This Week in Enterprise Tech 563 Trascript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Louis Maresca (00:00:00):
On this week enterprise tech, Brian G. Curtis Franklin and I talk about the future of network security and the game changing. Sassy. We'll get into what that is. Plus, as part of our host round table today, we're going to navigate you through the maze of document and file management solutions out there. Should you go on-prem? Should you go in the cloud? Should you strike a balance between accessibility information rights? We're going to dive deep into the details of document and case management systems. You definitely shouldn't miss it. Try it on the set.

TWiT (00:00:30):
Podcasts you love from people you trust this is TWiT

Louis Maresca (00:00:43):
This is TWiET, This Week in Enterprise Tech episode 5 63 recorded September 29th, 2023. Don't drop your file drawers. This episode of this week, enterprise Tech is brought to you by eva. It's a first Eva's new pro series. The H D L three 10 for large rooms in the HCL four 10 for extra large rooms gives you uncompromised audio and systems that are incredibly simple to set up, manage and deploy at scale. Learn more at eva.com/twi and by our friends IT pro tv. Now a C i Learning acis New solution insights assist in identifying fixing skill gaps in your IT teams visit go dot aci learning.com/twit. TWIT listeners can receive up to 65% off and IT pro enterprise solution plan after completing their form. Based on your team's size, you'll receive a properly quoted discount tailored to your needs. Welcome to this weekend enterprise sector show that is dedicated to you, the enterprise professional, the IT pro and that geek who just wants to know how this roles connected. I'm your host Lewis Marque. Your guide are the big world of the enterprise, but I can't guide you by myself. I'm going to bring some professionals in and some experts starting their very own. Mr. Brian Chi, he's all around Tech Geek network guy, you name it, he does everything. Bert has been your, how's your week been? What have you been up to? Actually,

Brian Chee (00:02:07):
Actually I've been up,

Louis Maresca (00:02:10):
Been stuck.

Brian Chee (00:02:12):
I was stuck in a boom lift, so I'm a little crispy today and so little did I know that boom lifts that have an extender arm if you manage to tilt it even a little bit. In fact one set of wheels up on the curb, one set of wheels down on the pavement is enough to set off the tilt alarm and me and the guy up there were going, how do we get out of this? And finally managed to get the head groundskeeper over and explained to us and we swung the boom over just as the boom finally got close to the ground so it wouldn't be in danger of tipping over. An alarm went off and we're able to move again. Really embarrassing then. Funny now, but I give credit to the head groundskeeper. He did not die laughing, so I think I'm going to make sure he gets a nice cold six pack to say thank you.

Louis Maresca (00:03:14):
I'm glad you didn't get stuck up there all day, so that's good. Appreciate that. Well good. Well welcome back and we also have to welcome back our very own Mr. Curtis Franklin. He's principal analyst at MD and of course the man who always knows what's going on in the enterprise. Curtis, what's going on this week? What's keeping you busy?

Curtis Franklin (00:03:29):
Well, I have kept my feet firmly planted on the ground and while I've had them there, I've been doing things like writing. I've had a piece up on dark reading this week, been helping some of my colleagues do the same sort of thing, been researching a new article that's going to be coming out on omni.com for our subscribers and I have to say it is getting to be that time of year. I'm starting to think about what's happened in 2023 and trends to look out for in 2024. Love the TWI riots. Help on that latter one. If you've got something that you think is going to be big in cybersecurity, please let me know with the end of the podcast, I will let folks know how they can get that headed my way.

Louis Maresca (00:04:19):
Well thanks guys for being here. We should definitely get started. Lots to talk about today. Now we're going to discover the future of network security and the game changing sassy technology that's right in the digital age. Every click matters and we want to make sure you're equipped well. So we're going to talk about what that means and how you can take utilization of it. Of course, we also have the host round table today. That's right. We're going to talk about and help you navigate through the maze of document and file management systems that are out there, whether we should digitally transform you into a SaaS service, into an online service. Should you be a private network service? Should you roll your own servers? We'll definitely talk about that and how you can get started there. So lots to talk about, definitely stick around. But before we do, let's go ahead and jump into this week's news flips breaking news on the tech security front.

(00:05:02):
Google has unveiled a critical zero day vulnerability in its chrome browser that harks back to a similar disclosure just a little over two weeks ago. Notably, this isn't just a Chrome concern though Mozilla's Firefox has been identified as susceptible to the bug as well tagged as C V E 20 23 52 70. This ATech article goes delves into the details here and the vulnerability is rooted into a widely utilized code library for processing media files, specifically the VP eight format. For those acquainted with the lib V P X file, you may recognize it as the backbone for many packages across platforms like Ubuntu and Debian. In addition, industry giant sets a Skype, Adobe V L C and even Android rely on the same library. But there's a caveat. Researchers underscored that the vulnerability targets V P A encoding hence packages using that strictly for decoding can actually breathe the sigh of relief here.

