Video: Mainline Director of Tech Talks Differentiators and End of VMware Partner Connect

hey Channel insiders welcome back for another episode of Channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it channel to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso and my guest today is Carlos Marcus director of Technology at Mainline Information Systems and I'm so happy that was able to make the interview after being in Buffalo in January in a snowstorm the day before you made it back from Buffalo safely did you are your boots like filled with snow though um well there there was plenty of opportunity to get into that um so I live in Rochester New York so it it we experienced this thing called lake effect snow up here it is an adventure going to Buffalo this time of year especially uh depending on where you want to go so um those of you who have watched bills games uh it it is an adventure I fit right between the two big snowstorms cuz today they're getting 3 feet and so do you tobogan out to Buffalo or is it more of you I when you when you get to a certain spot yeah your your options are going to be limited so you you then could get into toag and a snowmobile um find somebody with one of those big trucks with the big wheels and and you know hope that it's weighed down enough um but they they actually have railroad Gates on many of the exits in in the main um interstates near Buffalo so that it prevents people from actually going on the interstate during a snowstorm you talk about this like it's so mainstream like up here we go again it's January and we can just expect this this is just a part of our life it it it is I mean the the the Great Lakes are are they're great so Carlos tell me about Mainline who are you what do you do and who do you primarily serve so Mainline is a value added reseller systems integrator and Trust adviser we mainly focus in the information technology industry and Enterprise customers and uh we serve all sorts of verticals from Financial to healthare to manufacturing distribution retail government defense and it's a it's a variety of Industries so when your customers come to you Carlos or come to Mainline what are they typically asking for when they enter into a deal with you do they come with knowing what they typically need a general idea or they do they mostly come with challenges when they need to approach you it varies by customer I would say that a lot of them come with challenges either they've got a new business or technical initiative um we we get involved in a lot of different projects around uh infrastructure around Cloud around modernization of infrastructure so we we typically get a challenge or a problem set and then we come up with different options and ways to solve the customer and and get get a better outcome for them in your position Carlos as director of Technology obviously it's right there in the name you're very technically focused so how close do you sit to that client interaction or how do you help your sales teams maybe your even your marketing team sort of navigate that relationship with the client the director of Technology role is is new to Mainline and I've been it's been important for me to make sure that I do stay uh very close to what our customers are asking of us uh I do go on customer calls several times a week um because we we do want to understand as we're developing new offerings as we're onboarding new partners we do want to understand what our customers are asking us for and making sure that we stay relevant to what our customers need and so it it is very important for me to be uh out in front of customers uh talking about various things and then obviously working with the The Architects and the pre-sales resources that we have in the field um to hear from them as well as our sales people to hear from them as to what our customers are asking and making sure that we're we're executing and that we're making making good good decisions with our business what is the mainline differentiator if you had to pick one thing um I think the mainline differentiator is really is around execution um for us and and I think that's that's been um one of the the things that has has gotten us more customer acquisition is we are responsive and when a customer says I I need to have a technical proposal or I need to have a proposal in a certain format a certain way because of the way we have to procure something or I need it to look this way or we can't we can't purchase it all up front can we be flexible um we do things like that and I think that those are the things that and it's those tiny little things that make their lives easier um that I think um sort of sets us apart and whether it's um if they need to uh you know you know pause equipment shipping because they don't have space for it or it's you know I need to defer or change terms contract terms things like that we're very flexible and I think that's that's that's something that they value when it comes to whether a customer should update what they have or completely rip and replace when it comes to some of their infrastructure and some of that Hardware it's a big decision for them when you talk to them about that and you walk them through that plan of what they need to do how do you assess that situation first of all we get a baseline of what they have right if we don't know what they have we obviously have to understand what they have what they use it for and then potentially what their issues are with it um if it is something that is um working well and it just needs to be refreshed um if there are problems or there is the potential for problems we can't see if we upgrade it all of a sudden we've introduced a bottleneck that was hidden by something else so I think that goes into it I think that um now nowadays with um different Financial models um how they want to consume uh infrastructure if we're talking about servers or storage how customers want to consume that because there are more and more customers that are looking at consumption based uh approaches to to things um and so I think that's that's part of it but then obviously business growth security requirements um you know anything from high avilability and and you know most things can't be can't be down today right so it it's it's a a a bunch of those things and is upgrading existing versus refreshing does it minimize the risk right and so you take a into risk availability security those are all the big things and then um making sure that ultimately we have a path to success so very much so so speaking of success is there a story that you might be able to share with me from the past year or two where you were able to help a client go from not so successful to upgraded and fully operational in the place that they want to be we had a um a customer that was unhappy with the direction of a um one of their current vendors and wasn't getting what they needed in terms of the the the uh the vender had um uh moved a lot of their management um tools to the cloud and and had made it very difficult for them for their on Prim environment so they had no intention of moving to the cloud so so we had a um an opportunity to uh work with a a different company to um to refresh the the equipment across three data centers um so we we showed them how the 