- It's lunch time and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
(upbeat music)
If you work with technology,
you've probably been to more than a few conferences
in Orlando.
When I got invited to speak at Citrix Synergy
I booked a flight and called a few really smart people
to meet up for lunch.
(lighthearted music)
This week I meet up with Mark Bowker,
senior analyst and mobility expert at ESG.
(lighthearted music)
Alright, hop on in.
- Quite the ride here.
You got some gators in the back?
- That's why we got this.
We wanted to be safe.
(laughter)
So Mark, tell us a little bit about ESG
and what you do and what you're specialty is.
- We are an analyst and consulting firm
like many other firms but the fascinating part
about what I get to do Brad is
the strategy with these different companies.
So I get to meet with folks like yourself
to small little companies that are driving
this new innovation and come up with some idea
and ultimately starting a new company.
- For me, one of my favorite things about the job
that I get to do, is when I get a chance to meet
the customers, meet the partners.
It's the fun part about it.
You can do that all day long.
- Yes.
It is so true that at the end of the day
people do business with people they like, right?
You and I remained friends just for that reason.
- Yep.
Sort of.
(laughter)
Florida is well known for having just like crazy stuff
that goes on.
(laughter)
I'm gonna give you a list of headlines
and you're gonna try and guess which ones are
made up and which ones are real.
- Let's go for it.
- A man is charged with disturbing the peace
after climbing on top of a police car
to escape vampires.
(laughter)
Alright, second one.
A man impersonating a police officer
accidentally pulls over two police officers.
(laughter)
And the third one.
A man burning books in front of his house
accidentally burns down 700 acres.
- So I'm gonna go ...
Let's start in the middle one.
The impersonating a police officer.
I'm gonna say true.
- That one is true.
- Yeah nice.
I burn a bunch of books and set the Florida everglades
on fire.
I almost wanna say I've heard that one before.
- That one is true also.
Can you believe this?
(laughter)
- I know, it's crazy.
- Alright, the first one.
- You know what, I was going for the first one to be true
until the vampire thing.
That just seems too out there for me.
I'm gonna go false on that one.
(dinging)
- That one is true as well.
(buzzing)
- Ah.
- In the last, say, twelve months,
what's been one of the biggest changes in the conversations
that either customers, organizations
are wanting to have with you
and what they're looking to get advice and insights in?
- The number one increase we see in spending
is around cybersecurity.
The number one IT priority is about
new tools and process to improve cybersecurity
and the number one business priority is cybersecurity.
- How many of the organizations
ask you about how to balance the end user experience
and the daily users get with security?
Because there's that balance there
and you can over pivot.
- Yeah, I know.
That's constantly what we see setting the dials
because that one sense we wanna improve productivity
and maintain the security at the came time
so we've asked that question with research.
70% of the people said we'll put security first
and so good for them.
Now they're struggling a little bit with how to
maintain productivity in that environment
but a third of the people say
that they're putting productivity first.
That's like hold on a second what are you giving up.
Honestly what happens is a lot of their effort, Brad,
is actually put into the Windows environment,
the traditional Windows environment
on their laptop or their desktop
and they aren't putting the effort
out on that endpoint device yet.
Because they don't see it as as much of a target.
- What advice do you give
or what can somebody's who's listening to this
as they're trying to balance this,
what advice can you give them about how to do both?
- So I think there's a couple things.
One, the most important thing is you have to
involve the security team.
I see so many, whether they're help desk support,
kind of typical desktop support, IT Directors
and they're coming up with these great ideas
but the security team is an afterthought.
So I think to your point earlier about, you know,
the perimeters changing
well so the security really is the same
you just have to apply it to that same environment.
- So from an outsider's perspective
what is the partnership?
The Microsoft Citrix doing to help organizations
increase their bottom line
and make their users more productive?
- One I look at the success Microsoft has had with Azure.
I look at Office 365 migration.
I look at Windows 10.
I look at things you're doing around identity
with something age old, active directory.
- Yep.
- And I start putting those together with
okay at the end of the day no Citrix comes along
and delivering, you know, apps ...
Securely delivering apps, desktops and data to any user.
Now if you take those two together,
really looking at that kind of workspace together
with all those, I'll say, consumption models
I mean that's the magic right?
You complement each other so well
and I think that you find all the Citrix customers
I speak with are happy - Are also ...
- Yeah, and they're also Microsoft customers.
- Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
If you've ever seen in person, it's incredible
but there's a lot more laying around then you expected.
- I would really hope that that's the alligator farm.
(ding)
- Do you see organizations moving to a solution
where they're going to start using their smartphones
even more than PCs?
- I do.
I've been a believer in this one for a while.
So we did some research about this.
(twinkling)
(maracas shaking)