(00:05:57):
However, major browsers, particularly those chromium based and platforms exposing V P A encoding capabilities from lib V P X to its JavaScript are squarely in the crosshairs here within the wilds attacks already exploiting the zero day Google's threat analysis group indicates it's used by a commercial surveillance entity. Google to their credit was swift in its response, releasing a patch just two days after the vulnerabilities. Discovery updates are available for both Chrome and fire pox. Now a significant observation here, both this and the earlier zero today, vulnerabilities stemming from a buffer overflow is allowing a potential remote code execution from malicious webpages. Both are also involved in media libraries released by Google over a decade ago crafted in the venerable C programming language, why they considered unsafe given its vulnerabilities in memory corruption. I want to end the blip with a word of caution of course for those using apps of platforms centered around V P A, especially for the video coding, it's time to be vigilant. The full implications of this c d are still unfolding, so forcing a browser update will be in your best interest

Curtis Franklin (00:07:03):
Here at Quiet. We've been saying that cybersecurity is about far more than just computers for a long time and now the Department of Homeland Security is agreeing with us as they're warning that a recent data exfiltration attack at Johnson Controls could have a security impact because of the physical environment and information it might've released. Johnson Controls is a government contract that provides physical infrastructure, products and services like H V A C, fire and security equipment and controls, thermostats, things like that. Due to the nature of the services and products, officials at D H S are raising concerns of compromised information like D h s floor plants. According to an internal memo referenced by C N N, the stolen data could include classified and sensitive contracts for D H s that depict the physical security of many D H SS facilities. In a dark reading article, it's still unclear as to what information was accessed in the breach, which we think was a ransomware attack, but various reports state that D h s is telling its employees that until further notice we should assume that the contractor stores D H s floor plans and security information tied to contracts on their servers concerns are heightened because of a potential government shutdown which could begin this coming day after tomorrow, making the incident government making the incident not only a security issue but a time sensitive security issue.

(00:08:43):
More than 80% of the CSA workforce will be furloughed should the shutdown go into effect and possible cyber attacks across the nation's software supply chain will add additional consequences to putting critical infrastructure at risk. This story manages to tie together a number of trends and events we've talked about here on twit. One that cyber criminals are being more aggressive about stealing data before launching a ransomware attack. Two, that the government emphasis on cyber infrastructure security is awfully well placed. And three, that your concerns about cybersecurity don't end at the perimeter of your organization. Third party risk is a very real, very concerning thing.

Brian Chee (00:09:37):
Before I start onto my blip, I want to make a quick comment about Curtis's blip. I've had hands-on experience with Johnson Control and a lot of their building management systems. If you are running a Johnson control system, when they turn the system over to you, you really and truly need to change the passwords. I'm not sure if they've changed their corporate policy, but when I had to touch them, they had default published passwords and usernames for their building control systems and there was a organization that had their air conditioning system hacked out from under them because they didn't change their passwords. So there's a lesson here. Now speaking of passwords and vulnerabilities, this article comes from dark reading and the headline is interesting. Hick vision intercoms allows snooping on neighbors a concerning internet of things. Cyber attack vector has been uncovered, one that can turn the neighboring devices of a hick vision smart intercom into spying devices.

(00:10:56):
In a recent blog post on the attack researchers Cyber Light Skylight Cyber warned that the potentials of such devices to be used in spyware attacks should be of concern for businesses and organizations because an attacker could potentially gain access to an individual's life denying their privacy. Hick vision devices were specifically chosen for this research because they're readily available and because the brand is popular, researchers tested on two intercom products, the D S K H 62 10 L and the D S K H 63 20 WT one. Among other things, they tested the devices inside an apartment to observe how they would interact with other devices found in a normal complex such as door controllers, cameras and other intercoms. Port mirroring was configured within the device to allow the researchers to capture all traffic entering and leaving the device. Okay, so I'd like to remind viewers that Hick vision is among the vendors that have been barred from being purchased and used by US federal activities. Companies like Z T E, Huawei and a few others seem to have issues with their equipment. Phoning home and sharing your information with Hacker Organization, what's a red flag is how popular these cameras have become since they're actually pretty decent cameras for a great price. But then again, the temu online sales site has some spectacular pricing too and I rumored to also phone home with your personal information. So I want you to ask yourself, is the price that you pay for this so important that you're willing to give up your privacy

Louis Maresca (00:12:45):
Question? A high alert warning has been issued jointly by the US and Japanese government state-sponsored actors and hackers from China known by several monikers including black tech and Palmerworm are infusing malware into routers. Now this move gives these hackers enduring and covert backdoor access into the networks of prominent multinational companies. Here's the rundown of this from ours, technical Now black tech hackers obtain admin credentials of network devices, particularly from subsidiaries. Using these they install covert firmware that waits specific magic packets to execute undetected commands. Then their target. Many compromised devices have been linked to Cisco who clarify that these attacks focus primarily on their older products. Their latest devices fortified with secure boot capabilities are not affected. Now here's the intrusion. The hackers utilize older firmware versions altering them in runtime, bypassing Cisco's signature checks. This allows undetected SS s h connections there. Now there are some defensive messages you can take.

