SUMMARY KEYWORDS

truck, people, h&m, built, customers, load, system, company, freight, drivers, called, tools, security, dock, director, orders, computer, shipment, couple, track

SPEAKERS

John, Alex, Jeff

Alex 00:00

Hello, and welcome to another cloud podcast, a podcast designed to bring you stories from the smartest minds in it, operations and business and learn how they're using cloud technology to improve business and customer experience. All right, well, welcome to another cloud podcast. We're excited today to have john Walker. He is the IT director over at agent MBA. JOHN, welcome to the show. Good to have you.

John 00:29

Thank you.

Alex 00:30

And you're just telling us a little bit about the raspy voice because you're an avid fisherman, and you're on the boat screaming instructions of people. So you're a little bit hoarse today, but nonetheless is great to have you and I appreciate you coming on the show.

John 00:45

Thank you. It's nice. Nice to be here.

Alex 00:47

And of course, we have Jeff young, our partner in crime CIO over at the confer group joining us as well today, Jeff, great to have you looks like you're at the lake house today.

00:57

I get the lake house ready for a long weekend. But great to be here with you. And john, thanks for having me.

Alex 01:02

Absolutely. It's as good a long weekends getting everyone's excited that either you're fishing or have fun on the lake. All sorts of good stuff on Memorial Day weekend here, john, like you're either going to the mountain mountains or going surfing, trying to let's see this weekend. This is a packing weekend for us. We're actually moving out of town a couple weeks. So it's a working weekend. But it'll still be fun. on Memorial Day, we'll have a little party and stuff like that. So but yeah, it's great. Great to have the extra day off and get some r&r for sure, compared to just continuing the grind every single day. But john, what I'd like to do is just you know, have the audience learn a little bit more about you. We know that you're the IT director over at h&m, tell us a little bit about what h&m does. And just your journey in it on getting there and how you ended up at h&m Bay.

Jeff 01:53

Yeah, h&m Bay is less than truckload carrier. We don't have our own trucks. But we take orders from customers. And all the all of the orders when we take them are based around one of our areas where we pick up. So we have a doc in New England, Mid Atlantic, the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, Tennessee,

John 03:35

So key to that is our computer system. And that's how I came to h&m I was brought here to design one when they had an older system that that really couldn't couldn't be moved up technology wise.

Alex 03:49

Yes, talk a little bit about the computer system. So I mean, you've been you've been there looks like about almost 18 years now. Computer Systems 18 years ago obviously a lot different than they are today. How's that? How's that evolved? Since you've been there designed it originally to how it looks today?

John 04:07

Well really honestly, for us, it hasn't had to evolve a whole lot. We were built in on what would then maybe be called leading edge technology. So it was a web based application at that time. And it took five years to develop. So it's really only been in production probably for like 13 years, 14 years something like that.

Alex 04:31

Okay, one of the interesting things you know that obviously the pandemic has been on top of everyone's mind but as of late everyone's talking about the supply chain being broken and you know, cost of goods are going up like lumber and you know, anything cement that anything has to do with a supply chain. How's that been for you guys being a logistics company, on just how busy you've been or how Chow challenges just around The demand for for goods and services, how's that affected you guys?

