Graham Walsh.

Simon J Dudley (00:00:01) Hello everyone, this is Simon Dudley, and you are at the Before It Was Obvious podcast. You know that 'cause you've already pressed a button. So ⁓ watch to the end. There's something really exciting at the end. Actually, I've no idea if there's anything exciting at the end. We haven't recorded that be yet. But there might be. So watch. All right. Today's guest is an old friend of mine who I've known for I don't know, fifteen years, so relatively new friend by my standards, ⁓ Mr Graham Walsh of Neat. Graham, welcome to the show. Graham Walsh (00:00:32) Thanks, Simon. Hello. Simon J Dudley (00:00:34) ⁓ Right. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start with what Graham does today. ⁓ so that everyone has a right, well, this is where he's got to at this point, and then we're gonna go backwards in time and talk about how he got started and you know where he came from and all those things. And then we're gonna walk through ⁓ the things that appear obvious today, but I'm certain weren't obvious at the time. And I'd like to explore those ideas because I think there's some wisdom in there. So Graham You're at Neat and have been for a while now. What do you do for Neat and what's life look like for you at at this juncture? Graham Walsh (00:01:14) Right, so what do I do? Well, if you ask my wife that, she doesn't know. She thinks I work for Mossad and just travel the world. ⁓ I'm some sort of spy or something. But actually, ⁓ I I look after our solution engineering team for our alliances. So that is Microsoft, Zoom, Google, and all our App Hub partners ⁓ from a technical aspect. So pre sales, go to market, ⁓ and I wear another hat working with our engineering team as well. ⁓ And the Microsoft engineering team, Zoom engineering team, making sure when they say, Hey, we've got this great new feature coming, when's it gonna come on neat devices? So help the product managers align those features and and customer requirements. So quite a nice varied role of in front of the customers, but also behind the scenes. But I don't get my hands dirty because I can't code. I let the clever people do that and the pointy hat people. ⁓ I just put it into customer speak saying, Hey, this is a great feature, we should have this. so that's what I do today and ⁓ I lucky enough to get to travel the world, ⁓ talking to people. Simon J Dudley (00:02:13) That's a great and you're but you're based in the UK somewhere, right? Graham Walsh (00:02:16) I am indeed, yeah, just north of London, so close to the office as well, which I don't go to 'cause everything's at home. Simon J Dudley (00:02:23) Yeah, perfect. ⁓ so what's technically your title? Graham Walsh (00:02:28) ⁓ it is ⁓ global director of solution engineering for alliances. Simon J Dudley (00:02:34) Right, that's a good five letter acronym, always the best. ⁓ Superb. Okay, so ⁓ everyone we've ever spoken to on this show said to me, ⁓ no, I had no idea I was going to end up in the UC, V C A V industry. So before we work out how you ended up here, let's start from the very beginning. So you were born, I'm assuming you were born. Graham Walsh (00:02:37) Yeah. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:03:00) So when you were born, where and when was that? And and what did that whole early part of your life look like? Graham Walsh (00:03:08) So pr nobody usually guesses this, but I was born in Southern Ireland in Cork. ⁓ in I'm gonna give my age away. Nineteen I had to remember then, 1977. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, ⁓ the accent has gone. ⁓ I lived in Cork for six years and then moved to Dublin, so the capital, ⁓ for about four and a half years and then moved to the UK in eighty-eight. When I was ten and a half, so 'cause I was young, I think the accent just disappeared. People think I'm from the West Country, to like Bristol area sometimes. ⁓ but when we moved over from the U ⁓ Dublin to to the UK, I moved to a lovely place, people may know it, called Luta. Great thing there's an air or t get get out of the place. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, I had a a mixed accent and then ⁓ yeah, that was, you know, early life and then ⁓ school sixth form. Simon J Dudley (00:03:56) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:04:05) And then university I went to Telford, another wonderful place. Simon J Dudley (00:04:08) Wow, you really did see the sites, didn't you? For those of you who aren't aware, this is sort of c you you move from Cleveland to ⁓ I don't know, somewhere else that's a mistake on a lake. Sorry, Cleveland. I've got history with Cleveland, I don't know why. I've I've never actually been to Cleveland. But anyway, another story. So what did you do at uni and what did you expect you would be doing when you left it? Graham Walsh (00:04:20) Okay. Graham Walsh (00:04:32) ⁓ so actually I had ⁓ in my degree I had a sandwich place, so that's a year out in industry. So my brother did that, so I thought, great, I'll follow his tracks and try and see what you know what to do. ⁓ so I studied business studies and I got to like doing things like accountancy. I like those modules, I like numbers, it was easy. ⁓ so when I did my year placement, I applied to, I don't know, a hundred places ⁓ and I wanted to do six months in IT. ⁓ and six months in ⁓ finance to try and see which sort of role I wanted. ⁓ And there was one company that would offer me that role. ⁓ And it was in Northampton. ⁓ so ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:05:13) You really have seen the sights, haven't you? Graham Walsh (00:05:16) But it was at Silverstone Race Circuits. So there wasn't added benefit of going there. So that was like a nice passion dream of motorsports as well. ⁓ But it was like a 45-minute journey from home, although otherwise I'd need to rent a place. And then I had ⁓ a job offer a one mile from home from a I think were they American or Canadian? I can't remember. ⁓ They made blood testing equipment, totally boring technology for me, but it was in IT. ⁓ And I thought ⁓ 45-minute drive each way. Or a five-minute car journey in the morning. ⁓ I went for the easy option into IT, 12-month contract. ⁓ so when I went back to university for my final year, I changed all my modules from accountancy to just business information systems, marketing, and you know, other things that would help in business later in life. So nothing to do with IT. ⁓ so that was uni. And then whilst at uni, I tried looking for a job, ready to, you know, for that following June. And by the December I had secured a job at a an IT and telecoms reseller in London. So I could finish the sort of fourth year of my degree without having to worry. Sugar, I need a job at the end of this. So that was a relief. It was well planned out and maybe it was easier, ⁓ what, ⁓ tw twenty six years ago to ⁓ to get jobs, I guess it was. ⁓ so yeah, that's how I sort of finished uni then, ⁓ and then fell into IT. Simon J Dudley (00:06:40) And this was well, obviously it was the twenty six so it was the year two thousand. Graham Walsh (00:06:44) Correct. So nineteen ninety nine. Simon J Dudley (00:06:47) Yeah. ⁓ the world was doing pretty well, I seem to remember, in nineteen ninety nine. Well and until of course the dot com bust killed everybody. ⁓ but did that affect you very much? Or is it just you were just early so you didn't really you didn't even notice? Graham Walsh (00:07:02) Well no, because when I joined this ⁓ telecoms reseller that was telecoms, so going back to ⁓ DAS two and ⁓ T P N S S and ISDN circuits, ⁓ I was also doing IT on there as well. ⁓ And ⁓ there were you know, we'd have to go to customers and go, right, let's run a check on all your computers, are they Y2K compliant? So it was like thrown right into the th thick of it for six months essentially. ⁓ on the IT side, but also on the telecom side, you know, was your SDX index? gonna survive or your, you know, definitely system and they're gonna blow up when it comes to ⁓ you know, Y two K. So ⁓ so that was like the thrown in at the deep end essentially. fix this problem if there is a problem. ⁓ And there was no problem. Simon J Dudley (00:07:47) No, but we shouldn't you know, we talk about obvious in hindsight. It's obvious in hindsight that it wasn't a problem. ⁓ but it certainly wasn't obvious at the time. ⁓ I remember I was in IT as well at the time, and I remember ⁓ BA made a big deal that all their senior leadership had to be on an aeroplane at the strike of ⁓ midnight, ⁓ on a global basis. ⁓ that had to be in the air on a BA flight to to give customers the idea that all the planes weren't gonna fall out of the sky. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:07:52) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:07:57) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:08:16) Which in hindsight seems like a s ridiculous scenario, but it was clearly a real a real concern at the time. Graham Walsh (00:08:24) I ⁓ would you have volunteered? ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:08:28) ⁓ well no, 'cause I was in the south of France dressed up as a eighteenth century ⁓ army officer having the best party of my life nearly getting beaten up. But ⁓ by the by the staff of the hotel I was in. It was a nice hotel. I pretended to be German, it didn't work. Anyway, another story. ⁓ I I think that the concern was big enough that people thought it might happen. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:08:32) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:08:38) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:08:42) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:08:45) ⁓ That's a story. ⁓ I think it's also ⁓ you know, it's not the first, let's call it, ⁓ worry we've had in the industry of something happening massively. ⁓ I think, you know, we you could say COVID is another thing, you know. We as we jump forward tw twenty odd years, it's another series of events, you know, white decay was one, yes, it was technology. ⁓ I'm gonna go off on a tangent now. I remember doing my dissertation at university on the resistance of change, on how people hate change in organizations. ⁓ No idea what wrote. ⁓ I did write it myself. I didn't get AI to do it, then that wasn't around. ⁓ but ⁓ yeah, it was, you know, that resistance to change, because I you know, I could see that working when I was doing my year placement. Talk about resistance to change, working on Lotus Notes, Novelle Network, Token Ring Networks, ⁓ Windows 311, ⁓ and with AS400s. So and that, you know, that are people still working with them? ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:09:48) I was gonna say almost everyone who's listening to this, if indeed there's anyone listening to this, is just gonna say he said a whole bunch of words. I wonder what those mean. ⁓ yeah, it's ⁓ it it's funny to think that I think many of us look back in history and think, well things changed a lot at that period. But they haven't changed that much in my life, and it's like they've changed beyond all recognition, even since the year two thousand, which I often think myself was about three months ago. I mean it seems Graham Walsh (00:10:11) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:10:15) impossible to imagine. It was such a long time ago now. ⁓ now it's interesting about resistance to change because I don't know when we're gonna get when are we gonna get to the to when you're going into visual communications and and that. I'm not rushing you to that point, but there's a there's a point there about visual comms that is to do with resistance to change. ⁓ which I think we could dive into later, but I don't want to do that until we get there. So you were doing IT systems, talking to clients, that sort of thing, ⁓ in two thousand, then we're hammed. Graham Walsh (00:10:46) Yeah, so actually I started out ⁓ as a telecoms engineer at NIT, you know, pounding the streets of London and remember the little A to Z. You know, that was my Bible of how to get around London, ⁓ on tube or the underground subway or buses ⁓ with a huge backpack and you know you'd be carrying around cassettes to change in phone systems, or you'd be crawling under someone's desk to r you know, fix their RJ forty-five port, and then you gotta like deal with like the four hundred pairs of shoes under someone's desk or Back then people were smoking in offices, like you know, the yellow ceilings, it was just ⁓ it was horrible. ⁓ you're stuck in a comms room for eight hours while you're programming up a you know a new phone system for someone. So that was the early days, pounds in the streets. ⁓ and then moved up into ⁓ doing pre-sales ⁓ of basically the phone system, so loosened of via ⁓ MyTel as well. ⁓ so they were the sort of the main manufacturers and ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:11:21) Yep. Yep. Graham Walsh (00:11:44) Again, evaluating products as we moved from digital phone systems over to IP, you know, do you go MyTel or do you go Cisco? ⁓ and after evaluating them all we said, okay, my Tel knows how to make a phone system, let's go with MyTel. Was it the right decision or not? Who knows? But they had a cracking platform and they had like the six hundred features that nobody needed. Whereas Cisco Core Manager in the early days, yeah, it's