You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things
Speaker:backup recovery and cyber recovery.
Speaker:In this episode, we take a look at something that's happening
Speaker:right now across Europe, the eu, US Cloud exit movement.
Speaker:European companies and governments are considering ditching US cloud
Speaker:providers like Microsoft 365.
Speaker:Have you thought about this?
Speaker:Uh, here's my question.
Speaker:I I, is somebody thinking about the backup implications of that?
Speaker:If you're thinking about exiting, uh, a cloud provider?
Speaker:We'll talk about your options.
Speaker:Talk about what works, what doesn't, why the 3, 2, 1 rule
Speaker:is more important than ever.
Speaker:I. W if you're thinking about navigating a cloud exit or a migration.
Speaker:By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.
Speaker:Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.
Speaker:Ever since.
Speaker:I had to tell my boss that there were no backups of the production
Speaker:database that we had just lost.
Speaker:I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.
Speaker:On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.
Speaker:This is the backup wrap up.
Speaker:welcome to the show.
Speaker:Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with me my Bluetooth
Speaker:speaker, analyst Prasanna Malaiyandi.
Speaker:How's it going?
Speaker:Prasanna?
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Curtis, did you finally decide what you're going to do?
Speaker:Did it work actually?
Speaker:It did, I got the sec. I went, you know, the second one.
Speaker:Um, I wanted to get a Bluetooth speaker closer to my bed.
Speaker:Because I, I, I'm trying to like, keep the noise down in the room when I'm watching
Speaker:tv and so I wanted a Bluetooth speaker and it, it was a little harder than I thought.
Speaker:. I didn't wanna spend like 300 bucks on a, you know, just basically
Speaker:a minor convenience speaker.
Speaker:Uh, so I, I ended up finding one that was, um.
Speaker:You know, that was, uh, it, it worked.
Speaker:I've got, actually, not only do I have it assembled and powered on, it's
Speaker:actually already mounted to the wall.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:I,
Speaker:job.
Speaker:I, I had some free time today,
Speaker:is it a
Speaker:so
Speaker:weird though with the sound, because I know you mentioned that you have
Speaker:it mounted on the wall, which is
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:your head.
Speaker:Does it seem a little weird with the sound coming from behind
Speaker:you rather than in front of
Speaker:It is a little weird, uh, but like, I don't know.
Speaker:It's, it's not that much different to me than having AirPods in, for example,
Speaker:it, sorry.
Speaker:There are two things.
Speaker:One is the sound coming from behind you,
Speaker:Uhhuh.
Speaker:then the other thing is the left and right channels being flipped.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't, I don't think that's a,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:that, that literally just really hasn't, at least not I. It's
Speaker:not something that made it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, but, but yeah.
Speaker:But anyway, that, that was my project for the day and that project was completed.
Speaker:Uh, now I'm
Speaker:one off the list.
Speaker:check one off the list.
Speaker:Now I just have like 19 Amazon returns to get to.
Speaker:It's okay.
Speaker:Amazon's easy to deal with.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:so before we continue, I think it's important to tell our listeners if
Speaker:you like the podcast, if you like what you hear, please subscribe
Speaker:on your favorite podcaster, apple Podcast, Spotify, whatever you use,
Speaker:so you don't miss an episode of US blabbering every week talking about
Speaker:tech and data protection and privacy.
Speaker:Talking about tech and backup and data protection and restores and recoveries,
Speaker:and how can I forget cybersecurity.
Speaker:So please make sure to subscribe and if you actually wanna see us talking,
Speaker:like actually see what we look like.
Speaker:Uh, I do have a shorter beard now.
Speaker:I. But still have the long hair.
Speaker:Uh, we are also available on YouTube under the same channel, the backup wrap
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:if you wanna see what the two of us look like and our random facial expressions
Speaker:and me staring off into the distance every once in a while, uh, a look.
Speaker:And, uh, feel free to comment, uh, like we recently got a
Speaker:comment on our YouTube channel.
Speaker:It was one of those like backhanded compliments.
Speaker:I, I, I, he, he actually comments pretty regularly on the channel and, and he
Speaker:was like, uh, he basically said, Hey, these guys, it started, you start out.