Jeff 05:04

Well see, it's kinda you know, food and liquor are two things that don't really care about what else is going on in the world. You know, people are in their house Shut up, guess what, they're still eating food. Yeah, there is before the band dynamic, and everyone's having going out and having a good time, everyone's eating food, it really doesn't make any difference. So the only real impact when we had some impacts, obviously, but the main impact was immediately lots of places closed. So then our business went to hell. So we actually ended up a couple million short last year, because of it, you know, when it all hit, but that didn't take long before people said, Wait a minute, we got to go to work. So, you know, we'll wear masks and social distant, you know, the whole spiel. So we had to do things, you know, we had to make procedural changes at the dock here in the office, we don't have a lot of people coming in and out sales folks and things like that, you know, customers sometimes want to come visit. So that that pretty much stopped. But where it's more important is that the docks because we don't have our own trucks. So we take all this freight, and we build these loads. And we're not really a true broker, we do broker the freight out to owner operators, generally just, you know, an operator that has a single truck, in some cases, it might have multiple trucks and have a couple people that were formed. But we don't deal with any large companies to just small. Well, when these guys come to the dock, they normally go on the dock help unload their freight, loads of freight, and we couldn't have anybody on the dock. So they had to make some procedure changes, forgetting the paperwork from them, because in transportation, you must, there must be a bill of lading that travels with the product. So you are forced to deal with paper, there are companies that are trying to make it fully electronic. But in reality, it's very difficult because your shipper is going to hand you a piece of paper, you know. So, anyhow, there's some procedural things. But other than that are businesses good. I mean, it's normal.

John 07:09

Its capacity is the issue, you know, with all the money that was given out by the federal government to people when they're buying these, you know, consumer goods, and when trucks get tight, I mean, you've probably seen the backlog of containers, most mostly California, but other ports as well.