got hold, yeah, we don't have a park yet, ⁓ and we've got no hold music, but yeah, who needs that? ⁓ and funny enough, customers needed features. You know, if they're coming from something, they wanted it as MVP on the new product. ⁓ you know, people were used to these. Simon J Dudley (00:12:22) Ye y Yeah. Yeah. It's i it's interesting, isn't it? Cisco Call Manager, again, another example. It looked from from here it looked obvious that the whole world would go VoIP ⁓ and that the world would change. I remember talking to ⁓ telecoms managers in the city of London at about that time and they were like saying, ⁓ the IT department's trying to take over telecoms, but they'll never do it because we need five nines reliability, which means Graham Walsh (00:12:35) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:12:43) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:12:50) ninety nine point nine nine nine res respon ⁓ reliability, which is, by the way, twenty minutes a year, right? Of of downtime. And like they'll never match it. And and they didn't, but they took over anyway. And all of those guys ended up retiring or being moved on. Graham Walsh (00:12:55) Time. Graham Walsh (00:12:58) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:13:06) Yeah, I I I remember, you know, we'd put a a new phone system into an office and we'd be putting in new switches, POE switches, because they weren't allowed to touch the IT network. It was like a completely separate network. we can't do convergence, you can't use the other port on the on on the ⁓ on the phone. dual port, no, you no, we can't do that. And eventually that, you know, as you say, they were taking over, IT were gonna run the show. And you know what? Thinking about it now, as we we'll jump forward quickly, we have the same problem today. Who owns the room? ⁓ The problems don't change. They're just moving. Simon J Dudley (00:13:35) Yes. Yeah, yeah, this is we're gonna talk about this later, but things like who owns the room? Is it facilities? Is it the A V department? Is it the IT department? A V and IT are probably in the process of merging, but is facilities, is facilities merging it to IT? Ooh, I think that's a that's a big step. We'll we'll we'll come back to that one. Okay, so so you were selling or or involved pre sales, ⁓ my tel. Interesting that you picked my tell. ⁓ you said was that a mistake, do you think it was? Graham Walsh (00:13:44) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:13:53) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:14:00) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:14:06) Or do you think it was the right decision at the time? Graham Walsh (00:14:09) I think it was the right decision at the time. ⁓ you know, having that as that sort of all encompassing PBX that had all the features from ⁓ a company with good history. ⁓ and you know, they they you know they understood what the market wanted. ⁓ And I think onboarding someone like Cisco, when you're a small, let's call it, you know, telecoms reseller in London with many, many others competing, ⁓ I think it was a good choice at the time because you had that expert skills in in Mitel. ⁓ and the new telephony and when you get the RFPs tick tick tick tick tick tick you know it checked all the boxes. ⁓ so I think you know it was a good idea going that route and then the other offering was your Aviar. again another ⁓ back in the day, rock solid name. ⁓ they both had their troubles ⁓ in recent years but ⁓ I think back then in you know in the in the noughties it was you know the the right answer. Simon J Dudley (00:15:04) I I think I mean I have to say I would tend to agree. I wasn't in telecoms directly, but I was certainly adjacent to it. And I would agree with that. I think one of the things that Cisco benefited from enormously was that ⁓ as IT was was ⁓ swallowing telecoms as a department, then the IT department already had a long term relationship with ⁓ the Cisco people. They they had the accreditations, people built careers on Cisco. Graham Walsh (00:15:30) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:15:32) And I think that that really helped them. ⁓ I don't think it was the quality of the product, certainly not in the early days. It was definitely the but we always buy Cisco, ⁓ and Cisco are our friends and we know all their pre sales engineers. ⁓ It's it's kind of interesting to see that it's not just the technology that matters, it's the mindset of the people who are buying it and their relationship to ⁓ the vendor who's supplying it. I think that's rather over rather overlooked in many cases. Graham Walsh (00:16:01) And I think also, you know, like you mentioned, they might have been on a ten one hundred network and they're moving to a a gigabit network. Well they're gonna go Cisco for their, you know, their next network upgrade. You know, there wasn't many out there. Yes, you had HP Dabbling and a and a few others. Juniper just came in on the scenes back then. But really, as you say, you'd trust Cisco as you're okay, I've had their ten meg switch, I've had the hundred meg switch, now let's get their gigabit switches. ⁓ you do telephony. Yeah, we could do all that. And as you say, they've got the relationships, they've got the tack support cases, they know how to navigate it. And I think going back to your point of tele IT taking over telecoms was a natural progression. ⁓ and those obviously telecoms people's reassigned roles or, you know, look you know, doing new things into, you know, business intelligence or, you know, looking at reporting and contact centres then. Simon J Dudley (00:16:49) Yes, yes, yes. I think you're right. We'll come back to that one. So how long ago did you so how long did you do that for before y there was another change? Graham Walsh (00:16:54) Mm-hmm. Graham Walsh (00:16:59) So yeah, while I was doing that as well as pre-sales, I was also IT manager for the group of three companies we had and we were doing the billing platform as well. So I was looking after all the Microsoft servers as well. So exchange, right, desktop, VPNs, I had all that on my plate as well. So just another side, you know, a bit of fun at work doing the f the full IT management as well. So I did that role for what combined roles for seven and a half years, ⁓ and basically walked out the door ⁓ on the thirty first of ⁓ December. 2006 and walked into Polycom on the 2nd of Decem 2nd of January 2007. ⁓ and my idea there was, ⁓ it's just something else on the end of the cable. How hard can video be? ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:17:44) Well well, I guess you quickly learnt how hard video can be. in inter I mean what made you I I was at P Polycom myself, for those of you who aren't aware, but earlier than that, I was there from ninety nine to three. ⁓ it was an i two thousand seven was an interesting time that Polycom were claiming to do high definition they didn't. ⁓ and I know that 'cause I was at Life Size myself and therefore we would but but they did a good job of stalling the market until they actually got there. Graham Walsh (00:17:47) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:18:07) Ha ha ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:18:14) So it was an interesting time in the market. ⁓ what made you decide to join Polycom? And was it on because they do lots of things. So were you were you only on the video side or did you do all sorts of things? Graham Walsh (00:18:17) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:18:26) No, it was only on the video side and for me looking for my next role out of you know the telecoms IT area was ⁓ do I go into secu you know ⁓ you know messaging, antivirus security, whatever. I wasn't fast, I just wanted the change. ⁓ And I think that was the key thing was, you I'd done this role in in telecoms and IT. I wanted to do something different. ⁓ I do or you know, sometimes kick myself and think, should I move earlier? Should I, you know, done three, four years and moved on? You know One of my best friends, he was an accountant and he was moving job every two, three years and you know, progressing up the ladder. Maybe it's because I was comfortable, it was easy, I enjoyed what I did, and that I think that's the key. You need to enjoy what you do. ⁓ you know, if you're going to work and you hate it and hate your colleagues, it's no fun. You've got to enjoy what you do, you're doing it eight hours plus a day. ⁓ so I enjoyed it. ⁓ but then I thought, enough's enough, time to sort of move on and see what else there is. ⁓ And yeah, as I say, I applied for various different sort of pre sal pre sales roles. So I wanted to stay in pre-sales ⁓ and ⁓ yeah, various different, you know, job, you know, is there a certain look, you know, looking at BlackBerry, you know, it was a great product at the time. ⁓ and you know, I deployed them at the old company, etc. And it was, you know, brilliant technology. They just failed with the hardware. ⁓ and I should have focused on software in in the end, but yeah, they were too slow. ⁓ so yeah, that's where Polycom came up. Simon J Dudley (00:19:38) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:19:52) And yeah, I thought hang on. Yeah, they're doing a bit of, you know, video, it's similar to voice. It's just a d little bit more bandwidth. ⁓ you know, I've got sixty-fourking over here, three eighty-four, yeah, we'll just bund you just bundle those ISDNs, they'll be fine. we're moving to IP as well. Okay, yeah, that's yeah, okay, you firewalls, traversal, okay, right. This is yeah, this is a bit different now. ⁓ what, yeah, people don't allow video on the network. No no no, we'll stick to ISDN. So yeah, it was an eye opener, I think. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:20:14) Yes. Graham Walsh (00:20:21) in in those days because as you say, I think it was in the November two thousand six is when Polycom launched the HDX nine thousand and four, you know, the the big two U rack, ⁓ all singing, all dancing, high def ⁓ video came in from the VSX. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, it was here's a product, let's call it one dot zero, but it's actually maybe naught point something. Simon J Dudley (00:20:48) Not point one in my opinion, and I was competing against you at that time. So I do know the topic. And now the other reason to move to Polycom and and you have a history of this, is that you got to move to to and work out of ⁓ well, I guess, let's see. Slough, that's right. Graham Walsh (00:21:05) Slow, yeah. I I do pick the places, don't I? Simon J Dudley (00:21:08) I was once told that Slau was a bomb dump during the war. ⁓ a friend of mine who worked at Polycom told me it said that in a presentation, I couldn't help myself, I shouted out for ho for who? Us or the Germans. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:21:14) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:21:19) Ha ha. Graham Walsh (00:21:23) ⁓ The smell of Mars bars in the morning was great when you got to the office and caramel ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:21:28) Oof, l little sweep of my taste. So okay, so pr still pre-sales engineering, ⁓ polycom. ⁓ now that was an interesting time, right? The world was moving from standard definition, which for those of us who aren't old enough to remember this, was three hundred and fifty-two by two hundred and eighty-eight pixels. Yes, it was that bad. ⁓ at twelve frames a second, or or maybe fifteen, if you were lucky. ⁓ And ⁓ we were all moving to a high definition world. Graham Walsh (00:21:35) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:21:59) Did you did it seem obvious that Polycom was gonna become one of the great winners there, or did it look like there was a an opportunity for the Apple cart to be upset by new players? Graham Walsh (00:22:11) ⁓ so yeah, back then. So actually I think you missed a ⁓ a transition in that period as well. Moving to IP, you know, a lot of the world was still on especially in Europe, was still on ISDN. And the Germans Simon J Dudley (00:22:23) Yes, I suppose so. I I always thought it was earlier than that, but then I didn't actually sell anything for three years because I was help building the life size product. We didn't actually have a product. So that much of that transition was missed for me. Graham Walsh (00:22:28) Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, so that was I think a key thing as well, especially in Europe. You the I think the Americans and the Japanese, they all moved to IP and allowed it on the network. Again, it goes back to that. Facilities wanna wanting to put IP stuff on the network. no, you can't touch my network. IT run that. ⁓ and that was, you know, one of the big battles then as well, I think, ⁓ in that sort of period as I started. ⁓ And it wasn't just, you know, about the room. Going back to that room. That room was twenty, thirty thousand dollars just for the codec. ⁓ so yeah, it was very early days of this is expensive and we're only gonna kid out maybe five rooms in a hundred in the building. ⁓ but there was also that starter convergence with the desktop. ⁓ you know, I even remember actually just go back to telephony, you know, we also did actually forgot, ⁓ ASCOM, Astra. And they were like miles ahead in, you know, ⁓ speech to text