-Hi, I'm Martin Rust, the director of the Security and Policy Institute for Professional
Development, here at the University of Ottawa.
My guest today is Dave Buchanan.
Dave is the director for the Canadian federal government with the company called VCE.
And VCE does a lot of business and interactions with the federal government, especially in
the area of technology and data centers and clouds.
And, hopefully, you're going to help us understand some of that today.
But first of all, let's start with sort of the environment with the government today
and what are your observations around the government vis-à-vis technology.
Just sort of a big picture overview.
-O.K.
So, when we talk about technology, Martin, I'm going to kind of divide technologies into
two groups.
One: end user devices, the things that you and I touch and use every day.
Your mobile phone, your laptop, your desktop.
And two: the data center environment, the place where all the smart sit and are utilized
and looked at, etc., etc.
And, really, my focus is really around the data center or what a lot of people are calling
the cloud.
And I would say that utilization of that technology, i.e. the data center, is, within large businesses
and governements, very much utilized based on how they buy those technologies.
And I would say that there is a fairly large percentage of businesses and governments that
are still buying technologies as technologies were bought and run five to ten years ago.
-And yet, the technologies themselves have changed quite a bit.
So, help me understand what that gap really is.
-So, five to ten years ago, when I was looking at a data center environment - and I'm speaking
specifically around the hardware, not the zeros and ones or the smarts or how things
are moved around, but around the hardware, traditionnaly in the data center environment,
there was a person or group of people that ran the plumbing, i.e. the networking.
There was a group of people that ran the compute, i.e. the brain of the data center.
And there was a group of people that ran the storage, i.e. where all the stuff was kept.
Now, when you look at how that was bought traditionally, those groups were buying thoses
pieces separately.
Today, in a data center environment, you are not buying those pieces separately, you're
actually buying those pieces purpose-built and delivered as a whole.
So it totally changes how the technology is utilized.
It totally changes how the technology is able to deliver what the user, you and I, want
to use on a daily basis.
-So, if I understand you, the analogy going through my head is: when I was growing up,
we bought a hi-fi stereo and we bought the different components, we brought them home,
plugged them all in, and they were expensive, but they worked.
But they were pretty big and pretty cumbersome.
Whereas today, I can buy a smartphone, or something like that, that manages my music
and that delivers the music much the same way.
-Correct.
And an user device is simple to use, it's small, it's light.
I would call it very thin.
And the data center environment that delivers those services to that is very agile, a lot
more inexpensive to run.
It's a smarter, faster, cheaper way of doing things.
-And so, the governement, today, we would say, is probably still buying things largely
in the old or more traditional way.
-Correct.
-So, they're still buying things pretty much off a shopping list, individual components,
and then putting them together themselves, correct?
-Yes.
I think that is to change very quickly.
I think even in buying that cloud appliance, the new way of picturing things, there still
is... they can't forget the old ways.
-Right.
-Yes.
Yes.
-And so, a trend, then, that you're seeing is a trend towards doing some of these things
that are currently available today.
That says to me that there's a bit of a leapfrog approach here.
-Well, and that's a great technology advantage that the government can take advantage of.
Because they have a lot of...
And quite smartly, they've sweated a lot of assets, they need to buy new things.
And just like buying a mobile phone, you don't buy one for a couple years, what you get is
a very cool new device.
-Right.
So, as the banks and the insurance companies and other private sector have labored and
spent the money year after year after year, it helped push technology to advance, the
government has an opportunity now to leapfrog all of that and take advantage of those gains
that have been realized for people.
-For sure.
For sure.
-Terrific.
Well, thank you, Dave.
I'm Martin Rust, with the Security and Policy Institute for Professional Development, here
at the University of Ottawa.
My guest is Dave Buchanan with VCE.