Finding the Upside in a Downturn – Techstrong Research Review EP 10

here Hey everybody, Mike Rothman here general manager of texturung research through strategy officer text wrong group. We are here for another recording of the text wrong research review. It's actually a special one.

We are at the end of the year. So we are going to do our little Tech strong research review. 2022 retrospective I'm joined as always by Mitch Ashley My Pal my colleague my friend Mitch.

How are you? Brother? What's going on all the same back to you my friend glad to be here.

I was always military CTO and also principal with extra research working with Mike. In the endless business. So this is our year in wrap up show, you know, we can do this for about a three-hour show but 15 minutes.

I think we'll lose everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know when you think 2022 is really been an interesting year, right? We you know, obviously for me personally, you know doing text wrong and getting part of the team and starting up, you know build out something that I think is is really cool with the research group. So but it's been a strange year, right?

I mean, you know between a war breaking out and obviously economic uncertainty and you know, just technology Evolution and a lot of money you just have valuations coming back to Earth. So, you know, a lot of deals that have been done but not as many as before when money was kind of free interest rates going up. So yeah, it's been a Of kind of uncertainty a year of unsettling.

I think that's kind of mapped into a lot of the areas that that we follow I mean, you know, it's fine. We were talking the other day and and we had one speaker. We were trying to line up for the predict show and you know, we had him slotted into the cloud native environment and he's like, yeah, I don't really, you know, I'm just I don't have personal experience in terms of folks that have you know, kind of made this Cloud medium, you know transition and it forced us to take a step back and go.

Yeah, you know, we live in kind of the future to a degree right this intersection of devops and Cloud native having some security with digital transformation as the Catalyst for a lot of this environment and you know, sometimes we kind of get caught up in the fact that yeah, it's really cool technology and a lot of our buddies are doing some really cool stuff. It's a really big world out there. Right?

And when I kind of look back at 2022, I think we're gonna kind of see it as as the inflection point. I think we are at a point where we have to be more effective in terms of how we do things and that forces us, you know to kind of start to embrace operational Motions like devops. I think when we have to optimize cost, right you have to start looking at, you know, kind of Cheaper options, you know more community-based options and that starts to drive you towards a lot of the cloud native environments.

I think there's a general dissatisfaction with the state of protection and prevention right in security and monitoring and and everything out. There's gonna be a lot of focus on that. So, you know, it'll be interesting.

They will look back and and the uncertainty that we're going through now a lot of the economic headwinds I think are going to result in some significant Innovation on the part of all technology, you know organization. That's pretty much every you know company now, so it'll be interesting right it'll be interesting. You know, one of our our themes are you know, kind of along those lines, you know for predict that we're doing in early January.

So, you know, it's been an interesting here. What are your general observations on I'm kind of thing you're after I, you know got on my soapbox for a little while since I think it's a year of confirming some things and it's a year of expect anything right? You know, we thought the pandemic was the random thing that was going to show up.

No all the things that you mentioned and red waves are nowhere in red waves or you know, what the economy and what are we gonna be doing next year and everybody kind of hitting that in certain dip. I think we're kind of coming out of that. Um, so I think I think the watch word is anything can happen.

You don't control most of it. So be nimble and be able to move when you need to move and adjust and how do I say to Pivot word, but now it's got to be flexible and agile and and on the other hand it's been a year of really come confirmation of a lot of things of kind of locked into how we do stuff and devops is locked in not everybody is doing it. I'm not saying that but it is the expectation that like most people if you're not doing it already you're gonna be doing it and a lot of people are invested in making it happen and their organizations this summer pretty far along maybe Cloud native is you know on the horizon of potentially getting there it certainly, you know, got a lot of Buzz and our industry SRE is really hit home observability is really at home with people App security is really I think kind of landed now.

It's really, you know taking roots and I've talked a lot about how security is morphing and changing and becoming something kind of more broader than than the old security you and I know from what we started in. So in a way we can have a new place to build from then we maybe even did a year ago. So it's to be as exciting but you know you and I know have gone through a couple of downturns.

Yes downturns suck but also great things come out of it right companies. Yeah forces you to be disciplined about this. And so you invest in the right things instead of you know, wasting money on stuff.

You don't need to be doing so there's upsides to downsides downturn. Yeah. I I think that's it.

