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You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things

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backup recovery and cyber recovery.

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In this episode, we take a look at something that's happening

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right now across Europe, the eu, US Cloud exit movement.

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European companies and governments are considering ditching US cloud

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providers like Microsoft 365.

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Have you thought about this?

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Uh, here's my question.

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I I, is somebody thinking about the backup implications of that?

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If you're thinking about exiting, uh, a cloud provider?

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We'll talk about your options.

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Talk about what works, what doesn't, why the 3, 2, 1 rule

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is more important than ever.

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I. W if you're thinking about navigating a cloud exit or a migration.

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By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

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Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.

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Ever since.

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I had to tell my boss that there were no backups of the production

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database that we had just lost.

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I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.

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On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.

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This is the backup wrap up.

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welcome to the show.

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Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with me my Bluetooth

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speaker, analyst Prasanna Malaiyandi.

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How's it going?

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Prasanna?

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Good.

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Curtis, did you finally decide what you're going to do?

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Did it work actually?

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It did, I got the sec. I went, you know, the second one.

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Um, I wanted to get a Bluetooth speaker closer to my bed.

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Because I, I, I'm trying to like, keep the noise down in the room when I'm watching

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tv and so I wanted a Bluetooth speaker and it, it was a little harder than I thought.

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. I didn't wanna spend like 300 bucks on a, you know, just basically

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a minor convenience speaker.

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Uh, so I, I ended up finding one that was, um.

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You know, that was, uh, it, it worked.

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I've got, actually, not only do I have it assembled and powered on, it's

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actually already mounted to the wall.

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Nice.

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I,

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job.

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I, I had some free time today,

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is it a

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so

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weird though with the sound, because I know you mentioned that you have

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it mounted on the wall, which is

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yeah,

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your head.

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Does it seem a little weird with the sound coming from behind

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you rather than in front of

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It is a little weird, uh, but like, I don't know.

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It's, it's not that much different to me than having AirPods in, for example,

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it, sorry.

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There are two things.

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One is the sound coming from behind you,

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Uhhuh.

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then the other thing is the left and right channels being flipped.

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Yeah.

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I don't, I don't think that's a,

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Okay.

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that, that literally just really hasn't, at least not I. It's

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not something that made it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Um, but, but yeah.

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But anyway, that, that was my project for the day and that project was completed.

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Uh, now I'm

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one off the list.

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check one off the list.

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Now I just have like 19 Amazon returns to get to.

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It's okay.

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Amazon's easy to deal with.

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Yeah.

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so before we continue, I think it's important to tell our listeners if

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you like the podcast, if you like what you hear, please subscribe

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on your favorite podcaster, apple Podcast, Spotify, whatever you use,

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so you don't miss an episode of US blabbering every week talking about

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tech and data protection and privacy.

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Talking about tech and backup and data protection and restores and recoveries,

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and how can I forget cybersecurity.

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So please make sure to subscribe and if you actually wanna see us talking,

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like actually see what we look like.

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Uh, I do have a shorter beard now.

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I. But still have the long hair.

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Uh, we are also available on YouTube under the same channel, the backup wrap

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Yeah.

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if you wanna see what the two of us look like and our random facial expressions

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and me staring off into the distance every once in a while, uh, a look.

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And, uh, feel free to comment, uh, like we recently got a

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comment on our YouTube channel.

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It was one of those like backhanded compliments.

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I, I, I, he, he actually comments pretty regularly on the channel and, and he

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was like, uh, he basically said, Hey, these guys, it started, you start out.

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These guys might not look like much, but, but they, they, you know, they

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seem to know what they're talking about.

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And I'm like, what is that supposed to be?

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And he's like, you guys kind of look homeless.

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And I'm.

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I mean, the video was back when you had the longer beard.

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I had like the same beard and then it was one that Mike was on, and Mike,

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Mike has sort of his normal beard, but yeah, homeless, um, that's a bit harsh.

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I, I, you know, but, um, anyway, so, so we're, we, we've got

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a, an interesting one today.

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I, it's, it's gonna start out I think, a little bit outside of our normal.

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Scope of, of stuff that we talk about, but we're gonna bring it

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back home to the things that we normal, that we normally talk about.

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And, uh, this was, this was something that, go ahead.