(00:13:45):
Administrators are actually advised to monitor both inbound and outbound connections. Of course, upgrade to devices with advanced security features of course in check configurations and be vigilant about unauthorized changes to the devices. Cisco's newer devices with secure capabilities are immune to the such attacks. Its call to action is to actually monitor, upgrade, and always stay ahead and of course the cybersecurity chess game. Best thing to do, upgrade. Well folks, that does it for the blips. Next up the bites, but before we have the bites, think really great sponsor of this week Enterprise tech and that's Eva Nabas is a meeting room audio technology and has a history of wowing it pros. Duque University has a hundred EVA devices installed in one of their senior technologists Recently said, I can't say enough about how I'm impressed I am. Audio has been my life's work for 30 years and I'm amazed at what Eva, Mike and Speaker Bar will do.

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You can even use them individually in a divisible room. The HGL four 10 also features a unified coverage map, which processes mic pickup from the two devices simultaneously to actually create a giant single mic array. And the HCL L three 10 covers spaces up to 30 feet by 30 feet with just one mic and speaker bar. An array is all about simplicity here. The H C L three 10 takes about 30 minutes to install and the HTL four 10 takes about 60 minutes, not long at all. With continuous auto calibration, EVA audio automatically and continuously adapts to the changes in a room's acoustic profile. Now with eva's console their cloud-based device management platform, it takes the pain out of tasks like firmware updates, checking device status, changing settings, and a lot more. Bottom line with the Pro Series Neva makes it simple to quickly and cost effectively equip more of your spaces for remote collaboration.

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Learn more at neva.com/twit. That's N U rva.com/tw and we thank EVA for their support of this week in enterprise tech. Well folks, it's now time for the bites and today we're going to talk a little bit about ssss E solutions. That's why in today's digital age, CISOs and CIOs are really confronted with a ton of challenges, especially when they're actually spearheading virtual teams and that digital first revenue channel that's out there. Now, these challenges spotlight a compelling shift towards the solution called Secure Access Service Edge, which is called SS ss e. Now, Gartner actually offers some striking projections here. By 2025, 80% of enterprises 80% will lean into ssss E offerings, blending web, cloud and private app channels together. Now further testament is actually the traction that we're seeing in the market and it's projected to actually have a robust $15 billion market by 2025. Now at its core SASS E champions the essence of what we call zero trust.

(00:17:40):
It's merging lots of different services together. It's actually SD one S W G, CASB and Z T N A that holds zero trust solutions. Now, steward Health, C I C S O actually concisely puts it at its core ssss E is zero trust. Now we're going to get into that in just a moment, but the shift isn't mere just text consolidation here. It's actually calculated response to pressing and imperatives and elevating the security protocols, fortifying identity-based C T N A zero trust here and catering to the hybrid work models. Now a prime case in point is actually cradle point's strategic acquisition of acom and I'm sure Brian has lots to say about that. Now this union signals a conclusive networking and cloud-centric security together. It's actually pairing CRADLEPOINTS one networking pros with ACOMs Security Service Edge and they're poised to actually meet the surging demand for that fortified cloud network solution.

(00:18:36):
Now ACOMs, C E O envisions their joint endeavor as powerful capability put together those two solutions prime to actually define A five G anchored SSS SS E as a service. Now, as the IT landscape continues to change endeavors like that Creative point eCom alliance really underscores the need for proactive response here and moving forward in these types of solutions. Now I do want to bring my cosst back in because this is a very interesting shift as we move into the environment. I want to bring Curtis in first because the thing that kind of called out in this article, which was interesting is that they're saying, Hey, sassy is essentially zero Trust that true, I mean is that why people are gravitating towards it, Curtis?

Curtis Franklin (00:19:20):
Well, I don't think you can say that ssss E is only zero trust, but I think you have trouble getting to ssssss E without zero trust. Put it another way, zero trust SASS E must always include zero trust, but zero trust can be done without ssss E. The big thing that ssss E does, and I think the reason that we're hearing so much about it is that ssss E is a necessary solution for highly divergent multiple cloud provider infrastructures. So if you have parts of an application infrastructure that are strewn across half a dozen public and private cloud vendors as well as let's say some on-prem stuff just to keep it old school and confusing, even if you don't call it sassy, you're going to end up with a solution that looks and smells a lot like sassy in order to make it secure and doable. So this has been an evolution, but it is, I think the industry's response to the fact that everyone is doing hybrid cloud infrastructures. Now if you're not doing a hybrid cloud, it's because you've only got four employees. So I think that's really driving it and if you understand it that way, it makes a lot more sense.

Louis Maresca (00:21:10):
Speaking of industry response, Bert, what do you think the industry will respond to Cradlepoint actually acquiring Aircom

Brian Chee (00:21:20):
Probably ought to give a little bit of background on cradle point. First, if you've been out and about and you've seen the commercial television station cameraman and you see a whole forest of antennas off the back of their camera, there is a high probability that was Cradlepoint. I actually am a partner with a company in Honolulu and we rent mobile devices so that people can stream from the beach, they can stream from wherever, special events when you don't want to have to go and drag a cable behind you. Cradlepoint has been part of our rental fleet for a very, very long time, and as one of the few companies that are able to bond to use the special bonding features in cellular towers, if and only if there's enough channels available, it can bond way beyond what your standard mobile phone can do. If you have the special accounts, you can actually bond and do several megabits per second actually enough that TV stations and so forth can run hd.