That's an interesting thing, you know, really starting to question a lot of you know, kind of the bacchanalia that's happened over the last, you know, three or four years, right and from a technology. I don't know you do or look it up. You can Google it right now.

I'll do this to go and do that. I know what's interesting is is you know, since most of us can be, you know doing a little a little nerdy. You know, as you were talking the image that kind of flowed into me was this idea that you know this time last year.

It was kind of a New Hope right? You know, we had all this stuff. I mean just the market was going bonkers.

I mean, you know, it's just it felt like, you know, everything was moving in the right direction and and this year it kind of feels like The Empire Strikes Back. Okay, you know, who's your who's your devop daddy? Right but you know, I mean, I think that you know, there's just been kind of a reevaluation right a pushback on the part of you know, let's just take shift left and we'll talk about this a lot and during per day right?

There's this push back about you know, kind of you do developers really have to take on all this responsibility and you know, we're starting to you know, talk about shifting back to the right a bit, you know after maybe we over rotated on that, you know, you look at and even devops And I think it's absolutely ridiculous. That folks are questioning, you know kind of the world devops as in you know, both how we're provisioning our infrastructure as well as how we're building, you know, integrating and developing and deploying our code but you have folks that are you know, poking at it, right, you know, just you know, platform engineering's gonna replace them. No.

No, there's room for everybody and you know, we're calling different things at this point and be you know, that's more marketing than anything else but it just feels like, you know folks are chopping away at the you know, kind of the the feel good stuff that we've been doing over the last, you know a couple years which is inevitably the case and you know, will it be 23 will it be you know Midway through 24, you know that we kind of, you know, get to the Return of the Jedi phase. I don't know but it's coming right because because we see a lot of this stuff and and the thing that I always say about devops right is that when we stop talking about it, that's when people really start doing it right and and I think we are at that stage of Bob's right now and that it's just not that sexy anymore. It's not that exciting.

But you look at what some of the companies are doing, whether it's you know, kind of get GitHub as part of Microsoft, you know, starting to integrate a lot of Automation and deployment in there when you look at what gitlab is doing from a growth standpoint. It's really impressive from that perspective. So you're starting to see these things, you know, Cloud bees.

I mean all these other companies in the ecosystem. Um, you're starting to see these things, you know kind of start to take root and start to, you know, hit there, you know massive increase in in deployments and and get to me those are all indicative that you know, the machine is fighting back a little bit but underneath the surface, you know, the water continues to flow, you know Downstream and and that's exactly where we want it to be. Yeah, it really has changed things.

You know, you think about how much our world has changed and last even couple years. It's pretty amazing. I think looking into 2023 and we're working on predict together, which is a great letter.

I'm excited January 12, everybody join us and 12th is the there's there's a lot of community as well as elevating. Disciplines within our organizations right ops isn't just the you know, whatever headed step child right in the background and we always throw stuff over to and they discuss suck it up there there. They're applying engineering discipline.

They've got respect, you know, and and open sources moved into a whole new phase and I think about the open Telemetry and how many Tech companies have given up agents to adopt hotel, or at least combine it with their own, you know it you don't see that very often. And so I think there's a real community of wanting to share and work together. Maybe it's because we're all been stuck on zoom and not being able to work side by side.

But I think that's one thing that I'm interested to see how much that'll accelerate we could talk about all the text stuff but it's the people make it happen, right? It is the people and and it'll be interesting for me to kind of see as we go into 23, you know, which companies are gonna hit the gas on digital transformation right in which ones are gonna pull back and ultimately we're not gonna know for a couple of years which decision is right, but you're gonna see a bifurcation right? I mean, you know, they're just some companies that have made significant Investments and they're probably question those the best because by the way, it's hard right?

It's hard it takes, you know, consistent effort over a long period of time it takes The reality that not everything is going to go is you had hoped and that you're gonna run into some some challenges in terms of what your digital transformation efforts are going to be and some companies, you know, kind of when things get tight. They're just gonna you know, again circle the wagons and and do what they do and what they've always done. Whereas you have other companies with more of a growth or an Innovative mindset that are gonna lean into it knowing that you know, that survival for them is is at stake and and that really is the discussion so it'll be interesting just again see how that shakes out, right, you know see which the organizations continue to make significant Investments, even though it's gonna be difficult even though they're gonna have to tighten their belt in other areas, you know, and and see how that kind of ripples through the rest of the environment, right?