recognition, ⁓ you know, doing your voicemails. Sending that to your email and stuff so you could read it on your BlackBerry, etc. ⁓ so you know, there's a lot of that in the in the place as well. But then taking the video into the desktop. ⁓ and again, my chel, Lotus Notes, and then Microsoft obviously came along with live communication server with the old the old MGC because it sort of integrate into. ⁓ and then obviously into OCS R2 or OCS and then OCSR2, which then brought on a lot a lot a lot of voice. So actually the role ship. Graham Walsh (00:24:01) Up shifted, it added on not just video pretty quickly, but then Microsoft telephony ⁓ with OCSR2. Simon J Dudley (00:24:10) Do you think it would did it feel obvious at the time that Microsoft were gonna basically dominate this space? ⁓ Or did you feel that they were more of a dabbling? Graham Walsh (00:24:17) Absolutely. Graham Walsh (00:24:20) I think it was more of ⁓ it's l you know, like with w the the ⁓ the telephony, it was just an add on to your desktop. You know, it just could bring it in together. ⁓ okay, I can right click, start a call, and I can call Simon on his desktop, but it's going through the bridge and we can add someone else in. It didn't feel like it was going to be anything major. It was just like I've just okay, it's another integration, kick. ⁓ you know, people are still gonna go into their video rooms and meet on the bridge. You know, that's what we did and you know, that's what you know, you look at the other side of the world, conferencing was massive. Think of all those, you know, MCI Wellcoms, the ⁓ PGIs of the world, they were selling billions of minutes. Yeah. ⁓ You know, they were rr rampant in the industry with ⁓ yeah, we've done ten million minutes this month. Simon J Dudley (00:24:57) Yep. Genesis, that lot. Simon J Dudley (00:25:07) Yeah, and and for those of us who aren't old enough to remember this, everyone if you work for a corporate, you were basically given a little credit card size thing, which was your personal ⁓ multi point audio bridge. So you had a number and you could give someone a number and a hash and a couple of numbers after it, and in theory they could meet you in a bridge audio bridge call. ⁓ some people used it extensively, other people didn't. I do remember one of the sales directors at Polycom, ⁓ He he told he stood up this is to give you an idea of the world we lived in at the time. He turned up at a sales event with about two hundred and fifty reps in it and said, ⁓ you know, I don't really do email. So ⁓ if you've got any questions or you want to, you know, ask me anything, just call me ⁓ and I'll get back to you. Well, to my knowledge, his voicemail was never not full for the next year and a half that he worked there. I mean it was literally within ten minutes, it was full and that was the end of it. And no one no one ever no one ever communicated with a guy unless you actually spoke to him directly. ⁓ remarkable management structure. Graham Walsh (00:26:04) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:26:12) ⁓ so yeah, that was a super interesting time. ⁓ and as you say, I I don't I you know, being in the Microsoft world, you know, desktop servers, ⁓ you know, you name it SharePoint, exchange, you could never see Microsoft coming in to dominate the video market. It was always you can add that on. It was always like, like a Me Too product, yeah, we can integrate with that and then All of a sudden you saw everyone else doing it as well, you know, around you, the capacitors, as you say, like yourselves at life size and the folks at Tanberg, they all started building these bridges and integration. ⁓ so yeah, that that was ⁓ I never envisioned that happening at all. You know, you're always in this like we're in video, we're in video, you're in telephony, you're in telephony. ⁓ you know, d who who would have thought telephony would die, you know? When's the last time you made a phone call? ⁓ You probably WhatsApp everyone now or everything else. Simon J Dudley (00:27:03) Yes. ⁓ I I must say I I've probably gone the wrong way myself. I've I've assumed it would all collapse down to very low cost endpoints and everything integrated. But I've been thinking that since about nineteen eight nineteen ninety six. And you know, it hasn't it it's mainly happened, but not in t not as much as I thought it would. ⁓ and I was just thirty years early, and and to be fair, I think there's you're just as wrong if you're early than if you were late. ⁓ yeah, you may be prescient, but Graham Walsh (00:27:22) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:27:29) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:27:32) It doesn't actually help you very much if if your your entire career it didn't actually happen. Okay, so you started this in ninety six sorry, two thousand and six. ⁓ how long did you end up being a polycom? Graham Walsh (00:27:33) Mm-hmm. Graham Walsh (00:27:43) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:27:46) So, ⁓ what did I do at Polypom? So yeah, I did ⁓ So I did the pre-sales role for about three years and because of my strength and knowledge with Microsoft, I sort of took on the Microsoft Alliance element as well. ⁓ in the UK. ⁓ and seen as the expert globally of how's it work at Microsoft? ⁓ go and ask Graham, he knows. ⁓ so ⁓ then in twenty ten So after a couple of years I then moved into basically managing ⁓ because there was a little company called ⁓ HP Halo, if anyone remembers that, and ⁓ Polycom acquired that wonderful network. ⁓ that ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:28:30) It you D did did it die before Polycom bought it, or did it die after Polycom bought it? Graham Walsh (00:28:37) I'm just trying to think ⁓ how many fingers I need to hold up on number of customers actually used it. ⁓ but Simon J Dudley (00:28:45) But for those of us who aren't aware, I should ⁓ so Goham and I are talking completely inside baseball here. ⁓ HP Halo was a fascinating ⁓ system in that it was basically a full turnkey telepresence room environment. So ⁓ HP would provide the room, but also the network and the bandwidth and the multi pointing and so so multiple sites could be in a call together. Interestingly enough, I from from memory it was only four eightyp, which was DVD quality. Graham Walsh (00:29:15) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:29:15) ⁓ technically not as good as high dev as a high def video system, but in reality it was because the the screens made each person look full size or life-size for for want of a better term. ⁓ and it competed with people like Telerist and TeleSuite and then Cisco's telepresence. ⁓ And ⁓ I never got the sense that HP really understood what they had. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:29:39) I think they built it by accident maybe, you know, they're in these big, you know, enterprises. Yeah, we'll do your network, we'll do your desktops and your laptops. Yeah, we can put video together I think as well. And I think didn't they use from now it's trash to my memory, video in the back end as well, with S V C coding. Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:29:55) Yes they did. Yes, they did. And we're god we've gone completely geek. What a surprise. ⁓ and that used the thing called S V C ⁓ codecs, which were very they were very good at doing ⁓ a variable bitrate, like a cope with n noisy networks. ⁓ all desperately ⁓ none of this matters anymore. ⁓ but but it it was an interesting conceptual idea because ⁓ for those of us unaware, telepresence became Graham Walsh (00:30:06) To fit right. Graham Walsh (00:30:11) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:30:16) ⁓ Nobody cares about networks anymore. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:30:25) A niche of a niche, but but quite a talked about niche ⁓ at that time, at about 2010 era, with a few years either side of that. ⁓ Cisco had an obvious market for it, ⁓ because John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco at the time, said two things that really mattered. One, he claimed, I don't know if there was any evidence to support this claim, but he claimed that each customer who spent a dollar on Video Collab. Graham Walsh (00:30:33) ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:30:54) Spend seven dollars on network upgrades. ⁓ that was a great, great marketing tour game. I have no evidence to support that, but it might have been true. But the second one was it allowed John Chambers to be in the boardroom of any of his top thousand customers anytime he liked. And that was a very important story for a company like Cisco, and particularly for a CEO like John Chambers. He was very customer focused. ⁓ HP, on the other hand, Graham Walsh (00:30:56) Yeah, I remember that. Graham Walsh (00:31:20) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:31:23) Didn't really get that. They didn't, they didn't have a super charismatic CEO. I can't even remember who it was at the time. ⁓ But there was the lady, wasn't there, who then ran for president who got nowhere, and I now can't remember her name either. ⁓ We'll put her name in the description for those of you who care. ⁓ and and they also didn't really have the network background issue, so they didn't get the network effect. But anyway, so back to you, and you could you took over Halo. Well, lucky you. How did that go? Graham Walsh (00:31:29) Was it Mark someone? Graham Walsh (00:31:36) Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Graham Walsh (00:31:46) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:31:50) Yeah. ⁓ So yeah, that was basically ⁓ I think the correct term was swept under the carpet. ⁓ and you know, you'd go in and replace it with your HDX high definition codex and get rid of the software rubbish that was in there. ⁓ so but then they were obviously buy, you know, as part of the acquisition was that network, as you mentioned, you know, run on a private network, dedicated MPLS, which again which you needed for high quality video, you know, you'd you're doing boardroom to boardroom. But you know, I remember back in the polycom days, we'd be doing between London and Sheffield for, you know, public sector departments, and it was saving them two or three nights in a hotel. And it would be saving them, you know, the two, three hundred pounds back then on a train ticket. So it absolutely made sense. ⁓ to, you know, go into the you know, life lifelike across the table experience. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:32:38) It it did and it didn't, right? And and I've been in this the reason I think it it did for all the reasons you just pointed out. It didn't if people didn't believe that video was more than a phone call with a colour picture. And this has always been one of the issues for me about video collab. It's it's one of those technologies that the likes of you and I think, well, it's a great replacement for a meeting. But there is a certain pi part of the of the business community who don't like Graham Walsh (00:32:51) Mm. Graham Walsh (00:33:00) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:33:08) ⁓ not going although Sheffield might be a push, but the y i if you turn around to your average, you know, senior executive and go, you know that meeting in Paris you do on a quarterly basis? Yeah. We don't have to do that anymore. Graham Walsh (00:33:11) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:33:19) You went in the slow. