We are back again this time with co-host Patrick Coble joining Jarian Gibson to talk with Scott (Ozzy) Osborne, Sr. Solutions Architect and Shane Kleinert, Sr. Solutions Architect of Choice Solutions. Choice Solutions is a founding channel partner of the World of EUC. In this podcast we talked about all things going on with Choice Solutions.
In this podcast we had the pleasure of talking with Oz and Shane from Choice Solutions about:
- About Oz and Shane and what they do at Choice Solutions.
- An overview of Choice Solutions, their EUC practice, and areas they cover.
- How Choice Solutions has adopted their strategy with changes in the EUC space and what they are seeing from customers in the field.
- Thoughts on what Microsoft is doing in the EUC space and if they’ve seen any challenges.
- Their recent Cloud PC webinar and what they are seeing for customer adoption.
- How the changes at Citrix and spin off of Omnissa from VMware is impacting their EUC practice.
- What other players in the EUC space they are seeing as good alternatives to the big 3 of Citrix, Microsoft, and Omnissa.
- The cloud strategy they are seeing with their EUC customers when it comes to cloud first, all in cloud, coming back to on premises, multi cloud and hybrid.
- Which cloud they are seeing the most in customer deployments and how they are deploying hybrid cloud for customers.
- What they are seeing for GPUs in EUC customers and their GPU strategy.
- Thoughts on changes in the EUC community.
- Where we will see the Choice team next in the community/at community events.
Thanks to Patrick for being our co-host! Thank you to Oz and Shane for joining us to have a chat about Choice Solutions. Thank you Choice Solutions for supporting the community!
You can find more information about Choice Solutions on their website. For more information on services Choice Solutions offers, see Advisory Services and Jump Starts.
Thank you to our sponsors for their continued support – Founding Partners – 10ZiG, Goliath Technologies, IGEL, Liquidware, Omnissa, Nerdio, and Nutanix. Founding Channel Sponsor – Choice Solutions. Core Sponsors – Google and Parallels.
Jarian Gibson, Frontline Chatter Host:
Good day and welcome to the Frontline Chatter Podcast, brought to you by the World of EUC. I am your host, Jarian Gibson, and I am back today with Patrick Coble as my co-host. How are you doing today, Patrick?
Patrick Coble, Frontline Chatter Co-Host:
Doing good. How are you, sir?
Jarian Gibson:
Doing pretty good. It's Friday. The weekend is almost here. It's not like snowmageddon blizzard getting here, so it's looking nice weather. So ready to rock and roll, and then you're getting ready to go on vacation, too. So I bet you're ready to bounce out as well.
Patrick Coble:
Ready to go. But we got like, two guys beside us. So I gotta point this way. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
But let's get to our guest. Oh, yeah. Let's get to our guest today. People I am very familiar with. No strangers to me. We are talking to some of the Choice Solutions crew. We are here today with Scott Osborne and Shane Kleinert. How are you doing today, Oz?
Scott Osborne, Choice Solutions:
Doing good. Doing good. Thanks for having us on, fellas.
Jarian Gibson
How about you, Shane?
Shane Kleinert, Choice Solutions:
Doing awesome man. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having us on. Excited to be here, talk to you guys again and and support the World EUC.
Jarian Gibson:
Yes. And speaking of support, you guys are our channel sponsor and have supported us from the beginning. You're back again this year. So thank you for all the support. You guys have also been on one of our webinars, I believe. And also you were presenters along with Ray at last year's EUC World Independence. So thank you for all the support and and being a part of the community. But let's kind of go ahead and get into to things. I'll start with you kind of tell us about yourself and what you do at Choice Solutions.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, yeah. I'm a Senior Solutions Architect here out of Omaha, Nebraska. Co EUC lead with, you know, Shane over there on that side. We're also, Azure Solutions Architects. Enterprise Architects for the kind of the Azure practice side of things for us, for cloud. And really it's just, you know, we cross over all things, you see. So again, hail from Omaha, Nebraska. So sort of that Midwest, North Central up here.
Jarian Gibson:
So yeah, not not too far from me. I'm about three hours south from you. And I pretty much grew up in Omaha, so know exactly how things are in the Midwest.
Scott Osborne:
Yep.
Jarian Gibson:
How are you doing today? Oh, go ahead, Patrick.
Patrick Coble:
I said we got the Florida boy here, too. Shane.
Shane Kleinert:
That's right. Man. Shaking and baking. We got the sun in the background. Oh he's hustling I got the liquor in the back. We're running a bootleg out of the side over here trying to make some extra cash.
Patrick Coble:
I would expect nothing less.
Shane Kleinert:
Right. It's it's kind of just stayed here. These are all books. We just moved into our new place a year plus renovation. So it's super excited about that. And with that, it's kind of, you know, part time office. We got our Choice office as well down here. So I got the the background, and I just kind of kept that and Smirnoff. I'm not a Smirnoff drinker. These are packing boxes, so we're on the whiskey side. But, yeah, happy to be here. So. Yeah. Senior Architect and co-lead, as Oz mentioned, our EUC practice, so very heavily focused on, on the Azure Citrix side, we're both, we're all here, a former, Citrix CTPs. I don't know if you want to bring that topic up or not. It's a yeah, it's a, it's a it hits close to home here on that. So maybe, maybe we'll leave that as a bonus topic. But. Yeah. So, so yeah, a lot of the same stuff. So we do architecture, pre-sales, we handle all our large enterprise accounts, do some implementation services focused on, on our larger enterprise, more complicated projects, but, yeah. Ready to, ready to be here. Been Choice southeast. South Florida. Been here, what, 11 years in April. So a long time.
Jarian Gibson:
I want to say to Oz is just been there, I think 14 years now this year as well.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I think, man, how do you know that so. Well, but yes, I think it's 14. It's those work anniversaries. Funny story. Jarian was interviewed me in 2011. So we made a story. For me to something I remember.
Patrick Coble:
Next year, you can get your learner's permit Oz at work.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah. For those who don't know, I was at, Choice Solutions for a long time as an employee. And then, when I went independent they were one of my biggest customers that I did subcontracting for. So very familiar, I think I helped bring both Oz and Shane over to the Choice team. And then I got...
Shane Kleinert:
You helped create the southeast. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
I got Shane on board, and then I bounced.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. It's like first day in and you're like, all right, we're out. Wait a second. What?
Patrick Coble:
Hey, that just gave you room to do your thing. Now you and Oz. Yeah.
Shane Kleinert:
In massive shoes to fill, man. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
So, yeah, I remember driving up to Omaha. Dana and I going up there to start building the Omaha area out. We were up there and staying with my mom. And then we started recruiting Oz to the team and brought Oz on board. And then I remember with Shane. Shane, I met through the community. I think Shane kind of Twitter stalked me back in the day, said, hey, you gotta join Citrix IRC, you know? And so I joined the IRC channel. We became good friends, started doing presentations and that kind of stuff. So I'm happy to have you guys on today. Knowing you guys a long time, and you're a great bunch of guys. So.
Patrick Coble:
Friends and family.
Shane Kleinert:
Same here man. Yeah, we're super, super close, man. And, I may or may not have camped outside your house, or or whatnot, but. Yeah.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, my buy one get one. I was the by one. Then you got Shane.
Patrick Coble:
Well. All right. Well, cool. Well, one of the things is, is what do you what's what's kind of the things that Choice Solutions does in the EUC space? It kind of is. It's obviously changed a lot. Then if you would have answered this question five years ago, it probably would be a very big difference in what you'd say right now. But what's kind of the focus on the EUC team at Choice right now?
