3130: From Chaos to Continuity: How Businesses Can Prepare for IT Disruptions

[00:00:03] Have you ever wondered how businesses can prepare for and recover from unexpected IT disruptions?

[00:00:11] All while navigating the complexities of a data-driven world that we all find ourselves in.

[00:00:17] Well, in today's episode, I'm going to be joined by Jeff Hickson, VP of Solutions Architecture for a company called Lakeside Software.

[00:00:27] And together, I want to explore the role of data in building IT resilience.

[00:00:33] IT resilience has been a huge business buzzword throughout 2024 and it will continue to be so in 2025.

[00:00:41] So I want to learn more about that and also explore this fascinating concept of autonomous IT

[00:00:46] and why organizations must move from reactive responses to proactive, predictive and even self-healing systems.

[00:00:57] So what are some of the lessons we can learn from the events of 2024?

[00:01:02] And what can we implement in 2025?

[00:01:06] Well, time to get today's guest on to find out more.

[00:01:09] So a massive warm welcome to the show.

[00:01:13] Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:18] Yeah, my name is Jeff Hickson.

[00:01:19] I am the global VP of Solution Architects here at Lakeside.

[00:01:23] Prior to coming to Lakeside, I was in the trenches of IT.

[00:01:27] I dealt with a large international steel company, managed their infrastructure, their networks, their systems,

[00:01:33] as well as being a partner and an MSP in the Detroit area in Michigan in the States.

[00:01:39] So I've seen lots of different things and experienced lots of different issues and problems.

[00:01:45] As I progressed through my career, obviously, with a lot of IT folk,

[00:01:49] I got really tired of the 24-7 and being on call and whatnot, and I found Lakeside.

[00:01:55] And I've been with Lakeside now for 14 years, and I've helped thousands of customers through their IT challenges,

[00:02:00] their issues, their struggles.

[00:02:03] I've seen lots of different things, experienced lots of different things,

[00:02:06] and lots of organizations feel that they're snowflakes.

[00:02:11] And while there are definitely snowflakes that are out there in the organization,

[00:02:14] if you're working through thousands of enterprise customers,

[00:02:17] I find that they have very similar issues and problems that are happening across all organizations.

[00:02:22] And that's really what I'm about.

[00:02:24] I'm definitely about a how-can-I-help type of an attitude and mentality,

[00:02:28] being able to assist companies and customers that are fighting the good fight in the trenches

[00:02:33] and being able to solve their IT issues.

[00:02:35] So that's kind of what I bring to the table in regards to Lakeside.

[00:02:39] And again, I've been here for 14 years, so very much how can I help?

[00:02:44] I love that.

[00:02:45] And as someone that's also spent many years on call, out of hours, enjoying the weekends,

[00:02:50] I feel your pain.

[00:02:51] I'm also a recovering change manager as well.

[00:02:54] So when I hear things like that crowd strike global outage

[00:02:58] or poor change management responsible for software updates that have gone wrong

[00:03:03] and took down retailers around the world at the same time,

[00:03:06] it seems that so much has changed and so much has stayed the same

[00:03:10] because tech unpredictability continues to challenge businesses.

[00:03:14] But I'm curious, from everything that you've seen here too,

[00:03:17] or you're from a similar background, how do you see the role of data evolving

[00:03:21] to not only prevent but expedite recovery from IT disruptions?

[00:03:26] And were there any specific lessons that you learned from responding to CrowdStrike's global outage

[00:03:31] to name but one of so many different outages we've seen this year?

[00:03:36] Yeah, I mean, not only CrowdStrike, but again, there's so many ransomware attacks

[00:03:40] and other security things that happen that it's causing major outages and major disruptions.

[00:03:45] Obviously, here in the States, we've had some issues with ransomware attacks on healthcare systems

[00:03:50] that have blocked out people from getting their prescription drugs to scheduling appointments and what have you.

[00:03:57] So regardless of the outage and CrowdStrike and ransomware attacks, they're not going to be the last ones.

[00:04:03] There are going to be more, as we know. And it's how do you recover from it?

[00:04:07] And how do you address what needs to be addressed quickly and most effectively?

[00:04:11] It definitely does come down to data invisibility.

[00:04:14] In situations of an outage, we need to understand where do we start?