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:33:21) It's like, what? But but I like that week away from the kids ⁓ and the family. And I like staying in a hotel and I get my points and I meet my friends and like it and and that's never mentioned. ⁓ everyone always used ⁓ video collab as a replacement for all your travel, isn't it great? It's like but I like the travel. Graham Walsh (00:33:26) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:33:30) I like my steak dinners ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:33:41) The C O two and you Simon J Dudley (00:33:44) So ⁓ I must say Sheffield might be a push. ⁓ see, I mean is there a city I won't insult during this particular I haven't done it on any other episode. Now I've insulted five cities in one go. ⁓ I'm sure Sheffield is lovely this time of year, whenever that is. But ⁓ it's still an issue, isn't it? Video Collab has always been an optional technology. If I was to turn around a job, let's say I was interviewing with you, Graham, right? And I said to you, or you said to me, Well, what other questions have you got? Graham Walsh (00:33:51) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:34:05) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:34:14) Or things you want to tell us. And I say, well, I would like to let you know I don't do email. It's like, ⁓ well, you know, you just wouldn't get the the interview would end. But video has always been an optional technology. People say, I don't like it. So I don't use it. But you can't do that with anything else. So I I don't know where we go with that and the HP side, probably nowhere. But I just thought it was an interesting aside. And of course Poly also had its own telepresence solutions at the time too, didn't it? Graham Walsh (00:34:19) Ha ha. Graham Walsh (00:34:23) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:34:44) Which they acquired Destiny Conferencing. I think that was in 2006 or seven. ⁓ so yeah, they acquired Destiny Conferencing again, a managed network of Vnoc. Anyone remember them? The Video Network Operations Center, people managing the calls, setting them up for you. So you when you walked in, it just looked like magic. ⁓ so yeah, Polycom acquired that, and then obviously blended those two together: Destiny with the HP network. ⁓ And then it was like a reciprocal. Okay, so HP will now start selling Polycom devices, you know, to their enterprise customers. So then in 2010, that's what I was doing, working on the Microsoft Alliance, go to market, ⁓ you know, involved in the launch of ⁓ you know, what was it back then? ⁓ forgot my ⁓ you got your ⁓ link communication server 2010 was that sort of you know, next generation product moving on from, you know, ⁓ OCSR2 was the next leap. But let's face it, it was ⁓ right click, change logo. ⁓ it was the same under the hood if you I'm guessing if you looked at the code, I'm sure it's very similar. ⁓ but it's time for a liquor paint, you know, you gotta do the decoration every now and then. ⁓ so they were good times. And then in twenty eleven I decided to move into the channel team and do channel sales. So looking after partners. ⁓ because I felt When I was pre-sales, I was doing most of the work anyway. So you were doing all the technical stuff and you're answering all the questions from the account managers from the resellers. And I'm like, what are salespeople doing that are getting paid an absolute fortune? I'm like, well hang on, I'm going into sales. ⁓ let's stop getting paid for what I do. ⁓ so then I ⁓ then I moved into the channel sales team managing multiple different partners in the UK. ⁓ so that was fun. And I think, yeah, my first year Hundred and forty one percent the target, so I was pretty pleased with that. ⁓ next year was good as well. And I think and this goes back to, you know, again being being in pre-sales and probably any sort of sales as well, is people buy from people. They trust each other. You know, once you've built up their relationship, trust, they know if you're gonna get a phone call, people do phone every now and then, ⁓ or send an email, you're gonna answer that message and and get back to ⁓ and I think that's, you know I would say I think that's probably one thing of how I became successful was just Graham Walsh (00:37:06) getting back to people. People hate not being re you know, getting back to. Simon J Dudley (00:37:10) I I would agree. So this is interesting. So I mean, I think it's well reg you're well regarded as one of the the most technically adept SEs in the industry. I mean, you are, right? I'm not asking and telling, right? That's a fact. But then moving into a sales role, most high end SEs don't do that. But you did, and you said yourself less than a minute ago. And of course I just looked at salespeople and thought, well, they're just roll up fifties to light their cigars and let the SE do all the work, right? And maybe paraphrasing, but that's basically what you said. But once you moved into that, did you still feel that salespeople were rolling fifties and lighting cigars? Or do you did you see that the world was different from a salesperson's perspective? Graham Walsh (00:37:41) Poor like it sounds called. ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:37:57) ⁓ I think there's two types of people. ⁓ There's exactly that. People who, you know, yeah, can you can you answer this customer question? Come on, in you come. And there's those those that, you know, who do learn and you know can answer probably let's say 50%, 70% of the questions. ⁓ I think, yeah, I think there's two types of salespeople. ⁓ the lazy ones and the ones that want to work and understand it. ⁓ So I thought from both sides. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:38:21) ⁓ Okay, so I think I'm gonna a different perspective perhaps. Normally my interviews are very much let the person speak and I'm today I'm going a little different because your and my background are so s so tightly entwined at some level. ⁓ I think that the best salespeople ⁓ know how to use an SE effectively because they know that the if even if they know the answer, the customer isn't gonna trust them. They're gonna trust the S E. So you use I mean, my my super S E for most of my career was John Tracy, right? ⁓ to call JT an S E is l ⁓ little underselling him, but it doesn't matter. He's retired now, so I don't care. ⁓ but even if I knew the answer, I'd let J T answer it because the client trusted them. ⁓ And I I I don't know that I was I I like to think I was a reasonably trusted salesperson, but it still says salesperson on your business card. So Graham Walsh (00:38:51) Correct. Graham Walsh (00:39:03) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:39:11) Yeah, totally agree. Graham Walsh (00:39:20) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:39:21) ⁓ you know, your mouth is moving, therefore you must be lying. You have an ulterior motive as a salesperson, all salespeople do. ⁓ SE is the thin as pure, so you can do a slightly different job. ⁓ Would you agree? Did you did you end up taking an SE or did you end up just doing all of it? Graham Walsh (00:39:24) Ha ha ha ha. ⁓ Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:39:35) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:39:38) ⁓ I more or less did all of it. ⁓ you know, and I think people enjoyed that and like that trust that hang on, you could give me the quote and you also tell me how much I don't know bandwidth is needed and the resolution from the camera. ⁓ so I think, you know, the odd occasion I I did want to bring people in exactly as you said, you know, let's bring in my SE or my specialist, ⁓ you know, or let's get someone in from the US who's on, you know, working in the alliances with Microsoft or whatever. And again, as you say, I think bringing in someone with an expertise helps validate even what you know you could say, but it hearing it from someone else validates it even more, I think. Simon J Dudley (00:40:20) Yeah, much for a a level selling. I mean, once you work for a company the size of Polycom, you you want to show that there's some depth on the bench that however good Graham is, you could f you know go under a bus tomorrow and ⁓ they could be up up the creek at that point. Okay. So ⁓ interesting. So you moved into a sales role. ⁓ let's keep this let's keep this thing rolling. Where what what happened next? Graham Walsh (00:40:27) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:40:31) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:40:39) Yeah. And Graham Walsh (00:40:45) So then ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:40:46) You must be running out of years at at at Polycom, I suspect, at this juncture. Graham Walsh (00:40:49) ⁓ so where where are we? Twenty thirteen? I think it was a twenty thirteen. I thought, ⁓ you know, again, working on the front line, listening to customers, listening to partners, and then feeding that back into engineering. And it was going nowhere. And I'm thinking, hang on, this isn't right. We're out here in the thick of it. We're giving you feedback from customers, what we're hearing from competitors, etc. Go and take this and develop it, or make it work, or fix it, or do whatever. ⁓ And ⁓ I think Polycom is going through a lot change, ⁓ as people would have seen. You know, they had a a new logo with coffee stains ⁓ from the triangle, so it was a great success. And ⁓ the ⁓ A Water. Simon J Dudley (00:41:31) Well a and also for those of you who aren't aware, there was also you you ended up getting bought by ⁓ private equity, ⁓ and then there was some other they they sold the company to another one and it was a whole there was a lot of sort of s upstairs stuff going on, wasn't there? Which probably distracted everyone. Graham Walsh (00:41:47) Yes. And I think that's probably what was happening in the background just as I was leaving was all this mess happening. Because no one was listening. They're obviously all focused on let's sell the company or private equity or whatever it was. ⁓ and that's when I thought, hang on, they're not listening to me. I think I'm valid, I think I know what I'm saying, 'cause I'm hearing it from customers. ⁓ so if you're not gonna listen to me, I'll go somewhere where my opinion's valued. ⁓ So then again, looked around, okay, let's stay in the channel, you in the in the sort of channel sales or partner management piece. ⁓ and then I got ⁓ joined a company to do secure messaging. ⁓ I thought, try something different. You know, maybe I've done my time in in video, tried something different. ⁓ And again, the company I was working for wasn't that big. It had a giant like Dropbox and others that had so much, you know, marketing dollars to spend and win the market. ⁓ basically you couldn't compete, so that didn't last long. ⁓ so I was there nine months, and then ⁓ I thought, right, let's get back to collaboration. So I ⁓ there's a company called Dimension Data. So ⁓ people may not have heard of it, ⁓ not around anymore. ⁓ which is NTT, that was the parent company. So that was my first ⁓ time I would be selling Cisco hardware. ⁓ I was always competing against Cisco in telephony, in video. Now I had the Cisco Price book. It was amazing. ⁓ I'm like, what? How many SKUs? ⁓ it was yeah. So I was doing ⁓ collaboration sales there. And ⁓ what was I doing? So working with partners like Vodafone. ⁓ you know, they were reselling the sort of services from Domension Data NDT. ⁓ and ⁓ yeah. collaboration in that's where again I first saw heard of Akano. ⁓ and obviously by then in twenty thirteen, fourteen, that was all been wrapped up, you know, it was now no more Tandberg anymore. It was all Cisco products, but the same product still. ⁓ just a new ⁓ a a new skew on the product. ⁓ but I always sort of in the back of my mind, do you know what, I wanna go back to the OEM. I wanna go back to the food top of the food chain. ⁓ it's n it's Simon J Dudley (00:44:07) W which which I wanna pause on that one because w a couple of guests have talked about moving from reseller land to vendor land. And I think a lot of people see that as a kind of a a graduation. It's like working for a vendor is the top thing and then working for a reseller is is not considered as sort of prestigious. I I I personally a bit mixed on that one. I mean the downside of working for a for a reseller is you don't control the roadmap or have any influence on it. But the upside of working for a reseller is you could sell whatever's best. Where Graham Walsh (00:44:31) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:44:44) If you're a manufacturer and your product's not so great, Polycom 2012, I'm looking at you. right, ⁓ you're you're you're you've got to sell your book, you've got to sell what you've got. So, what made you decide that you wanted to go from vendor to reseller? I mean, Dimension Data NTT, obviously enormous company. ⁓ Dimension Data alone was I think the biggest reseller of telecoms on the planet for a long time. So they weren't exactly a small company. Graham Walsh (00:45:04) Yes. Graham Walsh (00:45:13) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:45:13) But how did you find that transition between vendor and ⁓ going back to reseller? Graham Walsh (00:45:20) ⁓ I as you say I like the flexibility that I could sell a tambour box, I could sell a telarist network. Remember they acquired Telarist back then as well for that managed servers, telepresence, blah blah blah. ⁓ I could sell network and security or bring in specialists on that area of, you know, software management or anything else. So it was nice to have that variability and not as you say, right, I've got to sell this box, it's all we've got on the truck. I've got to sell this, it's gotta work. I'm gonna say it works, maybe it doesn't, but I've gotta I've gotta say it works. But as you say, at a reseller you could go actually, yeah, they haven't got stock of that. Why don't you go for this? So it almost felt like, you know, you had a bit more flexibility and you could choose the products that you believed in as well, ⁓ that you could sell. But from there I think I just knew that I wanted to be at the top of that food chain so you could help influence the products, the roadmap, et cetera. I felt ⁓ that's where I felt I'd be more useful, ⁓ in an environment. Simon J Dudley (00:46:17) Right. And you mentioned a moment ago Acano. Now they ended up getting bought by Cisco for seven hundred million dollars. But I can't remember. Did you actually join Acano and then get wrapped up into Cisco? Is that how it worked? Graham Walsh (00:46:28) No. No, so it's a funny ⁓ do I call it a funny story? It's an odd story. So ⁓ I had then decided, okay, I wanna go out of here. ⁓ personal life changes as well, going through divorce, I thought, why don't you change job as well? Why not? ⁓ And ⁓ make make myself easy in life. So ⁓ and I thought, you know what? I wanna take a step back and go back to pre sales. ⁓ And I wanna go back to the top of the food chain. And that's when I discovered PEXIP. ⁓ And applied for the role ⁓ and signed, all done and dusted, working out my notice period at ⁓ dimension data. ⁓ And popped up in the news, a