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and promise me that we will not get political because this

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is not a political podcast.

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I will promise that you will not.

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Yeah, right.

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Yeah.

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I promise that because there will be some, some, some stuff mentioned.

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Um, and this is just.

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We're just, I, I think, I think it needs to be mentioned because

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it is the point of view of the eu.

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Um, and, and, and, and it's providing a point of view from which

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we need to have the discussion.

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So, um, and you, you sent me a bunch of articles and, and, and a PDF that,

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um, the, the general, um, the general.

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Gist of the, sort of the impetus of this discussion is that a number

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of EU countries, companies, uh, and entities within those companies are

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feeling that they can no longer trust the, the US and the US tech companies.

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To be the sole provider of the services that they use.

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Correct, right.

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Uh, either sole provider or, um, or just to store data in a US cloud at all.

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Right.

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Um, and the, you know, it, it comes from things like the Cloud Act that was

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passed several years ago, which I would refer to as the Modern Patriot Act.

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Um, for those of you that don't remember the Patriot Act,

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uh, you know, it basically.

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It was enacted after nine 11 and it, it gave us governments a a little bit,

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well, many would say a lot of extra access to basically it, it sort of.

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Undid, what I would say, fifth Amendment type protections for your data.

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If, if, um, the terrorism was, was suspected or whatever, right.

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And the, the Cloud Act, which was passed in 2018 was similar.

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Uh, there were some comments and some, some stuff from the current administration

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that added to the, to the mix.

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And so they're feeling, uh, just in general, um, that they.

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That the, the sort of friendly relationship and the trust that they

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have, not just in the companies, but in the government that the companies are

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running under that they don't have the kind of trust that they used to have.

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And then there was, uh, some comments.

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There was actually one of the links that you sent me had a,

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had a link in it to a Dutch, um.

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You know, discussion, which I of course gave to AI and had it take a look at that

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page and they, and they were basically saying that there was this ongoing

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discussion about how that governments over there would say that like, well,

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US cloud providers can't really see our real IP addresses or something like this.

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And that just totally ended up not being true.

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Right.

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And so, so, so it's a combination of both.

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So politics, some laws, and also some technology where, you know, and, and.

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How?

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How would you comparing EU law to US law, when it comes to matters of privacy, how

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would you summarize the difference there?

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Yeah, EU is very, user privacy is paramount.

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Right.

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it comes to laws and regulations with GDPR in the US it is more lax.

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That's putting it mildly, I think.

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well.

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I think those, some states are trying to do the best that they can, right.

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California with CCPA and other things like that.

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But there's no sort of federal standard that

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Yeah, there's,

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data.

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there, there's no federal standard and even laws like GD or uh,

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CCPA, there's no bite to it.

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Right.

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You've done some access requests using CCPA and you're like, Hey,

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how'd you get my information?

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Like you, you know, and, and, and you have found it to be a mixed bag.

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Is that a fair statement?

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yeah.

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Some companies are like, yeah, uh, we're not gonna tell you.

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And sometimes it actually required getting the attorney General for California

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involved in order to actually get them to

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Yeah.

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me back my data.

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Isn't that hilarious?

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Yes.

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used it, interestingly enough, um, I used it when, uh, uh, for tax time.

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Um, I went to, uh, the, the stores that I frequent, Amazon, home Depot,

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and Lowe's, and I said, give me all the data that you have on me.

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I. And, and they, and they, and all of them except for Home Depot, very quickly

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said, Hey, here's a giant ass spreadsheet of all the stuff that you bought for

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us, the dates, the names, the thing.

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And I was gonna use it basically as like a receipt kind of thing.

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Uh, home Depot did not, interestingly enough, uh, right away do that.

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And then I was like, Hey, home Depot.

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You're supposed to gimme all the stuff you have on me, and I know

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you have my purchase history because it's on your computers.

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When I go to your store and they're like, oh, oh yeah, sorry about that.

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Here you go.

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And they gave it to me.

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So I got a spreadsheet again of everything that I bought from Home Depot.

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Home Depot, which for the record is a lot, um, especially, especially since

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Lowe's changed their return policy.

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And I'm no longer shopping at Lowe's unless I have no other choice.