[00:04:18] And when you're thinking of a large enterprise organizations,

[00:04:21] and even not necessarily large enterprise organizations,

[00:04:24] you definitely have your priorities of where you need to get systems back online very quickly

[00:04:29] to handle the day-to-day business and mission-critical infrastructure.

[00:04:33] So in regards to like the CrowdStrike specifically,

[00:04:36] is being able to identify those systems that have been impacted.

[00:04:39] Because as we know, some systems were coming back online, some systems weren't.

[00:04:43] And then being able to identify those systems that are mission-critical to the business.

[00:04:47] When we think about aspects of like airports as an example,

[00:04:51] how do we get those planes in the sky or keep those planes in the sky?

[00:04:55] How do we keep traffic moving?

[00:04:57] And then being able to understand, did you fully recover from the issue?

[00:05:02] When you think about CrowdStrike or any type of outage,

[00:05:06] when you think about thousands of systems,

[00:05:08] it's very easy to miss systems.

[00:05:11] And being able to quickly identify, again, those systems that you fully recovered from,

[00:05:16] those systems that still need your attention is going to be important.

[00:05:19] And the only way that you're going to be able to do that is with data and the visibility across your estate.

[00:05:24] And one word that we've heard a lot of this year, and we will continue to hear in 2025, is resilience.

[00:05:31] And one of the things that put you on my radar was your recent IT Resilience eBook.

[00:05:35] So from everything that you've seen, everything that you've written down to help other people as well,

[00:05:40] and business leaders, what trends and strategies do you see shaping the future of resilience in IT operations?

[00:05:47] And are there any revealing insights you can share from what you've seen there too?

[00:05:52] Yeah, and I think it's important when we think about IT resilience, this is not an overnight thing.

[00:05:57] Yeah.

[00:05:58] It's a journey.

[00:05:59] And if anybody's thinking that they're going to be able to flip the switch

[00:06:02] and all of a sudden make your IT department more resilient or your systems more resilient, it's a fallacy.

[00:06:10] I think it's important to understand that we need to take a methodical approach in regards to how do we become IT resilient.

[00:06:20] And in the past, and even recently, I think the concept of IT resiliency is security.

[00:06:27] We throw more and more security products out there.

[00:06:29] We want to protect our systems.

[00:06:31] And to be fair, I think sometimes security can get a little overboard.

[00:06:36] And the idea of a secure environment is a system that you can't use.

[00:06:41] And while security is definitely important, productivity is equally important.

[00:06:45] So from the executives and the C-level people that are out there listening to this, I think it's important to understand that, yes, security is important and it is something that you need to fund.

[00:06:55] But also, IT and productivity is also something equally that you need to balance and you need to fund.

[00:07:02] And when we think about IT resiliency, it's a journey and it starts with becoming more proactive.

[00:07:09] It's easy to continue to stay the way you are and be reactive.

[00:07:15] And that costs a lot of money and it costs a lot of issues.

[00:07:19] And it doesn't make you very resilient because you're always fighting fires.

[00:07:22] So your first thing that you got to do is you got to move into proactive.

[00:07:26] And as you start working through proactive IT, you start moving into predictive and being able to say, hey, this shouldn't be this way or things are starting to go sideways.

[00:07:37] And we're starting to predict issues before they become issues through AI and ML.

[00:07:43] And then as you continue the journey, you move into autonomous IT and you start trusting the data.

[00:07:50] You start trusting the things that you're seeing in your environment.

[00:07:53] And we're creating automations to fix those low hanging fruit.

[00:07:56] You fix those problems that are happening, which really drives again more proactive IT and becomes more resilient.

[00:08:03] And with that becomes more insights and you're becoming more insightful and being able to understand and make business decisions about what you need to do, what you need to change in your environment.

[00:08:14] If you are not evolving your IT, if you're not changing your IT, you're going to be left behind.

[00:08:20] IT is not meant to be static.

[00:08:22] Technology is constantly changing.

[00:08:24] Threats are constantly changing.

[00:08:25] And if you're not investing in those changes and you're not evolving your IT, you will get left behind.

[00:08:32] As you make those insightful decisions and those business decisions, you're going to become more optimized.

[00:08:38] You're not going to have 15, 20 different security agents.

