From Risk to Resilience: Nick Gee’s Cloud Strategy for Modern MSPs

0:00Welcome to IT Mastermind Talks, your access to insights and experiences from thought leaders in the IT services industry and those that support the industry. Our podcast features not only the seasoned professionals charting their start to exit journey, but also the key contributors who help ensure their success. We delve into the diverse challenges encountered within the IT services realm, encompassing both professional hurdles and personal obstacles. Join us. Be part of our growing community and engage in the conversation hosted by Ian Markram of Loading Growth.

0:37Good afternoon. And today we've got Nicholas G on from Cloud Ready Solutions. Been working with him in the past and he's got a unique business model which I love to share today. It's something that I tried to do at some stage maybe 12 years ago. I had some success in that type of business model, but Nicholas and his team have actually been working at it quite hard for the last couple of years. Anyway, I'm just going to ask Nick to basically give himself a quick two-minute introduction and then we're going to go into his background and what got him into his IT sector and then from there what his actual business does. So Nick, welcome on the show today.

1:14Thanks for having me Ian. This is a it's a a bit of a first for me, but that's great to be invited. Yeah, I'm Nicholas G. I'm a co-founder of Cloud Ready Solutions and we are a specialist distributor looking after Australia, a little bit of New Zealand, Pacific Islands quite significantly. and our focus is on protecting business data with backup disaster recovery and storage solutions. and really specialize on solutions that the some of the big disties don't bring to the region. So some very specialist products. Recently we've adapted a few new vendors. So we've just brought on Keep It the number one SAS backup platform in the world and we have got a new product a a new relationship with Stonefly offer immutable storage for various backup solutions. So we've really introduced some new technology that is very exciting in the last 12

2:14Brilliant. Brilliant. So Nick, let's just go back to where it all started. I mean, you know, it's been a while. Obviously from the UK originally, but can you tell us how you got into the tech sector? I think probably back in the in the day in the '9s, like many boys of that age, I was in a bedroom gamer on PCs and really to for better experience, they basically you'd end up upgrading your PC. And basically I spent all my money, all my saving money on on buying video cards, new new motherboards, everything you could buy and building PCs and I, you know, build one PC and, you know, you play on it and then watch Link Links 386 draw and I need a new video card and upgrade and really got me into the into that techie world. I also was downloading illegal copies of things like remember Chicago Windows 95 early versions and I was running Windows 95 essentially for a year or two before it was released. So I knew it quite well and it kind of got me a bit of an advantage when I actually finished my degree. me I was I was doing electrical engineering computing I suppose by the time I I actually went into the workforce and ended up moving to Ireland back in the UK in that time there wasn't a lot of of of opportunities in my area so I went to Ireland and it was the the age of the Celtic tiger and just work everywhere so I I initially started working for company

3:49Called Gateway 2000 and suddenly Windows 95 was launched and I was an expert at it that you know really is knew inside outs. I was in tech support and I got elevated to senior tech and then eventually to lab technician and you got familiar with Windows NT. yeah it was it was nice easy way to get a career started by jumping over to Dublin.

4:16It's only a half hour flight away. So, Gateway 2000, I actually bought some of the stuff when I was in the UK because they were the ones that came out with the cheap PCs and the white ones. Very white, weren't they? Yeah, that's right. The black and white cow logos. Remember those? Yeah, that's right. and it was a great company. It was I mean, it was like a a club. Yes. Such young young people, thousands of young u people with, you know, you got a marketing department, your customer service department, and they have big events. So, it was really good. They did have to rebrand as gateway. You know, it wasn't really a very very good foresight when they named it Gateway 2000. that was good and I think you know got some good experience there. Nice people learned quite a lot and then eventually I got I followed quite a few people that moved to company called Carell. If you know Carell Corell Corporation or Coral Coral Draw you might Coral Draw. Yes.

5:11Word Perfect. Coral Draw. That's right. And I went there as what was title was MIS project manager and I I knew nothing about project management and I was what 23 I think then and I eventually got promoted to MIS manager of so looking after all these servers and routers and really no clue what I was doing but I'd learn learn quick learn quick and that was huge that was a great opportunity so I traveled a little bit around Europe and went to Canada a few times He introduced me to like the the corporate junkit kind of thing. So it was again a fantastic job. I even got a a company car. I got a little MX5 Master MX5 company car.