Jeff 07:29

You know, those, whenever anything, when there's a volume of these things going on, then then it's obviously going to be some people getting a premium to haul freight that they can't find freight for. So we have lost some capacity due to or let me say we can't get additional capacity. So we're kind of stuck. Even though we have sales tab, there are marching orders are go make your current customers happy. Don't even bring up begin counting here because we don't we can't find the drugs. So so it's caused us to also do some technology things. So we've been working with a product by a company called trucker tools it has it's called Smart capacity, where we are posting loads to their network, and then it matches them to drivers that are using their app. Because when they're using the trucker tools app, I mean, the trucker tools app was originally offered to drivers, as a tool to find places to park their truck where to get the cheapest fuel to keep track of things like to scan, you know, take pictures of slash scan bills of lading and send that stuff into whoever your your freight broker is that sort of thing. Then they came to the freight brokers and said, Hey, you can use this product to track your drivers, kind of like a you know, in a company that has their own trucks, they might put an actual device in the cab that has GPS tracking and allows them to give that driver instructions and all that. I mean, there's a lot of automation, but we have people that haul for us one time. So we can't go install a system in their cab. So these these phone based apps made that something that we could do. And I actually had the idea of doing that a long time ago, the very same thing. But my boss didn't want to do it. Because one of the things that happens in trucking, it's real heavy right now, especially in California, where they want you to classify these drivers as employees and not as vendors if you do a certain amount of control of them. So my boss was leery of doing it until trucker tools came out with the same exact thing. And I'm like, Well, why are you so high on it now? Well, that is this isn't us. They've already broken into the market. They've fought all the battles, that it's okay to use this tool. So we're just going to be another user. It's not going to be us doing it and then it'll be more control, right? If it's a custom app from us that we're making them use, blah, blah, blah. So anyhow. you know, that's just a nice tool to be able to find capacity. So we are doing some things like that right now. integrate with some other load boards for the same purpose. To make it easy, easier for our dispatchers to find a truck to cover a load Your job when you say load boards, does that also include I would expect, you know, where a particular customer's order is on the truck correct. So so they know it's the third delivery, upcoming or fourth, or fifth or whatever it may be, you do know that location on the truck of the merchandise as well. it's been a dream board and renamed trying to think of the name of the company bottom but but, but it's to software that allows me to give them a map, give them the time and distance between each stop, apply the hours of service rules, so they know oh, this guy's got to rest for so many hours here. It's not just back in the day, not too long ago, and we didn't have to worry about that we just thought about no you just drive and then you can sleep because there's always a delay at every one of our stops. Well, that doesn't count anymore, they need to really take a on purpose break at a particular time doesn't matter if you're waiting to unload your truck or your trucks unloading that is not breaktime anymore. So anyhow, we give them these tools. So they lay it all out. So we know when where the truck is supposed to be, you know at certain days and times and then so then we find someone to to haul for that and so we tell them these are the stops. This is how long it's gonna take here's how much we'll pay. And then once they come in on a dock on a Saturday, they see all the signs telling them to download this you know and you know, a scan code so they can scan it and and install the application on their phone. But honestly, most drivers have it now any bait not company drivers because they might have a device in their, you know, in their in their truck cap. But for ones that run different loads. For different companies, owner operators, they have the app already. So come Saturday, noon, we send out all these text messages by posting the loads to trucker tools. And those people get a message saying we want to track you h&m wants you to haul this load. And it doesn't just track them and also gives them the basically the information we would give them on a paper load sheet, showing them where their stops are, and what their appointments are, and who, what the phone numbers are. And all that kind of stuff is all built into the app too. So it helps them and then when they get within one mile of each stop, we get a geo fence post to our system, saying the guy is arrived. That's basically what we consider it. And we use that to try to drive down detention. Because one of the biggest problems that we had when we all you know, when they came out with the hours of service rules, all this stuff that I saw in most of the magazines, and you know, my tech newsletters was about all you know, now the drivers are really can't drive too many hours. Well, no one ever really drove too many hours. You cannot you can't drive constantly. I'm not saying no one did that. But that was old school that you know, people were taking their breaks. what the problem is, is what happens if a guy shows up to unload, and they don't let him unload for 10 hours. Okay, well, he used to sleep then. But you can't do that now. Not unless you wait all the way till when your time window comes for a break. If it happens to line up, you could say you're on break. But if not, that doesn't count. So you we had to come up with ways of telling these people you can't do this. So we're charging our shippers for detention and they're getting a warning within an hour if that guy's still showing at the location. So it's an it's not an attempt to drive money out of our shippers who they're going to get out of their customers because most of these places that were waiting to unload or load is the customer's location, or you know, our shippers location or their customers because we're usually picking up at the shipper delivering it to there constantly or customer. So, you know, it's just a way to try to drive down the tension and keep the wheels moving. And all of that has been very positive for the industry, I mean that that part of it's been positive. Yeah, you're doing all refrigerated goods, right, john? Yeah, fresh and frozen. Pretty much we do some dry but that's not our that's not our bread and butter. That's not where that's not where we shine. So is that your bread and butter I'm sure you want those Doc's ready to receive your goods is my point. So not only is that help your drivers and your your schedule, and I'm sure it has an impact on the quality of the good. So like, Well, no, we we Well, I guess fresh to some degree, but we have very stringent temperature requirements on our trucks, we use things we use a device called a locust track that goes with our freight. It's about a $50 disposable device that has a built in cell built in temperature. And it reports to through cellular it reports to their servers, that's an Emerson product. And then we pick that up. So we have another way of tracking them, we know where they're at. And we know what the temperature of the freight is. And if it gets anywhere near getting out of boundaries, dispatchers are all sent emails and text messages with temperature grass so they can follow up and talk to the driver. That's not the biggest thing. It's more the truck if the truck if the truck goes to to its first stop, and stays there 10 hours instead of one hour, in nine hours behind. So the next appointment is wrong. The next appointment is wrong, the next appointment and some of these places, some of the bigger customers, I'll just come out and say one one, Walmart is terrible. Basically, you better call on Monday and set your appointment for the following week. And if you don't make it, you might not be able to get unloaded, you might have to go in this is stuff that Walmart ordered. But this is how they run their ship is they say well, we can't handle you guys come in and go on when you feel like it. You tell us you're going to be here at eight o'clock on Friday morning. You better be here at eight o'clock Friday morning. Now on the good side, if you are there at eight o'clock, they will get you unloaded. You know and so if then then that's because they're not dealing with all this one's late and we Oh, he's not supposed to be here. Oh, this other guy's here who is supposed to be here. You don't have to deal with that. But on the other hand, it may mean sorry, customer, we're gonna drop this at preferred cold storage, and we'll get it read delivered to you. But all of that's gonna cost money. You know, perverts gonna want you know, 100 bucks to keep it two or three days and then we're gonna have another truck come up here a local truck, and he's gonna want two or $300 to deliver it. So all of this has been, you know, in attempts to minimize all that and that has gotten better because shippers have had to and constantly people buying freight, they've had to change their shipping to be more stringent and and try to, you know, keep up with timelines too. So everyone is trying to keep those wheels moving. And all that happened kind of right before COVID that it all kind of wound up and then that that's all still been happening. But anyhow, that was interesting. Alex, when you think about it, listening to john talk, this is so educational. And you think about your, your past semis all day on the highway, and look at the technology that's behind the shipment, just to monitor truck temperature to monitor location to coordinate schedules, is phenomenal. How much technology is behind a single truck? going from A to B, you know?

