(playful music)
- It's lunch time and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
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.
Today I'm meeting up with
the CIO of Antares Capital, Mary Cecola.
(relaxing music)
Hey Mary!
- Hi Brad, how are you?
- Good, I feel like I gotta say welcome aboard.
- It is like welcome aboard.
- So tell us a little bit about the history of Antares,
and like where it came from.
'Cause I think you have got such a unique story.
- About 10 years ago, I guess it was,
GE Capital came around and ultimately bought Antares Capital
into GE Antares, is what it was.
In 2015, GE decided to shut most of the businesses
in GE Capital, and Antares was one of those.
Instead of being bought out by a large firm,
a lot of 'em went to, a Wells or a BMO,
Antares was kind of a crown jewel of that business,
and the management really wanted to launch
as its own company, and they came out of GE
as their own company, which has led
to the challenges we have.
It was a deal business, but there was no infrastructure.
- Yeah, so we talk a lot about mergers and acquisitions,
merger, but like, when you spin out,
there's a day where all the sudden you're completely
on your own, and it's just like,
today you're part of GE, tomorrow you are
a standalone company.
- Standalone company, and every system they wanted new.
They did not want to use the GE systems.
So we went from 35 platforms at GE
to five major platforms at the new company.
And we rolled it all out in about 18 months.
- You're a born in the cloud company,
but it's not like a typical born in the cloud,
where it started with one or two people and then grew up,
you started running full speed day one, born in the cloud.
- When we first bought the Azure cloud,
it went on my personal credit card,
'cause we didn't have corporate cards yet.
And then I had to move it to my corporate card,
and then slowly we got our U5 licenses,
it became a regular billing,
but that's where it really felt like a startup.
- I wonder how many CTOs or CIOs can say
that they started their first public cloud acquisition
for the company was on their personal credit card.
So I heard you talk about leading in an IT department
in a way that becomes a measurable part
of the company's bottom line,
so how do you communicate to the organization
that you're a part of the success of the organization,
and how you attribute what IT does
to the success of the overall Antares.
- You know, this is I think one place that cloud
has helped us tremendously.
When I first thought we were gonna do it,
I really thought it was an infrastructure play.
And I learned that being completely in the cloud
changes the way you run a department as a CIO.
One story I have is after we rolled out three offices,
we realized the size of our BDIs were too small.
They were half as much power as these deal teams needed.
So in one weekend we ran a script,
and really it lasted two hours.
We dropped every desktop we'd roll out,
doubled the size of them in one weekend.
If I had to that as a traditional project,
- [Brad] And it would've been weeks instead of hours.
- Weeks, instead of in a weekend, and no one noticed.
The desktops came up like they were before,
they just seemed to perform better.
- So you were super bold, you said I'm going
all in the cloud from the get go.
What was that like?
And was there resistance?
I'm curious what that was like.
- I would not say there was resistance.
The speed we had to move, it made the most sense.
- A good point.
- We had test environments up before we had
our own network up, and one of the only ways
you're gonna do that is really
gonna be going with the cloud.
I'd done my research at my last firm,
and realized how safe it was.
People ask me about the safety of the cloud.
- Is it secure or is it not?
- Honestly, when you pick a partner like Azure,
that's FedRAMP certified, and the security controls
they can afford to put around it,
it's safer than a data center in my shop.
But what I did like is tools that weren't ready,
Microsoft engineers were really honest with us,
they're like you probably don't want to go with this yet,
we're just moving onto Intune, we started
with another product, but they've said, now it's there.
And we're migrating next weekend.
And I would again mention, being in the cloud,
these migrations, they take a week to plan and execute
instead of months and months of our time.
- All too often people who haven't gotten into it yet
think about it as just a way to save costs,
it's about agility, and it's about
making the business better.
- I talk to CIOs and they're like,
what were your cost savings?
And I said, I wouldn't make it about money,
I would say I'm gonna pitch my last infrastructure
project ever, and after I do this,
I will focus on every business need you have,
and I think that's the play.
It just changes the business model.
(upbeat music)
- [Brad] Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
- Do you think it's safe to be in the cloud?
Well not all cloud providers.
I mean you pick ones that are certified,
that you can trust, and then change the question,
it's not is cloud safe, it's what do you consider safe?
And let me explain to you how you can do that in the cloud.