(00:22:46):
Well, it's compressed hd, but it's still HD video streaming live, so almost all your live streams from your TV stations, there's a good chance it's being done over cradlepoint. Now the background on Aircom is interesting. We actually had Aircom being interviewed in episode 4 34 and 5 39. Now episode 4 34 talked about a remote access offering from ACOM based on HTML five. It's a direct competitor for Citrix and the V D I gateway from Microsoft. The difference is I was able to install the aircom gateway in about 15 minutes and that was with tying it into active directory. Now once we got to episode 5 39, by the way, episode 4 34 was the gentleman that we had on the show that got interrupted by a missile attack in Tel Aviv 5 39 started talking about this relatively new concept called Sassy, and by leveraging their HTML five based clients, basically any HTML five browser could be a remote desktop client, they were offering what would be called now a zero trust client.

(00:24:21):
It was actually a virtual desktop that only had what the admin set up and when you logged out it would go poof. So it was isolated, it was jailed, whatever adjective you want, it was what I would call now a sassy client. So now that the two have combined, this is going to be really interesting because now you have dedicated bandwidth from a mobile device. In fact, Cradlepoint is also OEMed into several other types of devices, typically ruggedized laptops and aircom allows you to have virtual desktops, sss e virtual desktops with very, very little bandwidth necessary to do their work. In fact, I was actually able to run three D Revit from AutoCAD over the aircom client and it ran beautifully. So I think this is going to be a really, really interesting combination and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Louis Maresca (00:25:34):
I think the interesting thing here is we usually when companies like this, they acquire other companies, they either have total integration or they kind of leave things separate, right? They still maintain the business, they maintain the ecosystem cheaper. What do you think is going to happen here? Do you think it's going to be total integration and they're going to just go to integrate it into all their products and rebrand everything as Cradlepoint or do you think it'll leave it separately and then just find better integration points?

Brian Chee (00:26:02):
I don't know. This is going to be a real interesting thing to watch. However, one of the frustrations when I was talking offline with the Aircom folks is the uneven integration or uneven implementation of a full HTML five browser and how certain add-ons and extensions go and break it. So my personal wish prediction, crystal ball, whatever you want is that I think Aircom is going to have their clients and their dedicated client that's written by them is actually an optimized client. So it's much, much more than just a straight HTML five browser and it does an amazing amount of compression. I was using it for several projects at the University of Hawaii. I think they're going to start sticking those into the firmware on certain cradle point devices, and I am almost certain it's going to do the same thing for O E M cellular devices, especially the new five G and five G plus devices that we're going to start seeing ratified by the international standards committee.

Louis Maresca (00:27:27):
One last question to Curtis. Curtis. I'm curious though if we talked a little bit about the SaaS SASS E market and how it's been, it's projected to be bigger. Do you think that acquisitions like this will push forward more people utilizing it? Of course, people who are already using Cradlepoint or do you think that it'll slow the market down because there's less options out there? And so what do you think will happen with the whole concept of SaaS as a service associated service?

Curtis Franklin (00:27:53):
I don't think it's going to slow things down at all. I see forces beyond just the size or the actions of one or two companies driving this. So I don't think it's going to slow down. Do I think this is by itself going to speed things up? I'm not sure that that is. Again, because I think the driver is the evolution of the larger market. You've got some external drivers. What I think this is a good indication of is the pickup in merger and acquisition activity after we've had a couple of years where it had slowed down a bit largely as interest rates were going up around the world and especially in the US I think we're seeing now people deciding that the interest rate increases are stabilizing, that money is not going to get more expensive in the future, so they're going ahead and putting some of these trades that have been on the back burner for a while into action. The same is true of last week's Cisco taking over Splunk deal. So I suspect we're going to see more of these as we roll into the fourth quarter of 2023, but I don't see anything slowing the progress of SSS SS e and sass E as a service unless something even better comes out of left field and just takes over the market. I'm willing to be surprised it wouldn't be the first time, but I'm not aware of anything right now that would come along and knock

Brian Chee (00:29:40):
Sassy of the game. I think I'm going to make a prediction here. We saw an announcement almost four years ago when L T e CAT M one was starting to be rolled out. I got a briefing from at and t and back then I was under nondisclosure no longer the case. They started doing something that they wanted to roll out for people like U P s and FedEx because L T e CAT M one was a low bandwidth solution. However the product was, they're going to put virtual servers into the data centers closest to the cellular APNs. Kind of a cool concept. Didn't really catch on very vertical market. However, now that five G and five G plus is going to start appearing cradlepoint with aircom, I'll bet you we're going to start seeing some key announcements about full at and t or full Verizon or full T-mobile certification and partnerships where they're going to combine aircom ssss S e servers in the A P N data centers and they're going to go for ultra secure zero trust clients.