You know, how's that going to impact again the development tools and the processes that you know kind of have driven that how's that going to impact? You know the Adoption of you know, some of these new technologies and open source, you know capabilities. How's that going to impact, you know, our protection strategies and and our monitoring strategies and you know, what are we not gonna be able to do, you know from a security standpoint?

Because we've got to continue to you know, invest in the infrastructure or the change, you know agents or projects that will represent that kind of transformation within the organization. So it you know, I kind of get this way every year right, you know stuff happens think about you know, what's gonna happen in the future, but but it just it feels to me like, you know this transition from 22 to 23 is going to be you know, a little bit, you know, one bumpier right but to a little bit more impactful and I think that the decisions that A lot of organizations are are making this year, right, you know really the first half of this year are really going to either, you know, kind of set up a company for prolonged sustainable success or you know, we're going to be digging, you know ditches for these folks, you know, kind of within two three years beyond that. It does have kind of a get real feel to it.

Right. It's a kind of getting Brown down to just brass tacks and not working to the Future it's doing both but it's sort of you know, you're not trying to do everything. You can't follow all paths, right?

You've got to pick a path a couple paths. You know, what what's strategic what you need to do tactically and you know, whether you're rebuilding and rethinking Supply chains or you know jobs coming back to the US or you know, working more in the last internationally and dealing with you know so much so many different kind of recovery Paths of different companies and countries it's there's some strategy to it. But there's some luck to it Mike.

Let's let's face it you I wish I could say all the good decisions that I've made were because I I was smart I think maybe 2% of them because of that's me too. Right? I mean a lot more luck than it is anything else because timing and luck is so much of it so that I think that's you know, when people make bats when companies make bats whether it's technology or strategies.

I think this is what you're referring to is it's exciting to see what happens. What's gonna happen. What's gonna take hold what's going to prove to be the right strategy or a one of the right strategies and maybe the outcome will be different than any of us thought, but the outcome is good versus one that we have to pull back on.

Yeah, so let me put you on the spot nature of let's just pick pick one thing that happened in 2022 that you think is going to reverberate for a number of years. I mean just water it down. And again, they're not another many and I know it's an unfair question and I might even apologize for it because I you know part of the ideas, you know, let's see where you come up with when giving a very difficult, you know question off because Well, you know I felt for a long time that we've been sitting on her heels in security.

We just been doing the same stuff the new way with a new product with a new company and You know the vulnerability management stuff that I built in early 2000s. Well that stuff didn't seem like anything really Innovative have happened not. To give credit do where it is due but I think we're an inflection point where now security is gone.

Got a much wire wide your field to play in it's and it's in the software and it's not just infrastructure. It's up the stack right and into the application. It's into API some things like that.

I think that is potentially, you know game changing for how we can secure application. Let's say it's gonna be easy and it's also getting it fixed right but what we're doing wasn't making it much better every year. We're just kind of you know, Over rotating on the same strategy.

So I think that's that be my most biggest thing. I think that's impactful. Yeah over my career.

Anyway, so now you need to you're easy predicting this stuff so you can probably feel to get the pressure I do to make such a statement, but what do you thinking about Mike What You Know It? It's interesting because and I love that one bit. I mean, I really do think that you know kind of what after Decades of struggle in terms of you know, getting any kind of visibility or Enterprise type support for application security.

I'm not gonna say we're done but I do think that you know, kind of things are moving in the right direction. They're still resistance. There's still a lot of you know, kind of push back because of the you know, wacky incentive system, but I think enough people understand how important that is that you know, we are going to continue to see slow steady progress on that front to me the most impactful, you know thing that happened in 2022 happened around identity and act this management.

Right? And and what you had is you had a number of actually pretty substantial public companies that were taking private by Tomah Bravo. Um, and you know, whether it's Dale coin identity and a couple years ago, they had done, you know kind of centrify and and now it's delinea, which is really on you know, kind of Secrets management and some operational directory operational, you know type stuff and and when you start to see this transition that we're making to whether it's public infrastructure open source infrastructure, you know stuff that's Cloud hosted and however, you want to frame it.