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Um, home Depot, if you would like to sponsor this podcast,

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please reach out to us.

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And Lowe's, if you would like to change your stupid new return policy, which

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for the record is if you go past 90 days, like so, just for those that

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don't buy at these stores, right?

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Home Depot, if you have a receipt, uh, you're going to, you can return.

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Right, period.

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If, if you don't have a receipt, you can even, you can generally, like within

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reason, you can do store credit, but even if you have a receipt, I literally

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have an experience from not that long ago where I came in and I had a project

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that I started like a year and a half before and it was a year and a half later

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and I, I never got to the project that I had like $300 worth of stuff, but I had

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the receipt, they gave me store credit.

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Right.

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Lowe's.

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I had a similar experience where I had a project that went 91 days,

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literally 91 days, and I went back with like $30 worth of stuff.

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And Lowe's was like, you're past our return window.

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We, and we no longer do store credit.

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And I was like, well, I no longer give you money.

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Um, anyway.

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No one cares.

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No one cares.

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Anyway, we're back to eu.

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We're back eu.

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So,

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So

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in

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yeah, go ahead.

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are more sort of.

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User privacy centric, right?

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They do worry about their data, right?

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This is where everyone, if you've ever seen the cookie banner popups, right?

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And you're like, why are they always asking me do I wanna

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share my data or accept cookies?

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Yeah,

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driven by the eu.

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yeah, yeah.

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And you know, we could, we could have a different discussion as to

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how effective the GDPR has been.

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There are some that feel that it really hasn't been as effective as they would

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like, but it still goes to the fact.

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That they view data privacy paramount and they view, in this case we're

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also talking about data sovereignty,

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Yep.

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Or digital sovereignty is actually the term.

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And so this, we're now actually talking about governmental data and they're saying

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they cannot trust storing that data, especially over on another, you know,

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basically specifically the US' technology.

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Yeah.

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And go ahead.

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And I think it's important, like as you mentioned, data sovereignty, right?

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It isn't just a matter of, hey, public cloud provider X has a Bitbucket or

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a place, a data center in Switzerland that I could store my data in.

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Because to them, that's not good enough.

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Because those US companies, those US employees, right, they

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have access to that data, right?

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Or to the, at least the infrastructure there, right?

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They have access to logs, maybe logs are being sent back to

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the US for troubleshooting, all the rest of that stuff.

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And therefore it doesn't meet that notion of data sovereignty, which a

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Yeah.

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European governments are expecting.

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Yeah.

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And, and this, and that's the stuff to which that I was referring to

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earlier where they're like, well, we thought they couldn't see the stuff.

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And no, they can totally see the stuff.

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Right.

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And I, I, I, before the call, I made this statement, and I'll make it again.

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I, I think they're seeing.

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Our like cloud facilities in, within those company, within those countries,

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the same way we see like TikTok.

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Which, which is run in the us but it's, you know, there is this, this, this

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connection to the Chinese government, which they say isn't there, but, you

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know, there's too big of a concern.

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And so, uh, you know, we, they passed a law that said that we

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were gonna get rid of TikTok.

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Uh, now there's a whole other thing going on on that, but I,

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I'm just saying that that's, they, they view it in the same distrust.

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And And from like a public cloud provider, right?

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Or any infrastructure provider, right?

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Or a SaaS service, right?

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It's not even just public cloud, right?

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It is difficult to sort of isolate and split up all of these various

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Yeah.

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centers and regions because you don't get the scale right?

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You don't get the efficiencies.

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You have to manage, have multiple ops teams and everything else,

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and it just becomes complicated.

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Yeah.

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Agreed.

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And the um.

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Uh, so the question that, that, that I, you know, that the question

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that, that we wanna talk about is, well, let's say I am a company or a

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governmental entity that wants to, um, that wants to be more sovereign, right?

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That wants to ensure that my data is being stored in a country that I

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control with privacy, that I control.

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You know, number one, how do I actually do that?

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And number two, how does this affect, like what I've been

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doing with regards to backup,

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All the

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right?

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about.

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All the stuff we talk about.

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So, um, so what there's, as I see it, there's basically

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two choices that you have.

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And I don't mean company names, I just mean two broad choices.

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One is you can in, in-house it, and the two is you can, you can find a 100%.