Scott Osborne:
Well, Shane I'll let you go first.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah, yeah. So. So it's company. It's, you know, we've been in business as a company for over 40 years, and at the time before EUC was EUC, it was just Citrix. You know, Jim Steinlage started the company. It was very focused around Citrix remote access. We've been doing that since the early days. Right. And we've all been in that space for a very, very long time. And so with that, you know, as a as the company had grown over the years, really, you know, we're, I think just under 75 users in the users, like, we're end users, we are end users of the company technology. But 75 team members, you know, in the company and it's very boutique focused shop. And we heavily focus on end user computing. We have some of the top engineers, and we're really focused with EUC. As you know, our end user computing, everything else is kind of drag along with that. Right. Sort of focused on that application, you know, desktop delivery. And then with that, we over the years we've kind of been in Choice Solutions in general has really been kind of at the forefront of all these different technologies through the years, right. So beyond early on on the Palo Alto side, on VMware, on, you know, Nutanix, we've been with Nutanix for 11 plus years. And so all that kind of is a big part of the EUC story. But, I'd say over the last, and so with that, you know, design, builds, architecture, advisory services, we do all that. Right. But we we're very focused on Citrix up until what would you say, Oz? What about four, three, four years ago or so? Maybe three. Time flys. Man. So I don't even know. So, it was something like that. It was like three years ago. And we kind of as the market has shifted, it was basically back when when Citrix started to go private, some of those big changes started happening. You know, as an organization, we took a step back and we kind of formalized an EUC practice versus just a Citrix practice where we can kind of expand our, you know, expand the umbrella in our services to not just look at Citrix, but look at, you know, we've been doing a lot on Azure, OZ and I are Azure architects, you know, so looking at Azure Virtual Desktop, you know, Azure Virtual Desktop plus Nerdio, Microsoft Cloud PC, Intune. So all that kind of got expanded and then expanding outside of that to, you know, Parallels as well and solutions outside of Citrix and that's, that's, you know, hard hard for us to say because we live, eat and breathe Citrix. But with a lot of those changes and then focusing on, you know, these top enterprise class customers and doing amazing things, they're doing incredible things from a software and product perspective. But, you know, other things that that we all love, like, you know, community and some of the smaller customers, it's just not their focus right now. Right? So it's a win for the bigger customers, not a win for the smaller customers. So us as a company, we had to obviously, you know, change that up. And so as you talked to that to, you know, for us is a big changes, on our staff.
Patrick Coble:
It sounds like it sounds like y'all kind of followed your customers leads and also kind of stayed ahead because you knew there was rumblings and change coming even before your customers started changing or asking questions to go ahead and get ready for the next chapter or chapters in this unique space when it's almost been kind of one author has been, you know, writing all the books for years, right? And so now there's a lot more mini series and stuff like that going on.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. For sure. And, and honestly, I mean, all of us, you know, they always say you punch in the face, change the way all of us got punched in the face with Covid, right?
Patrick Coble:
Yup.
Scott Osborne:
So we started seeing things change and we hadn't, you know, things picked up pretty much at a furious pace on where the where market was going and what happened there for for all of us. And that time we shall not speak of, you know, that was a that was a bleak time, but that quickly changed things. You know, it changed everything we do from a day to day perspective and really, since Covid and then with all the other changes in the market. Obviously you know with Broadcom and Citrix and things happening there that has definitely made us you know look at things a little bit differently. And our customers want they need more. They need options right. They're all looking for different options. And as we know that space is filled with a lot of good options for customers.
Jarian Gibson:
One thing I want to jump back to where Shane said, about 75 employees now. And Patrick and I were fortunate of you guys inviting World of EUC to come the Choice Connect last year. And it seems like every time I come around the Choice Team, whether it's, you know, for my job or for the community or just stopping by to say hi, you know, a lot of the foundational pieces are still there, but it's amazing how much has grown and changed over the years of of coming in there and just visiting you guys.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, it was fantastic seeing you guys and having you guys there in October. I think it was. And you know, we're doing that again this year. I'm sure you guys will be there as well again.
Patrick Coble:
Yep.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. It's, t's really a anybody that's been around Choice Solutions for any amount of time, whether a partner or vendor, you know, anything. You know, we're all about family here. Yeah. It's very, very family focused and relationships and loyalty. And that's why a lot of us have been here for a long time, obviously.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. Well, I mean, because people is what makes the job in so many cases. Right. And when you've got a tight group and I think for you all with your leadership too, and along with y'all's thought leadership, you all have had like a good direction and focus and everyone's together pulling the same way, and working together. And I think that's like just a testament of Choice Solutions and what you all have done over the years and just continue to do, which is great.
Shane Kleinert:
I appreciate that. And it's a it's an incredible I said that the tenure is something that we've seen across the organization. And and there's a lot of organizations, a lot of large, you know, big companies that are basically they'll use the term family lightly and throw it around. And and so you hear people say like, oh, they use the word like this is a true like like this is the culture. And you know, it's it's, Jim, the CEO and the partners are, you know, his sons and and Brad and and it's it's the culture is just trickles down and it's really just the farmers mentality. Everyone doing the right thing, rolling your sleeves up. We're not multi-tiered, you know, organization where there's a lot of different managers and directors. Right? Everyone kind of rolls their sleeves up, gets a job done, and we got a lot of, a lot of really good talent. And I think being that, that, that that culture, that family relationship, culture really drives how we, you know, treat our customers. Right. And, and those long term relationships is, is big for us. But it also allows us to be agile, like when we look at, like our size of our company. And so we've adapted the stack or we call our EUC stack heavily, you know, over the years. And we're not tied to, you know, a lot of larger, you know, partners or we like to call it VAR or value out or reseller, not just someone that's like, you know, pushing boxes or selling software, right? We're selling really value added services. You know, that's something that that for us, it allows us to, you know, to be agile because we're not tied to, like, you know, a bigger like a Cisco, for instance, where we're, we're a lot of our revenue is driven by that, right? We're able to to bring in these different solutions and, and, and, you know, Choice gives us that, that trust to help kind of build, build a business within a business. And we got a great, great team across the board, of solid engineers. So.
Jarian Gibson:
So you mentioned earlier too, that you guys are both Azure architects. And so what are your thoughts on what Microsoft is doing in the EUC space? Because there's a little bit of disruption there. And it's like kind of like the, the buzz right now with Microsoft and some of their EUC solutions. So what are your thoughts on that and are you seeing any challenges there, whether it's on, people going to Azure, the AVD side, Cloud PC, Microsoft 365, any challenges around that stuff? And then we'll don't go too much on Cloud PC. We'll touch on that next too as well. But just overall in general, Microsoft and the EUC space.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. I'll give you a short answer. I mean, Microsoft's winning. I mean, the bottom line is they're winning. They know what they're doing whether you hate it or love it. Whatever. Right. In the EUC space, Windows and Office and Microsoft with Entra ID in general are winning, right? So they're closing that gap with AWS. And AWS. Got to jump big jump on them way back. But EUC in general and what Microsoft is doing there, they're adding to their entitlements hand over fist. All these other features and capability like multi-session like you mentioned, Cloud PC will go into, but they're doing a lot of stuff there that's really propelling people to Azure. And so our as Choice Solutions are number one is Azure for for public cloud. So you guys might have another question about the you know more cloud you know later. But that is our number one because of our EUC focus, and that's really the tip of the spear. I always say for us, getting Azure workloads running and what we're doing is usually you see focused in Azure first.
Jarian Gibson:
Any thoughts on that, Shane?