Speaker:These guys might not look like much, but, but they, they, you know, they
Speaker:seem to know what they're talking about.
Speaker:And I'm like, what is that supposed to be?
Speaker:And he's like, you guys kind of look homeless.
Speaker:And I'm.
Speaker:I mean, the video was back when you had the longer beard.
Speaker:I had like the same beard and then it was one that Mike was on, and Mike,
Speaker:Mike has sort of his normal beard, but yeah, homeless, um, that's a bit harsh.
Speaker:I, I, you know, but, um, anyway, so, so we're, we, we've got
Speaker:a, an interesting one today.
Speaker:I, it's, it's gonna start out I think, a little bit outside of our normal.
Speaker:Scope of, of stuff that we talk about, but we're gonna bring it
Speaker:back home to the things that we normal, that we normally talk about.
Speaker:And, uh, this was, this was something that, go ahead.
Speaker:and promise me that we will not get political because this
Speaker:is not a political podcast.
Speaker:I will promise that you will not.
Speaker:Yeah, right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I promise that because there will be some, some, some stuff mentioned.
Speaker:Um, and this is just.
Speaker:We're just, I, I think, I think it needs to be mentioned because
Speaker:it is the point of view of the eu.
Speaker:Um, and, and, and, and it's providing a point of view from which
Speaker:we need to have the discussion.
Speaker:So, um, and you, you sent me a bunch of articles and, and, and a PDF that,
Speaker:um, the, the general, um, the general.
Speaker:Gist of the, sort of the impetus of this discussion is that a number
Speaker:of EU countries, companies, uh, and entities within those companies are
Speaker:feeling that they can no longer trust the, the US and the US tech companies.
Speaker:To be the sole provider of the services that they use.
Speaker:Correct, right.
Speaker:Uh, either sole provider or, um, or just to store data in a US cloud at all.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, and the, you know, it, it comes from things like the Cloud Act that was
Speaker:passed several years ago, which I would refer to as the Modern Patriot Act.
Speaker:Um, for those of you that don't remember the Patriot Act,
Speaker:uh, you know, it basically.
Speaker:It was enacted after nine 11 and it, it gave us governments a a little bit,
Speaker:well, many would say a lot of extra access to basically it, it sort of.
Speaker:Undid, what I would say, fifth Amendment type protections for your data.
Speaker:If, if, um, the terrorism was, was suspected or whatever, right.
Speaker:And the, the Cloud Act, which was passed in 2018 was similar.
Speaker:Uh, there were some comments and some, some stuff from the current administration
Speaker:that added to the, to the mix.
Speaker:And so they're feeling, uh, just in general, um, that they.
Speaker:That the, the sort of friendly relationship and the trust that they
Speaker:have, not just in the companies, but in the government that the companies are
Speaker:running under that they don't have the kind of trust that they used to have.
Speaker:And then there was, uh, some comments.
Speaker:There was actually one of the links that you sent me had a,
Speaker:had a link in it to a Dutch, um.
Speaker:You know, discussion, which I of course gave to AI and had it take a look at that
Speaker:page and they, and they were basically saying that there was this ongoing
Speaker:discussion about how that governments over there would say that like, well,
Speaker:US cloud providers can't really see our real IP addresses or something like this.
Speaker:And that just totally ended up not being true.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so, so, so it's a combination of both.
Speaker:So politics, some laws, and also some technology where, you know, and, and.
Speaker:How?
Speaker:How would you comparing EU law to US law, when it comes to matters of privacy, how
Speaker:would you summarize the difference there?
Speaker:Yeah, EU is very, user privacy is paramount.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:it comes to laws and regulations with GDPR in the US it is more lax.
Speaker:That's putting it mildly, I think.
Speaker:well.
Speaker:I think those, some states are trying to do the best that they can, right.
Speaker:California with CCPA and other things like that.
Speaker:But there's no sort of federal standard that
Speaker:Yeah, there's,
Speaker:data.
Speaker:there, there's no federal standard and even laws like GD or uh,
Speaker:CCPA, there's no bite to it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You've done some access requests using CCPA and you're like, Hey,
Speaker:how'd you get my information?
