Larry Mead, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft

00:02 Hi everyone, welcome to the latest edition of Walter’s World, the podcast series from a Astadia. Astadia is a global service provider and we focus on mainframe migrations and modernization and this podcast series is really designed to bring in some of the industry leaders in this space to help talk about topics that might be of interest to people who are considering alternatives to their mainframe.

00:29 And today, I am delighted to have with me Larry Mead who's the principal program manager for Global Azure Engineering. Larry, thanks so much and welcome to the podcast series.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

00:42 Well, thank you, Walter and you know this excited to be here and I hope we will get some good information for the listeners.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

00:50 I think it's going to be great for people to listen to your experiences and recognize, you know the types of customers that you've worked with and the things that you've seen as you've worked over these last many years and mainframe alternatives.

01:06So Larry, can you tell us a little bit about you know exactly what do you and your team do for Microsoft.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

01:12 Well we're part of a group that's called the critical infrastructure team within azure global and what that essentially means is that we look at how to best host.

01:23 Applications that would be considered critical infrastructure, you know into azure and certainly.

01:30 Anything that's coming off a mainframe is probably critical infrastructure for the customers who are using that application so our job is to make azure.

01:40 The best place to host applications from mainframe for customers who are looking for alternatives and also very important is.

01:49 Working with partners like Astadia to have their solutions work, you know and perform in an optimal manner within azure so Those are our main focuses, but we also work directly with customers.

02:04 You know when needed, especially the larger ones, are the ones that have maybe some things that aren't common, you know as far as.

02:11 migrations are concerned and transformation is probably a better word to use at, and then you know once we've done that, then we have a blueprint for you know other customers if we move forward so that's essentially what our team does.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

02:27 And that certainly makes sense, you mentioned the larger customers and Larry I know enjoy working over the years, with you on some really large joint customer opportunities.

02:36 I think the audience might be interested in your opinion, what are the two or three most important elements for an organization to consider when they're looking at mainframe trance formation alternatives.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

02:49 Well, you know that's very good question and I would say, the first thing they should look at is what did they really need.

02:57 When they want to land in an in a different platform like a cloud platform.

03:02 By that I mean what do they need for availability, what do they need for throughput what are their SLA is what is their Dr requirements.

03:10 What are the things that I'll call almost the non functional requirements that they're going to have these applications.

03:16 mean the mainframes have always been pretty solid for delivering those so we have to take a look at what is it that you know that are.

03:25 They you know, do not want to have any compromise on as they're going into a platform like azure so that would be the first thing.

03:35 The second thing would be okay, I am I happy with the applications that I have just because i'm considering moving off the mainframe doesn't mean.

03:45 that the application is not doing what I wanted to do if i'm happy with that application and i'm still maintaining it.

03:53 Then you know that's that's a different kind of a transformation into the cloud than that let's say an application, that is not maybe meeting the business needs of the customer.

04:04 Under those conditions, I might want to consider what the cloud can do for me in moving this across to maybe either enhance that application or perhaps even.

04:17 Replacing parts of it as part of that transformation, so those that's The second thing and then the third thing that is very important is how do I get from here to there because.

04:30 You know if, especially with the larger customers that's not something that's done over a weekend that's something that can take several months, it could even take a year or more to do, especially for the ones like you and i've done that go up to like 300,000.

04:45 MIPS that's that's a very that's a very large customer.

04:47 By the way, not everyone's that big but anything that I would say is over, say 10 to 20,000 NIPs given us when we get into.

04:57 Looking at you know I need to have a plan for how I get from here to bear and do it in a way that does not disrupt my business in that process and i'm still my end customers are either.

05:09 You know, being exceeding their expectations or at the very minimum, at least meeting those So if you take care of those three things at least you're on a good path to you know do that transformation.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

05:22 I think you're spot on as always with that lay there for me it's a there are no to mainframes that are exactly alike.

05:29 Nor are there no to landing zones that are going to be 100% the same for customers and understanding that roadmap and how you're going to get there, defining that on the front end is critically important.

05:44 If we can let's talk for a second about past services, how do you see customers implementing past services as part of their transformation Program.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

05:54 Ok, that's a very interesting topic because first off, you can do the ends with some of the transformation and there's value that you can gain from bms, but a lot of customers will say Okay, if I do that well what's happening as far as.

06:12 You know I if i'm doing it on the vm they see a vm as needing you know, a person right so.

06:22 If i'm implementing with past services, I can probably now do things with you know, out of another FTE to run my stuff in the.