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think I think they if you look at like the last couple of years right. Microsoft obviously has a you know they have the OS right. And so they kind of for you know they they kind of stalled the market with with the licensing. Right. And until in my opinion the background they're getting all this stuff ready. There's a bunch of guys back there building stuff. And when they felt like it was ready, they started opening up. I mean, what makes sense, what you're seeing today is as, as, you know, Cloud PC as what they brought, brought to the forefront. Right. And it starts to, you know, it's it's a it's a very delicate balance, you know, and being able to balance the ecosystem. Right. Because they're they're now offering, you know, Windows in the cloud. Right. And that's, that's in my opinion, their holy grail. Right. I mean, they're, you know, per user per month. We'll go into it more a little bit later. But then they offer now, you know, Windows Link, right now they're offering a thin client. Right. And now there's a whole thin client ecosystem and they're trying to create that. So and you have Citrix out here. And obviously Citrix is a massive extension to what Microsoft has been for years and years and years. And Citrix had to jump back in and quick and like, hey, with, UMHC, universal hybrid multi cloud licensing, you got unlimited Cloud PC licenses because they want to make sure that they're still providing value. But, you know, so I think Microsoft, as Oz said, is doing all the right things here. But with that said, it doesn't mean that it's the right solution for everybody, right? There's still scenarios where on prem makes sense, whether AWS makes sense. It's all about obviously applications, data and use cases. That hasn't changed. All this shit changes around us. But those key things applications, data and use cases, those still drive where you go. Right. And so but but yeah there we're we're heavily you know we were historically not Intune guys. Right. We came I came from an endpoint background with LANDESK or thousands and thousands of endpoints. Back in the day, Oz was SCCM, right? And now you you look at like where like Intune we're like, we're not touching that. We're over here in our world. And now it's like converged right. Cloud PC and the policy engine. And so, we're definitely doing a lot of that now. We got the teams been ramping up on it. And, yeah, it's they're, they're doing, doing some great, great things, honestly. And that's, that's why we're, we're pushing that way. There's other solutions we have on the truck as well. So it's not just Microsoft, but.
Jarian Gibson:
So you recently had a webinar on Cloud PC. How did that go? And are you seeing a lot of adoption there from customers? So and what are you seeing around Cloud PC in general?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, we actually just had that yesterday. I think it was, but yes. Cloud PC is it's really that conversation is switching to more of a persistent versus non persistent model. And and again Microsoft soft. Is pushing hard on Cloud PC. It's a win for them. They don't care where the stuff's off on. You pay them a fixed price. All good to go. Very easy. It's a very nice service, actually. So it's coming up in pretty much any conversation we have where we're talking AVD. And then looking to go that way because you need the same client virtualization rights for both solutions. Either which way you go. And it's just about talking through the feature sets of one versus the other and what makes sense. So I would say for us, Cloud PC is coming up in all those conversations where our customer is looking towards usually AVD or something like that. Yeah. Yep. So yep.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. It's it's uh it's topic of conversation webinar went great. It's it's recorded by the way. You can go on the YouTube search Choice Solutions. Subscribe like subscribe whatever. It's right. You got to put it up there. If I go like this. It, like, just shows up. Yeah. But. But, yeah, it was like 90 minutes. We got to go and do, you know, try with a larger audience. You can't just be 100% deep, but you got to try to be broad as you can. And so we think we did a decent job at that. And talking through AVD, talking through Cloud PC, what makes sense where and and the different options with Cloud PC because it used to be just persistent only. And now you have, you know, the ability just recently with frontline shared where they do offer a non persistent option. So, but it's it's definitely pretty much every one of our customers is bringing it up as a topic of conversation. And so yeah.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. And I mean to that point then as everything's been changing like that with some of the changes at Citrix and Omnissa and the VMware split and all that, I'm sure that you've saw a lot of change happen with those two companies doing the changes they're doing. And as it rolls down to you as a, as a VAR and especially to your customers when they got renewals and then they're wondering like, should I stay or should I go? I'm sure there's a lot of conversations for the past year or so.
Scott Osborne:
Oh, huge. And it was actually one of the, the one of the things that we talked about as we led into the subject of Cloud PC and AVD yesterday was what are the things that are pushing to this direction and making this a conversation? And that's one of the big ones was licensing changes. And Broadcom and Citrix plays right. Those two alone over the last 12 to 16 months between those two major players has made it so that every customer is asking what are what should I do next? What are my other options? Maybe that make more sense depending on the features I need.
Shane Kleinert:
So yeah, it's it's super interesting because you come Citrix is in majority of the accounts the larger accounts. Right. And you look at what they're doing with their their platform license. Right. It's like they keep buying up technology to obviously grow laterally within the environment. And it's disrupting the ecosystem. Right. In my opinion, it's just what you're starting to see. Obviously at Uber Agent you know great solution. But they were ControlUp is is amazing. We've been ControlUp partner for 11 years. You know. Early advisory board. Just incredible solution. But you got Uber Agent now, right? And then they went and just bought. We were I was like man IGEL where you're at. And then they bought Unicon.
Patrick Coble:
Unicon. Yep.
Shane Kleinert:
And so if you're, you know, a large enterprise customer, they're, you know, they're going to be talking at the higher levels and say, hey guys, you know your platform customer I know your big IGEL, maybe you want to take a look at this Unicon stuff. Maybe you want to. And so the customer has to do their due diligence and look at it right. And so you know, now it doesn't mean they're going to have all the, all the solutions, right. Or all the features and functionalities that they need for the business. But it disrupts the conversations with our customers. Right. And and it's good for the platform ones. There's a ton of value. And we're telling the whole story right. We're doing SPA and we you know those customers are loving it, right. But some of the other customers and, you know, we have to bring in these other, other solutions to help, to help with that. But it's also, you know, expanding things and, you know, technologies we talked about for years with application packaging where you're doing some more conversation around that because now they're there you're looking at managing that application on the physical endpoint with Intune. And also in the Cloud PC, We're looking at third party. We've been working with third party patching solutions because we're going more persistent. So it definitely changed kind of how we're looking at things. And then just kind of this like just non-persistent, you know, route. I'd say it definitely impacted all those changes, impacted the practice for sure.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah, I like how you mentioned Uber Agent and Unicon. And those are two great acquisitions by Citrix. But I still think their best one, you know, as of late has been Device Trust. And it was more from getting that technology. But it was also strategic too, because if someone else would have picked that up, that would have been a big acquisition for somebody else. So it seems like they struck at the right time for that acquisition.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. Oh yeah. And what's what's great about that, besides being probably the one, the one most well known to us, and really those of us that have played in that sandbox with Device Trust, it's an incredible product. But they they in January they backported that to also be allowed for DaaS. Even our DaaS customers that haven't gone to the UHMC licensing either 1.0 or 2.0 doesn't matter. You have it. And so it's starting to show up now in all of our customers tenants on the Device Trust side of things. So it's a really good point. You make, with just another value add feature.
Shane Kleinert:
You know, it helps against that. Like, you know, Citrix isn't a security company, right? I mean, they're acquiring technologies and really focusing because they are setting their strategy. They're focusing on their enterprise customers, and they're going to drive and and they're building phenomenal product. And now they're going to be integrating Device Trust is just another, you know, play in that not a security company story. So definitely a great bringing that up because that was an awesome acquisition.
Jarian Gibson:
So kind of makes you think, what they're going to do next.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. I think they have funds to do a lot of things.
Shane Kleinert:
Got that money?
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. because I mean, like other than Citrix, Omnissa and Microsoft, who's some of the other players in the EUC space that you all are deploying or seeing or being brought up? Because I know for a while, the most two common head to head battle was Citrix and VMware. Microsoft was kind of the MVP for a little bit, just kind of minimum viable, but it's caught up a lot. And then it's like, all right, now you're down to you can battle those three, but who's the other ones that come into the arena to do that? And I know sometimes it's really based on customer size and, you know, on prem, cloud and all that. But what are some of the other ones you're seeing?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. Yeah I mean the big one for us and we're we're now fully on boarded with Parallels here at Choice Solutions. So we're doing quite a bit with them. As you mentioned the big three. Right. Even for us Omnissa because it now is Omnissa. And there's some unlock from the VMware stack now will be that for us is going to be a big play this year. So Omnissa is going to be folded into that enterprise type class play where Citrix Workspace is today. The Parallels really is is the one where we're we're doing quite a bit with right now for that space that was really just thrown to the side by Citrix. And then we have some other players. You know, we used to do a lot. We used to do some stuff with Frame now Dizzion, not so much anymore. Right. We've been talking to the fellows over with Sonet.io, is another one we've been talking to. And then Shane, what was the other one?