Speaker:Like you, you know, and, and, and you have found it to be a mixed bag.
Speaker:Is that a fair statement?
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Some companies are like, yeah, uh, we're not gonna tell you.
Speaker:And sometimes it actually required getting the attorney General for California
Speaker:involved in order to actually get them to
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:me back my data.
Speaker:Isn't that hilarious?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:used it, interestingly enough, um, I used it when, uh, uh, for tax time.
Speaker:Um, I went to, uh, the, the stores that I frequent, Amazon, home Depot,
Speaker:and Lowe's, and I said, give me all the data that you have on me.
Speaker:I. And, and they, and they, and all of them except for Home Depot, very quickly
Speaker:said, Hey, here's a giant ass spreadsheet of all the stuff that you bought for
Speaker:us, the dates, the names, the thing.
Speaker:And I was gonna use it basically as like a receipt kind of thing.
Speaker:Uh, home Depot did not, interestingly enough, uh, right away do that.
Speaker:And then I was like, Hey, home Depot.
Speaker:You're supposed to gimme all the stuff you have on me, and I know
Speaker:you have my purchase history because it's on your computers.
Speaker:When I go to your store and they're like, oh, oh yeah, sorry about that.
Speaker:Here you go.
Speaker:And they gave it to me.
Speaker:So I got a spreadsheet again of everything that I bought from Home Depot.
Speaker:Home Depot, which for the record is a lot, um, especially, especially since
Speaker:Lowe's changed their return policy.
Speaker:And I'm no longer shopping at Lowe's unless I have no other choice.
Speaker:Um, home Depot, if you would like to sponsor this podcast,
Speaker:please reach out to us.
Speaker:And Lowe's, if you would like to change your stupid new return policy, which
Speaker:for the record is if you go past 90 days, like so, just for those that
Speaker:don't buy at these stores, right?
Speaker:Home Depot, if you have a receipt, uh, you're going to, you can return.
Speaker:Right, period.
Speaker:If, if you don't have a receipt, you can even, you can generally, like within
Speaker:reason, you can do store credit, but even if you have a receipt, I literally
Speaker:have an experience from not that long ago where I came in and I had a project
Speaker:that I started like a year and a half before and it was a year and a half later
Speaker:and I, I never got to the project that I had like $300 worth of stuff, but I had
Speaker:the receipt, they gave me store credit.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Lowe's.
Speaker:I had a similar experience where I had a project that went 91 days,
Speaker:literally 91 days, and I went back with like $30 worth of stuff.
Speaker:And Lowe's was like, you're past our return window.
Speaker:We, and we no longer do store credit.
Speaker:And I was like, well, I no longer give you money.
Speaker:Um, anyway.
Speaker:No one cares.
Speaker:No one cares.
Speaker:Anyway, we're back to eu.
Speaker:We're back eu.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:So
Speaker:in
Speaker:yeah, go ahead.
Speaker:are more sort of.
Speaker:User privacy centric, right?
Speaker:They do worry about their data, right?
Speaker:This is where everyone, if you've ever seen the cookie banner popups, right?
Speaker:And you're like, why are they always asking me do I wanna
Speaker:share my data or accept cookies?
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:driven by the eu.
Speaker:yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And you know, we could, we could have a different discussion as to
Speaker:how effective the GDPR has been.
Speaker:There are some that feel that it really hasn't been as effective as they would
Speaker:like, but it still goes to the fact.
Speaker:That they view data privacy paramount and they view, in this case we're
Speaker:also talking about data sovereignty,
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Or digital sovereignty is actually the term.
Speaker:And so this, we're now actually talking about governmental data and they're saying
Speaker:they cannot trust storing that data, especially over on another, you know,
Speaker:basically specifically the US' technology.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And go ahead.
Speaker:And I think it's important, like as you mentioned, data sovereignty, right?
Speaker:It isn't just a matter of, hey, public cloud provider X has a Bitbucket or
Speaker:a place, a data center in Switzerland that I could store my data in.
Speaker:Because to them, that's not good enough.
Speaker:Because those US companies, those US employees, right, they
Speaker:have access to that data, right?
Speaker:Or to the, at least the infrastructure there, right?