[00:08:41] You're not going to have tech stacks overstepping and standing on each other and causing additional conflicts and impact productivity.

[00:08:49] Which then, of course, moves you into simplification of your IT stack.

[00:08:53] When a lot of times when we don't have the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing in large enterprise organizations, we start adding a lot of complexity into our IT.

[00:09:05] Which causes a lot more opportunities for impact or outages.

[00:09:11] Because again, the left hand and the right hand aren't necessarily in full sync.

[00:09:14] And then after you start simplifying it, the last thing is strategize.

[00:09:19] To really have IT resilience, you need to be a thought leader and you need to be strategic.

[00:09:27] You can't be reactive.

[00:09:28] You need to understand where IT is going, where it's evolving.

[00:09:32] To making those business decisions around AI and ML.

[00:09:36] Obviously a very hot topic.

[00:09:38] But also things such as even NPUs.

[00:09:41] Looking at hardware refreshes.

[00:09:43] Do I need these NPUs?

[00:09:45] How can I take advantage of these NPUs?

[00:09:47] So you're looking at all of the data.

[00:09:50] You're looking at the visibility that you're providing and you're making those strategic business decisions.

[00:09:54] Which will make your IT become a lot more resilient.

[00:09:58] Because you're not always in reaction mode.

[00:10:01] I absolutely love that.

[00:10:03] I'd love to probably take you back a few steps on that.

[00:10:05] Because you did mention it is a journey.

[00:10:07] I completely agree.

[00:10:09] And I think a proactive versus reactive IT is a pivotal shift on that journey.

[00:10:15] But of course, knowing what you need to do and where to start are two very different things.

[00:10:20] So anybody at the beginning of that journey that may be listening to your advice here.

[00:10:25] Is there anything else you can add on how to adopt a proactive IT approach?

[00:10:29] Because it is a pretty big change.

[00:10:30] And also what are the measurable benefits of a transition like that?

[00:10:34] Again, what are you seeing here?

[00:10:36] Yeah.

[00:10:37] So when I do POCs and that for organizations, it's a lot of around visibility.

[00:10:44] And not knowing what you don't know.

[00:10:47] And there's been many times that I've gotten into an environment.

[00:10:51] And the customer is like, yes, we know our environment inside and out.

[00:10:55] And literally within an hour of having our solution installed,

[00:10:59] I'm providing insights to things that they had no clue were even happening.

[00:11:03] They're like, we didn't know that was happening.

[00:11:04] And we didn't even know that was configured that way.

[00:11:07] So I think in order to move to proactive, you have to know what you don't know.

[00:11:11] And you have to have that complete visibility of your environment.

[00:11:16] The larger the organization, the harder that is.

[00:11:20] Nobody's going to know what's happening on thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of devices.

[00:11:26] And the only way that you're going to have that type of visibility is to find a solution that has the depth, breadth and history of data to be able to provide that visibility.

[00:11:36] So when we start talking about where do I start is first and foremost, you have to have the visibility, the data collection, and that data needs to tell you a story.

[00:11:47] Once that data starts telling you a story, you start identifying those issues that are most prevalent, most impactful impacting the highest number of users.

[00:11:57] That is where you start.

[00:12:00] That is where you start.

[00:12:00] And with SysTrack, we make it easy by using like a quadrant type of a system where things in the upper right hand quadrant of our prevent solution are those issues that are impacting the highest number of users and are most impactful.

[00:12:16] And what we do is we start working from one side of the quadrant over to the other side of the quadrant and start fixing those big issues.

[00:12:24] Again, this is not an overnight solution.

[00:12:27] You're not going to boil the ocean.

[00:12:29] You're not going to fix all of the problems overnight, but you start with the things that really start moving the needle.

[00:12:35] And then you start working towards those onesie twosie types of issues.

[00:12:40] And I know another area that you're passionate about is the need for IT to shift left and focus on more strategic issues, more value add activities.

[00:12:49] So again, we bring in AI and automation in here to balance that shift.

[00:12:54] Can you ensure how that happens, especially while ensuring that those routine problems are resolved effectively?

[00:13:00] Yeah, anything you can shine a light on here?

[00:13:02] Because it's kind of the IT utopia that we've all been dreaming about forever, that monitoring and all that other stuff and routine tasks every morning are taken care of so we can focus on more value add activities.