(00:31:14):
And personally, I think one of the things that I tried to work on almost 10 years ago was DOYs five based H T M L desktops so that you could sell a managed desktop to people at home and through your cable box you can actually do office automation. I think this is going to be one of those turning points in the industry. We're going to start seeing some really interesting things, especially now that home five fixed 0.5 G is rolling out and getting better. So that's my prediction. Let's see if it happens within say the next year.

Louis Maresca (00:31:59):
We'll definitely have to take a snapshot and come back next year to see if you're right. Well folks that does it for the bytes. Next up was our host round table. We're going to talk about document archiving and document as a service, but before we get there, do have to take another great sponsor of this week in enterprise tech and that's it Pro TV now it's now actually called a C i Learning. 94% of CIOs and CSOs agree that attracting and retaining talent is increasingly critical in their roles. Now with today's IT talent shortage, it's more important than ever for your team's skills to be current. 87% of companies say that they have skill gaps in their employees. The challenge of assessing your IT staff skills is overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Now a C I Learning now offers insights. It's a revolutionary skills gap analysis tool to assure you that the training you're providing is actually working.

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Brian Chee (00:34:47):
Hey, I remember being briefed and learning how to sell write once, read many optical systems that were 14 inch platters and it was from Wang Laboratories. So that's how far back it goes.

Curtis Franklin (00:35:11):
Yeah, this is one of those things where from the very beginning of the industry, we've been dealing with documents. I mean, Brian and I have certainly been around long enough to remember when the big players in the market were companies like Wang, which was a purely document play Prime and companies of that sort were heavily into document management as their very reason for being as general purpose. Microcomputers came to take over the desktop for most companies. The documents and the organized storage of those documents took a backseat for a while, but it really only took a few years before companies started realizing just how important it is from not only a practical standpoint, but from a governance standpoint to talk about document storage. And I've got to say that's been one of the side effects of our good friend generative AI since November of last year. All of a sudden, everybody is talking about document governance now as companies try desperately to figure out what they're going to allow to be used in training generative ai, how to put it in, how to keep it out, how to let various authorized functions have access to it. It's one of those things that is an evergreen topic in the industry.

Louis Maresca (00:37:01):
I want to throw something in here because I think the one thing that I was always confused about is I did hear about, I actually looked up when Brian brought up the concept of weighing laboratories and their optical storage. I thought, well, what is so special about this system? Why does it need to be this way? And the whole concept of worm, which is right once read many, and I think that that concept is very important for things like I was reading obviously New York Stock Exchange uses as US Department of State, US Library of Congress, and the whole point is the idea that they have to make sure that they're able to keep their data secure and reliable for long-term, right? This is data that they want, historical data that needs to be around and available and accessible over a long period of time and need to have some kind of storage to do it.

(00:37:45):
And what I'm seeing now is the trends kind of going towards these cloud services, these SaaS offerings that try to also offer this whole write once read many solutions. And you have these concepts of applying policies to them, like document retention policies where now they're trying to repeat what weighing has done, but it seems like they're doing it more in services and software than they are with actual physical hardware that they're saying, Hey, this is the hardware you need to do this. So why are we seeing this kind of shift? Is it just as effective?

Brian Chee (00:38:22):
I think I want to jump in here. I think realistically we saw maybe 10, 15 years ago a fork in the industry. A lot of the cloud offerings came in and did exactly what Wang Laboratories, digital Equipment Corporation, I B M, prime, you name it, they could do the whole thing. They kept your documents around, they put 'em, they made it searchable by tags and so forth. However, one of the things that happened was in the fork content management systems or document storage systems, one side became a case management system and the legal world adopted it wholesale. And the idea behind this is who touched it when and how it's legal paper trails. So one part of the industry went whole hog and really went crazy on making sure that paper trail was just as accurate as real paper. And that became the case management world. Lots of money there. However, the other end of the spectrum started going into are you going to be in the cloud or are you going to be on-prem? And that's I think going to be the big conversation today. So one of the things that I got to touch and play with actually at c b in Germany was a company called hits. And so the product is now called from kintron. So let's bring up the one Tronix. It's in cell D 360.

(00:40:13):
Tronix took this. It's basically based on Windows server. It is a feature that is built into every copy of Windows server, but they extended the capabilities. So their optical libraries are Blu-ray in this case. They are write once read many with 35 disc magazines that have R F I D tags in them. So what happens is you write to the front end, which is a Windows-based NAS network attached storage, and you can set timing on different file folders, directories, and so forth. After a certain amount of time, it will migrate the actual data onto the Blu-ray, but keep the metadata on the spinning disc. And the idea is you can still search for it, you can still find it, but the second you touch the file, it will issue a command, a prompt to the operator, say, please Mount magazine number such and such, and it'll bring it in on a jukebox, mount the data, bring it back in and mark that it's online now.