Alex 20:49

Yeah, there really is. I'm curious on you know, besides like all the technology that you guys have on the trucks and what you're using to track all the shipments? How does it look internally, right, managing it for the organization as a whole? And what are some of the challenges that challenges that you faced, just over the years and more importantly, I just recently, right, or any challenges that come up, or things that keep you up at night, right? Like, these are things these are some big, big things that keep keep the wheels turning, they're in your head on what what's coming and what risks to avoid?

John 21:21

Well, honestly, it is very easy. And I say that, because I came from manufacturing and banking. And this is not, it's just one facet of, you know, manufacturing, we had transportation to and we had, you know, we had to print bills, and we had to schedule, you know, shipments. But that's all that we do. So it's, it's, it's a very focused scope. So that's one nice thing that I knew right from the beginning, that to me, it was like I called it, I told him, it'd be like semi retiring, in that there would own you know, instead of having 800 people working on a shop floor, based off of your computer system, you've got these trucks rolling, and just seeing that, you know, there was going to be a much smaller scope to, to focus on. And these, the two owners were very supportive of having a custom application built to run the business. So in addition to what I have, all we needed was a back end accounting system. And they already had purchased Microsoft Dynamics, division. And they hadn't implemented much of it yet, but they had it and then they hadn't been able to implement it because 90% of it has to be fed from the the transportation management system, because most of what we pay out is pay the trucks, most of what we charge our customers is coming off of the orders. So until I designed that integration, and we built that part, they really couldn't do much they were doing payroll and like miscellaneous accounts payable, but that was it. So and they were also willing, when I talked to them, even though there was kind of a tight timeline, because their system was built on some old Unix equipment, and they really couldn't upgrade. So at some point, it could have become a problem, not being able to find parts for their old computers, but they weren't so worried about it when I said, here's the thing, though, guys, I need to learn your business. In order for this to work, I can't sit down and start writing the system tomorrow. I can only do that if you and I can't even do it tomorrow. But I could do it quickly if you told me to mimic exactly what you have. But that is not what you should do. So I had to learn what they did. I had to sit down I spent months sitting with people, giving them ideas, telling them what I was going to do, you know. And so it was like I said it was like a five year investment before they ever really had anything much to show for it. The one caveat that they did, then there were a couple things that they really needed badly. Oh, and let me say that I had already built them a customer extranet and some internal tools working for a consulting company that they brought in prior to that. So so I had some prior knowledge of this customer. And not just I had to change jobs because I went through a divorce and my 16 year old daughter wanted to live with me so I couldn't be traveling all the time. So anyhow, I I put in for a blind ad and I came over here to do some work. And he handed me my resume back and I was like What's this? I'm like, how did you get this? Oh, yeah, I'm PO Box by Oh yeah, really? Okay. So anyhow, that's normal. You're not allowed to, quote unquote poach a consultant. But I applied and I didn't it wasn't to h&m it was still a blind ad. So according to our, our terms, it was okay. He just couldn't approach me. That's really what it amounted to. So, so I had some prior knowledge so when they when they knew was my I'm almost done with this point. I'm almost there is that they wanted they said, if we're going to wait all that time to get it, here's a couple things we really want you to fix right away. So I had to build a little system that for paying the drivers and these to do it on these pieces of paper and use these little card terminals is called calm data is the company that fuels the transportation industry. Like if you go to a big convenience store, you'll see a sign it says calm data is accepted here. Well they get, that's how you can pay them through this system. And then they can accept, give them cash, let them get fuel, food, whatever. So it was a couple things we had to do. But then they waited. So the so why is it easy, then? Well, we only really have two systems, we don't have 20 different. So load systems and, and, and Microsoft Dynamics, vision was built on SQL Server. So I built this new system on SQL Server. And I actually can query division directly. And then build interfaces for things that we where we wanted to update it. So it's very tightly coupled. There's no redundancy in their work, they, they are so much, I mean, I'm