Speaker:They have access to logs, maybe logs are being sent back to
Speaker:the US for troubleshooting, all the rest of that stuff.
Speaker:And therefore it doesn't meet that notion of data sovereignty, which a
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:European governments are expecting.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and this, and that's the stuff to which that I was referring to
Speaker:earlier where they're like, well, we thought they couldn't see the stuff.
Speaker:And no, they can totally see the stuff.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I, I, I, before the call, I made this statement, and I'll make it again.
Speaker:I, I think they're seeing.
Speaker:Our like cloud facilities in, within those company, within those countries,
Speaker:the same way we see like TikTok.
Speaker:Which, which is run in the us but it's, you know, there is this, this, this
Speaker:connection to the Chinese government, which they say isn't there, but, you
Speaker:know, there's too big of a concern.
Speaker:And so, uh, you know, we, they passed a law that said that we
Speaker:were gonna get rid of TikTok.
Speaker:Uh, now there's a whole other thing going on on that, but I,
Speaker:I'm just saying that that's, they, they view it in the same distrust.
Speaker:And And from like a public cloud provider, right?
Speaker:Or any infrastructure provider, right?
Speaker:Or a SaaS service, right?
Speaker:It's not even just public cloud, right?
Speaker:It is difficult to sort of isolate and split up all of these various
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:centers and regions because you don't get the scale right?
Speaker:You don't get the efficiencies.
Speaker:You have to manage, have multiple ops teams and everything else,
Speaker:and it just becomes complicated.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:And the um.
Speaker:Uh, so the question that, that, that I, you know, that the question
Speaker:that, that we wanna talk about is, well, let's say I am a company or a
Speaker:governmental entity that wants to, um, that wants to be more sovereign, right?
Speaker:That wants to ensure that my data is being stored in a country that I
Speaker:control with privacy, that I control.
Speaker:You know, number one, how do I actually do that?
Speaker:And number two, how does this affect, like what I've been
Speaker:doing with regards to backup,
Speaker:All the
Speaker:right?
Speaker:about.
Speaker:All the stuff we talk about.
Speaker:So, um, so what there's, as I see it, there's basically
Speaker:two choices that you have.
Speaker:And I don't mean company names, I just mean two broad choices.
Speaker:One is you can in, in-house it, and the two is you can, you can find a 100%.
Speaker:You know, Europeans, uh, housed company, uh, to, to to store your data.
Speaker:And I think let's talk about the, let's talk about both of those.
Speaker:And so I just wanna talk through an example because it works easier
Speaker:for us and probably our listeners.
Speaker:Let's just assume that today you're on Microsoft 365.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So you use them for email
Speaker:And, your productivity tools?
Speaker:They're two choices, right?
Speaker:So the first is you bring it on premises.
Speaker:you're deciding, okay, I'm gonna run it locally, I'm gonna manage everything.
Speaker:And this kind of reminds me of like the old days when people used to
Speaker:manage exchange on premises, right?
Speaker:And
Speaker:What
Speaker:saw how.
Speaker:is that?
Speaker:I, I like, I like lotus notes,
Speaker:Right, but they used to manage it on premises and then they're like, Hey,
Speaker:Microsoft, you have this cloud thing.
Speaker:I don't have to worry about patching and managing and everything else.
Speaker:I just manage my users and their emails.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:they moved over to Microsoft 365 and that's kind of like
Speaker:the one approach, right?
Speaker:The first approach you talked about
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is sort of that, okay, I'm gonna go find a local provider to host
Speaker:my stuff and they'll manage it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I know we did a prior episode, I wanna say it was earlier this year, about a provider
Speaker:who offered exchange as a service.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And we knew what happened with that.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Didn't go well,
Speaker:to, I'm referring to Rackspace.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:ended up with a ransomware attack.
Speaker:They lost all of their end users data.
Speaker:It took weeks for them to even try to recover some of the mailboxes to Microsoft
Speaker:365, and in the end, they shut down their exchange as a service business.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So this was hosted exchange, which is the one sort of
Speaker:cloudy type alternative to 365.
