix and all of that stuff and sort of the market negativity and sort of the profit taking that those orders are doing you know which is which is that's fine that's their strategy but at the same time like I've got a bunch of customers that are shifting more heavily to Cloud faster making different changes trying to make trying to adjust their business with those platform challenges I know people have been kind of going Cloud for a while now but there's sort of a different Pro economic problem driving that now right the CH the cost models have shifted pretty considerably as those platforms have changed their models and again Cloud's been expensive so I think there's a lot of space in that that's that's going to be a big change for this year I think we should all be thinking about since our clients are thinking about it um so I think that space is going to see some big growth but yeah I'd say regul regulatory certifications the broadcom problem ransomware those going to be our big place for this year learn more about Gotham Technology Group at Gotham tg.com thank you to my guest Ken for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening to check out more episodes of Channel Insider partner POV head on over to Channel insider.com or our YouTube page at Channel inssider newws and Trends you can also listen in podcast form on your preferred podcast platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible to never miss an episode we put out a new video and podcast every week and if you'd like to be on the show or you've got a question for me email me at partner poov Channel insider.com once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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