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You know, Europeans, uh, housed company, uh, to, to to store your data.

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And I think let's talk about the, let's talk about both of those.

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And so I just wanna talk through an example because it works easier

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for us and probably our listeners.

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Let's just assume that today you're on Microsoft 365.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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So you use them for email

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And, your productivity tools?

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They're two choices, right?

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So the first is you bring it on premises.

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you're deciding, okay, I'm gonna run it locally, I'm gonna manage everything.

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And this kind of reminds me of like the old days when people used to

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manage exchange on premises, right?

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And

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What

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saw how.

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is that?

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I, I like, I like lotus notes,

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Right, but they used to manage it on premises and then they're like, Hey,

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Microsoft, you have this cloud thing.

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I don't have to worry about patching and managing and everything else.

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I just manage my users and their emails.

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right?

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they moved over to Microsoft 365 and that's kind of like

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the one approach, right?

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The first approach you talked about

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Yeah.

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Is sort of that, okay, I'm gonna go find a local provider to host

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my stuff and they'll manage it.

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Right.

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I know we did a prior episode, I wanna say it was earlier this year, about a provider

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who offered exchange as a service.

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Mm-hmm.

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And we knew what happened with that.

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Right?

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And

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Yeah.

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Didn't go well,

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to, I'm referring to Rackspace.

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Right.

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right?

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ended up with a ransomware attack.

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They lost all of their end users data.

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It took weeks for them to even try to recover some of the mailboxes to Microsoft

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365, and in the end, they shut down their exchange as a service business.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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So this was hosted exchange, which is the one sort of

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cloudy type alternative to 365.

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If you don't wanna run exchange on-prem there, there are a number of companies

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that are doing Exchange as a service, and they were, they were one of the

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biggest, if not the biggest in the us And then, you know, poof happens.

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Yeah,

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and so what I would say is.

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No matter, you know, my opinion hasn't changed regarding like backup

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and data protection, no matter what you choose as an alternative to

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Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

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Um, is there anybody else like that?

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That's, that's pretty much it, right?

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In terms of, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Um, or, or any of the, or any other services, no matter what you choose.

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There needs to be third party backup of that thing because although

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you have a, you have a good story.

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You know, the Rackspace story of the,

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Mm-hmm.

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Hosted exchange and that one, that one was so kind of sad because it was

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all made possible because of a patch.

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That Rackspace could have installed but did not install, um, in a timely manner.

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And, um, and two weeks passed by between when the patch was available

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and when the attack happened.

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And they, they could have totally addressed that, but they did not.

Speaker:

And so that's why mistakes happened, right?

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The and, and, and, you know, and, and, yeah.

Speaker:

I mean, the fault to this Rackspace is because, who else's fault would it be?

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I don't know, like.

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How much blame there is, per se.

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Right.

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You know, did they do something wrong?

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Did they just make the wrong priorities?

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Were there other things that they were worried about?

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Did they, I know that in, in this case there was, there was, um,

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There was a workaround.

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Well, There was an issue with the first,

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there was an issue with the first batch.

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Right.

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Um, and there was a belief that this workaround would address it, but

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there was, there was a new problem with, so anyway, so there, there was.

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They made that choice.

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But the thing is, no matter who it is, 365 Rackspace, you know,

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whoever mistakes happen and.

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This is why we have the 3, 2, 1 rule,

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Yeah.

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right?

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That you, you have something else, you have another copy of your data that

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doesn't have the same risk profile, and so you don't, you don't use Microsoft 365

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and then just use their backup system, what, whatever backup system as I, as I

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make quotes in the air and you don't use hosted exchange on some provider and then.

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Not back it up and then just use their backup side.

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'cause some of them do offer backup.

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Right.

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You, you use third party backup.

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Right.

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And, and it's not just because you and I both used to work at a

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third party backup company, it's because it's basic backup design.

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Uh, and in fact we've also talked about a previous case of an EU cloud provider,

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Mm-hmm.

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backup and then lost their customer's data due to a fire.

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Yeah, that would maybe OVH.

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That was so, that was so bad.

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Uh, and that one, that one I'm definitely just, they did bad, right?

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Because they had the backup system literally in the same data center.

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And then, um, yeah.