[00:13:13] But anything you can share around how you see AI and automation finally achieving this?

[00:13:18] Yeah, and I'm a big process person.

[00:13:21] I started my world in IT of just looking at process and saying, you know what, this doesn't make sense.

[00:13:27] This is really inefficient.

[00:13:28] This is taking a lot longer than it should be back to when I first started in Windows 95 and going through 50 disk guts and like, why am I doing this?

[00:13:37] There's there has to be a better way.

[00:13:39] And I think AI and ML is really bringing that back to the forefront of especially with automations and fixing issues.

[00:13:47] Happy signals has done a survey from 2019 to 2023, and they've got 9 million responses from IT incidents.

[00:13:56] 13% of the tickets cause 80% of the production outages.

[00:14:06] So what does that mean?

[00:14:08] Looking at the data from them, 69% of the tickets are very easy.

[00:14:14] They're the remedial things.

[00:14:15] They take less than an hour to fix.

[00:14:18] And actually even more than that, I think it's like almost 55% of the systems take less than a minute to fix.

[00:14:25] So those are the types of things you just need to get off your table.

[00:14:30] We need to have automations to handle that 69%.

[00:14:35] Get rid of the noise, get rid of those onesie, twosie types of problems that are happening in your environment.

[00:14:41] So you have more time to focus on that 13% of the problems that take days to potentially fix and are causing 80% of the production outages.

[00:14:52] That is where you need to really start shifting left.

[00:14:56] And using AI and ML, one, you can get rid of that 69% through automations.

[00:15:02] But then also you start attacking that 13% that are taking days and you reduce that down to hours for a mean time to resolution.

[00:15:12] And before you came on the podcast today, I was reading a story on the website about a large international bank that had brought new monitors and sent technicians out to replace them, only to discover they didn't have the right cables for the monitors.

[00:15:25] And a simple, tiny oversight that actually forced them to reinstall old monitors, manually inventory cables, buy new cables and send out technicians twice.

[00:15:35] And a costly mistake like that cost the bank millions, all for the sake of a $20 cable and cause it all through a simple lack of data visibility.

[00:15:45] So bringing this back to you and your work here, how do you address such challenges and what industries benefit most from the kind of visibility that we're talking about here that could make or save millions of dollars?

[00:15:58] I'll be honest with you, it'll be any industry whatsoever.

[00:16:01] Yeah.

[00:16:31] How many times I've seen something similar.

[00:16:35] Because again, when you have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands devices, there's a lot of assumptions that are being made.

[00:16:42] And even a $20 mistake at scale is absolutely detrimental to the business.

[00:16:49] Not only from a time perspective, but also from a cost perspective.

[00:16:53] So again, being able to have that depth, breadth and history of data to be able to tell your story and to make strategic business decisions.

[00:17:02] Which again, if you remember back to building an IT resilience plan, that is one of the core aspects is strategic.

[00:17:11] You have to make business decisions.

[00:17:13] Maybe it's a monitor cable.

[00:17:15] Maybe it's buying new devices with NPUs.

[00:17:18] Maybe it's trying to figure out what size of hardware your users actually need versus what they want.

[00:17:25] Do I really need a $2,000 graphics card and eight cores and 64 gig of memory?

[00:17:31] Well, no.

[00:17:32] I'm a task worker and I primarily only use Outlook and Zoom calls.

[00:17:36] Well, okay.

[00:17:37] I don't need all of that.

[00:17:39] So being able to understand the user's needs versus wants will really drive ROI across all industries.

[00:17:47] And same kind of concept for those kiosks where an employee doesn't necessarily sit behind the keyboard and our customers are there.

[00:17:55] Those kiosks are having issues.

[00:17:57] They're having problems.

[00:17:58] They're blue screening or whatever the case may be.

[00:18:01] That's costing your business money.

[00:18:03] It's costing you customers.

[00:18:06] And I suspect we have set off more than a few light bulb moments for business leaders and IT techies listening with similar stories from the tech trenches out there.

[00:18:15] So with endpoint data collection playing such a key role in IT resilience, I'm curious, what are some of the most overlooked advantages of collecting and analyzing endpoint data in real time?

[00:18:28] Because I suspect you've got a few stories there too.