15 years of automation that they built uh on the existing server platform could be redone in a matter of two weeks uh they did they thought it was going to take them months to do it and we partnered with uh the vendor and we showed that we could redo their deployment Automation in a number of weeks um and then that that lowered their risk and then on top of that we uh worked with the the new vendor on pricing um which again lowered the out-year risk of 3 to four years of you know locked in pricing so they they knew that technically the solution was going to be viable they knew financially it would work for them and so that ended up being a a major refresh which is going to be done over the course of the next 3 to four years but they were facing a lot of end of life uh situations as well as a as a road map that was very fuzzy and um so that essentially allows them to continue to grow on Prem uh continue to support their business uh but at the same time have a predictable financial situation and a predictable um uh deployment scenario for for their teams um so that's one example we've also been doing some um the beginnings of some uh Financial operations or fops type of work um I was just made aware of a of a when we haded a client um where our Consultants went in and um looked at how the client was provisioning Cloud instances and uh the client was provisioning basically on demand instances which are the most expensive in any of the public clouds where you're just you know giving me a server right now and um if you just change how you buy Cloud capacity to reserved uh instances you can save substantial amounts of money and So that obviously translated into value to the client and then it turned into some additional uh revenue and profit for us because we were able to take down additional um operating system subscriptions and other software that that the client was able to um uh leverage by by making that conversion how do you continue that relationship with the customer after everything is implemented everything is fired up and ready to go and turned on what does that look like for you as far as nurturing the customer relationship after you leave the building I'm involved in in numerous accounts where we have monthly status meetings I'm big on making sure that we if a customer gives us an hour that we make sure we have an agenda and what that ultimately leads to is a dialogue around well hey I just got out of a meeting and we've got this new initiative I want to talk to you guys about that um if you're not you know in in front of your customer checking in on them and making sure that you know what you sold them is successful um and you just kind of walk away then the next conversation they might not talk to you about um you know it if it takes if it takes more effort for them to re-engage on the next one are there any vendors right now that you feel based on their service their support their solutions that they deserve a shout out IBM is has been a great partner for us and uh they you know we talked about our Mainframe modernization the Mainframe platform continues to be an Innovative platform that a lot of customers are investing in and uh it's rock solid reliable and um so we we have customers that will continue to invest in that platform um IBM also bought red hat and is deploying more and more things on redhead open shift and um and we are excited about IBM's relationship with AWS where we're able to sell IBM software uh in the AWS Marketplace so that's been um something that we've been uh very excited about um from a uh storage perspective uh we are very excited about a relationship with vast and with infinidat um being some of the the larger players that we see relevant going forward as we look at things like AI machine learning um and the growth of the unstructured space um from a security and network perspective we're obviously very interested in what happens with the hbe and Juniper relationship uh as that uh acquisition unfolds we have a great relationship with both vendors um and both vendors have great Wireless uh products and so it'll be very interesting to see how that works um from a security perspective uh we have been working very closely with Palo Alto and foret I think our most common security entry point has been around ransomware around data protection um data deidentification um and and being able to help a customer uh survive a Cyber attack that's been one of the big uh Focus areas where we we combining traditional uh cyber security with traditional storage and server infrastructure to be able to to come together um there so that's that's Technologies like rubrick that's Technologies um like Pure Storage um where they have cyber resilient offerings you mentioned HP and Juniper that really incredible acquisition that news just came out hp's acquisition of juniper uh soon to come I noticed on your website there's a few Partners in there that have been either recently acquired or have been acquiring and so on and so forth we're seeing a lot of m&a activity in the channel right now how do you adapt to that as Mainline how do you adapt to that as a business when that goes on behind the scenes and how do you make sure that it's not disrupting your relationship with your customers I think it's important for us and for customers to not jump to conclusions because a lot of these uh recent acquisitions are going to take months if not years to come to fruition I think the the biggest one that we've seen that has caused a lot of um dialogue has been the broadcom acquisition of of the mware and so in a in a situation like that it's important to not make any drastic decision until you start to see how this is going to play out we've seen mergers where uh the companies have been relatively untouched for several years um and then we've seen others where it is a pure land grab where uh the the products have been Sunset relatively quickly and we have to find an exit strategy so um I think it's don't overreact but it's also come start coming up with the stay the course option and then here are some alternative options where you can start to maybe migrate to and try out and then if you decide to exit that particular vendor solution that you have a path forward that you've taking the time to vet and will work for you so that you can get from point A to point B uh relatively easily it's often hard for customers to really figure out what they're going to get at the end of the day um but it it's a I think it's important for um for us to help walk them through and and just not do change for change's sake right you have to you have to sit there and say okay the VMware in the VMware example um there might be some near-term pain but the pain of the acquisition might be easier than the migration to the wholesale migration to some other technology which you don't know how to support um which you may have an uncertain road map something like that so um so I think that's it's it's don't overreact but but be smart about it have a have a plan B you took the words right out of my mouth bringing up BMW I don't think that we could talk about Mainline without talking about that I don't think you could talk to anybody at this point in the channel without talking about vmw and what's happening there is that decision