5:56I lived about a kilometer and a half away from the office and about the parking space under the building and it really was crazy. Just the Celtic Tiger Yeah, it was going it was going gang buses then. I remember they a lot of it moved into moved to Ireland at that stage.

6:16So it's all the tax breaks and all the incentives that the government was giving at the time. Really really amazing what they did there to be honest. I remember the property prices is going gang busters as Absolutely. I I I looked at properties and I was I was horrified by the cost of places in around Dublin compared to the northwest of of England. Only in Manchester like

6:37Three times the price for anyway, so from there, where did you go progress to? Well, I was at at Carell for several years and we we eventually obviously Carell were up against Microsoft, which is u not not a great position to be in. And they eventually decided to close the Dublin office. So myself and my a lot of my colleagues were made redundant and or my friends I should say were made redundant and a group of us decided to go traveling. So we booked around the world trick ticket with the destination being Australia and we were fairly cashed up. We got redundancy money. So I had a great time. Traveled through Thailand, Malaysia, Harley and eventually got to Australia think fairly fairly broke by that stage. I did have a good friend already in in Australia who'd actually gone from Gateway via another route. so I I'd moved in with him in in Manley, Manley Beach. So you imagine it was a terrible time. I was 28 at this stage. Yeah. I loved loved living in Manley for a while. His girlfriend at the time was actually a recruitment agent and was chasing me to get hurry up and arrive from Thailand because she had a lineup of jobs working for me for me, contracts I should say.

7:54And yeah, as soon as I landed, I was I was sponsored with a contract working for IBM. APM GSA. So, you know, the old saying is it's not what you know, it's who you know to get a job. You know, when I was when I was before my own consulting business, I never really looked for a job ever. I was always sort of,

8:14You know, someone always grabbed me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, come work with us type thing." So, it's it's awesome to hear that. so, you know, going from small companies and everything else to a big company like IBM, how did that transition? Well, again, I I was recruited as basically from my from my resume, you know, worked in in tech support for Gateway and it obviously big multinational. This this guy was running the lab effectively in the tech support section of Gateway in Dublin. So, I got the landed in third level server support. Again, you know, I I hardly seen a server at this stage, only the things we had at at at at Carell, but third level server support. and I think I'll figure out on the job. I'll work my way up and figure it out. so I got some on the job training with a colleague of mine. I did courses. I did all the Microsoft certifications, pretty much everything that was available. All they were MCSE and Citrix Metaprain certifications. And I'd spend a lot of time geeking out at home learning and just absorbing and taking CBT nugget lessons and just taking every exam I could do for a while. And yeah, I I I I did that for a year, third level service support. And then they said, "Would you like another 12-month contract?" And I said, "No, no, I'm going I'm going traveling. I've been to Australia. I've been in Australia. I' landed and got a job in my first week." And I'd just been hanging out at Manley Beach, which is great, but I wanted to see Australia's. I went up and again,

9:47Very cashed up for a backpacker. so I do the backpacking and then when I got sick of roughing it, I just book it myself into a nice hotel and did got back on the Greyhound bus the next day and I did the the trip around Australia was really good. Obviously at all this time not knowing what I was going to be doing next. Got back to Sydney, another contract. It was very different times that just just the availability of contract work at a at a at a very good rate.

10:16Yeah, times have changed. Yeah. So from there, where did you go? What's next in your career? The next the next was with I say NRMA. It changed the name but something like that. Yeah. NMA placement. Yeah. Not sure if basically Yeah. NMA building in in George Street in Sydney on the 10th floor. And again, it was it was one of these cushy contract jobs that really no one wanted to manage you, but you just there to fulfill a role. And yeah, we just it was a dedicated department that had their own server room. So I look after the servers again.