[00:18:30] Yeah, and it's a lot of assumptions.

[00:18:32] We think that we understand and we know our business.

[00:18:36] I've been working at this organization for 10 plus years.

[00:18:40] There isn't anything that I know about it.

[00:18:41] But you think about how often and how quickly systems evolve.

[00:18:47] It's time that you deploy a system to a user, it's already changed.

[00:18:51] They've either added things to it or they've made changes to it.

[00:18:55] They've installed software.

[00:18:56] Whether you think they can or they can't.

[00:18:58] The amount of shadow IT that I see in enterprise organizations that think they have their systems locked down is amazing.

[00:19:05] And I think it surprises a lot of organizations just how much shadow IT is actually out there.

[00:19:11] So again, by the time you've deployed it, it's already changed.

[00:19:14] The other very important aspect of data collection is the frequency of you collecting it.

[00:19:21] If you're looking for a solution out there to tell your story around your IT, data is king.

[00:19:28] And if you're collecting a couple hundred data points every five or 10 minutes, you are going to miss a lot of things.

[00:19:36] Everybody that's listening on this call, think about this.

[00:19:40] You have your laptop, your desktop, or whatever the case may be.

[00:19:44] Think of how many things can change, happen, or be impactful within a five or 10 minute time period.

[00:19:53] If you're only collecting data every five or 10 minutes, think of everything that could have been missed during that time frame.

[00:20:02] So if I'm, again, collecting data every 10 minutes and I bury my CPU for five minutes, right?

[00:20:10] You know, 100%.

[00:20:10] Well, averaged over 10 minutes, it's only 50%.

[00:20:13] There was no impact.

[00:20:15] Everything's fine.

[00:20:17] So that's a big differentiator for Lakeside.

[00:20:19] And it's the reason why I've been here for 14 years.

[00:20:22] We're collecting over 10,000 different data points every 15 seconds.

[00:20:29] So when we're talking about delivering an IT story and being able to provide that visibility, it's not only the depth of the data, it's the breadth of the data as well as keeping the history.

[00:20:43] And by default, we keep that history for three years so we can start understanding the trends.

[00:20:48] How is our business evolving?

[00:20:50] When we're going down this journey of IT resiliency, how are we doing?

[00:20:55] Are we doing better?

[00:20:57] Are we providing a better end user experience?

[00:20:59] Are we reducing our IT costs?

[00:21:02] Yes or no?

[00:21:03] And being able to quantify that is going to be very important.

[00:21:06] So data is key.

[00:21:08] And in your experience, from everything that you've seen, every customer conversation that you've heard, I've got to ask, what are you noticing?

[00:21:17] Or what are you observing the biggest challenges organizations are facing in achieving this fully autonomous IT dream that we're talking about here?

[00:21:26] And how are you, and indeed your approach at Lakeside, how are you helping customers overcome some of these obstacles?

[00:21:33] Because I would imagine it'll be something that everybody's experiencing right now.

[00:21:37] And I'd love to hear more about what you're seeing and how to overcome them.

[00:21:41] AI, I think, has got a lot of people excited.

[00:21:44] Yeah.

[00:21:45] We also have a lot of people scared.

[00:21:46] And I think the biggest thing right now and the biggest obstacle that we're seeing around fully autonomous IT is trust.

[00:21:57] There is a big trust issue of another CrowdStrike issue.

[00:22:02] I go out there and run this fully autonomous solution.

[00:22:07] Does it break something?

[00:22:08] Do I bring down my entire organization?

[00:22:11] Do I cause an outage?

[00:22:12] So I think the trust aspect is a big hurdle that organizations have to overcome.

[00:22:19] Trust is earned.

[00:22:21] It's not given.

[00:22:22] So in order to get trust, you have to have the data and the visibility.

[00:22:27] And you have to have a methodical approach in how to become autonomous.

[00:22:33] Again, it's not a thing that happens overnight.

[00:22:36] It is a journey that you take.

[00:22:38] So you look at the data.

[00:22:41] You review the issue.

[00:22:43] You build the automation or you use an automation.

[00:22:46] But you don't blanketly push it out to everybody.

[00:22:50] You push it to a handful of users or a handful of systems.

[00:22:53] Did it truly fix the issue?