Speaker:If you don't wanna run exchange on-prem there, there are a number of companies
Speaker:that are doing Exchange as a service, and they were, they were one of the
Speaker:biggest, if not the biggest in the us And then, you know, poof happens.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:and so what I would say is.
Speaker:No matter, you know, my opinion hasn't changed regarding like backup
Speaker:and data protection, no matter what you choose as an alternative to
Speaker:Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Speaker:Um, is there anybody else like that?
Speaker:That's, that's pretty much it, right?
Speaker:In terms of, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, or, or any of the, or any other services, no matter what you choose.
Speaker:There needs to be third party backup of that thing because although
Speaker:you have a, you have a good story.
Speaker:You know, the Rackspace story of the,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Hosted exchange and that one, that one was so kind of sad because it was
Speaker:all made possible because of a patch.
Speaker:That Rackspace could have installed but did not install, um, in a timely manner.
Speaker:And, um, and two weeks passed by between when the patch was available
Speaker:and when the attack happened.
Speaker:And they, they could have totally addressed that, but they did not.
Speaker:And so that's why mistakes happened, right?
Speaker: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?
Speaker:I don't know, like.
Speaker:How much blame there is, per se.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You know, did they do something wrong?
Speaker:Did they just make the wrong priorities?
Speaker:Were there other things that they were worried about?
Speaker:Did they, I know that in, in this case there was, there was, um,
Speaker:There was a workaround.
Speaker:Well, There was an issue with the first,
Speaker:there was an issue with the first batch.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, and there was a belief that this workaround would address it, but
Speaker:there was, there was a new problem with, so anyway, so there, there was.
Speaker:They made that choice.
Speaker:But the thing is, no matter who it is, 365 Rackspace, you know,
Speaker:whoever mistakes happen and.
Speaker:This is why we have the 3, 2, 1 rule,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:That you, you have something else, you have another copy of your data that
Speaker:doesn't have the same risk profile, and so you don't, you don't use Microsoft 365
Speaker:and then just use their backup system, what, whatever backup system as I, as I
Speaker:make quotes in the air and you don't use hosted exchange on some provider and then.
Speaker:Not back it up and then just use their backup side.
Speaker:'cause some of them do offer backup.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You, you use third party backup.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And, and it's not just because you and I both used to work at a
Speaker:third party backup company, it's because it's basic backup design.
Speaker:Uh, and in fact we've also talked about a previous case of an EU cloud provider,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:backup and then lost their customer's data due to a fire.
Speaker:Yeah, that would maybe OVH.
Speaker:That was so, that was so bad.
Speaker:Uh, and that one, that one I'm definitely just, they did bad, right?
Speaker:Because they had the backup system literally in the same data center.
Speaker:And then, um, yeah.
Speaker:So once that happened, you know, they, it burned up both the, uh, both the
Speaker:primary and the backup at the same time, which is why you have it somewhere else.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Um, yeah.
Speaker:also think of a third scenario, which I
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:gonna be the more problematic.
Speaker:So we haven't even really touched upon like the data protection aspects yet.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We're just looking at what are the options for replacing your production.
Speaker:Microsoft 365, in this example, I.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:think what becomes more challenging is if you look at a Microsoft 365 a Google
Speaker:workspace, or if you look at even like any of the public cloud providers, they're
Speaker:not just offering a single service, right?
Speaker:It's not just email for Microsoft 365, it's email, it's
Speaker:SharePoint, it's teams, it's.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Word, right?
Speaker:It's all of these things all rolled into one package, and now if I'm looking
Speaker:for an alternative, it's much harder for me to find that full package,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There are one provider that provides all of those capabilities.
Speaker:I might need to pick 3, 5, 7 providers
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:replace my functionality.
Speaker:And, you know, one of, one of the government.
Speaker:Uh, they were saying, you know, we're, we're moving off of, of 365.
Speaker:So no matter what you choose, whether you choose another SaaS
Speaker:provider, you choose hosted exchange.
Speaker:Like we're, we're just using exchange as a, you know, as a, as an example,
Speaker:if you decide to go with, with.
Speaker:There is no other provider of Microsoft 365.
Speaker:So assuming you have another service that is an alternative for the SaaS.
Speaker:Thing that you're trying to replace.