I am really becomes decentral point of how you both provision and protect most of the things that you're doing and a lot of really interesting assets are now, you know kind of within a private, you know public, you know, private Equity type of environment. So to see, you know, kind of how they invest for growth. What are they gonna fold in?

Is it really about you know, let me go with Market. Is it about I'm gonna consolidate all this stuff and you know take the fact that get sale Point has a whole bunch of Enterprise customers and paying as a whole bunch of Enterprise customers, and you know, we're gonna put them together. We're gonna streamline it we're gonna you know run this thing for for profitability at the expense of growth.

I don't know, right 'cause I see IAM is such a huge opportunity, you know to really establish, you know kind of the trend center, right the the leader in in the space and it'll be interesting to see again how these assets kind of come together how they start to collaborate and really start to leverage kind of that common platform that Tomah Bravo has built to see where that goes. Those are to me that would really an unimpactable thought leading potentially game-changing and I really hate that word. Right but, you know something that can really kind of change the you know, Viewpoint and Outlook of the entire, you know kind of structure that that we're doing in it and it's kind of controlled by it by one, you know investor now so that to me that was you know, interesting that was impactful.

It's gonna be again very curious to see how that shakes out because we and again we'll talk about this a predict too, but I am is is really, you know, kind of just a center piece to you know, what we have to do in order to you know, kind of enable this next wave of innovation and and it'll be just to see how they how they handle that. There's and there's an interesting intersection between both of our, you know game changers use that word because I am isn't just about people identities, right? We used to just talk about machine and machine learning about apis we're talking about all up and down the stack identity internet of things all of it as identity, right?

Secrets and management or authentication Etc. So there's kind of a cool intersection. Just a quick story.

I was at a conference. This is pre-pandemic. We're a major company has a coffee company who has lots of stores that I frequent.

Starts with star and enter box. Yeah. Anyway, one of the one of the the security Executives we're talking about strategy of how do you get engaged with software groups and long story short this individual said We just went to the cloud and we worked on IAM and we put the IAM infrastructure together in the cloud.

We told all that whatever you want to go. This is done for you build from here and all sudden we're engaged because everything has I am right that's pretty brilliant. That's great.

Now maybe we'll see more of that or even better strategies like that. But I agree that's it is Central to everything everything that we're doing. So, you know again we're as you can tell folks right we're excited about about where things are going.

We're excited about the future. Yes. It's gonna be bumpy but it always is right.

There's a decent amount of gray hair, you know kind of on this panel and you know, probably even a little bit more experience on that front with which means we've kind of seen this we've done this this is not our first rodeo from the standpoint of understanding how to you know, navigate through a downturn. So yeah it is we are gonna have periods of bumpiness over the next, you know, three four five maybe Quarters on that front but as you said, I really like that that framing right, you know kind of finding the upside in the downturn. I think that's you know, that really is the way to frame.

You know, I think what we need to do in 2023 and and really focusing and streamlining efforts, right? I think many of us got you know, kind of a little bit overbuilt right a little bit lazy from the standpoint of driving things. Just thought it was a little bit too easy and we've been around too long to know that that was you know, and I should have seen it coming earlier, but you never do it feels too good, you know, when it's gonna win, right?

You don't know when and just like money. I'm gonna enjoy it now if I go crap, I you know, I don't enjoy it whatever, you know your own Island somewhere. So yeah, that's yeah, that's all another skills that with that want to thank everybody for playing along with us, you know this year.

We're gonna do a lot more cool stuff both, you know within the review and and that text on Search next year and yeah, we will see you in early January right January 12th. And predict don't you know don't mess with we're gonna have a whole bunch of trend documents. That'll be you know, kind of consumable from that standpoint.

We're gonna introduce, you know, a couple new pulse meters that we're working on right now some other research initiatives that we have going. So it's gonna be exciting time for us for textural research and hopefully for you guys too. So with that Mitchell have a great holiday, you know, be safe enjoy time with with the family and and whatever else you plan to do while we are out and and recovering and retarding over the next couple of weeks and we will see everybody in early January.

We'll see you all soon same to you on the holiday and thanks for everybody for following along with this week. We do appreciate the feedback and engaging with you. So be safe everyone.

We'll see you in 2020.