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah, yeah, we've been talking a Apporto. And so these are kind of the Sonet.io's, newer, obviously. You know, when you're startup newer, you're able to look at things at a different lens. And they're kind of looking at it with a security focused lens. But, you know, we're looking at a Apporto. Apporto has been around for ten plus years. They have a lot of longevity working in there, but they've been very laser focused on like the education space. Right? And so they're kind of starting to break out, obviously. And they've done some great things in education, you know, DaaS based solution. You know, they built in all these classroom, classroom based functionalities into the platform. So it's nice, but it's like with now, just like everything happens, right? Citrix just created a whole market now for all these people in small to medium business that don't have good solutions. So they naturally are jumping into that like, hey, we've been here ten years, we got good stack. But, that's what they have, like AHV integration, something that's coming for them. So when that gets kind of integrated, we're going to start looking at it in-house for those customers. And they're looking at it with their they're looking at Kubernetes and they got containers. And so they have a modern architecture for what you know has been you know these bigger you know EUC vendors have been traditional infrastructure. And they haven't gotten the modern route yet. You know, they are in the control plane world but not on prem. And so these guys are on prem and in the cloud. So kind of keeping an eye on things outside of just, you know, Parallels. And we're looking at like Apporto is kind of our other one that we're looking at as well. And so yeah.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. And I think one thing that I've noticed is when you look at all the other vendors other than those big three, their takes just on the nerdy thing like the management console and how things are laid out and where you do things. Because for some of us, we've been doing Citrix for, you know, 15, 20 years. You're used to clicking here even as they've moved stuff. There's been some familiarity. And I think that's where when I first started getting into like the Parallels console, I was like, oh, that's their that's their oh, okay. That makes sense. It makes sense. It's kind of intuitive. But you got to be like kind of break your own cycle because you've been used to it for so long. And Apporto is kind of the same way, the way it is. But it's got some things that I think would be if people go down that road and that's what they choose, can have go like, oh, that's pretty sweet, because if you are in a meeting and everybody's in their virtual desktop and doing their thing, it's like, oh, let me just one click, share my screen. Oh, let me share my screen. Like it's like the way it's built in for the teachers and the way the things layer in there. It's meant to be, you know, sharing is caring and it's like, oh, it's built in where it's not like I need to Goto Meeting in my VDI or a WebEx or whatever, Zoom to then share something else. It's all just kind of built in. So that's kind of a real cool feature for it. So that's awesome.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah, Apporto is one to keep an eye on too, especially with them coming into the enterprise space being primarily from the education space. And then Parallels also another one, it kind of seems like they're rapidly adding features to kind of catch things up to. And with the Parallels and Omnissa being owned by the same parent company, that will be interesting too long term to watch to see. Are they going to stay separated or are they going to kind of bring them together? What's going to happen with them? So yeah, very interesting to see with, with all the changes in the market, how things end up turning out with this?
Patrick Coble:
Yep.
Shane Kleinert:
Yep. And that's in Parallels to on that side of the house is really like you look at like AVD you look at Nerdio. You know, unless you're staying in the Azure at, you know, the Azure world, you have all your data on that side or your, you know, contract or SaaS web modern technology. If you're in this hybrid world, if you're not in the Azure ecosystem with Azure Local. Right. Local to run that, you know, you're kind of locked in, right? And that's where Parallels kind of opens up, where we typically are in the Citrix world with the openness, right. You know, Parallels. That's Parallels right now. Now, with that, there's some limitations around the greater things that, you know, around unified communications. Things are getting built back in. But that's where we kind of are able to cherry pick what makes sense based on the customer. So yeah, it's definitely interesting. We're going to keep an eye on things and and, yeah. Continue conversations around that for sure.
Jarian Gibson:
So we talked a bit a lot about Azure actually. And then AWS was mentioned a little bit. Are you seeing a lot of your EUC customers adopt a cloud first or an all in cloud strategy. And for those that have gone full cloud, have they pulled back all or some on prem at all? Because I know that's been some things that I've seen out there where people are saying, I'm cloud first, I'm going all in on cloud, but they either have that long migration, things don't go, it's expensive and they end up pulling some things back, or there's like back end stuff. They can't move to the cloud and that's not causing the best end user experience. So what are you seeing around that? And then, you know, what are you seeing about them pulling back in either all or some back to on prem?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. I mean, for us, with our customer, it's a hybrid cloud is really. That's it right now. Right. We have do we do have some that are greenfield or as you, as you mentioned, born in the cloud. Yeah. Those are very small percentage. Right. That that works right out of the gates a lot of times this might be a startup companies or you know, they're not doing anything on prem. So you got a fresh new start. They want to start out there. They don't want any no data center nonsense and nothing they're managing. Right. So it makes sense. But that's a very small percentage. Majority of ours are hybrid cloud where they have some customer managed on prem situation. And maybe they don't want to have two data centers anymore. That's a big thing right now. They want to use public cloud for the secondary data center.
Patrick Coble:
Yep.
Scott Osborne:
As a burst or a, you know, just DR or whatever to be able to do to use cloud to what cloud is best for where you don't, you know, spend all your money's, you know, everything you got. But so, and then multi-cloud comes into the play as well.
Shane Kleinert:
Because there are not just the buzzword. We are seeing that more and more conversations come up with our customers around that space.
Scott Osborne:
A lot of them started doing something in AWS already, and then they see Azure for what we talked about earlier, being that you use licensing costs, entitlements, Microsoft winning over there. So Azure then comes into focus as well, but that doesn't mean their AWS side is going away.
Patrick Coble:
Correct.
Scott Osborne:
Now, AWS is doing a lot of cool stuff over there with workspaces, right? Allowing office and client OS on top of workspaces. Now they got the personal and pool that they've rebranded into. And so AWS is putting themselves out there as a viable option. But for us it's it's a lot of a lot of Azure, a good amount of doing something with AWS with the multi-cloud and less so as you get outside of that to the GCP's and things like that.
Shane Kleinert:
But yeah. And that's, that's also for us to I, we, we kind of, you know, strapped ourselves. We've got almost 11 years now, if not a little longer on the Nutanix side because of that, you know, holistic nature, that, that agnostic nature that they have on on the platform of being, you know, it's been it's to create the HCI market before, you know, it was what it was. Obviously everyone kind of folded in in that story. And obviously you know Broadcom and the big changes there is just accelerated what we're seeing on that side, on the Nutanix world. But their NC2 platform, their cloud cluster's platform, essentially being able to run Nutanix software on bare metal in Azure, in AWS, future other other clouds are coming. I'm not sure I'm able to stay here, but, but but point is, is then the user can take that same workload, same management experience, same operational practices that they do today that they're used to and travel that across. Whether it's AWS, Azure, they can exit if they need to at that point. Right. And it's bare metal. And, and and you're not stuck to those t shirt sizes, you're getting guaranteed performance and that sort of thing. But, that's something we've seen customers that will do the lift and shift to cloud and then realize after like, oh, this is someone else's hardware performance isn't the same, you know, and they start running into these issues and they're trying to exit cost drives up. So, we try to go the hybrid nature first, as Oz mentioned, you know, start creating a bridge. Right. Get the Azure landing zone out there. Get the bridge from a connectivity standpoint. start putting EUC workloads out there that make sense. And then we talk about, you know, we really focus on the EUC side of things, but we talk about some other pieces as, as they make sense potentially moving up there. But, that's why we really like the Nutanix story. When Oz talks about the multi-cloud, there is really, really important there.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah, it will be interesting to see too, because right now primarily it's it's AWS and Azure. You know, in Google sitting out there with GCP. I know Citrix has some of their control plane stuff there for, for DaaS. I know that some other EUC vendors have also, used GCP for their, for, you know, for the hosting piece of that side. They've also recently, I think last year they announced their bare metal service as well. So it seems like Google is starting to make some moves on the GCP. I can't even talk GCP side. But I wonder they're kind of out there like the they're the, you know, one of the big three cloud vendors right now out there, that we that you guys see because I know we've talked about GCP as well with some of your customers. But, I wonder if they're going to make any play for any of these other EUC solutions because they're kind of the the third one out there that doesn't have their own broker type solution. So. Yeah. Also too, I like I mentioned before, I know you guys have talked about GCP or we talked about before on in our side chats. Are you guys seeing a lot of customers there? Because I know in the past Oz, I think you did some Dizzion Frame stuff there, but are you still seeing a lot of good demand there for GCP?
