Cloud Migration, Chetan Mathur – Nextpathway

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome to another tech strung TV interview. I'm really happy to have a First Time guest new company to our audience on for this segment is I want let me introduce you to chatin Mather.

Chayton is the CEO founder of next pathway. Hey Jason, welcome to text on TV Great Allen. Thank you.

I'm just pleasure to be with you pledge of pleasure to have you on we always wanted to find out about companies. We haven't covered before and You know, I I live for these things to tell you the truth. So Jaden, let's start off with maybe give our audience a little bit of your background and and how you came to found next pathway.

Great. Thank you Alan. Thanks again for having me my background is I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years.

I've had the pleasure of starting and selling a few technology businesses in the past and my most recent business and my passion is is next pathway next Pathways mission statement is that we automate the end-to-end challenges that are customers face when migrating applications to the cloud and as you very well know it's quite it's quite top of mind with large Enterprises around the world. The pandemic has certainly accelerated the requirement of our customers to migrate their applications to the cloud. absolutely, you know Chad and I'd like you I've been an entrepreneur about 30 30 years now.

It doesn't have done several different organizations. You know when Cloud first on the scene around 2005. Let's say it was sort of a lot of companies.

Were you well, not a lot but those companies who were moving to the cloud then we're doing sort of that lift and shift and you know cloud-washing if we can call it that just taking their apps and putting it out on a cloud whether it was private public or what have you. it's not 2005 anymore though, and they and the whole like notion of migrating to the cloud has changed the tools available the platforms available, you know are drastically more Powerful, but also maybe a little more complicated than they were back then and no one I think people have learned that you don't just you know, take a an on-prem app or an arm some on-prem infrastructure and say, okay, we're gonna throw it up on the cloud. You could try that, but it's it's just that's not an effect of.

path You got to really think through what it means to move on to the cloud. How do I take advantage of all that the cloud has to offer while not losing maybe some of the functionality that was critical? When it was on prep, and so this whole notion of cloud automation is really become.

much more complicated Yeah, it sure has on and you know the term we like to use in our company is is not lift and shift anymore. We call it lift and optimize and let me just underscore that. The the reason that we use the word optimize is because as you very well know many of these applications are 20 30 years old in some cases and and and and and no pointing fingers or disrespect to our customers.

Some clients don't even know what's there and what's being used and by whom and so, you know, what we have is a technology called crawler 360 and as the name suggests, it does precisely that it crawls through Legacy data pipelines, like Informatica data stage ssis and it shows the lineage back to Source systems and and through the tables and in views of Enterprise data warehouse and who's using that and in many cases we found just to throw out a number and approximation number. 80% of those applications or data warehouses aren't even being used. So to indeed just pick that application up and put it up into the cloud you're wasting money.

Right and you're not rationalizing exactly what's there? So, we really guide our clients and our customers to really do that crawling analysis before they undertake the migration. Absolutely talk about skeletons in the closet.

You know, it's a because as is often the case in technology, you can't you can't fix something till you know, it's there. All right, and and you get some of these Legacy apps and some of the tribal knowledge behind why and what was done where and when is lost by the time, you know, five 10 15 years go by and so people don't even you know, it's kind of like that movie Office Space the guy who works there for 25 years now and knows what he does. There's there's a lot of stuff and in people's apps today.

We're no one's really quite sure why we do it that way or what's in there behind that door, right? But it's always been there and you know don't mess with it. So, you know the idea of using this as an opportunity to sort of clean house and and we kind of stabilize things is what a great idea.

Of course, you know, it's great. You have a tool. That does it and that kind of automates it.

Is it really that easy? Though, I mean from a user's point of view crawling in the analysis. Most certainly is the technology have is quite quite Superior and quite Advanced and it really allows us to give our customers a view a graphical view of data flow and lineage.

So that part of it is pretty straightforward. You know, what we do find out just to your point about institutional knowledge in any cases the long poll in the tent. Allen is just I us getting the code from our clients because forget about the people that wrote that code they're long gone.

And in one case one of our clients actually didn't even have the code and they didn't have the source code. They had the binaries and it was running and I suspect that. That's probably I don't want to say it's calm in place.

But you know, it is a situation we're running to so we had to do there we had to decompile the code or you know Etc. So just kind of getting the getting the code organized and collect it. So that we could actually show what's happening in the Enterprise is really, you know, it's it's necessary.

I believe it's it's Paramount that we must do this then of course that then gives the client the purview into okay. Now, what do I do? How should I plan my migration?

Should I be moving, you know these applications over to the cloud and in just to finish the point, you know, one of our really large clients a large Midwest banking client and giving us a really good complement in the CIO had many a comment. She said, you know, thank you trading. Thank you next pathway because now you do you risk my migration for me.

So, you know, they the the jumping into a migration without actually knowing what you're doing and knowing what you have there is I think one of the biggest mistakes that I see happening in Industry today. a great Well, so let me ask you just does it make a difference what cloud you you're deploying on here? Do you guys just support like one of the main three or all of them?

It's kind of cloud diagnostic. Sure. Excuse me.

Yeah. No absolutely where we are Cloud agnostic in our company and we have partnered with all three Microsoft Google and Amazon. What I am seeing is a pattern developing.

No Allen, I'm seeing that as Microsoft has grown up in the Enterprise space for over 30 years. They really have the confidence of the siso and the cios there from an Enterprise perspective and and we're seeing in our survey results that they are slightly leading which was a little bit surprising to me from a market share perspective of our of our respondents said that they are are there using Microsoft above the other two really and the use cases. Yeah.