(00:41:26):
Very, very cool. It was a spectacular system. They aren't cheap, but if you're going to roll your own, it's a pretty spectacular system and they're still available. Hits has been acquired by Tronix, and you can add that as a front end and it will integrate into active directory beautifully. So anyway, now that I've set the history, let's kind of dive in. Let's talk about on-prem versus cloud and let's see, let's tear it apart because it's a lot of really cool things. And just as a quick extra, I'm going to ask the guys to go and put some of my links into the show notes because one of the things researchers have done is they use SYC and they use bash scripts. There's also PowerShell equivalents. So you can archive your data in a roll your own fashion if that's all you need. But on-prem versus cloud, document management, content management, it's a very, very different world from the days of Wang Laboratories.

Curtis Franklin (00:42:46):
Yeah, go ahead Curtis. Go ahead Lou. No, no, go for it. Well, no, and I was going to say the thing that a lot of people forget, and Brian touched on this in his answer, it's very easy if you've never dealt with documents by the truckload to think that a document is a document when you're keeping your correspondence on your personal computer, that's kind of true. But when you are dealing with an enterprise level of documentation, when you're dealing with a university's level of documentation or the amount of documentation that goes along with a massive lawsuit, then you have to have systems that will take care of the requirements of that need. And that's why there are legal case management systems that specialize in organizing documents the way that the legal system needs them to be organized for both storage, archival storage and for retrieval and use. There are special systems for healthcare. We've had conversations here on TTW about E M Ss or medical records, electronic medical record systems that were dictated about 15 years ago. In the world of research, there are research management systems that deal with keeping track of all the data that you need if you are doing long-term research projects.

(00:44:48):
These are so large that there are specific organizations, associations, trade shows that deal with each of these. And it's very difficult to make a single statement about all of them other than the ultimate goal is to put documents into them in a way that is cost effective to store them in a form that is secure and resilient and to allow their retrieval affordably when necessary. Beyond that, you get into all kinds of specialized things, Lou, you have to have seen a number of these things because SharePoint is now used as one of the backends for a lot of these individual systems and has a bunch of different consultants basically earning giant piles of money forming document systems for specific purposes.

Louis Maresca (00:46:01):
Right? Yeah, it's funny that you guys are talking about this. I squirm a little bit in my seat when Bert was talking about these optical systems or these new systems that are now available from these other vendors. Because having worked with organizations, I've learned, hey, you need, if you're going to go to digital, have multiple copies of data and the concept of moving from a hard copy to a digital copy but still being onsite or co-located or whatever, and having a single version of that or even a backed up version of that is not necessarily the most optimal thing for business, whether even if you're in law or if you're financial. The concept that I'm seeing a lot, and I'll get your guys' thoughts on this, is obviously yes, having a physical medium that they archive these things and then they create some kind of an index so you can search through it and load it from these physical mediums, but then also having a service version of it so that their applications can access it quickly and it's redundant and available in multiple different locations.

(00:47:08):
They don't have to have a single data center that's being accessed across the country or the world. And so it becomes, and that's why people normally gravitate towards these kind of document management services like for instance, SharePoint or obviously there's Confluence or these other systems that are out there that offer similar approaches and all of them are attempting to adjust for what's needed for the particular industry. And so that's why I'm curious, are you seeing particular businesses that we acquire the, Hey, I'm going to have my own private network that has these kind of hand rolled services or systems in it? Or is it that you're seeing people gravitate towards the three copies of things, the hard, the digital and then the service-based? What are we seeing in what parts of the industry do you guys think?

Brian Chee (00:48:03):
Well, I think one of the issues is going to be the trail. So Mr. Anne, I want to go into some websites. One is on the legal status of scanned documents, and then the next one will go on the issues with scanned signatures. So these websites talk a lot about that, and one of the things that has been done, especially in the legal world, is they have serial numbers on every document and when the serial number is no longer increment, lots of interesting flags get set. So the legal people have kind of taken a good hard look at that. Now, I'll bet you when we start talking about, we've had conversations about the non fungible tokens for art, I just bet you all these document management people are going crazy about NFTs for documents and NFTs for the indexes going to be interesting.

Curtis Franklin (00:49:22):
Well, to follow on what Brian said, that was one of the early examples that proponents were giving for the use of blockchain to have a distributed ledger that would keep track of all changes in a document that would not allow for any change to be forgotten because the change would be stored along the chain. We haven't seen blockchain used for that purpose as much as I frankly thought it would have been by now. This is one of those cases I think where the industry got so distracted by the bright, shiny new toy of cryptocurrency that it forgot about some of the more practical uses of blockchain, like we've been talking about following the audit trail for documents.