Scott Osborne:
We don't do a ton there, right? It comes up in conversations once and once in a while. Honestly it did just the past week actually. And yeah, talking about BYO licensing. And I had to tell them that's going to be a sticker shock because they got, they got a single tenant option in GCP because you can do Win 11 over there you got to buy the buy it right. So it does come up. And yes, Citrix obviously has really nice integration from an MCS orchestration standpoint. GCP's one of the big, big three hyperscalers. So it makes sense. But for us, yeah, not not near as much over there on that side.
Patrick Coble:
Yep. On the EUC side, I know just in general with community, I know we've seen a lot of changes, hence why we're even here on this right now. There's been a lot of changes, of OEMs doing their own thing, pulling back a little bit. But then, I think we mentioned it earlier with some of that stuff is like Covid has kind of changed everything still, and we're still seeing ripples of it. I just came and spoke from a VMUG today, and I was over there yesterday. And it's just, you know, a fraction of the number that was there in 2018, in 2019. It's still going up there. And, it's it's kind of wild to see, how much it's changed. And then like we said, CTP, our tear comes out for that. And a lot of those things are also changing.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. Yeah. On the community side, it's, I'll tell you, it's something I haven't, you know, it's, we were going to the can of worms here, but just just just short. Just short.
Patrick Coble:
It's just a little, little thing to stand on.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. It's just, you know, community is big community changes. And it's interesting if you see the, the big changes Citrix made to the community, Omnissa is making, like they're shrinking the investment. Citrix. And Omnissa is increasing the investment, right? So you're seeing that and, just being even as far as you know, we are looking at it, it's like, man, you can see the difference. Like huge difference. And and from Citrix, from a business perspective, you take your community hat off, you take your CTP hat off, you take your your human hat off, and you look at what they're doing from a business standpoint, it doesn't make sense for them to invest in the community right now. You know, I personally I like I think it makes, you know, like if you just look at it from that perspective. But if you look at it in that short term vision, right, you look at it from a longer term. These are these are soldiers that that value your product. And they're going to eventually go to other companies, and they're going to eventually be at one of those larger enterprise companies that you're trying to get into, or you're already there, or maybe you want to expand. They're the champions. So I feel like, you know, things could have been done a little differently there. It is what it is. You got to move on. Right. And then, you know, on the, on the CTP side, obviously, that that program got discontinued. You know, I think it, it, you know, when you look at again, their vision. Right? CTP was all a lot of that feedback came, you know, driving a lot of the product direction and vision there, you know, a lot of that's done behind the scenes and but a lot of it they looked at for like what's being blogged out there, amplifying the message and that sort of thing. And that's the area they're not focusing on, right? The marketing, they don't care about marketing. And so I think it just got kind of shrunk down and and maybe something will spawn in at a later date or something. But at the end of the day, you know that that is something that impacted us as a partner and other people as well, because you have these strong relationships and we had direct access to product teams. But thankfully, you know, everyone that still works there is still we are in great communication with we still have those connections and still able to have those conversations. But yeah, it was it was something that was definitely a deep kind of kind of, I guess kick in the nuts a little bit. But but, you know, you just take a step back and you look at it and you understand it and you just move on and contribute where you can other ways and help the community. And I'll tell you what, that that because that happened with the community. Look at World of EUC, what spawned and and how fast you guys reacted within, you know, days of that announcement on the CUGC side. And that was, what, eight plus years of heart, you know, soul and everyone put in. Right. And and it just flipped back to now being agnostic for everybody. I mean, just awesome work on that and just seeing the growth over the last year, the conference, I mean, it's just incredible. And we're proud to be a part of that. You know, on the sponsorship side and obviously being friends and supporting you guys as much as possible. But it's really I think, you know, every, you know, bad thing that happens. Something good always comes out of it. Right. And this is definitely, you know, one of those things. So.
Jarian Gibson:
Any thoughts, Oz?
Shane Kleinert:
Open that can of worms.
Scott Osborne:
There was one that was a big can of worms. You open I think. Yeah.
Shane Kleinert:
Well Oz will shorten it up.
Scott Osborne:
I think he emptied the can there, so. No, I'm.
Shane Kleinert:
There's no it's recycled now.
Patrick Coble:
Well, I mean, because I mean, you saw it there in Omaha, too. I mean, in your own area, too. I mean, with Kansas City and Omaha, we're both strong user groups and lots of people showing up, and then it kind of has fizzled. And then trying to get the band back together, it's it's really weird. Yeah, it's been really hard because some people I think just when that period of time went by and they said, my career has been basically the same, with or without going to these user group meetings once a month, once a quarter, it's just fallen off the radar and the drives not there. But I think there's still something very magical about those kind of community meetings, not just the session you watch because you might learn something, but it's what happens before and after that session and just yapping about because we're all in it together. We all have the same problems. We all have the same users. People still can't print, right? Like it's like all the same things and that kind of community. And then also like yapping about barbecue and kids and sports and TV and all that, like all that comes in there. And then that's when you really are like, it becomes really a user group at that point and a community. And, you know, it's just really hard to get things rolling. But I'm positive after EUC World, I think that was really awesome. And y'all came up there and knocked it out of the park. And that was great and showed your support for the community there too. And I know we've got lots of big things coming too, so I'm excited.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah, Titans will make their changes. We just got to keep the fellowship going through it all, you know? Yeah.
Scott Osborne:
So for me personally, and I think for Shane too, we didn't get we didn't lose that because I still lead my local Nutanix user group here. I actually was doing two of them at the same time, which to be honest was a little overwhelming. I was actually on the when they when that all went away from a Citrix standpoint, it actually reduced some stress for me a little bit because I still have the Nutanix user group. So I mean, as soon as I got done planning one, I was planning the next and it was just constant. So. Yep.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah. And you mentioned the the CTP program and all of us being, you know, former Ctp's and that kind of stuff. Well, I think some fundamental changes needed to be made to the group. I am kind of surprised that that it ended and how abruptly it ended. But I guess, on the other hand, we shouldn't be so surprised either with how abruptly CUGC ended as well.
Shane Kleinert:
So yeah, if you if you look historically at how the communication is done by Citrix, it's kind of just like like like. Make the move. Move quick and and you know. And it's historically with that. I mean, it's just, you know, it's not. You'd like it to be more personal and, you know, have this one say this or that. But at the end of the day, it's like it happened. Like you got to just kind of you can't you can't, you can't stay down on it. You got to keep keep moving forward and keep keep the connections. Do what you can. But yeah, I know it's definitely, the group, you know, needed needed to be, you know, I think the change needed to adjust to the new vision, which is really product focused, right? Really focused on giving direct feedback, constant interaction, you know, and, and driving the features in the product and, and that's, that's different than, you know, I think some of the folks in the group were focused on, you know, whether it's blogging or amplifying the message or not as much on the product side. And so, I guess, you know, top down, they looked at said, hey, we're not going to worry about this right now, you know, but but, you know, we still give feedback where we can and, and not going to not going to change that, you know, regardless of what, what happens there. So.