Speaker:Or you can have, like in this case, you can go from 365 to hosted exchange,
Speaker:but if you truly, in the case of that one government want to get rid of
Speaker:Microsoft and you wanna get rid of all us, even software, um, first off, I
Speaker:think you're really limiting yourself.
Speaker:But that's just my, that's just my
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well.
Speaker:you know?
Speaker:But, but, but anyway, let me just finish the thing that you, if you're
Speaker:gonna go on-prem with something.
Speaker:No matter where you put your data, that data still needs to be protected.
Speaker:That that's just, you know,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:that's never gonna change, in my opinion.
Speaker:So I'm looking at my bookshelf right now and I have a book, I
Speaker:dunno if you've ever heard about it.
Speaker:It's called The World is Flat.
Speaker:It's a book from like the early two thousands where basically
Speaker:don't think it means what I think it means.
Speaker:It's basically talking about globalization,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:of globalization, it's no longer, okay?
Speaker:You have India's uh, tech industry, you have the US tech industry.
Speaker:It's companies are now spread throughout the world, and they benefit from that,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so I wonder, even though the EU and governments and companies and
Speaker:everyone else wants that independence,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:how feasible is it if you're taking open source software like a database?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That might, that database, the provider might be in the US if
Speaker:you're picking up chips, right?
Speaker:Where are those chips manufactured?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:What about those hard drives?
Speaker:What about all these other things, right?
Speaker:It's like how far up or down the supply chain do you go to
Speaker:say, yes, I'm truly independent?
Speaker:Yeah, I think.
Speaker:That you could say, like, indicate, again, going back to Microsoft, uh, 365, I think
Speaker:you're definitely more, let's say, let's say you found out you really couldn't
Speaker:get rid of the, the functionality of what is, what used to be called Exchange.
Speaker:Um, I do think you could be a little more independent by running exchange
Speaker:yourself or using a European based, um, hosted exchange provider.
Speaker:You're still relying on the Microsoft software, but
Speaker:You have more
Speaker:short, short of supply chain attacks, I, I, I think it's not, it's nowhere near the
Speaker:same as using a US-based cloud provider that happens to be headquartered in
Speaker:the eu.
Speaker:But I think though if I Microsoft, I'm trying to push all of my customers
Speaker:existing and new to use, Microsoft 365.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:think I will really put as much focus on the on-prem version with all the
Speaker:capabilities, with all the patches, with all the like functionality that
Speaker:an enterprise would require from compliance security and everything else?
Speaker:Or would I just sort of like check the box and say, yep, I have
Speaker:something, or whatever I had before.
Speaker:I'm just gonna kind of support it on an ongoing basis without really improving it.
Speaker:Um, there was a lot of questions all at once, but I think what I, I, I, I
Speaker:agree with you that it's a concern.
Speaker:Having said that.
Speaker:If my choices are a product that I already know and I'm used to and
Speaker:a random SaaS product , which I'm guessing is not going to be the same,
Speaker:it might be better, I don't know.
Speaker:But there will be a learning curve that will be an issue, and there will
Speaker:also be the issue of backing it up,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:I, I'm just saying that I, I, it, it still might be better.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And the learning curve, right?
Speaker:It's the same thing that when we talk about switching backup vendors, When you
Speaker:go from say, net backup to, uh, rubrik or Cohesity or whatever else, right?
Speaker:There is sort of, you need to relearn certain processes, how the
Speaker:technology works, and you may lose some functionality, but that may be
Speaker:okay for you if you're not using it or you're willing to live without
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And I think the same
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is here as well, right?
Speaker:If you are switching from Microsoft 365 to say Libra office, right?
Speaker:Maybe it doesn't matter, right?
Speaker:Depending on the features and functionality you're
Speaker:using, but maybe it does,
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I think it's
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:because I don't know if people have really done like that comparison sheet, right?
Speaker:Of Microsoft 365 versus X,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:X is a different thing.
Speaker:You know what I meant?
Speaker:I know what you meant.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:Because though that
Speaker:but
Speaker:never comes up for people, right?
Speaker:It's like,
Speaker:you have to say y now you have to say Y You can't say X, X is a brand,
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:you have to say Y Um, I still call it Twitter anyway, but the, yeah, and,
Speaker:and, and, and, and I guess it, it, it speaks to, and these are smart people.