tooting my own horn here. But it you know, the company is much better off, it's so much easier for them to do the things that they do. But they were using the archaic system, it would didn't take a genius to come in here and build them a new system from scratch and make an you know, become a hero. I mean, come on. I mean, they had old, you know, 20 some year old stuff that had never been changed in that was before. And it was all on Unix you know, green screen stuff. I mean, he, you know, it was not not a big deal. So anyhow, that that means that we only have to manage a couple things. Now, when I came here, I wasn't the IT director, I was just brought here as a salt, supervisor of applications development. And I've been IT director at two prior jobs, I welcomed the fact that I was going to, quote unquote, step down, and just focus on the software, because that's really where I came up from. I mean, it was my dad's idea to go and try it. And, you know, I was a programmer way early on. I mean, I we use cards when I was in college. So same here. So that so I didn't come through the hardware part to be perfectly honest, I didn't want anything that really do with it initially, because of its cantankerous, you know, these go, what's wrong with it? Oh, we had no idea. When we restarted it, everything's fine. That kind of stuff does not sit well with me. It just doesn't fit my brain. When something goes wrong. People get all bent out of shape. Why don't you go fix it? Right? Well, wait a minute, we got to figure this out. And we don't want it to happen again. Like, oh, this made this order, oh, can you jump in there and go do that? No, I'm not I need to, I need that evidence to figure out what's wrong, because I want to fix it, fix it one time, and never hear about it ever again. And if you're good at software development, you absolutely can do that. So so that so I wasn't the IT director, I'd never been in the data center at all, ever. I remoted into my servers and did what I needed to do. And I never went in there, well, my boss got fired, because we kept having this. They, they use this network attached storage for SQL Server, that's something you should never ever do. And I didn't know I didn't know anything about it, you know, saying is the way to go. Now, of course with that, you know, that's shared, shared among multiple multiple servers, etc. But anyhow, two different Fridays in a row, the system went down for a while and all they did was go offline, nothing. database was fine, nothing crashed, everything was there. But the storage just became disconnected and didn't connect. And when they took them a while to fix it both times he got he got fired. And we all were reporting to the head of accounting for a while. And he didn't like that after you know, the dealing with the infrastructure people. So they promoted me well, then there was a lot to do. A lot kept me up then because my boss got fired because the system be in doubt. So now I'm in charge of the same friggin system that could go down tomorrow. Okay. So I had to do a lot of jumping through hoops immediately built into SQL servers to make sure the initial problem didn't happen. But when I went in the server room, I asked the guy that had one of the infrastructure guys this goes up. Okay, where is where is the I don't remember the name of the SQL Server. Just let me say it was SQL. Oh two. Where is it? I'm not sure it's labeled. They're all labeled right? Now they're not labeled. I go over. This one isn't even on this isn't even on what is this? Oh, and that's that's where he's not. And I've met so many infrastructure people like that. And if any of you are infrastructure, people that are listening to this, I'm sorry if this offends you, but there's just so much of this shade tree mechanic kind of thing. It's Oh, it's screwed up. Oh, do this, do that. Oh, it's fixed. Fine, move on to the next thing where I go, Wait a minute, how can I not make sure this never happens again. And I have some infrastructure guys now that are like that. The ones that were here when I took the job, we're not like that. And consequently, they're not no longer here that didn't happen right away. But over time, but you know, we have a virtualized environment, we have the disaster recovery, I feel really good about our infrastructure, we have redundancy in all areas, I feel good about our business continuity and disaster recovery. So what keeps me up at night now is security. Because nobody, if anybody you have on here ever tells you, they're not worried about that, then they need to find another job because they better get worried about it. But I don't care. I don't care. If you spend 90% of a giant ID budget on security, your biggest chance of being down in my mind is a security vulnerability. You should never stop working on it. And then you can only afford to pay so much into this business. And you pay what you can and you work hard on it. But you still should. That should be what worries you. That is what worries me. I mean, I think we do a lot we get we're getting. Yeah, I mean, that's the bottom line. And it will be that way forever, I'm afraid.