Jarian Gibson:
I agree there. Yeah. You know whether there's a program or not. We keep doing the same things. It doesn't really, you know, change what we do day to day. Kind of circling back, on the tech side here, you know, Oz, what is it, NGCa, I believe for NVIDIA.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. They just changed it to the, Enterprise Advisor or something. NEPA program. Yeah, they just rebranded it. Yes.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah. So kind of going into GPUs and stuff. Are you what are you seeing for GPUs in your customers or are you seeing a lot? I know at one point everyone's like GPU for everyone, but you kind of got to keep more strategic and based on use case. So kind of want to hear, what you're seeing with GPUs out there in the field.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. Definitely strategic. And thank goodness we, we were early on that bus for graphics related workloads. And NVIDIA back in the couple of days and been doing it a long time before this. You know the world caught fire with AI and that side of things with the GPU side of the story. So we've been doing the graphics, with GPU, I don't know, maybe ten years now. Definitely important to0. And it gave us a leg up because we're, we're known as one of the, one of the few actual partners that specialize and are good at designing, you know, and building workloads and EUC graphical heavy solutions on top of it.
Patrick Coble:
Don't just go to Best Buy and pick up a card like what's going on?
Scott Osborne:
There's a lot to think about, right? So in these type of specialized workloads, there is a lot to think about. So yeah, it's definitely an important facet to for for our business because I can't even tell you, like right now I think I have 4 or 5 CAD CAM specific ones, most of them being, that I'm designing on Nutanix, for GPU related workloads. You know, this is all the SolidWorks, all the Revit, all the even the school districts are teaching this stuff. CAD CAM. And for those curriculums and they're finding out that, you know, it saves them costs you centralize those. You don't have to buy a $5,000 workstation. You just shift some of the cost to the data center. It's not like you're saving a ton. So but you're shifting it and you're centralizing all those data sets, keeping it secure. The whole story. Right? So we've been doing that for quite some time. But yeah, it's not all workloads. There are some that want that general I want to make Windows 11 better situation. I want to make it more like a localized laptop. Because you think about it, even those of us running like mine right now, I have a I have an Intel GPU on my CPU, like I got a GPU here. If you take that away altogether with a VDI situation, you're losing something. So some of them want that and they're not doing heavy use, you know, CAD CAM or anything like that. But it's it's definitely a discussion. It's not a GPU for all for sure.
Patrick Coble:
Well, I mean, Microsoft Office is definitely a hungry hippo. For the for all the, the menus and the layout and the smoothness and all that, like a GPU makes it much, much better if you can give someone even. And I guess on the NVIDIA side, they've really tweaked it down to kind of those productivity use cases instead of just high end. Makes a Pixar movie play a video game in it where you can just a sliver of it and that's enough to make a visual difference. And then as the UIs are going, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I do see a difference without even like Benny and GO-EUC and all and Ruben and all those, all their metrics, you can just see it, you can feel it and it's it's tangible and real. Whereas like if you weren't playing the video game on there, you'd never know if it was good or bad, right?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, exactly. You don't have to be doing high end stuff to realize when you lose your GPU.
Shane Kleinert:
Using just a traditional browser these days. Is the, you know, is the big app, right? I mean, so yeah, it's definitely a big part of it. And, and seeing that just when you talk Cloud PC, you know, there's a skew for GPU as well. And we got, we got a lot.
Patrick Coble:
That's really cool with that because because that's the thing I think like even Windows 11 on its own, which is like the default OS for like Cloud PC, that's where I think it shines, is having just that little sprinkle of GPU because it's just so much more graphics. You know, it's not just a gray start menu bar that we had for, what, 15 years or something like that. It's all rounded and smooth and the way aero loads and the menus and all that. Like you need a little nugget of something.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. For sure.
Patrick Coble:
So I had put one, got a boomerang question because, you know, what was it last week, Brian Madden back at, the Citruses, with buddy Shawn Bass. And so, I mean, they're both I guess. Shawn went to VMware first.
Jarian Gibson:
Yep.
Patrick Coble:
And then? But then Jack was there, and then Brian went there, and then all three were there for a little bit. Brian left. Jack stayed. Shawn left. Now Shawn's here. So I mean, like, you know, some heavy hitters in the EUC space. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I think I'm thinking it's kind of cool, but what do you all think?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. Shane, I'll let you go first.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. I mean, I just you're from Shawn's perspective. When we heard that, you know, I know that was. It's probably been a year now, right? I mean, it's got to be close to a year. And so, I was definitely super excited. I, you know, and Shawn, you know, over over ten years, I actually first met him at BriForum. You know, 09. Right? So, and I was in one of his sessions and, and and did his, he had some advanced. You go around doing these advanced master classes and stuff and, just just an incredible human and just a titan in the industry. For years and years. Right. And and just. You're probably the humblest dude you'll meet. And just as deep technical understanding, you know, security and EUC through and through across the board. And so when he went to VMware, you know, that long time ago that was like a kick or like, wow, man, that's. And look what he took. You know, a small little Horizon that really I mean they kind of did VDI. I didn't understand EUC. I mean, he took them to where they are, you know.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah with Workspaces and all that.
Shane Kleinert:
I mean, it's really it was incredible and took a lot of those big enterprise customers over there. Right. And so seeing seeing him come back to Citrix, you know, and and just just like what Citrix is going through, right. VMware going through the same thing with the acquisition. Obviously that creates a lot of change. And, you know, I think, you know, him joining, you know, Citrix is, is is under, a good leadership there on the product side, you know, with Sridhar and now having and he's an incredible human as well and, and being there 20 plus years and and you know having Shawn there on the, on the CTO side of things and and being able to focus on the technology and and with the not having those same, you know, you know, public limitations that are there. Being a public company and, you know, to drive the vision, I think it's super exciting. And, I think I think he's going to bring some great security enhancements and vision across the board. So I'm super excited on Shawn being there. And then Brian, I think was, definitely like that was didn't expect that, you know, and but you look at where his history obviously EUC and you know, been there forever and BriForum really founded the community with, you know, a big part of that. And tell you what I mean, he's an incredible guy, too. But just, you know, his like what he does. He deep dives. Right? He went deep dive in what, a year plus two years ago workplace AI all this stuff doing his talks on that. I mean that's the next logical step for Citrix on a big enterprise play on enterprise AI. You get the guy, he's been doing that deep research and he's a fantastic speaker. He can go into these big enterprises and go, you know, help that message, help bring some value there. So I think my my guess is that's going to be a lot of the focus there is bringing helping with that kind of vision. Obviously, he's an incredible speaker. Maybe help take some load off Shawn with some of that. Getting out there talking to the vision, I don't know. But but yeah, I think it's exciting. So what do you think of it, Oz?
Scott Osborne:
I was very surprised. I will say that very surprised. I am interested to see where where this goes, but to me, it was it was a little bit of irony sprinkled in because Citrix just got done killing community.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. Oh, I know.
Scott Osborne:
And then you bring over one of the big community guys, right? That's like it's like it didn't make.
Patrick Coble:
The community in one sense, right? I mean, you see we're trying to like baby emulate it, right. With our EUC world event and all that and I mean, like there and I think, you know, Shane's got it. It's a titan in the EUC industry, right? Those two guys. Right. Like, they've done so much.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah. It was it was a little strange, but I'm I mean, it's cool having them over no matter what, But yeah, they just got done nuking the community on their side. And when you bring in Brian. Right. So I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm interested to see where it plays out and where that goes.
