Google + JumpCloud: Just Changed the Enterprise Productivity Game

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Text Drug tv. Yeah, I haven't had this gentleman on in way too long.

I bet. It's Jesus. Gotta be almost a year, I'm gonna guess.

I think so. Yep. He's my friend Greg Keller.

Greg is a co-founder and the CTO over at JumpCloud, a company I'm been involved with and known of and intimately familiar with, I think since they were founded. Greg, it's good to have you yarn here, man. It's been a long time.

Alan, you don't send me flowers anymore. I was just gonna say, we're going to do the Neil Diamond thing, huh? Question is, which one of us is Barbara, but, uh, but, but seriously, you know, it could be one of two things.

Either you guys had nothing going on worthy to talk about, or you've been so damn busy that you haven't had a chance to catch your breath. I'm gonna bet on so damn busy you haven't had a chance to catch your breath, man. We've just been sitting on the couch eating our bon bonds and, and you know, just sort of taking it easy.

I, I get it. I get it. I know Raj better than that.

I know you better than that. But anyway, Greg, it, it's great to have you back on. And, um, you know what, for those folks out here maybe who aren't familiar with JumpCloud, let's, let's start there.

You know, I, I give them, give them kind of the quick pitch on JumpCloud and what, what you guys are about. Yeah. I appreciate it.

Um, I'll keep it sort of condensed. Um, your folks, uh, are largely our folks DevOps, it, those that sort of live in this community. So the, the, the, uh, the, the words that I say and the acronyms I may spill out.

Everyone's gonna appreciate they have heard of them. So what is JumpCloud? We're an access control platform.

What does that mean? It means it provides all of your users. And here's an interesting part, Alan, both human and non-human.

So all of your users, the right access to the right resources from the right locations with the right entitlements in the case of humans from a known trusted device. So think about that, and then you start to step back. Okay.

Yeah. There's sort of tools that kind of do this. Yeah.

We use active directory and maybe some multifactor like duo and, ah, I've got some MDMs that help me, like Jamf that help me do device trust on Apple. Oh. And we have Intune for Windows, and you get the soup of products.

What we did is wipe away all of that maddening complexity of different types of tools and shrunk it down into an very elaborate, yet elegant access control platform that covers all of that set of needs that I just described. User provisioning, storing and managing the appropriate identity of those users, getting them the right applications, uh, in front of them, managing their devices, all of that. Um, and that's what, you know, the team and I have built over the last 12, 13 years.

Very cool. And, you know, and you, you mentioned human and non-human, you know, Greg, when I used to think about the non-human element three years ago, five years ago, I would, I would think of IOT connected devices, for instance. Correct?

Yeah. Then I started, you know, with Cloud native, I started thinking if every container has its own unique identity That's right. Right?

And so that was yet another one. But now, you know, that's, that's baby stuff. Now, right now we've got every agent, every AI agent is a unique identity.

MPC servers, uh, excuse me, MCP servers. Yep. You know, all of the, the whole AI thing is, has added yet another layer.

You want to call 'em digital coworkers. I don't really care what you call 'em, but, you know, it's another layer of non-human users. We're gonna talk a lot more about AI and JumpCloud in a, in a second JumpCloud interview today, though, if you don't mind.

I want to zero in on an announcement. You guys may, we've been trying to get, get you on here with the holidays. It was hard.

This announcement, I'm going to guess came out around, I don't know, Thanksgiving time, maybe a little before. Yeah, Roughly. Yeah.

Um, I know it was a, it was a, uh, a project that you'd worked on for some time. Partnering with Google JumpCloud is, now, I don't, you know what? I don't want to take the words outta your mouth.

You tell us what JumpCloud is now regarding Google. Yeah. Um, thank you for just the airtime to be able to do this.

We're obviously extremely excited. Um, and yes, um, this has been a, a sort of buildup for the past, a little over a year working with, uh, very senior Google Leadership, both on the business and the, and the engineering side. And frankly, both on the workspace side of the Google business as well as the, uh, Google Cloud side of the business.