10:53Sure. Sure. So all that learning that you've been doing at IBM and all these contract roles and all the experience you had in UK and Ireland and then Australia that gave you sort of a good foundation, you know, I would think to to move into your own sort of environment and and become your own boss. Is that is that really what happened? Do you think

11:13Basically? Yeah. I mean, I would spend so much time sitting in a server room that I would I would be learning at the time, training myself on stuff that maybe wasn't related to the actual job, but I what am I going to do? Not wait for servers to crash and stuff. So, I'd just take learn what I need to take the certification and pick up as much as I could do. And eventually, I think I I landed another contract with Alpha West, as they were then. They were purchased by Optus later on and again another contract job learning VMware and in fact I I remember in a in a meeting that they had it was it was kind of a strange meeting they were kind of decided on a direction to go and I I remember putting my hand up and saying because anyone looked at VMware you know virtualization this is you know and I I kind of knew it I'd train myself and everything so this is and again they were going unified communications and whatnot. But that was that was the time and you know people just learning a little bit about what VMware could do and it was VMware GSX that you know had used before and so the ESX was was knew that hard to get hold of and no one understood it but again I got the trading for ESX and got my VCP and was one of the few VCPs knocking around. So again the education side of things that the self-arning as well it wasn't all big companies paying for it was all

12:41Self learning. absolutely and yeah that's that so that Alpha West job was really how I got into the business myself. So there is a reason why I brought up Alpha West because there was a guy with white hair that used to come into the office every now and again trying to sell a product called Double Take. And one of the the managers at Alpha West came, you know, looked at me as a contractor say, "What could we give you to do? Can you assess this Double Take product? Can you test it and see what it does?" So I spent a bit of time learning Double Take and figured out, "Okay, I know what it does." But we never used it. We didn't actually get to the point of actually selling it. So, this distributor that was coming around didn't really get any business except for when I finished Alpha West. There's a point when they decided no more contractors after the Optus takeover and we could go full-time or we could leave. So, I decided to leave. I was approached by Kelly Kelly Vonda Hayden, you know, my business partner now.

13:40Would like to talk to the owner of the distributor of the Double Take. So I did and I got a position there as a pre-sales consultant and again that was another change. It was a breath of fresh air getting out of the office a bit but it was it was that first step into the distribution world where you're trying to convince resellers to to look at your product to use your product and sell it. And after a few years again it it was a it was a one product distributor.

14:10The products obviously started to struggle. it got taken over by other venture capitalists entities. and so that distributor died slowly as well. Myself and Kelly then decided we will start up our cloud ready solutions. Right. and approached a few vendors for distribution where we didn't really get very far but we were approached a friend we had at CA technologies

14:40Formerly been regional A&Z manager for Double Take themselves and said look well I'm at CA now to look at our product it's a lot like Double take and we we had a good look at it and decided yeah this is great we can we can do something with this and we started initially as a as a reseller.

15:03Assisted with a fairly large sale for one of the banks to use that product to migrate on prem to Amazon with zero downtime. So it was a was a great winner. It was probably the biggest they they've done in the region for that particular product for CA. And eventually we we became initially a subdistributor and then We were made a full distributor shortly after for CA. Very shortly after that, Arc Serve spun out of CA. So obviously that was the Arc Serve products. They they spun out of CA as a standalone as their own product. It's a management bio and we became the distributor for ARS for many years and that was about 2014.

15:43And how do you so with cloud ready solutions you've got a unique model. Okay. So you've basically you've looked to see what the gap is I suppose. Mhm. in this region in the region that you guys work you and Kelly operate and then you know what's sort of happening overseas and you marry them up

16:03And then you bring these products to market. Can you just talk a bit about that whole process because it's quite an interesting process to go through and why there is a need for people like you know cloud ready solutions. Yeah, it interesting. So obviously we we spent a bit of time as a single single vendor DD and I didn't want to do that because I knew what happened in the past. so I spent a lot of time trying to find new vendors that didn't have a presence in Australia because that's that's really where we specialize. If if a vendor has staff here then that's their their priorities and you know there's a bit of a conflict how how we can work together. So we we've always looked at for for vendors that don't really have a presence here. often I mean for example we've just come across new vendor that we've brought on board called Gladinet and we were approached by one of our customers for a a a solution which was all about cloud sharing or access to file servers from

17:03Yep. and be able to leverage the cloud and be able to you know basically provide a lo local drive letter to users around the world that they the drive letter they're familiar with but their files are in the data center in their corporate office in in the cloud in S3 in Wasabi but to them it's just the drive and we would had to go looking for that solution and we found it and it's available and and it's it's actually something that is is in high demand people who want an alternate to SharePoint or maybe large companies that they they they're least they're reaching the capacity limitations that they get for SharePoint online that's included in the subscription because the costs for additional storage for Microsoft is horrendous. So the other one okay we why can't we use Wasabi or why can't we use Amazon S3 storage or Azure storage. So that's the the the capability that we we're bringing to the market now and it's it's incredible the opportunities that are actually coming out of the the pipeline.