Jeff 31:15

Yeah. Thanks. You're right. I'll tell you what, Alex, one of the things but john, first off, john, you should be commended. I think I mean, I love that you took five years to develop this tool. I love that you are patient and your company would let you be patient so that you could learn and build exactly what they need. And then kudos to you. This has been like 13 years. So you build something that now sustained the test of time for 13 years at a pandemic, I think you should be very proud that applaud yourself and your company and your management team for your efforts. So I just wanted to throw that in there, Alex?

Alex 31:48

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it. Security is on top of everybody's mind, you saw the CIOs or VPS. And directors we talked to and it is security seems to be top of mind for everything. I mean, that's why Jeff and his and his group are putting together a security, you know, series because it is top of mind. And no matter how secure you are, there's still the human element, right? And that's one of the biggest vulnerabilities is just human error, clicking on that link in the email, or if it's nefarious, and they bring in a USB drive and plug it in, you know, you're just, it's always gonna be there. And it's just, how much do you want to spend on it right, and figuring out what that number, what that looks like, and how, how to keep it going. So we've got a few more minutes here, what I like to, you know, just touch on really quickly for next two or three minutes is just your view on security and what you've done to not like giving away like what you do, because obviously that's a security risk, but what you what you see as things that are working as a, you know, good progress being made in the security realm.