So what is it, this announcement by name is called Google's Work Transformation Set, or WTS, it's an interesting name because the whole in inspired thought behind it was to offer technologies that includes Google Workspace and GEM Cloud that would enable companies on legacy software and infrastructure to help transform their IT practices, uh, into a modern cloud version of what they have been using for decades. So if we kind of unpack that and at the expense of, you know, um, going deeper yet this is, you know, totally public. What we're really defining here are companies that, in most cases are leveraging extraordinarily old and sticky Microsoft technologies, principally active directory at the core, uh, and other types of products that when you add it all up, make it extremely hard for companies to be as flexible as they need to when they're bringing in other forms of disparate resources, not just Microsoft resources.

So, in effect, this helps level the playing field for companies to really think about future proofing the types of technologies they want to bring in, where the future proofing is sort of the foundation, the access control and collaboration, foundation, collaboration being Google Workspace, uh, the access control foundation being, of course, JumpCloud and everything that integrates with or lays on top of us can be everything, including Microsoft Technologies. We're just changing the game on the, the, the bedrock by which a company can build a new foundation, a flexible foundation on. And that was really the intention.

And guess what, uh, it, it's working, it's working extremely well. The story resonates, the technology resonates, and the success stories now that we have been in market for quite some time around the globe where this is available resonates. So people are interested to learn how to, uh, more or less start to transition from the, um, kind of the, the nature of the, uh, the bundle, the Microsoft bundle suite, uh, which from a price point extremely tantalizing, but from a product implementation and ex, excuse me, and a security risk surface standpoint, that is sort of what people are really scratching their heads on, given the numerous, um, well-known, well-publicized vulnerabilities and exploits that, uh, run pervasively throughout the Microsoft backbone.

Um, so these are great motivators for companies in this moment to really think about, you know, their pla quote platform, really the foundation of it and how they want to move forward, building out their, um, architecture of it and access control and the types of products that they would like to leverage, uh, across their user base. So in a, in a nutshell, that's sort of like what's going on, and I'll wrap that part of it up by saying, um, this thing called WTS, the Work Transformation Set is a product, it's a Google product. Google sellers have been trained.

They go around the globe, uh, 'cause they have amazing relationships, um, advertising this new concept. Um, and we are their support arm. They just literally sell our technology underpinning Google Workspace and Cloud.

I love it. So, Greg, let me translate a little bit without, without having to be as diplomatic as you are, you know, working for JumpCloud, you know, you gotta give Microsoft some credit. They did an amazing job transitioning to, I, I guess we call it Office 365 now, which is the SaaS office.

They did a tremendous job of transitioning to a SaaS-based cloud-based office offering while still anchoring it to the on-prem. Though you, I guess you could use it as a SaaS offering too, to the legacy active directory and everything that goes with, with active directory. And in, in kind of true Microsoft fashion, it kept you locked in to that Microsoft stack and, and look there, you know, benign, uh, not benign ignorance, but benign indifference people, some people are okay with that.

But if we've learned anything in today's multi-cloud, multi-polar, you know, world is that people wanna avoid lock in, if at all possible. This is true. They go for open, they'll pick open over locked in almost every time.

And, and what Google's done here is they've tried to give people more of an open standards based solution. So whether you still want to use a little ad here, and as you mentioned a little jam there and, and what have you, we want, we want something that's standard space and that, that plays into that whole Google mantra, right? It's, it's not necessarily the do no evil, but it's the whole open piece of it.

And I think that's, that's a solution for today. And tomorrow's time not locked into a Wintel arch architecture from 1998, right? Which is absolutely the reality, I think.

Mm-hmm. Um, you know, it's interesting, the lock in. I don't want to, you know, necessarily create some sort of, you know, arbitrary, fictitious, good versus evil kind of thing.

Nothing like that. And listen, Microsoft is, I have so much respect and I'm in awe of when you look at the $4 trillion in market cap, you know, you know where that's generated by, that's generated by IT revenue and services. Yep.