[00:22:55] Did I have any negative impacts?

[00:22:57] Yes.

[00:22:58] No.

[00:22:58] I roll it out to a broader set of users.

[00:23:01] Do I have the same results?

[00:23:03] Yes.

[00:23:03] No.

[00:23:04] Then we do mass healing.

[00:23:06] I see it happening to hundreds or thousands of users.

[00:23:10] I push it out to all of them.

[00:23:12] Do I quantifiably fix the issue?

[00:23:15] Yes.

[00:23:15] No.

[00:23:16] And if the answer is yes, and we now have built that trust through a methodical approach,

[00:23:21] now we let a solution like Systrack fully automate that.

[00:23:26] When we see this issue, we know this automation resolves this issue.

[00:23:31] Let the solution go out there and automatically fix it.

[00:23:34] But that user should not have to be connected to a network.

[00:23:39] A lot of users are working remote.

[00:23:41] Sometimes they are off any network.

[00:23:43] That solution should be able to remediate issues even while the user is 100% offline,

[00:23:50] which is again a big differentiator for Systrack is we understand users aren't always well connected,

[00:23:57] but yet they still are impacted and we still need to help them help themselves and or fix issues while they're offline.

[00:24:05] That is the methodical approach that you're going to take to a fully autonomous IT.

[00:24:11] Trust, but verify.

[00:24:13] And make it a journey.

[00:24:15] And we've talked a lot today about the importance of that journey and the key elements of resilience,

[00:24:21] data, trust and process.

[00:24:23] And another big word is balance.

[00:24:26] And I think that balance between cost efficiency and resilience has famously often caused tension

[00:24:32] for IT leaders and business stakeholders.

[00:24:34] What strategies or indeed technologies do you think can maybe help organizations reduce costs

[00:24:40] without compromising resilience?

[00:24:42] Again, balance seems to be the key word here.

[00:24:45] It is.

[00:24:47] I think you can't reduce costs without a resilient IT.

[00:24:52] You think about a lot of the stuff that we talked about on this call.

[00:24:56] If you don't have a resilient IT, you're firefighting.

[00:25:00] You're spending 69% of the tickets on remedial things.

[00:25:05] Those are human hours.

[00:25:06] We're wasting a lot of money on things that we could just be automating and fixing automatically.

[00:25:11] We are making poor business decisions by spending money on wrong cables for monitors or making

[00:25:18] a wrong business decision on hardware or software, whatever the case may be, because we don't have

[00:25:23] the data or the visibility to have that resilient IT.

[00:25:26] And then we start making guesses and poor business decisions that cost the company millions of dollars.

[00:25:33] So I understand that there needs to be a balance, but you need to also have a resilient IT to reduce your cost.

[00:25:41] If not, you're just throwing money out the window on Band-Aids.

[00:25:46] So make it a focus of your organization like you do with security.

[00:25:51] And again, I'm not discounting the purpose and the need for security in this day and age,

[00:25:56] but your IT resiliency is equally as important as your security posture because you can have

[00:26:04] as secure environment as you want in your environment.

[00:26:07] You are still going to have IT outages.

[00:26:11] You are still going to have IT issues that don't have anything to do with security and cause major productivity

[00:26:19] impacts and outages, not only to your users inside of your organization, but also to your customers.

[00:26:26] And think of that cost ramification of that outage and that to your customer as well.

[00:26:33] And as we said at the very beginning of our conversation today, resilience has been a big word throughout 2024.

[00:26:39] And how do you see the world of IT resilience evolving in 2025, especially with trends like AI adoption,

[00:26:48] hybrid work and increased cybersecurity threats all almost colliding?

[00:26:53] And also what's next for yourself and indeed Lakeside Software in addressing some of these challenges

[00:26:59] that every business in every industry are going to be challenged by?

[00:27:03] So I think for us specifically, we have the view of fix it, what's fix it for everyone?

[00:27:11] As I said before, organizations, as much as they think that they're snowflakes, they're using the same computers as other organizations.

[00:27:22] They're using the same software as other organizations.

[00:27:24] Yes, there are one-off homegrown applications that are in organizations for sure.

[00:27:30] But overall, they're not really doing anything different than what other organizations are doing.

[00:27:36] Where organizations are accelerating is don't try to reinvent the wheel.