18:06Yeah, for sure. So So who who are your clients? Your clients are or MSPs or sometimes they're direct clients. How does it work? No, MSPs. Yes. But we got various solutions that suit MSPs really well. Resellers, system integrators. We don't do direct business. We we always go through the resellers. And I I'm a well aware always have been well aware that you know that doesn't make the opportunities as profitable and we're also relying on the resellers completing the sale.

18:36But it means we're not competing against them in any way. Yeah. It's a channel channel business and the clients that you you know the vendors that you bring on board I suppose they the ones that don't really want to invest in salespeople in this in in this region. Well, that that this is the the the key point is that if to establish a a a business in Australia needs to look at offices, they need to get staff and the staff are not cheap in Australia. You know, they're looking 10 to 20,000 per per sales head and it's it's a huge investment and then they're up against the competition. You know, it's immense competition before they even start. the way I I I look at it is that we're essentially a free resource, a free employees if you like for these vendors to establish something in Australia and you know they they support us as much as they can u and we represent them as best we can in the region. But mostly when we talk to one of our established partners about a new technology or a new vendor, they've never heard of them. The the partner hasn't had that reach. you can't really advertise or you know on on LinkedIn and and promote things from overseas if you're not here. The reach is so hard and so expensive.

19:52Yeah. Okay. I understand that because you know it's it's a there's different ways you got to can go to market different channels. You either go direct or you go through partners. What is the challenges working with partners? Because you know nothing's perfect otherwise everyone would be going with partners or everyone going direct. So what are the challenge? Are they just too busy or they can't make decisions? What are the challenges with partner

20:14Well, the challenge is obviously there's lots of distributors or lots of vendors chasing them with similar solutions in many cases which again was why we like to have something a little bit a little bit unique. I mean I would say as well I mean recently we we we we lost the arcs of distribution which was no surprise after so many years and the way that business is going. Thankfully, I mean, a lot of our partners have kind of pivoted with us and looking at, you know, our our new vendors that we brought on board. and a lot of our partners are, you know, the individuals are our friends in many ways. You know, we get them so well with so many of them that we u, you know, yeah, we have beers with them occasionally, you know, we go to our friends in Fiji and drink car with them and we're always, yeah, try to be as friendly as possible. I'm sure you know Kelly yourself is very personable and everyone gets on with it. So the challenges of of of bringing on new partners that that is definitely much more of a challenge and we find that we really are led when an opportunity comes to us that that really fits fits one of our vendors perfectly and then we we establish the conversation with maybe the new reseller who's approached us and and try and build that. Yeah, but establishing new partnerships particularly in Australia I find.

21:35Most challenging part of the business. Right. That's great. So what are the trends that are currently happening in your sort of area because you're very niche. You know what's happening in the US and and Europe and you're bringing these solutions here. So what's what's coming down the road for us if anything? Well in in terms of SAS I think I think you'll find most businesses now are heavily invested in multiple SAS platforms. Mhm.

21:59So obviously your office 365s and you've got your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and you got your Jira and Confluence and Zenesk and what whatever everyone's using SASbased platforms. We are heavily focused on currently in offering backup solutions for SAS platforms. So we we've got a a new partnership with Keep It as the the first distributor in the region for Keep It and we're busy educating our current partners and get driving our current partners on board to look at Keep It to Sign up as the M as MSPs for Keep It or as resellers for Keep It. So that's one something we got a major focus on. The the file sharing cloud file sharing service that's something that we're looking at doing as a as a service for small business. So we've actually created an entity called UFS connect ufsconnect.com where