Patrick Coble:
And time will tell.
Scott Osborne:
Time will tell, yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
Speaking of community, in EUC community, where we see the Choice team next? Does Choice have any upcoming events or are you all going to be at any upcoming events?
Shane Kleinert:
Well, Jarian, Choice Solutions will be at. Movie Voice. What do we have coming up? So we'll be at. Well, it's partner driven, right? Citrix Unite, partner driven. So I don't think there'll be any, but, .NEXT. Right will be there. Yeah. And then before that IGEL Disrupt, we'll be over there. Trying to think anything else.
Scott Osborne:
Myself and Ray will be at your guys's. Amplify?
Jarian Gibson:
Yes. Yep yep.
Patrick Coble:
Yep.
Scott Osborne:
Yep. I do have to get registered for that right away.
Patrick Coble:
You should probably click that.
Scott Osborne:
It's probably.
Shane Kleinert:
There's that button right here. Right there. Right there.
Scott Osborne:
Yes. So we're we're definitely signed on. Got that to to go to Minneapolis. Correct?
Jarian Gibson:
Yep.
Scott Osborne:
With that. So you know we're going to be bouncing around I don't. Shane are you going to like you said Now and Next?
Shane Kleinert:
Right. Yeah. So so yeah. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So it'll be it's local to me down here in the patch. So I'm going to be over there. And you know, IGEL is obviously just, they have a big ecosystem being, being on the thin client side. So there's that. That conference brings a lot of the ecosystem players in. So it's a good, good spot to kind of connect with the partners, connect with, you know, customers, and, and some good folks there. So we'll be there. And then obviously .NEXT.
Scott Osborne:
Yeah we're both going to be in at Ignite over there in California this year.
Shane Kleinert:
That's very true. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah. That's, you know, being, growing on our Microsoft side, we thought this the first year, we're like, you know, I guess we'll make it out there. And I think it makes sense as we continue to build those relationships. So.
Scott Osborne:
We got local events coming up for Choice too. We got a Big 12 watch party in your patch over there. Jarian, KC, coming up, March 12th, I think it is. We have some, local events down in Florida happen. Top Golf in Des Moines. So, you know, Ellie from our marketing side has always got some cool stuff she's got going on with our key strategic partners. And so we got those local events. And I know I'm trying to put together something or at least, my, my local, my team and my, something around the CWS in June here in Omaha. So. Okay. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
Always a big event there.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. ChoiceSolutions.com/events right here. And I gotta make you put something. Otherwise it's going to look like I'm pointing at nothing more editing, but. Yeah, that's, that's as, as mentioned, marketing does a fantastic job. But they all are. Events are tracked there. So you can kind of see what else we got cooking. So.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking about cooking, What's what are y'all cooking this weekend? What's the meal of choice for the weekends? What do y'all do? What's the what's the go to, man?
Scott Osborne:
Just sandwich.
Patrick Coble:
Sandwich. Oh, man.
Scott Osborne
Yeah, I am I am.
Shane Kleinert:
Oz getting that turkey sandwich. He's ready to go.
Scott Osborne:
I am not putting.
Patrick Coble:
Mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup. I mean, it's gotta be something to it or.
Shane Kleinert:
I think Oz is just a straight bread and turkey guy. I don't even think he does the condiments.
Scott Osborne:
Straight turkey. Dude, it's simple over here, man. I don't do a lot of cooking. The only time I'm on the grill is when my, my girls birthday parties or randomly, like, we get some. I'm not Jarian.
Patrick Coble:
Just eating hot dogs then? Then what are we doing?
Scott Osborne
It's just bread with some hamburger. Do some hot dogs. You know, the very complicated stuff over here.
Patrick Coble:
All right, Shane, you gotta have something good. What? What what's cooking this weekend?
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. So just, actually, you know, been getting getting into cooking for a while now, but we just just got in the new place. Just picked up a barbecue and, was cooking some steaks. And so this weekend we're actually watching our nieces. So they're going to be at the house, we're going to cook some, you know, steaks. We'll get some, hamburgers, hot dogs, you know, nothing nothing crazy. But, but, yeah. No, I'm, trying to get into, want to want to learn to make some fresh pasta. I just want that to kind of be a specialty man. Check, Evan Funky man. He's, he's, opened up Mother Wolf down here in Florida and then in LA. But he's got a I think it's called Chef's Table on Netflix. The Noodle Special. You watch how he just man, he makes he rolls each one of those pieces of pasta, man. Most people aren't going to have patience for that, but I just there's something about just fresh pasta that just just.
Patrick Coble:
Oh, it's.
Shane Kleinert:
Incredible.
Patrick Coble:
So you can't compare it. You can't compare it.
Shane Kleinert:
It's insane man. Yeah. So I think, obviously barbecue and, you know, not like Jarian's an incredible cook, by the way. He should definitely do some like that and bring in a little cooking tip coming in on these podcasts, you know.
Patrick Coble:
Have a cooking show.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. Follow Jarian's Instagram. He's been posting like you, I see you doing the plating now. Jarian, you got the plate nice. You're like putting the stuff. That's a whole another ball game. But, yeah, I'm gonna try to get fresh pasta is kind of something I really want to focus. I always do breakfast and stuff. So this weekend we'll do breakfast. We'll make some eggs, pancakes, that sort of thing. But, yeah. That's it. Keep keep it simple with the hamburgers and hot dogs.
Scott Osborne:
Do some mac and cheese. I'm sure this weekend.
Jarian Gibson
I got an important question. I got I got an important question for you. Shane, you mentioned you got a grill. What'd you end up buying?
Shane Kleinert:
Oh, man. Now you gonna put me on the spot? So it's actually kind of a funny story, so I, I was going to do all this research, you know, and then, then, we had a rush in to get some family coming over, and my wife's cousin and and he's like, hey, you want to cook on the barbecue? I'm like, oh, we're barbecue. And he's got a truck and I need to get the barbecue. So I'm like, well, if you want to pick the barbecue up. So and it was the day before and my wife was like, she's like, oh, check the barbecues out. So she went to like Lowes. And there was this nice monumental monumentum or something like that. Momentum. I don't know, but it's got this glass like front and so you can see what's cooking on the inside. So anyway.
Jarian Gibson:
So you got a gas grill?
Shane Kleinert:
No. Yeah. Gas grill. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
Shane!
Shane Kleinert:
So I wanted the Blackstone. I know we got to talk about this.
Scott Osborne:
I even have charcoal over here.
Shane Kleinert:
I know. Man. So so so. Yeah.
Patrick Coble:
Beat you up man.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. So so I went there with our cousin and then the, you know, the cousin there asking. So. So what are you thinking man? What barbecue going to get? I was like yeah I was like my wife was out here scoping it, you know, ahead of time. Oh, we already know you're going to pick whatever the wife scoped out. I was like, no, this is my decision. I made this decision, you know? So it's kind of funny because I pulled it up. I'm like, look, it's right here. It's beautiful. And then his wife is like, you know what she did, right? She totally set that all up. So you pick up that. But it is kind of cool. I'm not gonna lie. You could see what's cooking. What grill can you see through and see what's cooking? That's pretty neat.
Jarian Gibson:
You don't need to see it. That's why you have temperature probes and that kind of stuff. You don't need to see it. You just got to let it sit.
Shane Kleinert:
That's just. That explains why I have the working hands cream. Because I'm losing my man card. And I brought that up because my man cards. Don't forget. Yes. You're 100% right. Man on the thermometer. You don't need to see shit, man. Yeah, but I do open the oven door a lot, you know? So I'm like the guy that, like, opens it all the time. So that's, you know.
Scott Osborne:
At least I admit I don't do it, but I have charcoal and the other ones, like a split.