Even Google can't say that. Um, so I, I had huge respect for that. But the lock-in is interesting, and it's not just about a monetary component, like a bundle or, or a, a very obscure, very punitive licensing arrangements that are known that, you know, Microsoft doesn't make it easy for you to modify the package that you've bought.

You know, things can get bad to me, in my brain, it is about evolving the management of a Microsoft based foundation of an, of a company, which largely is still predicated on buying Windows server licenses to run infrastructure that manages all of this other IT related stuff that, to your point, Alan, that is 19 98, 19 99 all over again, or it never left. And the last three companies I've built, while we had some instances of maybe, you know, my finance team uses Windows. They love that.

And, uh, well, I I, I have not hired a DevOps engineer or anyone in, in that family of user persona or worker persona that could tell you anything about a Windows server. These are folks that have cut their teeth in the cloud on Linux, you know, using highly progressive DevOps, you know, uh, methods and practices that have nothing to do with Windows servers, right? So that's one aspect.

Like we, we often very quickly forget, we still have, you know, millions of of workers who are, are at the right now starting to end the tail end of their careers, which started in, uh, the late eighties in most cases. And the period that they cut their teeth and developed their trade craft on was the, the heyday of Microsoft on premise. And it's never left.

But now we're watching the trail off of that generation of employee, uh, in favor of the millennial focused person who, again, they, they, they don't know for Windows other than their gaming machine at home. So this is now about what their work practices are, right? And what Microsoft has very little to do with that.

Well, and again, to give them credit, you know, why Azure has been the success it is. 'cause they recognized it and they went to Linux, honor Azure, and they offer the same kinds of things, whether it's Kubernetes or absolutely, you know what I mean? Because they recognized that a Windows only cloud was not, it was never gonna be, it wouldn't compete with AWS Google or Oracle or any of those for that matter.

So, you know, I, I think the proof's in the pudding on that. Let's turn now though, Greg, 'cause I don't want to make this about Microsoft and their technology. I want to talk about the JumpCloud and Google technology in here.

So you have to be a Google Workspace customer in order to use this. No. Uh, in fact, um, you can not use any Google or GEM Cloud technology now.

So it, it runs the gamut of those that do have existing Google stuff and they want to upgrade to, you know, hey, we're, we're right at this juncture where it's a good time to rethink the IT architecture. Um, so it doesn't, in, in that way, it doesn't matter. Google's got both ends covered.

Very cool. And whether you're an existing Google Workspace customer, or maybe you're looking at workspace I, and forgive me, I forgot the acronym. You used W-T-S-W-T-S.

Like how is that presented? Is it just a checkbox on the install? Is it truly something I gotta go do separate after I've set up?

What, what's the user experience to incorporate WTS into, yeah, into my Google, Google Works really good question. The, the go-to market motion of Google is very sophisticated. Um, the targets of these are mid-market to, you know, small enterprises and, and large enterprises.

So think of those, uh, those types of, of companies. And most of this is white gloved. Um, so in this particular instance, Google will will advertise and make it known that there is this product.

Uh, and given the complexity of most often removing or migrating away from different older legacy infrastructure, there's usually, and if not exclusively a, uh, a conversation that goes related to how this will go down. Because companies are like, okay, Google, this sounds beautiful. How do we get started?

And you really have to understand the transition. You can't just flip the lights off on a company that is using legacy technology to, for authentication and authorization. That's pretty important, right?

So Google's playbook is very sophisticated on the migration away and the time sequences of moving away from that type of, uh, legacy infrastructure. At the same time, that plays into Google's channel strategy, which is, and again, it's something we don't talk a lot about. Look, Microsoft has a tremendous channel, right?

Huge MSBs, one Of the greatest channels ever created. Uhhuh, maybe Demonstr. I I totally Agree with that.

Yep. But Google has done a hell of a job with their channel and it's par for the course. I'm, you know, at reinvent this year, A WSI forgot what they said.

They have 140,000 partners or something like that. Yeah. On AWS I, I haven't seen Google advertise their numbers, but they have a, a robust channel and a robust channel of integrators who help people get up and running on this.