carno acquired by Cisco. I'm like, ⁓ PEXIP, what what's happening to the industry? ⁓ you said the industry was great, nothing's happening. ⁓ it was stable. So a carno and pexup were two sort of you know competing products. ⁓ born out of the Cisco Tandberg Accoush acquisition. ⁓ and so yeah, some people went and built the Carno, some people went and built PEXIP. ⁓ again it was like that, you know, back in the day of Tandberg versus Polycom. It's now a carno versus PEXIP sort of thing in the video meeting space bridging interoperability ⁓ world. ⁓ And ⁓ so there yeah. So in two thousand what was it, December two thousand fifteen, ⁓ so I think it was announced in November. And then it fully completed in the January ⁓ 2016 that acquisition. ⁓ and actually I probably forgot this bit here as well. So we mentioned earlier in 2000, was it 2009, Cisco acquired Tandberg. And then we had a great ride at Polycom because obviously Cisco had to integrate that roadmap and technology and people. You know, Tandberg was a big company, was it? Three and a half, four thousand people. It was a big organization. And you know, Cisco good at it. Simon J Dudley (00:48:10) Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:48:21) Sounds right. Graham Walsh (00:48:25) But they had no roadmap. They were stagnant. So we had a great time at Polycom. Fast forward ⁓ five years, at Peccip we had the same thing. You while Cisco integrated a carlo, paused the roadmap, push. Peccip got, you know, Microsoft certified ⁓ and ⁓ yeah, the rest is history. ⁓ but again it was a difficult sell. ⁓ you know, trying to convince people, hey, you need a a box to run on your network. Or you need to run it in a cloud, but what's cloud? Well you're putting your video in the cloud, no, it needs to be under my desk. ⁓ you know, people used to big bridges and filling up a a whole rack. You're like, no, we can just put it on a virtual server now. Whoop? ⁓ so it's again that transition you're dealing with of people bridging calls on traditional hardware versus software now. So again, another learning curve, teaching yourself AWS, Azure, GCP. ⁓ and ⁓ probably that's probably the other bit I thought of I haven't mentioned. Simon J Dudley (00:48:59) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:49:22) Everything I've done is self taught. I've never been on a course. I think I went on one course for N T four for about a week which taught me nothing. ⁓ but I li yeah, I love learning and and teaching myself and that's how how how I've learnt everything. Simon J Dudley (00:49:38) So you've done, we're gonna get we're gonna bring this up to date in a minute, but I'm interested. I should say for an aside, ⁓ for those of us who aren't old enough to remember or or weren't involved, ⁓ Akano and Pexit, a lot of those guys came out of Kodian, ⁓ which had also been bought by Cisco and got merged in with Tandberg. And ⁓ Akano did a hardware-based platform, ⁓ and ⁓ Pexit just went compute. It's now cloud level compute, it's now powerful enough we can do it all in the cloud, ⁓ which turned out to be the right answer. ⁓ I mean, not that Ocano wasn't successful too at the time, but but for a short period of time. ⁓ now you're you've done a lot of different things and moving between roles, right? Did you at the beginning or even halfway through any of this, did you have a a I need to get to this level. I'm I want to be an R V P or an S whatever, you know, s some three letter acronym. Did you ever have any interest in or even thought about a career? Or was it simply from what you said so far, it feels to me like I just want to do something new and different and interesting and you keep falling into interesting roles. Would that be a more accurate position? Graham Walsh (00:50:37) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:50:51) ⁓ Absolutely, yeah. The only vision I've got, maybe that's changed when I had children in what when 2011, 2013. All I want to do is make sure there's a roof overhead, children are fed, got clothes, that's my goal in life. And then enjoy each day. ⁓ Very simple. Simon J Dudley (00:51:14) Well it's it's s seems reasonably good to me. I must say I'm ⁓ I I've done the same thing. I think I don't think I've ever really considered a career. When anyone has ever said to me career, I always think of a car with all the wheels locked sliding off the road, you know, as in it careered into a ditch. ⁓ but I mean it's been pretty good so far. So yeah, anyway, it it's interesting to note that you you didn't sit there going, I'll be a VP by next Christmas or or bust. Graham Walsh (00:51:19) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:51:36) Yeah, and you know Graham Walsh (00:51:42) Yeah. And yeah, as we talk like career journeys, I'm asking my fifteen year old, 'cause he's do he's gonna do next week he starts his new school year, his final year for exams. ⁓ And I'm like, Okay, you're gonna go to college 'cause in the UK you have to until you're eighteen. ⁓ I'm like, Well what are you gonna do after that? And they he has no clue. ⁓ and I think it's very much different world from when we enter the world of job markets to what it is nowadays. ⁓ I I'm sort of scared for him. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:52:15) Yeah, I I'm scared for young people too. ⁓ interestingly enough, I mean, did you have a sense at sixteen as to where you wanted to go? Graham Walsh (00:52:25) ⁓ no. I don't know yeah. I mean I was tinkering with computers, you know, with IBM and DOS and things and thought it's it's it's alright. I didn't even think I'd land in technology and now when someone asks my wife, what what do I do? he's in IT, always just traveling the world doing something. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:52:43) My still what my mum does. When whenever you ask my mum what does someone what do they do, you know, some cousin or nephew or whatever. they're in computers. Over the years I've discovered that just simply means that they use a computer. That doesn't really mean I I don't know any job that doesn't use a computer at some level. Crossing guard, perhaps. ⁓ but that's about it. Lollipop map, yeah, crossing guard, sorry. I mean been in the US too long. Okay. So Pegstit, you were there a while. Graham Walsh (00:52:49) Yeah. Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:52:55) Yeah, yeah. Graham Walsh (00:53:02) Yeah. ⁓ Lollipop man. ⁓ ⁓ I'll translate for you. Graham Walsh (00:53:13) Yeah. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:53:14) What did 'cause that was a new right you'd always done hardware until then. I mean, I sure software on top of hardware. But ⁓ I've personally never really been any good at selling software. ⁓ not on its own. I need to tap pat things for me to get excited about them. I've always been a hardware guy. Did you ⁓ how did you cope with that? Or did it not concern you? Graham Walsh (00:53:18) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:53:30) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:53:38) ⁓ it didn't concern me because I knew I could learn software. ⁓ and and you know, pick up ⁓ yes, you had a tin box of server that you had to install virtual servers on, like VMware, etc. ⁓ so you had the hardware element anyway. ⁓ And then it was about, okay, here's the software you're selling. ⁓ And the problem with that is you could say to Mr. Customer, yeah, you here's a memory stick, go and install it, or go and click on the link and download it. And then back to your point, and they're like, No, I want to see the shiny box. I want to see what it looks like. I want to touch it. ⁓ And if you go back to those stories of Akano and Pexit, that was literally it. Yeah, there's a box. There's a link. And there were some buyers that wanted the touchy sh shiny box they could see and kick and hear the fans whizzing up. Whereas goes back to who you're selling to. Are we talking to facilities, IT, data center people? ⁓ yeah, we've got loads of space in data center. Yeah, how many servers do you need? So again, understanding who you're working with and your buyers and it was like, okay, yeah, we get that. But I do remember one customer like, Yeah, w we we can't have servers because we rent them, we've outsourced our IT. So now we have to pay a fortune to buy buy back, sort of thing. And they went, Well, if you could supply servers, then we could just call hex of boxes and no one would know. I won't say what the outcome was, but yeah, ⁓ you can guess what happened and ⁓ you know, there was you know things you have to get around at times and that's why you work with partners and resellers who can fulfil the whole packaging. Simon J Dudley (00:55:13) Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ and by the way, for the audience who don't really understand the the world as it was then, and it's only fifteen, sixteen years ago, Google used to make a server that you could bright yellow. Thank you, couldn't remember the name, that you would stick into your server rack. I mean the idea of that now is kind of just like What? Google made a hardware server box, but they did. And it and they sold I don't know how many they sold, but they sold a few of those over a number of years. So Graham Walsh (00:55:24) Touch appliance. Graham Walsh (00:55:31) Yep. Graham Walsh (00:55:38) Yep, I remember that. Simon J Dudley (00:55:43) This was a real thing. This wasn't just ⁓ you know, one customer being odd about it. People didn't understand it. Graham Walsh (00:55:48) Yeah, yeah. And now today that's Copilot searching your documents for you. Microsoft is doing it free of charge. Simon J Dudley (00:55:57) I don't know, free of charge is gonna last very long, but sure. Okay. So you did you did put and PEXIT went through a bunch of changes too. Because the world suddenly went to well it it got you know, we're now talking what, ⁓ late twenty teens. So ⁓ you know, we're rushing up on the pandemic, ⁓ and we're also rushing up on the zoom era. ⁓ which would have had a dramatic effect, I assume. Graham Walsh (00:56:00) ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ so yeah, that that was very different. Graham Walsh (00:56:09) Yes. Graham Walsh (00:56:17) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:56:26) So yeah. Yeah, so let's wind the clock back. So again, still while I was at Polycom, this zoom thing came out of nowhere. In what, 2012? I think it was, 2011, 2012. So we you know, me and a few others were we're, you know, testing the software, looking at it, going, hmm, this is interesting. Software? Video? Yeah, might take off. We're okay with our Polycom P VX client. It's it's a beautiful UX design experience. Simon J Dudley (00:56:36) Yeah, they they launched in twenty twelve. Yeah, that sounds right. Graham Walsh (00:56:54) ⁓ and it won't go through a firewall. Well actually the Zoom thing works through anything. ⁓ okay, interesting. ⁓ so yeah, then fast forward and I think, you know, going back to that days of a kind of PEXUP, you'd meet on those bridges. ⁓ that was great. ⁓ and you know, you owned the customer, everyone met on them, and you'd add more computer, add more boxes, and everything was happy. And then, as you see, along come ⁓ Zoom, slowly, you know, nudging its way up into the the enterprise. ⁓ And I almost felt, yeah, around the late twenty so twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. ⁓ you know, that's when they've, you know, we're really getting big into the enterprise, I think, and people were meeting on Zoom. They weren't meeting on your VMR anymore. They weren't meeting on the Ocarno Bridge, they weren't meeting on the Paxit Bridge, they were wanting either on Zoom ⁓ or because of obviously Skype 2015, ⁓ that piece, people were then going, actually. I just want Microsoft on my desktop. That's what we're doing. ⁓ and I need you to integrate into Skype for business, etc. ⁓ and then all of a sudden, you know, that was 2015, was it 2017 or 16? It was Teams. ⁓ So it was that transition as well. So hang on, people were like, hang on, I don't need a bridge, don't need that anymore. I've got my property on either Zoom or I've got it on Microsoft. So I almost feel that's when the platform wars were gone for meetings, should we say? ⁓ And it was either Zoom or Microsoft. Yes, you had a bit of Google. ⁓ again they were doing various different things for Hangouts and others, but really many enterprise Yeah, in in the S B start up Simon J Dudley (00:58:34) Not really in the corporate space though, were they? They they were much more in education or personal usage. ⁓ did you see that coming? ⁓ Or were you you I I'm just sort of wondering what your thinking was. I mean, you know, they perhaps you you could do your ⁓ one, either of us could do our time again. Well what we should have all done probably is joined Zoom in two thousand and twelve. ⁓ and we'd all be trillionaires by now. ⁓ hi Eric ⁓ Graham Walsh (00:58:40) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:58:57) ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ Hindsight's a wonderful thing. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:59:03) Come on the show again. ⁓ but anyway, ⁓ on a more serious note, there is that that's a really good example of it looks obvious now that it would all move to cloud. But I do remember, I do remember not that sort of time period talking to big like big financial houses in New York and London. And they would say things like ⁓ Microsoft's been in and they've told us that ⁓ Teams isn't gonna be hostable in our own environment. Graham Walsh (00:59:23) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:59:33) And ⁓ and therefore we'll obviously never use it. And they would laugh about it. ha ha ha! Microsoft was so stupid, they'll come round and they'll run teams on our own servers and and no they didn't. And you know, a few years later they all said, Well, of course we now run teams and we don't need all the servers, obviously. It's like it didn't seem obvious when you said it with the opposite three years ago. So you must have been right in the middle of that craziness with PECSIP. So how did you navigate that? And and do did PECSIP work it out or Graham Walsh (00:59:33) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:59:39) Yeah. Graham Walsh (00:59:48) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:00:02) Did events sort of, you know, roll over them and they had to reinvent themselves. Graham Walsh (01:00:06) So and that yeah, that's where it sort of took sort of two streams, shall we say. So one was yes, there's some certain enterprises, governments or whatever that this is going in my data center and no one's touching my data. ⁓ they're my calls, I want quality of service, that's it. ⁓ and then other as you say, we need interoperability. We're going teams. you know, we we were Skype, we're now going teams. We need to be able to get our room systems in there. And obviously that's where PEXAP became team certified, should we say, as the launch partner as well, along with others that don't exist anymore. ⁓ so you almost had a, you know, a fork and a crossroads, which way do you go? And you know, you'd have to work out when you went went met the customer. Right, which way do they want? Do they want on-prem or private cloud? Or do they want interoperability services? And that's how sort of PEXIP sort of niched themselves that they could do either one. ⁓ and I I remember a story actually, it was just before I left PEXIP. ⁓ Very large financial house. ⁓ And went in there with Microsoft ⁓ and ⁓ they were a big hardware house of you know traditional VTC, thousands of rooms, and also they want to go Skype teams, that was the route you know they've been visioning down because they've got the whole you know E3, E5 stack anyway, so it made sense to follow that route, but they wanted to control their video. Video was important to them, you know, they did a lot of meetings. and they wanted to control that quality. So it was like, okay, you either need that private inf infrastructure. So you can either host your calls as well, but you also can do interoperability. So you get both best of both worlds. All in a private instance. ⁓ and ⁓ so then I left and I you know was it twenty nineteen, I joined Questron well, we'll come on to that in minute. ⁓ but then after I left, I then had that customer went zoom. And I'm like, you just told us for weeks on end that you wanted to control your video bandwidth. your data, where your sovereignty is sov sovereignty of your data is, and control the bandwidth that your MPLS networks cause you had plenty of it, etc. as well. And then they went Zoom. It was like, ⁓ okay. Odd decision. ⁓ no, I I'd moved on by then. ⁓ but I just thought, yeah, it was an interesting decision. But then maybe they thought, hang on, it's somebody else's problem then. You know, just like the cloud is at someone else's compute. Simon J Dudley (01:02:20) Did they ever give you a reason? Graham Walsh (01:02:33) If it goes down I can blame someone else and I don't have to worry and I Simon J Dudley (01:02:37) I mean, certainly ⁓ an era before, I remember another big financial institution, entirely possible, the same one, but I won't guarantee it. ⁓ and I spoke to them and said, Why don't you buy your own audio bridge? I mean, you do hundred, multiple hundred-way calls a day. It would pay for itself in less than a year. And the lady who ran the department said to me, because when it goes wrong, I can blame the vendor and fire them. If we own it, I'm on the hook. I thought that was both. Graham Walsh (01:02:43) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:02:49) Mm. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:02:53) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:03:01) Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting the phone call from the CEO. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:03:06) you know, honest and reasonable. ⁓ it's but it's also interesting what you can justify in hindsight. Graham Walsh (01:03:10) Yep. I get it. Yeah. ⁓ so yeah, going back then to when I was at PEXAP, I could then see, you know, okay, we had interoperability, that was the main thing leading. Then I thought to myself, hang on, people are wanting to go native teams now. ⁓ in the you know, majority of customers we were speaking to. ⁓ they wanted native ⁓ experience in the rooms and not interoperability. Again, it was coming to that timer refresh. So the video devices might have been five, seven years old. Again These Tambro Cisco Polycom Codex Live Size, they're bulletproof. They didn't die. That's the problem. They ⁓ were made well. ⁓ and people wouldn't replace them un until they had to. So ⁓ but then their natural replacement wasn't another H three two three SIP video. It was ⁓ you know, a Zoom room or a Microsoft Teams room. ⁓ And back then the only option was really ⁓ to have a Windows based MTR. And then, you know, one day I what ⁓ was it, a message on LinkedIn. And the message just said, You're in the wrong job. ⁓ And I'm like, okay, ⁓ let's find out what this actually means. ⁓ and basically that was the job offer to come and join Crestron John. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ to come and join Crashron and lead their sort of, you know, launch of the Microsoft sort of Simon J Dudley (01:04:26) That was supple. Graham Walsh (01:04:36) ⁓ flex range of products into you know again Crestron being a very traditional A V heavy house getting into this sort of UC space again going back to facilities IT AV IT the two didn't talk and we're bringing these two together now A V and IT ⁓ or you know telecoms as well it was like you everyone's fighting for their job and it it feels as ⁓ history's repeating itself. Everything's landing in IT. ⁓ it seems to be that way. ⁓ so ⁓ I thought, you know what? I think this is the right time to move and move into native sort of Microsoft devices. ⁓ with ⁓ with Crashtron. ⁓ And again, they had the option for Zoom rooms as well. So again, that was, you know, people were doing both. They were putting native Zoom rooms in, native Teams rooms. ⁓ And yeah, that was twenty ⁓ that was August 2019. I think I joined Crashtron. ⁓ And yeah, ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:05:31) Great timing. I mean, obviously you wouldn't know that before it was obvious and all of that, but you know, it's what, six months later the pandemic hit. ⁓ and for those of you I I want to say before we go any further, Cresh Ron is an awesome company with an incredible history and a wonderful reputation, which is well deserved. But I also think it's fair to say that their ⁓ early attempts into video were not the greatest. Graham Walsh (01:05:49) ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:05:57) Hang on, yeah, they had an earlier product 'cause they did a collaboration with Polycom or Poly ⁓ and the R was it the R L? ⁓ yeah, they did a Simon J Dudley (01:06:06) I don't even remember that, but I do remember the thing with the Hudley camera in it. ⁓ the flex. ⁓ but then but then they couldn't build them because the pandemic hit and everyone's manufacturing evaporated. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:06:12) Yes, that was the first generation stuff. Graham Walsh (01:06:20) Yeah, couldn't get chips for the controllers, for this, that and the other. ⁓ so yeah, it was a great let's say year and a half because there was stock, there was everything else, you could, you know, kill out people's, you know, environments, no problems. ⁓ and then ⁓ yeah, ⁓ you know, twenty twenty start of twenty twenty one it was like I think it was the decision that in, you know, I'm not an NGO, I'm not in supply chain, logistics or anything else. It was a case of, right, we've got chip A, which is certified round the world. Do we wait till they come back in stock? Or do we go for chip B, which means we've got to homologate the whole thing around the world again? What's gonna come quicker? And they made the choice of what I won't say which one they did, ⁓ but obviously didn't have stock for a while. ⁓ and that sort of I think, you know, sort of really affected. And it wasn't just in the UC space, it was the whole Crestron control, and it wasn't just Crestron, it was all the other OEMs. Everyone had problems apart from one vendor. ⁓ and then fast forward to September that year, when I got a message saying, We're looking for someone for the UK role. ⁓ would you be interested? ⁓ And it was someone I'd met while I was at Dimension DASA and while he was working for Ricardo. So I was like, ooh, this could be a good it good time to to move. Because again, I could see the shift of everyone going, you know, Windows and Windows MTR, Zoom Rooms on Windows, it was the answer, but but then fast forward, Microsoft had been developing and Zoom had been developing appliance-based software on on Android. ⁓ And when you look back to when we all first started and we didn't all have grey hair, they were codecs, they were purpose-built appliances. And I'll say it, we you're shoehorning a Windows device behind a TV to act as a an appliance. ⁓ And yes, it works. Is it reliable? Not always. Does it need water and feeding? Yes, it does. Some people love that. ⁓ Some people love to look after their baby. Others like to fit and forget. And you know, that's what a a Polycom codic was, a timbre codic, a life-size codic. You fit and forget. And you use the management system to update. ⁓ and that's where I felt the appliance world was going. ⁓ and so when I got the message on LinkedIn again. So we talked about LinkedIn earlier. ⁓ Yeah, what a mess it is, but actually it can be useful sometimes. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:08:11) Yes, it does. Graham Walsh (01:08:37) That ⁓ I saw the appliance well and I thought, you know what? That's good. ⁓ And obviously I've been watching Need since launch at Zoom Topia twenty nineteen. You know, as I d as I just joined ⁓ Crashtron, obviously then Neat came out of nowhere, ⁓ out of stealth mode, ⁓ and launched at Zoot Zoom Topia, what was that, September, October time frame that year? ⁓ so I thought, interesting product. But it's only two products I had. ⁓ and then yeah, fast forward to ⁓ June that year, June twenty-one. That's when they announced they were gonna do Microsoft. ⁓ and thought ooh, that's interesting. Wasn't looking anything, but yeah, then I get that message saying, Hey, you're interested to help join and and build the UK team. ⁓ And then that UK role quickly became, ⁓ you can spell Teams. ⁓ yeah, can can can you make this stuff work? And ⁓ we've we've done our bit in the background coding the video codecs and into the hardware, but yeah, how to make a Teams call. ⁓ coming from yeah, people that were just Simon J Dudley (01:09:35) Yeah, yeah. Graham Walsh (01:09:37) Purely focused on Zoom, which you know they did a great job on. ⁓ it was now time to enter into the world of teams. So Simon J Dudley (01:09:45) Yeah, and for those of you who who don't know or remember, ⁓ Neat did an incredibly good job of basically hiding under the wing ⁓ of Zoom for a few years. And I don't mean that as an insult. In fact, from a marketing point of view, it was absolutely genius. ⁓ and they did they did a very good job. And of course, ⁓ Simon and OJ and Henrik were famous from Tandberg days, famous from Cisco days. ⁓ They were also I can't remember who was involved with which, but they were all involved with with the Carno and Pecsip as well in some form or fashion. Graham Walsh (01:10:13) no. Graham Walsh (01:10:17) Yes. Yeah, Siemen was at and that was the other thing, gonna wind back a quick bit. When I was joining Pecsip, Seaman also resigned, ⁓ and took a step back. ⁓ so the that Ocarano acquisition, the CEO stepping down, I was like, am I doing the right thing here? And you know, Clutchwood, thankfully, you know, it is the right decision as you know, everyone says, you know, you need change sometimes at startups, people can get you to a certain level and then you need someone else to come to another level and then another level. ⁓ and you know I've seen that happen here at Neat as well. ⁓ where, you know, Seben started it and then we had ⁓ other leaders come in, do it, you know, a phase and now we're in the next phase again. So yeah, it you know, things change for a reason. Simon J Dudley (01:11:00) Yeah, yeah, I d I I I've seen that too. The the kind of CEOs are good from getting you from zero to a hundred million dollars are rarely the people who are good at getting you from a hundred million to a billion. And then those people are rarely good at getting you from a billion to multiple billions. Different skill sets. Graham Walsh (01:11:15) Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's got their own sort of unique style and set and abilities. ⁓ so yeah, everything's you know seemed to work out fine. Simon J Dudley (01:11:25) So you've been now with Neat since twenty twenty one? Graham Walsh (01:11:29) Yeah, so yeah, coming up to five years in December. Simon J Dudley (01:11:32) Right, right. And yeah, one of the most sorid in history. Well, history in the sense of well, full of ⁓ full of the mo of the Norwegian mafia, I think is the technical phrase we use, isn't it, for this? ⁓ did did you learn any Norwegian since you've been there? Graham Walsh (01:11:43) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:11:49) Tack, ⁓ skull, ⁓ you know, just the keywords you need. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:11:53) You just ⁓ some swearing, I'm assuming, is in there as well. Yes. Graham Walsh (01:11:57) I remember my first trip to to Norway was with Peccip. It was the week I started. I think I did a day at well So again, talking about lovely locations, just in the outskirts of Reading, ⁓ in a little barn was Peccip's first office. So I was there for the first day and then the following four days I was in Oslo ⁓ and I'm like, ⁓ do I need to get money out? ⁓ look up what they take Kroner, okay. ⁓ let me just wing it and see what happens. So I get in the taxi when I once I get to the station to go to the office and I went, do you take credit card? He's like Course we do, we have done for thirty years or whatever. You know. They've been like digital cabins for decades. ⁓ so yeah, they're they're they're well advanced in ⁓ in Oslo and you know, everything's electric now. ⁓ yeah, even back then. Simon J Dudley (01:12:41) Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ no I've d I I've done a lot of work in Norway as well over the years and ⁓ mainly competing with Taburg and we had some fantastic times. I got myself in terrible trouble. I was walking through ⁓ the railway station, Oslo railway station, and saw my own face on the front cover of the Norwegian Financial Times. And ⁓ I bought a copy, took it to the office, it's all obviously in Norwegian, weighed It at our reseller and I said, What's this say? And he says, ⁓ it says, Simon Dudley of LifeSize says, Tandberg will suffer. ⁓ And because we just launched high def and I got in so much trouble with our PR department. And then the next day, ⁓ the CEO of Tandberg had a full spread, full page spread, because Tamburg's a big company in Norway, saying, We're not afraid of LifeSize yet, ⁓ which was just gold from a marketing perspective. Graham Walsh (01:13:26) Yeah. Mm. Ha ha ha. Simon J Dudley (01:13:35) We sold more devices in Norway that quarter than we did in the USA. So it was pretty cool, but I still got in a lot of trouble. Graham Walsh (01:13:40) Wow. ⁓ Ha ha ha. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:13:47) So you've brought us up to date. What's the next few years look like for you? What do you think, you know, either industry or personally? Graham Walsh (01:13:48) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:13:55) ⁓ I think industry, I think I think we're in a good position, you know, as we talk about yes, we've got Zoom, you know, actually Zoom just released their results yesterday. They're, you know, they're still improving, they're still doing well. ⁓ you know, if you looked back at if you had a crystal ball after the pandemic, was Zoom gonna survive? It was like mm, dunno. But then obviously it evolved, you know, they tried to buy five nine, so they didn't, and they built their own contact centre in a few weeks. ⁓ and it was drag and drop, you know, compared to what I was writing. Back in the noughties ⁓ when it was ⁓ you know, basically lines of code to try and get a a call queue working. ⁓ so yeah, you know, you you think Zoom have evolved a lot and obviously they're focusing on on on AI. You know, Microsoft, they've got ⁓ teams coming up to ten years old in November. Yeah, I remember that was being launched in November in XL. I remember being there. ⁓ so yeah, they launched that. Ten years old is the time ten years is a long name for a brand name, isn't it, in Microsoft? ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:14:54) Yes it is, yeah. Graham Walsh (01:14:56) ⁓ so and and you know, it's interesting how everything is changing in the room. You know, is it just a device? No, the devices are gonna be smarter in the rooms, it's gonna do more. But it goes back to I think what we said earlier, people using video, they're still afraid of it. So many people have their cameras off. ⁓ it amazes me. ⁓ But you know, what are you gonna do in the room? Are you gonna ask it for help, directions and everything else? That's you know, c if you think about that capability that came in years ago with ⁓ that lady from that big shopping enterprise company that I won't say. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so you know, you've had that technology around a while, but I remember speaking to, you know, many enterprises and they're like, We're not putting voice assistance in the room. ⁓ nobody wanted that. Yeah, it's great at home for your shopping list or what's the news or what's the sports, etc. That's fine at home, but yeah, enterprises didn't want that and Simon J Dudley (01:15:29) Ya please don't say a name, the whole world will explode. Yes. Graham Walsh (01:15:52) Look, we all know they're listening in somewhere, somehow. You see a adverts pop up in your feeds and different platforms the minute you say something. ⁓ it is spooky. ⁓ but and this is the next evolution I see coming into the rooms. You know, people are trying to put more intelligence in the rooms. Now, things like that, you know, how long will it take me to get to the train station or whatever else? Do people really want that? And will people just block that straight away? ⁓ I think they will. ⁓ Yes, you could say or argue or they will argue, hey it's just grounded into your data. It's only into your environment at that point in time, nothing stored, nothing saved. But I still think enterprises, especially financial organizations, they'll want to lock that down. And I I still don't think voice agents are there ready for the room yet. ⁓ that's my opinion. Could be wrong. Simon J Dudley (01:16:39) But I think it's coming and I think I think the angle I would ⁓ use here is that Video Collab as a just as a video conferencing device is great. But you've got high quality microphones, you've got good quality cameras, you've got speakers in there, you've got a user interface. There's so much more you could do with it. ⁓ when I was a kid, my father said to me, He said, if you're ever in a meeting, be the man who takes the minutes, because that Graham Walsh (01:17:00) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:17:06) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:17:07) That's actually the most powerful role in the meeting. And almost entirely throughout my business career, no one takes the minutes because no one can be bothered, right? Which is not good. But if we live in a world where meetings just imagine the productivity we gain if if meetings became ten percent more effective. I'm not even asking meetings to be good, just not totally terrible. And I think that there would be a meaningful ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:17:15) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:17:28) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:17:37) uplift in productivity. So I think that the idea of video being a recording, summarization, ⁓ to-do lists, sentiment analysis, all of those things, I think is becoming increasingly important. One of the problems perhaps in a meeting room as of right now is that AIs aren't very good at identifying different voices or who specifically people are. So you know you could have someone say Graham Walsh (01:17:38) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:18:04) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:18:07) Well, the stock price is gonna collapse. Well, you that could have been the tea lady with Tourette's who said that, right? We don't know. But if it was the chairman, then then there's a bit more to it. So ⁓ yeah, a bit more weight. So we've got that scenario of we've got some work to do, but I think that we're on that agenda. And I do think that that will push the market to ⁓ a much higher level of adoption. I do wonder if if Graham Walsh (01:18:09) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:18:16) Pit weight behind it. Simon J Dudley (01:18:33) purely for video calls, are we actually close to saturation point? ⁓ my guess is in corporate spaces about a third of meeting rooms have got video. It's in that range. Are we ever gonna get to eighty percent? ⁓ I think purely for video collab, no. But as a as an AI device that that makes certain that meetings are more successful, then then I think that's possible. Graham Walsh (01:18:44) Yeah, that's fine. Graham Walsh (01:18:57) Yeah, and I think that's you know, yeah, go back to our early days, ⁓ polycomber and life size, etc. Yeah, I don't know, one in ten rooms were video enabled. Now, yeah, we're what, you know, one in three enabled, there's a lot more video everywhere because the price point has, you know, come down dramatically. ⁓ but again, as you say, do we need video in every room? 'Cause now we've all got good headsets, good cameras built into our laptops, etc. Or we have a, you know, ⁓ external camera ⁓ on our devices. We can do video anywhere. ⁓ so we don't need all rooms saturated. But what we probably do need, and maybe this is a you know product I've just made up, yeah, we want those digital note takers everywhere. And you do see them coming out in the market, you know, like people like Claude and others who have like a you credit card size or a PIN thing that you can put on, or it's even softer now. Zoom are doing it, Rice are doing it, Otter, there's loads of others. As you say, taking those notes are key. And if we want to just jump in a room and ideate whiteboard or just have a general chat on Project XYZ, whatever, it'd be great to have those notes stored all the time. ⁓ yeah, I store a lot of stuff in my head. ⁓ and I remember a lot of things. I yeah, I'm a terrible note taker. Sometimes I do. ⁓ but as you say, it's much easier now to just you know, turn on the note taker of your choice. ⁓ but then that does lead to a whole where's that data? Is it someone else's? You know, if you're not in the three six five stack, you're not in the Zoom world, whatever it might be, yeah, yeah, you you know, you see all these bots coming into all your different meetings now, it's like Simon J Dudley (01:19:59) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:20:24) Well, hang on, w where's this data? Who's who's transcribing it? Where's it going? ⁓ but that hasn't changed. You could afford it an email by accident. So we're just moving the problem and something else we need governance on. Simon J Dudley (01:20:36) Y yes. Yes, but it's the it's the typical fear of the unknown. We talked right at the beginning of this conversation about how much people are afraid of ⁓ change. It's one of the reasons that people hark back to the past. The past was always better than the present. Why? Well, because I survived the past. Right? A and then and I'm not necessarily gonna survive the future. ⁓ by the way, it's always been like this. ⁓ Chaucer, who was writing in the twelfth century Graham Walsh (01:20:40) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:20:53) Mm-hmm. ⁓ You don't know what's gonna happen? Simon J Dudley (01:21:06) Harped back to a golden era. ⁓ which is kind of interesting. So I think that there is something psychological that many of us pretend isn't real. And and personally, I've always felt that Video Collab is one of those, it's a lovely intersection between ⁓ a technology stack and a human stack. And it makes it really interesting as a result. If we were selling switches, right? ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:21:16) Hmm. Simon J Dudley (01:21:34) It's a twenty-four port switch, it does hundred megs, great. Well, I've got this new one, it does one gig. ⁓ good. Got this nuts for it's not an emotional sale, right? It's a purely I can I do an ROI on this. Video is frustrating because a lot of people don't even see video as a as a ⁓ as an actually a replacement for a meeting or don't want it to be a replacement for a meeting, but it does make it a much more human technology than most of the others. And I personally have found that to be the most exciting element. Graham Walsh (01:21:38) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:21:43) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:21:56) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:22:04) But here's an interesting point now. If COVID hadn't happened, so let me go back to ⁓ a funny thing we used to say at Polycom all the time. This year is year of video. You know, back in 2007, 2008, we'd always say, right, this is it, this is year of the video. And it took 13 years for video to take off or really be understood. ⁓ And I think the driver to that was probably two things: COVID and Zoom. You know, we all had FaceTime and Hangouts, we we all had tools on our phones we could use, but we never did. I think COVID forced us to use video because we wanted to see people. Simon J Dudley (01:22:41) I think that's a very reasonable point. I mean, I think there's a con there's a confluence of technologies. The prices have dropped. You know, you can now do it on your phone. ⁓ that does make a difference. I think if it hadn't been Zoom, and you know, I think Eric and the team did an incredible job with Zoom, but there were Zoom weren't the only player, you know, there were other players out there. ⁓ Scott Wharton's old group. I now my brain's blanking. I'm sorry, Scott. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:22:50) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:22:57) Mm. Simon J Dudley (01:23:09) His technology was there. blue jeans, of course. ⁓ you know, they were another player in that space. There were other players, and I think that somebody would have benefited from it. I think what the what the pandemic did, it probably did 10 years worth of work in 18 months. ⁓ it's a bit of a counterfactual, who knows if it if if it actually would have taken off that much more. It also did other things like Graham Walsh (01:23:12) Yeah. Skype? Simon J Dudley (01:23:36) Yeah, we talked about Zoom, you know, Zoom is great for a distributed organization, but as soon as you've got a thousand people back in the building, the Zoom technology doesn't necessarily scale overly well. I've got a thousand one meg calls all pouring out of my internet connection. You know, at the time at least that wasn't very stupid, let's go with suboptimal. Graham Walsh (01:23:41) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:23:52) See. You need to go and see your switch guy now and get an upgrade. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:23:58) Well yes, yes, yes. Fair. ⁓ but but there was work to be done, right? It it wasn't it wasn't an obvious ⁓ what's the word I'm looking for? It wasn't an obvious the the the I guess w the the way I'm really going with this, and I'm sort of struggling with the words, is that the future always looks like the present just faster, better, cheaper. And sometimes there's breaks in it where Graham Walsh (01:24:02) But actually that Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:24:22) Mm. Simon J Dudley (01:24:24) the f the set of success criteria fundamentally changed. And I think Zoom and the pandemic were one of those. They they fundamentally changed what success looked like for ⁓ millions of people in in their personal lives as much as their business ones. Because that's the other thing that we need to consider that one of the things that the pandemic did was make force us all to actually start using FaceTime calls to talk to family and friends. Or or or Zoom calls or whatever. But you know, we ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:24:28) Yes. Graham Walsh (01:24:48) Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:24:51) do video on personal devices who got used the technology. ⁓ I know people who did yoga. I I wasn't one of but people who did yoga over Zoom calls. It was a it was a big deal. I whether that ever would have happened without the pandemic is debatable, I suppose. Graham Walsh (01:24:55) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:25:10) Well if you if you if you think about it, ⁓ you know, you had Peloton, you know, who were doing remote classes anyway, but their tablet built into a bike. So that era was starting to come, ⁓ of structured training. But as you say, ad hoc, you know, let's do a yoga session, that would've never happened without ⁓ I think the pandemic. Simon J Dudley (01:25:11) All right. Simon J Dudley (01:25:28) Yes, I think that's true. All right, so this has been a really interesting conversation, Graham. ⁓ you said yourself, just before we got on the show, by the way, that Graham's fifteen year old appears to have just broken his foot. ⁓ Graham, as the doting father gave him some a bag of peas, I hope that was frozen, but I don't actually know, to help fix that. And he hasn't come in with claret leaking out of him, so he must be fine. ⁓ What would you tell your fifteen year old self if you could go back? Graham Walsh (01:25:40) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:25:46) Yeah. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:25:53) ⁓ Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:26:01) ⁓ I think ⁓ use these in the order you have them, you know, listen, absorb, ⁓ and you know that's the key thing is watch others, learn from others, ⁓ and you know, build your own style. You know, that's I think what I've done is learn from others, watched others, seen how they perform, how you know, how they sell, how their pre-sales, you know, how you you know, they deal with tech support, how you deal with angry customers. And I think I remember doing that actually when I started my first job in ⁓ ninety nine at the ⁓ you know IT and telecoms company, I did a few days in each department. Accounts, tech support, service delivery, you know, everything else. You know, watch how the j you know, logistics went in and out with stock and everything else. So I think, you know, going round the organization really helped as well to understand the business. ⁓ so yeah, really listen, watch and learn that way. ⁓ unfortunately I don't know what the world is gonna be like, you know. ⁓ for a fifteen year old, what's he gonna do? But again, you know, there are still roles that are, you know, are very let's call it hands on, you know, AI is not gonna replace a plumber or an electrician. There there's certain jobs that aren't aren't gonna ever replace people that are needed. Yes, you could a contact centre worker, they could be reassigned to doing something else because a bot's gonna answer your calls and look up your query. But nine times out of ten you're gonna have to tell them your account number anyway because it hasn't worked or it fails, you know. Whenever whenever I ring my airline, I just told you I'd membership number twelve times and you're still asking me for it. ⁓ so, you know, not everything works first time. They'll always, you know, need that hu human element. But yeah, it'd be it really interesting, ⁓ I think to see, you know, how he's gonna go. And I almost think as well, I don't know what it's like in the US, but I know certainly here now in the UK, it's you know, I went to university and paid my way, got through, you know, worked in a supermarket and and paid the bills. It's horrendously expensive ⁓ to go to university here in the UK. I do I see value in it? I'm not really sure. I think, you know, getting those four years extra work experience against someone else could be better. I don't know. Simon J Dudley (01:28:09) Yeah, by the way, it's worse in the US. Graham Walsh (01:28:11) ⁓ so yeah, I think ⁓ get into work, get an apprenticeship, and you know, I've seen some friends, ⁓ kids who one's doing like a law, recruited by a law a la you know, a law firm and they're doing their degree part time while they're working as well. So what a perfect, you know, blendable, you know, learning on the job, but also learning technically as well, should we say. ⁓ so yeah, I think, you know, if you can land an apprenticeship, something like that, that'd be, you know, I think a great result. Simon J Dudley (01:28:40) I think it's also interesting. I mean, you're a Microsoft MVP, ⁓ which means you've taken a million Microsoft courses. ⁓ and it's something you have to keep up. I would guess that something like a C C IE from Cisco or or a Microsoft ⁓ MVP would be more valuable to most employers than a degree would be. Graham Walsh (01:28:47) Nope, not one. Graham Walsh (01:29:01) ⁓ so actually an MVP isn't something you you do with ⁓ exams or anything else. It's something Microsoft recognises you for doing or contributing to the industry in helping. ⁓ obviously CCIE is something yes you study for and be a nerd, etc. ⁓ yes, they are going to be valuable qualifications, I think, to anyone. ⁓ but again, you know, there's lots ⁓ I'm trying to think of something the other day. I just came up with someone ⁓ and They didn't know what a switch was. I'm like, how do you not know what networking is? You know, you work in technology but they didn't know about DNS and and switching. I'm like, but you develop code and do other stuff. It's amazing how sort of laser focused some people can be. You know, that's their forte and that's all they know. They don't know the wider picture. Like you say, you know, your cousin will say, ⁓ Simon's an IT, he can fix it all. He works for computers all day. ⁓ No, he uses a computer. ⁓ but yeah, you know, some people could be super laser focused on what they do. Simon J Dudley (01:29:56) Yeah, yeah. I Graham Walsh (01:30:00) but not know the broader spectrum. Maybe that's where you know it's been advan advantageous for me that you know, let's say I'm a generalist. Simon J Dudley (01:30:08) I think that there's a lot of argument for one of the real skills is not to be a specialist anymore, but to understand how to connect specialists together. So the s the special you you become the kind of Swiss Army knife in some sense. You can do lots of things because you've got you've got the corkscrew and you've got the thing that takes small boys out of horses' hooves and you've got the the scissors and and there's a skill set, you understand where the gaps are. ⁓ Graham Walsh (01:30:30) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (01:30:37) You know, someone like ⁓ Steve Jobs is a good example, brilliant product guy, wasn't an expert in, and neither was Apple, in any el one element of what they built with the iPhone as an example, but they understood how to pack them all together in a way that no one had done before. And I think there's real value in that. All right. ⁓ Graham, we're gonna finish with the question I always ask everyone. What question didn't I ask, which I should have done? Graham Walsh (01:30:48) Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:31:04) ⁓ I don't know. What's your proudest proudest achievement? Simon J Dudley (01:31:12) Let's with that. So what is your you've done a lot of different things. So that's actually really interesting question. Graham Walsh (01:31:16) Yeah. ⁓ What's my proudest achievement? Now I've really just thrown myself into the ⁓ into the dump here 'cause I don't know what the answer is. What am I proud of? ⁓ I think everywhere I've been, I've had to sound big header 'cause I won't get out the door. ⁓ we've had good success. We've had good product launches or good product features, ⁓ and evangelized them well. And I think I'm really proud of been able to do that at, you know, various different companies and various different roles. Just been successful at what I do. ⁓ and I you know, as I've described to some people, I think I have the best job in the world. You know, working you know in that pre sales element, working with R and D and Engineering, working with you know, the the Goliaths of Microsoft, Zoom and Google as well. ⁓ I really do have the best job in the world and taking, you know, taking that to the world. ⁓ and I think I'm very proud of, you know, what I've achieved so far in in doing that and long may it continue. Simon J Dudley (01:32:14) And and as we've just been discussing, you couldn't do what you do unless you had the broad range of skills and experience and background that you've had. So, you know, for the younger folks watching this, particularly in the earlier parts of your career, diversity now doesn't mean a new job every three weeks, but it does mean a new job every eighteen months to two years at the beginning. ⁓ and I think some diversity in thought and in experience is pretty important. Graham Walsh (01:32:32) Mm. Graham Walsh (01:32:44) And that you know that just just going back to that point. And it doesn't mean leaving the company. You can move around you know, if the company's big enough or small enough, you can move around the organization that 'cause I and that's what I believed at Polycom. It was easier to move into sales at Polycom rather than just jumping out into another org fresh into sales. ⁓ so yeah, be comfortable in your own organisation and you know, if a role comes up, go for it internally. ⁓ 'cause it's easier to transition internally, I think. Simon J Dudley (01:32:44) So Graham, look at mate. Simon J Dudley (01:33:08) Yeah. I think that's a great point. Yes. When I said eighteen months or two years, I didn't necessarily mean it but you clarified it well. Don't necessarily mean leave the company, but but change the role, particularly in your in your twenties. I think that's particularly important. All right, Graham, it's been a joy, my friend. Thank you very much for being involved on the show. ⁓ if you got this far, everyone, you literally must like, subscribe, and you know, all the buttons. I really hate the whole attention economy thing. Graham Walsh (01:33:19) Yeah. Yeah. Graham Walsh (01:33:28) Thank you. Graham Walsh (01:33:39) Click here, click my Simon J Dudley (01:33:40) Yeah, kick all of this. You work it out. ⁓ and we'll see you next week with another fantastic guest. ⁓ Graham Walsh, thank you again, my friend. And everyone, we will see you next week. Graham Walsh (01:33:51) Thank you, Sarah.