Speaker:And they know this, they know what you just said.
Speaker:They're, they're well aware that, you know,
Speaker:they know is not the same as Microsoft Office.
Speaker:And, you know, maybe it's close.
Speaker:Um, I don't know.
Speaker:But they know whatever the difference is.
Speaker:They know this, they know this stuff.
Speaker:They, they looked at it, they're like, you know what?
Speaker:It's good enough.
Speaker:And, um, um.
Speaker:production use,
Speaker:Well, I'm just saying that,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:but Well, my, my point is they've made that decision and what I'm saying is it,
Speaker:it just goes back to the beginning of the discussion that we were having that
Speaker:how big of a deal they think this is.
Speaker:They're like, we even, even if it's half the functionality,
Speaker:we're willing to take that hit.
Speaker:Because of the fact that we do not like the fact that the US
Speaker:government is, is, has access to potential access to our data.
Speaker:okay, so here's the question then.
Speaker:So that's from like the production side, right?
Speaker:So I'm deploying it across my users.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:wonder though, if they've thought or had the conversation about
Speaker:what do we do from a backup,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and maybe it's not needed anything specific, but.
Speaker:Well let, well, let me just answer your question.
Speaker:The answer is no.
Speaker:They absolutely have not.
Speaker:Like it just if, if my time in this industry has shown me anything, it's
Speaker:that no one thinks about this question.
Speaker:That's why, that's why we have to think about it, right?
Speaker:No one thinks about this.
Speaker:They're like, we have to make this change.
Speaker:And then boom, they make the change.
Speaker:And then it's like, you know, and then nobody's raising their hand and
Speaker:go, you know, nobody wants to be the person to stop the, the project, right?
Speaker:Um, and say, Hey, you know, are we backing it up?
Speaker:So here's a question.
Speaker:So let's say that someone's made the decision, right?
Speaker:There's no questions about it, right?
Speaker:It's like, okay, we have to march forward on this.
Speaker:Yes, we understand there's gonna be reduced functionality.
Speaker:As a backup person, what are some of my options or some of the things
Speaker:I should be thinking about in terms of, okay, we're already flipping.
Speaker:What do I need to do to be able to protect this?
Speaker:Like are there options or things I could be using or thinking about?
Speaker:Because I kind of think about this the same way as like previously
Speaker:we didn't have backup for like all the different databases, right.
Speaker:Or applications.
Speaker:And
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:those days, people still managed to back it up, right?
Speaker:It may not have been efficient, right?
Speaker:But it was still doable.
Speaker:And so just wanted to get your thoughts on what should people backup admins be
Speaker:thinking about as they're looking at these new applications coming online?
Speaker:Well, I think that.
Speaker:It's gonna be similar to what we've seen in other spaces where you're going,
Speaker:it's, it's the, the one step forward, two steps back kind of thing, right?
Speaker:So they're like, so we're gonna step forward in a digital sovereignty.
Speaker:Situation, but we're gonna step back in terms of backup and recovery, right?
Speaker:So you, when you say, what did we do back in the day?
Speaker:Well, back in the day before there were database agents, you ran a dump
Speaker:and you, you dumped it to, like, you either dumped it to tape or
Speaker:you dumped it to disc, and then you backed it up, you backed up that disc.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:This is what I'm talking about at.
Speaker:Going forward and going backwards.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Uh, this was the same thing, like this is the same opinion
Speaker:that I had about containers,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:The whole concept of containers.
Speaker:It sounds fascinating, it sounds it's all great, but like, how
Speaker:are we backing this stuff up?
Speaker:And they start talking about scripts and stuff like that.
Speaker:Oh my, oh my God, it hurts my brain.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:It's doable.
Speaker:I'll, I'll, I guess the only thing, the one thing we just want to get across is
Speaker:just make sure you're thinking about it.
Speaker:Make sure you have a solution, whatever it is.
Speaker:Maybe it's not as good as just paying for a third party service
Speaker:that automatically backs it up.
Speaker:But, um, but just make sure that you're not just picking a product
Speaker:just because it's not US based.