between broadcom's decision to end that vmw partner program is that something you're currently going through right now to figure out how Okay do you do you mind sharing of how you think you're going to approach that um we're still learning more so it is uh I what I say right now could change next month um I think we are still assessing what accounts they're going to take direct and what that means to those customers um what their pricing models mean um we also have other ways to help customers with VMware licensing through uh the OEM such as Lenovo uh that we have Partnerships with so there's different ways where we can address the the VMware side of the conversation and then there's also a technology side of it of um are there alternatives to VMware and at at what point do you start to look at refactoring applications modernizing applications and moving them to for example kubernetes or open shift and um and so then could you also look at things like open shift virtualization for moving certain virtual machines um over to being managed by open shift um and so there's there's that sort of progression you can walk through with a customer to say okay you know these are some of the use cases where we can containerize your applications and then get rid of VMS that way uh these are some of the ways where we can have a virtual machine run as a container manage manage like a container but have it be a full VM um and then there's always going to be some that were it's either because of vendor support or because of uh the nature of the workload where you may have to have a certain piece of of VMware infrastructure around but we're what we're trying to do is flatten the curve for customers so there's the technical part of it and then that obviously if there are cost increases or whatever that their exposure to those cost increases goes down um but it it it gets back to to the the core tenant of trusted advisor and then obviously moving the customer and the direction that's right for them and some of our smaller customers especially they're driven a lot by vendors that they procure and there's going to be a p portion of that market that also moves to SAS to SAS based Solutions as well so they might they might not reinvest in nonrem infrastructure for an Erp solution or something like that they might move to SAS bware is a rock solid piece of technology that is embedded in so many things um storage networking Disaster Recovery um it it is a core piece of technology in in a lot of our customers and you just don't rip and replace it in some cases it may be in your best interest to continue you know staying the course with it some really good points there Carlos the last thing I want to talk to you about today is just what's happening in 2024 from Mainline and where you're seeing the opportunities where do you see an opportunity both on your side as a channel as a channel partner as a solution provider within the channel a res seller within the channel where are those opportunities in your mind and then for customers where should they be investing based on those opportunities so for us in particular because of our our relationship with IBM and our history when the IBM Enterprise business we we believe that more and more of our customers that have um some of our Legacy Technologies are look going to be looking to modernize those to to provide access to um the data that is is in those systems and to to refactor some of those applications so that they can meet new business needs so that's a that's a big area for Us is around um how we get data uh to the right applications whether that be through transformation of data whether that be through apis whether that be through replicating of data AI is going to uh Drive some of that so because there's a lot of corporate data sitting on some of these Legacy systems so we do see an opportunity there um through uh data virtualization technology Oles and and data movement Technologies to be able to leverage that um obviously we are going to continue to see rapid growth in network and security space from the secure Edge um all of the different devices that are going on networks at at our customers um being able to uh have zero trust uh environments end to end and then automate things getting people out of the equation uh from a um from a security perspective I think AI um in general is going to be a per pervasive technology for us um but it's it's the generative AI space I think is still a lot of that is still kind of experimental and I think the easy ones are going to be like the SAS providers where you know Salesforce where they've already got your data and they're going to be able to very easily be able to provide generative AI um you know chat Bots and things on top of of of the data that they've already have I think the the the on Prem and you know the the big potential benefit of of generative AI is is still I think you know I think customers are going to be starting to play around with it in small use cases but I think there's still a lot of work in terms of tooling and and who's going to have the the right software and the Right Mix to be able to really get value out of it I think that for the masses is still I think a little ways out I I do think we're going to see a shift in um how we handle uh storage for customers in terms of um uh the role of of of object storage uh for on- premise customers uh the role of container based uh Storage Solutions um and the role of of containerization becoming sort of a mainstream technology like we talked about with the VMware uh acquisition I think that more and more software vendors are delivering their products um in containers which then has a direct impact on how customers run their infrastructure so I think that's going to be u a growth area for us um whether it's a a modernization effort of taking an existing application refactoring it or helping customers deploy new workloads um in in new ways so that they can be more agile lower their risk be more available obviously the other thing that I think we're we're going to continue to see is an increase in the use of Mana Services um we have a large uh manage services group that supports uh Mainframe and and IBM power customers um but we also have a growing manage Services offering around things like uh application performance monitoring and and um offerings like that where we um will be able to offer those things to the customers so that they can get the value out of the tool but not have to run the tool well Carlos if the customers out there want to get in touch with you want to get in touch with Mainline for all their needs where can they contact you so the best place is to go to our website at Mainline docomo for your time today and I hope we have you back in the near future thanks again to my guest car Lo and thank you for watching or listening if You' like more episodes of Channel Insider partner POV you could check out our latest podcast and video on channel insider.com along with a slew of awesome articles there and if you have a question for me one of my guests or you want to be on channel Insider partner POV you can contact me at partner POV at Channel insider.com once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time n

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