Greg, a question that comes to my mind is the linkage between moving to this and Google workspace versus transformation to the cloud, right? We're, and we don't call it transformation to the cloud anymore. We call it modernization.

Yes. Right? Yes.

And so how, how tightly coupled is our, is this to like modernization type of transformations? And forgive me for using the word, um, where there not only are we moving to a new IAM, right? Not only are we maybe moving off of office to workspace or something like that, or at least giving people choice, but we're also transitioning at least part of our infrastructure to a cloud.

Uh, so think of it like this. There are variety of motivations. Um, the one and the one that you have defined is most often seen and heard by companies that I kind of talked about before that are in this moment.

Okay? We are, we need to modernize to use the, the now new colloquial. Um, and a lot of them are going through what we see most often are applic internal application upgrades.

And migrations typically on premise. Very often they're, they're antiquated code often run on Windows servers, and they're trying to figure out the way forward to lift and shift this and modernize it. And they're picking, you know, a cloud.

Sometimes it's Azure. Very often we see Amazon, uh, which is a likely target, uh, for these kinds of things. And in that moment, um, in that driver, absolutely.

Like they're, they're, they really look at everything like, how does our workforce behave and, and authenticate? Do we want to provide choice? Like, yeah, we've heard from our engineers that they don't want to be on Windows machines using VMs.

We want them on Linux hardware that they can take home and is portable or MacBooks or something like that. Like companies are going through this transformation process and they look at all those nooks and crannies example, the one that I just mentioned. Um, you know, when you have engineers that are using, you know, their, their hardware is Windows and they need to virtualize or use VDI to enter in, you know, to other, uh, you know, infrastructure for security reasons off a Windows host, um, that's expensive, Alan.

And people are really mystified by how they can use Pam or other secure browser type products that abstracts and uh, uh, basically, you know, reduces the load and predication on, on Microsoft Windows. So we see all of that. But the other side that we see are, you know, scale ups that are what you and I would refer to as, oh, that is a cloud native company.

But guess what? They're also really examining their cost structures. Yep.

Like how much does it take to run our business on Microsoft E three and E five versus like, what if we were to, you know, think about other solutions that are comparable, more secure and likely more economic. And those are real motivators too. You know, not this is this not 2021 where capital is free anymore.

It's not every dime is, is accounted for in most well run companies. Yeah. No, look, Don, it's gives rights to the whole finops thing.

And then Greg, we're running outta time, but we'll continue this conversation. 'cause the next consideration for these companies is, well, but I need a new stack. I ha I need an AI stack.

Yeah. Yes. Right?

And, and that introduces a whole new level of discuss. It's so True. It's so true.

A and, and the whole ai, you know, which AI are we gonna hang our hat on? I don't know. For, for us and for Google, this is a total paradigm shift in that very unique and very specific way of ai.

And it's like, like when you think about legacy, it, it's all about controlling the user, right? You know, very explicitly. Um, but when you look at the possibility of WTS and what we are doing with Google is like empowering the user with ai, right?

Including the, the, not just Google's own variance of ai, but how ai, I'll be, uh, fully above board here. We use Gemini underneath the hood of Gem Cloud's platform to power our internal AI capabilities. So how do we reinforce all of that and help leverage ai, um, you know, as a transformative agent, you know, to get it out of the very command control, legacy IT way of controlling user into a much more empowered way of thinking about, um, the end user experience in an organization.

And that, my friends, is part two of my interview with Greg Keller. You're gonna have to stay tuned for that. Hey Greg, man, thanks for coming on here.

I appreciate you, Zoe. Uh, you too. Uh, Alan, I look forward to our next meetup.

Alright, man. Say hello to everyone. You All right.

Greg Keller, co-founder CTO of JumpCloud here on Techstrong tv. Go check out the JumpCloud Google workspace, uh, CTS how, what Wtts W Ts There. You heard it from him?

I'll get it eventually. We're here on text on tv. We'll be right back.