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So once that happened, you know, they, it burned up both the, uh, both the

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primary and the backup at the same time, which is why you have it somewhere else.

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Yep.

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So

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Um, yeah.

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also think of a third scenario, which I

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Okay.

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gonna be the more problematic.

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So we haven't even really touched upon like the data protection aspects yet.

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Right.

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We're just looking at what are the options for replacing your production.

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Microsoft 365, in this example, I.

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Mm-hmm.

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think what becomes more challenging is if you look at a Microsoft 365 a Google

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workspace, or if you look at even like any of the public cloud providers, they're

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not just offering a single service, right?

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It's not just email for Microsoft 365, it's email, it's

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SharePoint, it's teams, it's.

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Right.

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Word, right?

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It's all of these things all rolled into one package, and now if I'm looking

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for an alternative, it's much harder for me to find that full package,

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Yeah.

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There are one provider that provides all of those capabilities.

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I might need to pick 3, 5, 7 providers

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Hmm.

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replace my functionality.

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And, you know, one of, one of the government.

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Uh, they were saying, you know, we're, we're moving off of, of 365.

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So no matter what you choose, whether you choose another SaaS

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provider, you choose hosted exchange.

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Like we're, we're just using exchange as a, you know, as a, as an example,

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if you decide to go with, with.

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There is no other provider of Microsoft 365.

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So assuming you have another service that is an alternative for the SaaS.

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Thing that you're trying to replace.

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Or you can have, like in this case, you can go from 365 to hosted exchange,

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but if you truly, in the case of that one government want to get rid of

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Microsoft and you wanna get rid of all us, even software, um, first off, I

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think you're really limiting yourself.

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But that's just my, that's just my

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Yeah.

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Well.

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you know?

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But, but, but anyway, let me just finish the thing that you, if you're

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gonna go on-prem with something.

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No matter where you put your data, that data still needs to be protected.

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That that's just, you know,

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Yeah.

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that's never gonna change, in my opinion.

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So I'm looking at my bookshelf right now and I have a book, I

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dunno if you've ever heard about it.

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It's called The World is Flat.

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It's a book from like the early two thousands where basically

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don't think it means what I think it means.

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It's basically talking about globalization,

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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of globalization, it's no longer, okay?

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You have India's uh, tech industry, you have the US tech industry.

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It's companies are now spread throughout the world, and they benefit from that,

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Yeah.

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And so I wonder, even though the EU and governments and companies and

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everyone else wants that independence,

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Mm-hmm.

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how feasible is it if you're taking open source software like a database?

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Right.

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That might, that database, the provider might be in the US if

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you're picking up chips, right?

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Where are those chips manufactured?

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Right?

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What about those hard drives?

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What about all these other things, right?

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It's like how far up or down the supply chain do you go to

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say, yes, I'm truly independent?

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Yeah, I think.

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That you could say, like, indicate, again, going back to Microsoft, uh, 365, I think

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you're definitely more, let's say, let's say you found out you really couldn't

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get rid of the, the functionality of what is, what used to be called Exchange.

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Um, I do think you could be a little more independent by running exchange

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yourself or using a European based, um, hosted exchange provider.

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You're still relying on the Microsoft software, but

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You have more

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short, short of supply chain attacks, I, I, I think it's not, it's nowhere near the

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same as using a US-based cloud provider that happens to be headquartered in

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the eu.

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But I think though if I Microsoft, I'm trying to push all of my customers

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existing and new to use, Microsoft 365.

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Mm-hmm.

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think I will really put as much focus on the on-prem version with all the

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capabilities, with all the patches, with all the like functionality that

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an enterprise would require from compliance security and everything else?

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Or would I just sort of like check the box and say, yep, I have

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something, or whatever I had before.

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I'm just gonna kind of support it on an ongoing basis without really improving it.

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Um, there was a lot of questions all at once, but I think what I, I, I, I

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agree with you that it's a concern.

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Having said that.

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If my choices are a product that I already know and I'm used to and

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a random SaaS product , which I'm guessing is not going to be the same,

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it might be better, I don't know.

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But there will be a learning curve that will be an issue, and there will

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also be the issue of backing it up,

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Yeah.

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right?

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I, I'm just saying that I, I, it, it still might be better.