Patrick Coble:
I'm telling you, charcoal hot dogs and hamburgers are legit. It's better than gas, for sure.
Scott Osborne:
The gas side for, like, the quick hot dogs for the kids when they. They want something during the week. But, you know, charcoal is what I end up doing. So at least.
Shane Kleinert:
I'm going to get, like, an arsenal. This is like the one and I'm going to get the Blackstone. We're going to get some charcoal. It's going to be the whole thing we'll have, we'll do an update later, I'll tell you.
Patrick Coble:
Okay. All right. Well we have our barbecue update. We'll invite you back.
Shane Kleinert:
I'll let you know. This is just this is a starter kit.
Scott Osborne:
Sure. Invite me to that one.
Jarian Gibson:
You gotta get yourself, like, a Weber Kettle or something. Man, that's the most versatile one you can get to learn on is a Weber Kettle. Because you can you can do you can do duel zone. I told you that too, because you can do dual zone. You can do hot and fast. You can smoke on it. You can pretty much do anything you want on on a kettle.
Shane Kleinert:
Just moved in.
Patrick Coble:
Is this return? Can we return this thing?
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah. Well, listen, I always do the 90 day man, I definitely do.
Patrick Coble:
If you're in the trial period, you can. You can pull it back. You know.
Shane Kleinert:
I might do it, man. You know, Lowes is pretty good with that. But actually. Wait, I'm on camera now. I don't know. But. Yeah, it's funny you talk about zones and stuff, man. It's. You're right. There's all these different, so much to learn, man.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
What are you making, Patrick, since you brought the question up?
Patrick Coble:
Oh, I mean, we do brisket. Do a brisket every week. Just because it's like the most poundage of meat, everyone eats it. No one complains. You can eat it straight out of the fridge, you know? I mean, it doesn't even have to be warmed up the second time because it just falls apart. So that's our go to. And then every now and then, like a pork butt or, a whole chicken or two.
Jarian Gibson:
The nice thing is, if you have leftover brisket, you can always vacuum seal it.
Patrick Coble:
Oh, yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
And then put in the freezer and warmed up later, and that comes in handy for a quick meal.
Shane Kleinert:
Something just jumped out man. I mean, I'll look into that this weekend. Yeah, my wife's uncle makes a mean brisket, so yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
But you need like, a real grill to do a brisket. Otherwise it's just an oven on a gas grill.
Shane Kleinert:
So you're telling me, my my monumentums, with a glass front is not going to cover this.
Patrick Coble:
No.
Shane Kleinert:
So I got two steps. I'll send you a picture, I think.
Jarian Gibson:
You don't. You don't. Get smoke. You'll have to get a smoke box, though. The main thing you're doing that you need smoke flavor. And you're not going to get that in a gas grill unless you get one of those smoke tubes. And it's not the same as, like, like a charcoal or even a pellet. Yeah. Pellet is a step down from charcoal. But now you have pellet some pellets that you can put wood chunks.
Patrick Coble:
Yup.
Jarian Gibson:
And charcoal because I have one that that does both. So yeah I'm doing brisket as well, but I'm trying something stupid, so I'm experimenting. I found me a good size brisket that wasn't too expensive at Costco on Sunday. And so, man, yeah, I I'll do that at Costco. But I'm going to do is I'm going to do like a, like a mezcal, orange, soy type marinade on it. Overnight. I've never marinated a brisket. I've only done like like like not. I would say I've never wet brined or wet marinated brisket. I've always done dry. Right. So I'm going to let it marinate overnight.
Patrick Coble:
It's gonna be good.
Jarian Gibson
Yeah. And then take it out and then put, you know, salt and pepper on it for the rub and then smoke that thing for as long as it takes. But it might be, it might be good. It might be stupid. But that's how you learn. You experiment on stuff. So. But anyways, kind of moving on here because we're kind of closing things down and getting off topic. Any closing remarks here? You know, Patrick, Oz, Shane, any closing remarks? I know, Shane, that you mentioned go to ChoiceSolutions.com for events. Anything else or anywhere else to get information. You mentioned the YouTube channel to watch the webinars. Anything else you want to share about Choice Solutions or getting more information?
Scott Osborne:
Yeah, I mean, the, the website I mean, it has a it has our jump starts. We talked about those in the webinar. We have a lot of jump starts for these various services that we just talked about, like the AVD plus the AVD plus Nerdio, Cloud PC, you know, the new Teams stuff, all of that. We have jump starts around. Those are all out there too under under the events link or something as well for jump starts. I don't know which link, but they're they're out there. You know, make sure to go out there. We're we're excited to be, you know, paired up with you guys and be the only one. Yeah, we're very proud of that. You know, for being your, your channel sponsor, for, for for what we're doing. So, you know, pretty excited to, come to Amplify hang out with you guys. Yeah.
Shane Kleinert:
Awesome, man. Yeah. No, it's, I, I hit it. I mean, like I said, we got a lot of a lot of jumpstart services. We do an advisory workshop as well, focused around EUC for kind of larger enterprises, companies that are looking to just understand and unpack all the different changes that are going on in the industry, in the market, like 2 to 3, 2 to 3 day workshop and stuff like that. So do a lot of advisory services. But but ultimately, yeah, we're like I said, boutique, boutique shop. And, and we're here to, here to help. We love talking architecture design and and, yeah. Just just a phone call away, an email, a click, you know, the whole nine. So. But, um, yeah, no good, good group of folks, at choice. We're happy to be here and happy to be, connected with you guys and hopefully, you know, expand the message and, and hopefully folks are in the World of EUC Slack because that is probably the de facto best place to be from a, just, just a, you know, support, but also just knowledge sharing, right? It's not just like a spot like, hey, can you help? But it's also everyone learns from each other. So it's definitely a great, great spot to be.
Patrick Coble:
So yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
Any closing remarks from you, Patrick?
Patrick Coble:
Yeah. I mean, I guess if anything, the simplest is just thank you to thank you all for Choice. Because, I mean, we wouldn't literally be here without y'all and your support. And then also, you know, thank you all for your friendship over all these years and all the nerdy things we've done and and still yet to do. Right? Yeah, there's still probably going to be another YMCA dance sometime.
Shane Kleinert:
Nice, man. Still, that was the best man we got. This video's out there somewhere.
Patrick Coble:
Yeah, but, yeah, that that's my biggest thing is just. Thank you. And I know every time that I hear y'all speak, I always learn something. And that's what's always impressed me, so. That's good stuff.
Shane Kleinert:
Well. Thank you. Thank you guys too. Yeah.
Jarian Gibson:
You like to echo what Patrick said as well. Thank you for for being one of our sponsors. Thank you for supporting us, supporting us from the beginning. Always happy to be around the Choice family. And just thank you guys for everything you do. I also want to congratulate you because you guys made, recently had a big accomplishment. I think it was yesterday, the day before you guys announced it, that you guys became a Nutanix premier partner as well. So congratulations on that. Keep up the good work.
Shane Kleinert:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's. Yeah. Crill leading up a practice there and got a lot of years, a lot of years behind it. So doing a lot of great things on the Nutanix side. So. Yeah. Thank you for that, man. Appreciate it.
Jarian Gibson:
Yeah. And hope you guys have a great weekend. For everyone listening, make sure that you, join the website, World of EUC dot org where you can sign up and that'll give you information on local groups, webinars, events, our newsletter and so forth. You can also find the information to join the Slack channel. Look at our YouTube channel as well, where this will be posted in video form along with the audio where the regular podcast go. So I want to thank you all for listening to the Frontline Chatter Podcast, brought to you by the World of EUC. And we will talk to you next time.
Patrick Coble:
Awesome.
Shane Kleinert:
Take care everybody. See you.
Scott Osborne:
Go Lions!