John 32:56

Yeah, I mean, the first thing that if someone's just getting into this, and I'm hard to believe how many companies there are out there that have a substantial computer network and really don't do a whole lot is to get yourself assessed. And the first one hurt my feelings. Because, you know, security has been a learning process for me at this job, because in my old job as an IT director, we were very tight loops. I mean, initially, we had a couple we had, we use some, some corporate, it was called mainframe computer resources. But we had dedicated line between us in them, you could they won't get the ACA, T one line to get in, and it was, you know, just us access to it. And it was a long time there before we even provided internet access and, and just wasn't, you know, we were on a Vax computer system, it's not something that was gonna get hacked into No, it wasn't a target. It wasn't a target platform. That was all Unix stuff and the beginning of windows and to me windows then and I thought of it for the most part as a joke. Later on, we had to expose a little bit more. So we got into security, some but it has just really blown up, you know, in the time that I wasn't in charge of that, remember? So the first my first I don't know, a probably 10 years, maybe even more here, I wasn't doing it. Well, that's when it was going all over the place. So, so I come into it, we get assessed and I was always of the opinion. You just fortify your your perimeter. And that's all you worry about, oh no, the first thing they wanted to do, okay, well, we're going to attack your your outside, you know, everything that you've got to expose to the outside world. But then you need to let us come in and we're going to get on your network and we're going to see what we can find out and do. I'm like, Well, why would you do if you think that security means keeping people out? You, you're crazy, you're gonna they were they're gonna get in. So I was like, Oh, well, I already know we got a lot to do. And we've been doing that and I'm getting reassessed again and addressing that is your best way of knowing is to get it someone else and and I actually liked the idea of getting different companies, if someone wants to do an assessment and then tell you, we would like to, as part of this come back at a much cheaper rate and reassess you at the end, that's great. But what if you wait, wait, after you've done all this, you know, remediation of these issues, bring somebody different in and have them come at you and see what they come up with, because you're just going to get better and better and better. Beyond that we have we is to get some type of, I'll call it Soc. But that's being used for a lot of different things. But a company that puts a device on your network that sees what's hitting you from the outside, what's going on in the inside, and looks for malicious patterns, looks for, you know, things that we never knew, you know, okay, we for we have a, I've had firewalls since you know, forever, but when we didn't even know when we would have the hidden, someone trying to get in. So he just blocked them entirely. So basically, because we're a US based company, we have the ability pretty much to block anything outside of this country, except for the few customers that we have. And we have several but you know, a lot of the fishing industry is out of Norway and of, you know, things of that nature. So we have to allow certain certain IPS, but we work with them. And we're even willing to do things to help them to get a fixed IP address, for instance, you know, anything to make it so that we don't have to open up the entire country. But we don't have any, like customers in China, or in Russia, which are the only two names you hear, you know, 90% of the time when it's in, you know, a big deal. So, I mean, they they're, they're like the military, they run, they look at all this stuff they use, they say they use artificial intelligence machine learning. Again, I always put tick marks around that when people say it, because it's just such a hot buzzword, and every computer system has some smarts to it, even if it's just adding one plus two or eight is not equal b, right? If this is true or not, but they just treat it they got these guys all came from military from that part of military, you know, and they treat it all like a war and they open up situation of documents and suggest us to do stuff. And we just keep getting stronger and stronger through those two ways of getting input from someone outside of the company telling you you should do something different here. One that can actually see what's going on inside of us all the time. And another one who comes in and tries to penetrate our defenses. It caused us I mean, the things I learned were amazing. I mean, we were using Microsoft Terminal Services. Well, none of the past user IDs and passwords that were being sent on our network are were encrypted. I'm like, who designed something like that? Why would you? How can you have user IDs and passwords that aren't encrypted? So anyhow, so we had a lot to do. I mean, we replaced that with Citrix, I'm talking some of these investments were healthy, but they needed to be done. You know, when I was when I was happy with our infrastructure and knew that our servers weren't going to go down next Friday. It was the next thing I had to go to him with. Because if he didn't if he didn't want to do it, if the owner, owner, son runs the company, so it's really a very small group of people that are making the decisions on these investments. So if you want to keep running, this is what we need to do next. And he came right. He came right on, right.

Alex 38:56

Yeah, very good. Well, I tell you what, Josh, it's been absolutely great having you on and, and I love this security topic. And we could probably talk for another hour just just on the security and how it's changing. But I love I love what you said, you know, get assessed get assessed from different companies, right. It's like go to the doctor and getting multiple opinions. And then having that, you know, that managed sock, someone watching the traffic trying to come in watching the we've all we've all seen that map of you know, the attacks coming to the US from Russia and China and these other areas in the Eastern Bloc, right, just bombarding different areas. But it's been an absolute pleasure having you on like I said, and thanks. Thank you for jumping on and enjoy the enjoy the long weekend. hopefully get out there and get some more fishing done. And get some more sea bass for the wife. And you know, we appreciate it.

John 39:45

Yeah, it's great discussion. Thanks, Joe. And thank you.

Jeff 39:49

Thanks, Alex.

Alex 39:50

We got it. Well, that wraps up the show for today. Thanks for joining and don't forget to join us next week as we bring another guest in to talk about the trends around cloud contact center and customer experience. Also, you can find us at Adler, advisors.com, LinkedIn, for your favorite podcast platform. We'll see you next week on another cloud podcast.