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Yeah.

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And the learning curve, right?

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It's the same thing that when we talk about switching backup vendors, When you

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go from say, net backup to, uh, rubrik or Cohesity or whatever else, right?

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There is sort of, you need to relearn certain processes, how the

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technology works, and you may lose some functionality, but that may be

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okay for you if you're not using it or you're willing to live without

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Right.

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Right?

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And I think the same

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Yeah.

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Is here as well, right?

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If you are switching from Microsoft 365 to say Libra office, right?

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Maybe it doesn't matter, right?

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Depending on the features and functionality you're

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using, but maybe it does,

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Yeah,

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I think it's

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yeah,

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because I don't know if people have really done like that comparison sheet, right?

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Of Microsoft 365 versus X,

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yeah.

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X is a different thing.

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You know what I meant?

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I know what you meant.

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Um,

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Because though that

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but

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never comes up for people, right?

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It's like,

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you have to say y now you have to say Y You can't say X, X is a brand,

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Yes,

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you have to say Y Um, I still call it Twitter anyway, but the, yeah, and,

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and, and, and, and I guess it, it, it speaks to, and these are smart people.

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And they know this, they know what you just said.

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They're, they're well aware that, you know,

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they know is not the same as Microsoft Office.

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And, you know, maybe it's close.

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Um, I don't know.

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But they know whatever the difference is.

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They know this, they know this stuff.

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They, they looked at it, they're like, you know what?

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It's good enough.

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And, um, um.

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production use,

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Well, I'm just saying that,

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yeah.

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but Well, my, my point is they've made that decision and what I'm saying is it,

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it just goes back to the beginning of the discussion that we were having that

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how big of a deal they think this is.

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They're like, we even, even if it's half the functionality,

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we're willing to take that hit.

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Because of the fact that we do not like the fact that the US

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government is, is, has access to potential access to our data.

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okay, so here's the question then.

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So that's from like the production side, right?

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So I'm deploying it across my users.

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Mm-hmm.

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wonder though, if they've thought or had the conversation about

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what do we do from a backup,

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Mm-hmm.

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and maybe it's not needed anything specific, but.

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Well let, well, let me just answer your question.

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The answer is no.

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They absolutely have not.

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Like it just if, if my time in this industry has shown me anything, it's

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that no one thinks about this question.

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That's why, that's why we have to think about it, right?

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No one thinks about this.

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They're like, we have to make this change.

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And then boom, they make the change.

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And then it's like, you know, and then nobody's raising their hand and

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go, you know, nobody wants to be the person to stop the, the project, right?

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Um, and say, Hey, you know, are we backing it up?

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So here's a question.

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So let's say that someone's made the decision, right?

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There's no questions about it, right?

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It's like, okay, we have to march forward on this.

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Yes, we understand there's gonna be reduced functionality.

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As a backup person, what are some of my options or some of the things

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I should be thinking about in terms of, okay, we're already flipping.

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What do I need to do to be able to protect this?

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Like are there options or things I could be using or thinking about?

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Because I kind of think about this the same way as like previously

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we didn't have backup for like all the different databases, right.

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Or applications.

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And

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Yeah.

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those days, people still managed to back it up, right?

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It may not have been efficient, right?

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But it was still doable.

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And so just wanted to get your thoughts on what should people backup admins be

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thinking about as they're looking at these new applications coming online?

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Well, I think that.

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It's gonna be similar to what we've seen in other spaces where you're going,

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it's, it's the, the one step forward, two steps back kind of thing, right?

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So they're like, so we're gonna step forward in a digital sovereignty.

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Situation, but we're gonna step back in terms of backup and recovery, right?

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So you, when you say, what did we do back in the day?

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Well, back in the day before there were database agents, you ran a dump

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and you, you dumped it to, like, you either dumped it to tape or

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you dumped it to disc, and then you backed it up, you backed up that disc.

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Right?

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This is what I'm talking about at.

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Going forward and going backwards.

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Right.

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Uh, this was the same thing, like this is the same opinion

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that I had about containers,

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Mm-hmm.

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right?

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The whole concept of containers.

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It sounds fascinating, it sounds it's all great, but like, how

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are we backing this stuff up?