Speaker:Um, and, um, I mean there are a lot of open source.
Speaker:Productivity tools, open source alternatives to a
Speaker:lot of products out there.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:There isn't really this concept of open source cloud service.
Speaker:That's, that's not really a thing.
Speaker:But you, there are open source backup products.
Speaker:There are open source office products, there are open source, a lot of things.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, and I, you know, I use some of them, right?
Speaker:I, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a tool that
Speaker:I use once or twice a year.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I have, I have, um.
Speaker:Um, gimp, for example, I don't have Adobe Photoshop, I have gimp.
Speaker:Um, and, uh, but now it, you know, I use, um, Canva and I'm paying for that.
Speaker:But, but yeah, so I, that's, that's all I really just want
Speaker:people to think about, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:And so I guess one other question I had for you is, we've always talked
Speaker:about how most enterprises back up, like the major applications,
Speaker:mm-hmm.
Speaker:else sort of gets ignored, right?
Speaker:All these secondary applications, open source stuff, right?
Speaker:It's like everyone do your own thing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:feel like with this push there is a possibility for new businesses
Speaker:to be started new focus to be, uh.
Speaker:To be placed on all those other things which have been left on
Speaker:the side of the road to sort of be ignored all these years, all these
Speaker:applications and all that data that's
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:in environments, but
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:never been seen as important.
Speaker:well, having, you know, for, for a long time I was pushing backup
Speaker:companies to support stuff.
Speaker:Then I worked for a backup company and I was pushing them to support stuff.
Speaker:The answer really all comes down to are there enough people I. Are there
Speaker:enough companies, entities that are willing to pay for this thing that
Speaker:will pay for my development to go figure out how to back up this thing.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And also, a second question, is the company or open source development
Speaker:group that's behind this particular product, are they friendly?
Speaker:Are they, can I work with them?
Speaker:Can I, can, will they gimme an API, uh, and access to that?
Speaker:Or will they be more like Microsoft 365 that fought for years?
Speaker:Um, you know, and basically the backup vendors had to.
Speaker:Pretend to be WebEx.
Speaker:They used OWA, they just pretended to be a user and that's how they backed up 365.
Speaker:Um, so if, if, if the open source, if there's enough people that are using
Speaker:it and, or not just open source, but, but let's just say just a product
Speaker:that's EU centric or EU based and, and there's a lot of 'em, right?
Speaker:Or just not, not.
Speaker:US based.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, uh, oddly enough, um, one of the other countries where a lot of
Speaker:technology comes from is Israel,
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:which has its own challenges right now.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, so again, this is, this is why all these countries are thinking,
Speaker:Hey, let's, you know, let's, let's bring stuff back home.
Speaker:It's just that thing with your comment about the world is flat.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:It's true, right?
Speaker:Um, how it's gonna be hard for you to do it.
Speaker:So just, and all I wanna do is just whatever you do, I don't care what you
Speaker:do, just make sure you backend it up.
Speaker:That's all.
Speaker:That's all.
Speaker:Um, you know, 'cause it's, it's one thing to sort of deal with the issues of having
Speaker:to move data and applications and relearn everything, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:Just make sure you, that you don't end up then losing your data because of, yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I think we covered this.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:Do, was there anything else you wanted to touch upon this,
Speaker:no, um,
Speaker:by
Speaker:I guess that's pretty much it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I should mention, I know we did talk heavily about Microsoft 365 in this
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:but that was just an example.
Speaker:It could be any cloud provider, it could be any SaaS provider, right?
Speaker:It could be
Speaker:We just.
Speaker:that
Speaker:Yeah, we, we used it for two reasons.
Speaker:One is it's an example that everybody knows, and also it was specifically
Speaker:mentioned in one of the articles, we'll, we'll put some links to these articles.
Speaker:Um, and, uh, that they specifically, was it the Dutch government that they were
Speaker:specifically saying that they're, they're gonna move from 365 to Libra office.
Speaker:Um, anyway.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Thanks for the chat as always.
Speaker:Anytime Curtis.
Speaker:And, uh, thanks to the listeners, you know, you're, why we do this?
Speaker:That is a wrap.