[00:27:43] Evolve and move along with technology.

[00:27:46] If you're resistant to change, you are going to get left behind.

[00:27:51] AI is not an if.

[00:27:53] It's a when it comes into your organization.

[00:27:57] Machine learning is going to be very critical on your journey.

[00:28:00] It's impossible for any human to review millions of rows of data and interpret it and make a business decision.

[00:28:11] We're going to use AI and ML to interpret that data and make suggestions for humans to validate.

[00:28:19] But in order for us to move forward, you have to be open to change.

[00:28:25] And so for us, we see systems as self-healing.

[00:28:28] Autonomous IT is a goal and a journey that we hope to get organizations to.

[00:28:35] We see a lot of issues that are happening across organizations.

[00:28:38] We have over 1,300 sensors today sifting through our data and looking for issues.

[00:28:46] Those issues are common from customer to customer.

[00:28:49] And if we have an automation that fixes it for one customer, why wouldn't we fix it for all of our customers?

[00:28:55] And that is the journey that Lakeside is taking.

[00:28:58] I think that is a powerful message to end our conversation today.

[00:29:02] But for anyone listening that would like to continue that conversation, whether it be finding out more information about Lakeside Software,

[00:29:09] some of the topics we discussed today, or connecting with you personally,

[00:29:13] if anybody listening would like to bounce a few ideas around, where would you like to point everyone listening?

[00:29:18] So in general perspective, obviously lakesidesoftware.com is our website.

[00:29:23] Feel free to go out there.

[00:29:24] You can request a demo or request a contact.

[00:29:27] You can find me on LinkedIn as well, too, at Lakeside Software.

[00:29:32] I'm happy to have conversations.

[00:29:34] Again, I've seen lots of different things.

[00:29:37] I'm willing to further the conversation with anybody that would like to have that.

[00:29:41] I think it's important that we continue the conversation.

[00:29:45] And it's not just about selling software.

[00:29:48] And again, while I am very biased to Lakeside and I've been here for 14 years,

[00:29:52] and I do truly feel that our solution provides the best data in the industry by far and the visibility,

[00:30:00] I like to have the conversations of how can I help, what I've seen in other organizations,

[00:30:05] and how I can help you and where we can go together.

[00:30:08] Love that.

[00:30:09] I'll get links added to everything to make it nice and easy for people to find out more information.

[00:30:13] And we covered so much today from the ongoing tech unpredictability in the business world

[00:30:19] to how data is pivotal in preventing and recovering from IT disruptions

[00:30:24] and also the importance of IT resilience and that path to autonomous IT that is finally being made possible.

[00:30:32] I'd love to stay in touch with you, Jeff, and see how things do evolve in 2025

[00:30:36] and bring you back on to revisit some of this.

[00:30:39] But more than anything, thank you for shining a light on this today.

[00:30:42] Thank you for your time.

[00:30:44] I really appreciate it.

[00:30:44] And again, feel free to reach out to me if anybody has any additional questions.

[00:30:48] I'm happy to help.

[00:30:49] So thank you, everyone, for joining me on this exploration of IT resilience

[00:30:54] and a journey toward autonomous IT.

[00:30:57] And big thank you, of course, to Jeff Hickson for sharing some eye-opening insights with us today

[00:31:02] from the critical role of data visibility in preventing costly mistakes

[00:31:07] to the path that organizations can take toward building trust in automated solutions.

[00:31:14] But one question remains.

[00:31:16] How prepared are you and your organization to embrace the shift to proactive and predictive IT strategies?

[00:31:25] Love to hear your thoughts on this one.

[00:31:27] How do you see data and automation shaping the future of IT in your industry?

[00:31:32] Well, connect with me on LinkedIn, just at Neil C. Hughes.

[00:31:35] Love to hear your thoughts on this one.

[00:31:37] And also, cordially invite you, personally invite you to join me again tomorrow

[00:31:41] where we'll do all this again with another guest and another topic

[00:31:45] where hopefully I will once again be able to give you a valuable takeaway

[00:31:48] around the world of business, IT, technology, and everything in between.

[00:31:54] But that is it for today.

[00:31:55] So I look forward to speaking with you all again bright and early tomorrow.

[00:31:58] Bye for now.