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And they start talking about scripts and stuff like that.

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Oh my, oh my God, it hurts my brain.

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Right?

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It's doable.

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I'll, I'll, I guess the only thing, the one thing we just want to get across is

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just make sure you're thinking about it.

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Make sure you have a solution, whatever it is.

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Maybe it's not as good as just paying for a third party service

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that automatically backs it up.

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But, um, but just make sure that you're not just picking a product

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just because it's not US based.

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Um, and, um, I mean there are a lot of open source.

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Productivity tools, open source alternatives to a

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lot of products out there.

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Um.

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There isn't really this concept of open source cloud service.

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That's, that's not really a thing.

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But you, there are open source backup products.

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There are open source office products, there are open source, a lot of things.

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Right.

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Um, and I, you know, I use some of them, right?

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I, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a tool that

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I use once or twice a year.

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Right.

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So I have, I have, um.

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Um, gimp, for example, I don't have Adobe Photoshop, I have gimp.

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Um, and, uh, but now it, you know, I use, um, Canva and I'm paying for that.

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But, but yeah, so I, that's, that's all I really just want

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people to think about, right?

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Yeah.

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Um,

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And so I guess one other question I had for you is, we've always talked

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about how most enterprises back up, like the major applications,

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mm-hmm.

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else sort of gets ignored, right?

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All these secondary applications, open source stuff, right?

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It's like everyone do your own thing.

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Mm-hmm.

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feel like with this push there is a possibility for new businesses

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to be started new focus to be, uh.

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To be placed on all those other things which have been left on

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the side of the road to sort of be ignored all these years, all these

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applications and all that data that's

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Yeah.

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in environments, but

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Yeah,

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never been seen as important.

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well, having, you know, for, for a long time I was pushing backup

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companies to support stuff.

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Then I worked for a backup company and I was pushing them to support stuff.

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The answer really all comes down to are there enough people I. Are there

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enough companies, entities that are willing to pay for this thing that

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will pay for my development to go figure out how to back up this thing.

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Right.

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And also, a second question, is the company or open source development

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group that's behind this particular product, are they friendly?

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Are they, can I work with them?

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Can I, can, will they gimme an API, uh, and access to that?

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Or will they be more like Microsoft 365 that fought for years?

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Um, you know, and basically the backup vendors had to.

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Pretend to be WebEx.

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They used OWA, they just pretended to be a user and that's how they backed up 365.

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Um, so if, if, if the open source, if there's enough people that are using

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it and, or not just open source, but, but let's just say just a product

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that's EU centric or EU based and, and there's a lot of 'em, right?

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Or just not, not.

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US based.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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Um, uh, oddly enough, um, one of the other countries where a lot of

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technology comes from is Israel,

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Yep.

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which has its own challenges right now.

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Right.

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Um, so again, this is, this is why all these countries are thinking,

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Hey, let's, you know, let's, let's bring stuff back home.

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It's just that thing with your comment about the world is flat.

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Um.

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It's true, right?

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Um, how it's gonna be hard for you to do it.

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So just, and all I wanna do is just whatever you do, I don't care what you

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do, just make sure you backend it up.

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That's all.

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That's all.

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Um, you know, 'cause it's, it's one thing to sort of deal with the issues of having

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to move data and applications and relearn everything, all that kind of stuff.

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Just make sure you, that you don't end up then losing your data because of, yeah.

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All right.

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I think we covered this.

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Um,

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Do, was there anything else you wanted to touch upon this,

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no, um,

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by

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I guess that's pretty much it.

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Yeah.

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I should mention, I know we did talk heavily about Microsoft 365 in this

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Yeah,

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but that was just an example.

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It could be any cloud provider, it could be any SaaS provider, right?

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It could be

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We just.

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that

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Yeah, we, we used it for two reasons.

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One is it's an example that everybody knows, and also it was specifically

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mentioned in one of the articles, we'll, we'll put some links to these articles.

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Um, and, uh, that they specifically, was it the Dutch government that they were

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specifically saying that they're, they're gonna move from 365 to Libra office.

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Um, anyway.

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All right.

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Thanks for the chat as always.

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Anytime Curtis.

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And, uh, thanks to the listeners, you know, you're, why we do this?

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That is a wrap.