(00:50:32):
I suspect that in a few years time we'll see it come back around and be used more for that because it makes a ton of sense. We've got an awful lot of stuff going on around these documents. And Lou, you asked who uses the different kinds of documents or document management systems, and I think in many cases it boils down to a couple of forks. Number one, if you are not large enough to have a dedicated development team that you can put on this, well, you're going to buy it as a service from somebody because that's really your only choice. If you are big enough to have a dedicated development system, then your dividing line is somewhere else because then it becomes is developing this a core competency of our business, in other words, is having our very own solution, something that would provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace if it would, then you go ahead and you develop it. And as an example, I would give a couple of publications who have done that. I think the New York Times rolled their own and then sold it, ended up selling it to some other publishers. And there have been a couple, few other examples like that. But if your primary business is actually using the documents rather than developing a way to store and manage the documents, you're right back to buying it. Even if you have to do some significant customization, you're going to buy as much of it as you can,

Louis Maresca (00:52:20):
Right? Yeah, I think that's interesting because I think a lot of organizations, especially in the law part of the market, you're seeing more of a combination, not only physical documents to becoming digital, but also audio files, images, videos that are also are kind of correlated to these hard copies. And so you're starting to see a lot of services out there start to gravitate towards being able to handle these assets in the similar way, being able to make them searchable, using AI against videos to determine content and time keys and that kind of thing, and being able to store that kind of thing, indexing files and images and trying to determine what's in them and make them searchable. And I feel like a lot of these systems that even Brian has linked to these kind of solely archivable systems are limited to just data storage and being searched by whatever the data entry person has put in there. Do you see the market shifting more towards utilizing systems that take advantage of these plugins and these AI capabilities that are helping organizations get there faster? Or do you see organizations sticking around to data entry type things as they move from hard copy to digital?

Curtis Franklin (00:53:41):
The word that I hear is that this is going to be one of the great coming uses of generative AI because you can train a model on the documents and the other data types from a single organization. Don't share that model with the wider world. In other words, keep it internal to the organization. But if someone is looking for information on an internal basis, if they're trying to put together data across multiple documents, so for your example, the one that we've been using a lot, a law firm, if you had an enormous law firm that's trying to go through their case files and find evidence, find discussions, find judgments that might be useful in making a case, they'll be able to do that. So I think that we are going to see generative AI widely used on internal basis on very, very task specific cases in the coming say 24 months.

Brian Chee (00:55:05):
Well, I'm going to jump in automation. I think it's not going to be automation just for automation sake is going to be tying together a lot of different technologies. I think in this case, automation is going to be file management, it's going to be indexing using generative ai. It's going to be making sure the trail is kept with say, blockchain. I think actually automation is going to be more of a, oh my god, this industry is going to have a paradigm shift. We've got the individual tools, we've got the pieces. I'm just waiting for them to be put together. And I think we're going to start seeing some very, very interesting things out there. And unfortunately, I think the big one that's going to be a problem is actually going to be government. Let's do a fast example since we're running out of time. It's when the digital signatures were starting to be accepted by the federal government. It took Hawaii State Government in another what, 6, 7, 8 years before they started allowing it. And the interesting thing is the pandemic forced their hand. So a silver lining to the pandemic is it's going to, I think it's pushed us closer to document management putting together all the automation so that we no longer have to go and search through file drawers. Maybe that's a show title. No more file drawers.

Louis Maresca (00:57:05):
Wouldn't that be nice not to have to do anything manual anymore? That's the ultimate goal I think. Well, folks, you know what? We ran out of time. I think we probably could talk about this for a long time. In fact, I was hoping that we could get to some suggestions on business when choosing either these case management document management services, but that'll have to wait till another episode, unfortunately. So folks, thank you so much for being here. Of course, we want you to keep up with your enterprise and IT news, and I definitely want you to tune podcast catch at twit, but I also want to thank everyone who makes this show possible, especially to my wonderful co-host here Schneider by Mr. Brian Chi. Bert, what's going on for you? The coming weeks? Where can people find you?

Brian Chee (00:57:44):
I'm going to be up in a boom lift again, I've got lots of fibers to put up in the air, but I am talking about all kinds of goofy things that I'm doing, sometimes embarrassing things like getting stuck in a boom lift for half an hour or so. But I do a lot of that on Twitter, which is now called X. Still don't understand the name change. I'm sorry, Elon still. I think Twitter was much more an appropriate name. Anyway, I am A D V N E T L A B advanced net lab back from the days at the University of Hawaii, but I throw out all kinds of stuff there. Now, you're also more than welcome. Some of you have been throwing some really interesting ideas at me. The document storage content management system question is actually almost two years old, so I apologize. It's taken me so long to sneak this in, but some people have been asking about it. So thank you for that suggestion. So you're welcome to throw ideas via email at Schubert spelled C H E E B E R T at twit tv or throw it at TW at twit tv and it'll hit all the hosts. We'd love to hear your ideas. Sorry it took so long to get this one on air.

Louis Maresca (00:59:06):
Thank you, Siebert. Well, we also thank you very Mr. Curtis Franklin. Curtis, what's going on for you in the coming weeks? Where can people find you?

Brian Chee (00:59:14):
Well,

Curtis Franklin (00:59:15):
Like I said, I've got some pieces coming up on dark reading and over@omnia.com, and I'm starting to put together my thinking around trends to watch for 2024. I would love to hear suggestions from the TWI at Riot, what you are thinking about for the coming year. Let me know. Feel free to get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm Curtis Franklin on Mastodon kg four gwa@mastodon.sdf.org. I'm still on X at KG four g w. Any or all of these are ways to reach me. Always love it when I can hear from members of the TWIT riot.