22:53People can sign up and have the global or universal file sharing service as a service a monthly subscription but also we can offer the end use the corporate solution as well for larger businesses that might want to deploy in their own infrastructure. Okay. So let's go through as an example. Why would a small business use that product and and how easy is it to get running and and use it? I suppose

23:20Well I think suppose for a small business it's a case of like where are the files that got where's the data that they want and where do they want to use it you know so if they've got an office usually there's a file server so they're going okay how do I get to it do I need to run a VPN you've got to manage your VPNs it's slow it's clunky whereas with the the the UFS it's just a drive letter it's just you start the computer the the files are there straight away and it doesn't matter where they are they could be in Amazon in Wasabi on their local file server in their office to them they're just on the drive layer.

23:55So it's like a one drive that follows you around basically with different systems underneath that different That's right. That's right. It's it's you can think of it as as a one drive alternate or a sharepoint alternative. it's so it's fairly interesting. Yeah, I think that's a really good idea because the challenge you know small businesses have they've got so many they've got either Microsoft, Google Drive, whatever it is. Y

24:18And then they're always running out of space and then they've got files I suppose that they are working with their clients heavy duty size files architects or legal or something like that. There's a lot of data that gets absolutely so it's out of control in no time. It can be used to modernize your file share. So you've got a file share in the office and that's disk might be hitting capacity. You can actually set it up just to migrate it to the cloud and you start pulling those files from the cloud as if it was your normal file server. You doesn't really Yeah. So it's that's an interesting one. Obviously AI

24:51I've been into AI for a while. I know I know you have as well. So it's you know the rate of change and capabilities in AI is ridiculous. I mean you mean six months ago could you imagine thinking and looking at the chatb GPT agents in Crazy, isn't it? Yeah. I mean what can they not do and what where where are we going to be in the

25:14Yeah. Yeah. Look, I you know that's a you know it's a big question that everyone's asking and you know my daughter who's finishing her HSC this year she's trying to look at which degree to go and study and I said just do anything it doesn't matter because I don't know what I don't know what you'll be doing in three years time four years time. So so just get a degree and we'll work out afterwards what's happening. It's it it you got to learn AI, but like you say, it's the rate of change is so fast. What we're learning today in in in priming I remember the priming training and stuff that people have done six months ago, it's kind of almost seems irrelevant now. And yeah, I mean now I just ask chat GPT how I should ask it to do something.

26:00Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I saw this morning, when I got up early this morning, that in China, they've made it compulsory for everyone, I think it was 8 or 6 years old. To have like 10 days of AI training every year at that young age because they wanted to ingrain it into, you know, into the way they work and and how they can use it for to, you know, to do better. So I think it's it's going to be really interesting over the next year or two because as everything goes through a process of people learning and doing things you know it'll open up and there was another stat I was reading on on the papers about two days ago that when when one of the breaks in the colleges in the US all went on breakers

26:44And it's and I was saying because these people are actually using it. Okay. people that that are university or that you know and it's quite amazing because the large enterprise do take time to they lag behind some of those innovators and they will take time to catch up but it's the workforce that actually drives it forward and that workforce that's coming through the university system over the next two three years will actually drive it even faster.

27:10Yeah. I also saw in in the UK last week they released the GCSE results. Yeah. is the worst ever. I said, "Oh, cool. It's cuz you can't use chatbt in the exam." That's right. Could be that. I don't know. So, that's a So, where do you think you know this model that you have? Does it is it sustainable going forward or is it is it a niche that you think it will always be there? What's your thoughts on your business model as such?

27:38I I think our business model is probably about right for distribution. Because we're small. I've looked in the past at these bigger companies with all these employees and and obviously when we had the COVID situation a few years ago and we we survived because it was just us. So we were like, okay, we don't have a team of people to pay. We don't have massive salaries. We've got, you know, a few contractors effectively that work for us overseas in Philippines and in Australia, but we're we we very lean and again we're working really closely with a small number of vendors as an additional resource for them in the country. that works well. Now, can we be replaced by AI? Like you say, I think everything will be replaced by AI eventually apart from apart from maybe hairdressers. I chefs maybe.