Yeah. It was really really interesting data and the and and what I see evolving is the fact that there seems to be trust around security, you know, many corporations have been running Office 365 for many years for example, and they've gone through the whole gamut of Already checks and such and the other thing I'll say is that from large migration projects such as risk and Regulatory or financial applications being moved to the cloud. Those are the ones that we're seeing that are being moved to to Microsoft.

I still believe Amazon is very close and perhaps leading, you know from a market share perspective. However, we see that more from a developer open source, a whole basket of phenomenal technologies that they make available to their and end users. And then of course, we've got our friends at Google who grew up through the analytics Ai and ml world, you know who are really really being selected by data scientists and people that are doing you know, heavy heavy data analysis.

Yeah, I mean that's kind of what I've heard and seen is, you know, each of the cloud for the big three right each of them have their own. Home base if you will their own sweet spot and you know, I read an interesting article. Yes, they cheating about Oracle oracles cloud and you know, that may be the fastest growing of all of them though.

They're not as big perhaps as the other three, but for certain obviously if you're hosting Oracle applications, They recommend it but it also has its own. kind of Niche if you will what I found really interesting Jaden is that Companies are seeing willing to say look. I want to put this on the Microsoft cloud because they do this best but I'm gonna put this on the Google Cloud because they do that best and and they're okay with this kind of multicloud right where they don't have they're not locked into any one Cloud vendor.

Yeah, I know you're you're absolutely spot on what I will say to that is it's it's in its design. It's early stages and it's aspirational and in a completely support the exactly what you said of the example of don't get don't have vendor lock in use best to breed except Etc. What I am seeing though is that it's a big it's a big paradigm shift to be cliche, you know to migrate Cloud retooling we the hiring of new Talent perhaps and so what we're seeing right now is is our customers are actually moving to a cloud because there's a whole workflow that needs to be done retooling of Staff Etc.

Let alone, can you imagine if you had to you know, higher up Amazon skills, Google skills and Microsoft skills. Oh, yeah, not seeing that right now, but from it you want before you're right. Exactly very well put and so we're seeing that the investment is me being made to to instit.

The cloud processes first and then I think we'll see in the next few years. The clients are actually going to go and implement the multi-cloud strategy. excellent Clayton you mentioned a few times kind of what you're hearing and seeing from clients, and I know that it's more than just kind of subjective gut.

You know from a few conversations, you've had or whatever you guys do a pretty regular survey of. Is it just your or is it just your customers or the market in general? And recently did the latest version love to hear maybe some of the findings from that.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

So we do a survey of about 1500 a general it Executives Alan around North America. So it's a North America survey and these are pretty senior folks that we go out and ask, you know questions like which Lottery using are you having a hybrid strategy or multi-cloud strategy Etc? And you know, we found I think we did our first survey probably about two years ago.

There was a lot of interest in the club, but people actually hadn't migrated workloads to the cloud and I think the number was around 20% of the respondents. Actually it said that they had moved a workload to the cloud. Well that number in two years as you can imagine has greatly increased it probably double to about 40% of responsive said they've moved at least one more workload to the club so that you know all of the media.

You're seeing it's happening in practice. Right? So then perhaps not surprising but it's a good validation of what we're hearing right from from a pretty decent size pool of Universe of folks that we went out to the other thing as I mentioned earlier is is that the cloud Wars are on there is no clear winner, right?

You know, it's neck and neck coming down to the to the wire and and as you very well know these companies are are trillion dollar multi-trillion dollar market cap valuation companies and they understand the importance of winning today because it's generational, right? Yeah. This is consumption that is stickiness and they know that when they when when large customers are migrating to the cloud to their Cloud that they're going to be generating revenue for years to come right recurring revenue for years to come and so they're using their Hefty balance sheets to help the customers or entice the customers and they're A lot of money which I believe is the right thing to do.

So the finance people and all of these organizations are most certainly spot on in brilliant because they're saying Hey, listen, Mr. Customer will help you to pay for the migration or a portion of it or perhaps all of it depending on you know, the return on investment. So so those are things that we're seeing and those are some of the hesitations possibly a couple years ago the cost of doing a migration but the cloud providers have gotten very smart and said, hey, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna help our customers get over to our cloud.

You know, I think there's almost like a double bonus in them doing that because oftentimes what they do is they steer that migration business if you will that migration work. To their key Partners, right? So it's not Google or Microsoft or AWS themselves doing the migration, but oftentimes, they'll bring in their gold partner Platinum partner, whatever the cool term is or they're preferred partner that helps.

You know and in this way, they stimulate that channel. So now the channel is more likely to bring even more business into them. So I I think it's you know, it's it's money well spent as you said from the cloud providers point of view and they can kind of double that up like that.

Yeah, look at me it goes back to the old days of 30 years ago when IBM was selling big managed service contracts with their main things, right and we know that those aren't going away anytime soon. Yeah, and it's the it's the analogy now if they can get the workloads over to their own clouds, they know that they're going to be there for a long long time. Absolutely.

Hey chayton, we're almost out of time. But you know what? We never even said next Pat.

com the website? Yeah, that's right. com where toronto-based company we have offices in in the US in New York and also in Pune India.

So yeah. When it's very popular place for engineering teams, our friends equalis have huge. huge facility there.

Anyway Jayden I want to thank you for coming on texture on TV and enlightening us a little bit about next pathway. Invite you back anytime you maybe next next Saturday that comes out we can dive into it and keep up the great work. Great.

Thanks Alan. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure speaking with you today.

com. Check them out automating Cloud migrations Enterprises. We're gonna take a break here on Tech Strunk TV.

We'll be right back.