Louis Maresca (01:00:05):
Thank you, Curtis. Well, we also have to thank you as well. You're the person who drops in each and every week to watch and to listen to our show to get your enterprise goodness want to make it easy for you to watch and listen and catch up on your enterprise and IT news, you go to a show page right now, TWI tv slash twi, twi iet. You'll find all the amazing back episodes, of course, and of course the links of the stories that we do during the show. But more importantly, next to those videos there, you'll get those helpful subscribe and download links. Get your audio version or video version of your choice. Listen on any one of your devices on all of the podcast applications out there. So definitely choose one and subscribe. Now, you may have also heard, we also have Club Twit as well.

(01:00:43):
It's a members only ad free podcast service with a bonus TWIT plus feed that you can't get anywhere else, and it's only $7 a month. And there's a lot of great things about Club twit. One of 'em is the exclusive access, the members only Discord server. You can chat with hosts, producers. They have lots of discussion channels in there, lots of special events, lots of fun stuff. So definitely check out Club twi, twit TV slash club twit. And they also offer corporate group plans as well. That's why it gives you a great way to give your entire team access to our Ad Free Tech podcast. And the plans are include five members at a discount rate of $6 each per month, and you can get as many seats as you like, and it's a really great way for your IT department, your developers, your sales teams to stay up to date with access to all of our podcasts.

(01:01:29):
Just like that regular membership, you get the TWIT Discord survey access, as well as that TWI plus bonus feed. So definitely join Club Twit as part of corporate group plans. And of course, they also have family plans too. You get two seats, $12 a month, and you can add as many seats as you like. Theres $6 each per month. So definitely check out Club twit, TWIT tv slash club twit. I want to thank everyone who makes this show possible, of course. And also, before we move on, I also want to make sure that you know that we do the show live. We do the show live each and every week, 1:30 PM Pacific Time, Fridays at live Twitter tv. That's the live stream. You can come see how the pizza is made, all the behind the scenes, the banter before and after the show. Come watch the show live.

(01:02:08):
And you know what? If you're going to watch the show live, you might as well jump into our famous IRC channel as well, our twit live channel. You can get to it by just going to irc TWI tv. It'll pop you into the Twit live channel, and you've got a lot of amazing characters there each and every week. Lots of fun people in there, and they continue to make this show interesting and fun for us every week. So definitely be part of that. If you're going to watch the show live now, definitely hit me up. I want you to contact me, talk about show ideas, talk about tech, whatever you want to do. I'm on Twitter, of course, or x x.com/ twitter.com/of course. I'm also on threads, that's Lou MPM on Threads, and I'm on Masto on Lu at Twitter Social. So direct message me, whatever.

(01:02:48):
I would love to hear from you. Of course, you want to know what I do during my normal workweek at Microsoft. You can check out developers.microsoft.com/office. There. We post all the latest and greatest ways for you to customize your office experience to make it more productive for you. And of course, if you have Microsoft 365 pop open Excel right now and check out that automate tab. That's right. That's where my team lives today. And of course, also check out the preview of Python and Excel. Lots of fun stuff going on there. I want to make sure I thank everyone who makes this show possible, especially to Leo and Lisa. They continue to make this show part of our lives each and every week, and they continue to support us. So thank you for all their support over the years, and thank you to all the engineers and staff at Twitch.

(01:03:29):
Of course. Thank you to Mr. Brian Chi one more time, because he's not only our co-host, but he's also our tireless producer as well. That's why he does all the bookings and the plannings before the show. So we couldn't do this show without him. Of course. Thank you to our editor because they're going to make us look good after the fact. Cut all my mistakes. And of course, thank you to our technical director today, the talented Mr. Ant, Pruitt Ant. We had pretty fun time this week in the a m a Thank you for hosting that. I appreciate the time and everything.

Ant Pruitt (01:03:55):
I got to tell you, Mr. Lily, that was quite a treat. It was nice to be able to get to know a little bit more about you beyond sitting here giving you grief here this week in enterprise tech, each and every Friday like I normally do. I was able to give you some brief off of the live stream, if you will, but that was a lot of fun. So folks, if you're not a part of the Club Twit membership, go ahead and check it out and find out what exactly is and is not pizza. I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

Louis Maresca (01:04:25):
That's right, that's right. Do we have any other events coming up soon?

Ant Pruitt (01:04:29):
Actually, we do. Next week I'll be interviewing Sci-fi author, Mr. John Skai. His book just came out a couple of weeks ago. It's called Start of Villains, and I'm almost finished with that. And I want to try to be prepared when I sit down and speak with him. And we have a bunch more events coming up in the coming months and riding out the year, we'll do an escape room, going to do an inside twit with the co-host doing an escape room. And another a m A with Renee Richie and some stuff coming up with the old farts. We affectionately called him the Old farts. That's Mr. LaPorte, Mr. Jeff Jarvis and Mr. Docs. So yeah, stay tuned. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Louis Maresca (01:05:10):
Thank you, ed. Look out for it. Until next time, I'm Luis Mareka. Just reminding you, if you want to know what's going on the enterprise, just keep quiet.

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