28:34Sure. For sure. Hospitality. Yeah. I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think I think your business model is spot on. You know, it's it's niche specialized and you focus on an outcome and and and and you can pivot because you are, you know, agile to I think where I worry about these large companies that have a lot of people that are tech focused, how do they pivot with so much changing over a period of time? And it's quite interesting because the stock market in the US at the current time is all these big software companies that actually haven't kept up with the rest the rest of the market in the last year and they because they are ripe for change and and they they think AI could could actually eat eat some of their market share. So

29:19There's a lot of these big software companies that haven't progressed but there's others that are going up, you know, like 20% this this year and some have gone down 15%. You know, it's quite Yeah, absolutely. AI is amazing. I think the the future it's it's a little bit scary. Okay, let's go back into business model services. Do you guys do services or you just help the the resellers sell the software or do you actually go in there every now and then and help them through a demo or what's the process around

29:48We used to be very heavy on services and again that that would all eventually fall back to me. I never managed to replicate myself in in that kind of technical resource. We did have tech support engineers that would man the phones and deal with tickets coming in, but we were no longer obligated to provide tech support for the vendors. So, we do pre-sales support and we do demonstrations, we do proof of concepts, but prefer that the professional services done by the the resellers themselves. So, it's part of the task is to get them certified or a able to to to do the work and use us as as a as a kind of consultancy, paid consultancy. I mean, we we don't we don't charge our our for our our pre-sales efforts. I've got one or two legacy clients that we have support for. I'm not sure how long we'll we'll keep that up for, but they that's just been a long-term long-term kind of arrangement. and some of the MSPs that kind of were not interested in being an a a specialist in backup, we look after some of their deployments as well.

31:01MSPs going forward, how do you think they survive if everything? Do you think their model will be challenged themselves? The smaller type MSPs? I think some some of the MSPs are are going to be okay and you know some some of the ones that they they offer offer value to clients and convey that they're offering that value. I think others are always going to struggle things obviously I've mentioned SAS before people are moving to SAS platforms and a lot of the the MSP's role is automated and taken care of by the SAS platform so yeah I I I think some MSPs will survive and some won't I don't think it's not a business I would want to get into

31:37Yeah yeah it's going to be I think a difficult one because you know as you know traditionally software companies don't want to do the services and they're trying to make the product as simple as possible but as we know that's becomes complex there's complexity with those when those things happen. So, you know, will it would it always be around? Yes, it definitely will always be around, but I think it'll be less and less of the MSPs personally, but we'll we'll only know in the next couple of years and see how that goes.

32:01Absolutely. And and also the MSPs that are functioning, who are they going to employ because you've got the you know the AI chat bots that can do for sure so much of the tech support stuff now. And the same goes for doctors and everyone like say the doctors in the UK that are striking again they're on on a thin wicket I think in terms of you know if you know just launch an AI AI service and that's your doctor gone for

32:27Sure I think not far away I think next six months we'll see that anything that you would like to leave you know think about any of the challenges you've had in the past or anything that you got over in the last couple of years. Well, we we are like I say, we're pivoting. We have pivoted heavily away from from being the arcs of distributor. Again, we were for a while single vendor and acting as as their employees

32:54And then they of course they they merged with storage craft and suddenly had employees in the country. So, we we weren't seen as as being so valuable for them anymore. Yeah. Having multiple vendors that appreciate your purpose is key for us. Yeah. Good. Good. And of course they need to be re raising revenue. They need to be have a product that is required, is sellable, is is profitable. And really, we need to be sure that we focus our efforts in the right areas for the right vendors and with the right partners. the shotgun approach doesn't really doesn't really doesn't really work in terms of bringing revenue in. But but we've got few a few vendors that have have amazing class leading products that you know the resellers can sell. They understand the end user businesses need even if they don't know what it is yet.

33:53Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Well, thanks for your time today, Nick. I appreciate it. it's always good chatting to you. and I hope you and Kelly at Cloud Ready Solutions keep on helping out those vendors and those MSP providers to make sure that they provide a great service to their clients as well. So, thanks very much. Appreciate you. Keep up well.

34:13Thanks for joining us on IT Mastermind Talks. Don't miss out on our next episode. Hit the follow button and stay updated. Want to be our next podcast guest? Contact us and share your expertise with our audience. Visit for more information.