06:31 In the cloud so that's, the first thing the second thing is past services, by their nature, tend to be the more elastic type services there's the ones that can allow me to scale more seamlessly.

06:45 that's true with our data services like sequel db you know our as your sequel db and azure or it's.

06:51 True, with our Cooper nettie service aka S, so this also brings in a more seamless type of scalability Now you can still scale with the m's i'm not saying you can't.

07:02 But that's a little bit more where i'm turning them on and off, but, as you know, in order to resize them now, I can have.

07:11 You know where I can have elastic pools, too, but it's it's more straightforward if you're doing it with the past services.

07:19 And then the last thing that I would say some of the things that's being added, is really where a lot of the innovation is going within the cloud, so if you're looking to take advantage.

07:29 of some of the innovation that's happening in the cloud, you know you doing things like microservices and your containerizing everything and things like that probably one of the best ways to.

07:41 take advantage of that is to use proven technologies for that type of service and usually the past services are there so.

07:49 Those are the things that we really see customers, taking advantage of so not only are they you know, having maybe.

07:57 Know fewer FT he needed to once they get it into azure they're also getting some features that they did not have in the mainframe, especially in the ability to more seamlessly scale up and down.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

08:10 That makes sense, so you just raised a couple of interesting topics i've got a couple of questions i'd like to follow up with on on that specifically about you know, using different technologies i'm.

08:23 From your opinion, what are some of the the technical advantages, then that organizations might see or is that what you're really talking about being able to kind of do things differently, where you leverage things like microservices, are there any others, you can think of.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

08:38 Why because there's two main ones, the ability and more seamlessly scale and then the second one would be to.

08:45 take advantage of things like microservices where you would be able to then sort of change your way you build applications, make them more agile.

08:54 be able to implement different technologies and azure fortunately embraces that so and doesn't necessarily embrace it in a way that uniquely Microsoft so let's say I wanted to do something.

09:08 With open shift well I could do that on azure to open shifts available in our marketplace.

09:14 And by the way, I technologies that steady work with can take advantage of open shift, so I mean all those things are.

09:21 available so there's that plus the other one I can rethink how i'm actually say deploying some of my services within the.

09:31 cloud and i'll give you a really good example of that let's say i'm doing you know.

09:37 People say they want to get around you know batch they want everything to be more real time and or an event driven or something of that nature, well, I think event driven is great, but some events you know kind of trigger off batch.

09:51 And you know, and I really don't see around.

09:54 A way around that when you have things like close of market for financial systems and things like that there.

10:00 You unless the business changes which the cloud is not going to just change the business overnight, although it changes it to some degree.

10:07 But it's not going to change things like you have market open and market close, so I guess the point is is that, if I have something that's event driven I don't have to think in the term of a batch run.

10:18 The way I did it with my traditional cobalt systems if i'm implementing things with some of my past services, I could say hey you know what i'm going to.

10:27 I'm going to talk financial systems here i'm going to take every account that I either have in this core banking system.

10:35 or this investment system that i'm running and i'm going to let's say apply dividends to it, or you know if its investment or i'm going to apply service fees or.

10:44 distribute interest to it if i'm doing that towards all the accounts in it, I could use something like spark maybe to do that in a much more efficient way of using that compute, to the point where it might be.

10:59 You know advantageous to actually do an export to you know something that spark can run like.

11:06 A no sequel system like cosmos db or even into the parquet, which is an like a data like type system.

11:14 Then I could run something like data bricks, which is the past service for a spark that as your has to do that, and what we found is the time savings.

11:24 You know, especially for the large customers, we can cut several hours off their end of day of processing because of the parallelism that can be done, as opposed to.

11:34 You know, having to do something bring it all together sort it then distributed all backed out then finally reloaded you can maybe take that all and put that into a single step with.

11:46 spark so that's what i'm talking about from a point of view of rethinking when you're taking advantage of the things that are available for you on the cloud.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

11:56 that's perfect and you just segue it perfectly into the second question I wanted to ask, as a follow up.

12:04 And that's about how customers look what experiences you're seeing where customers are actually extending the life and value of their legacy application once they move to azure.

12:15 Being able to use these new technologies do you find that more people just say i'm going to get to azure and save some money.

12:24 Or are people really starting to understand these technologies that you just mentioned and start starting to be able to re envision the way that they have these applications in place and what can be done with them.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

12:39 Well, it kind of is a little bit of both I don't want to say it's it's just one or the other but.

12:45 Typically, the initial thought is saving money you know i'll be very straightforward, the initial thought is okay, I could probably save money.

12:52 But if i'm not getting value out of the effort and i'm introducing risk without getting value is that really something that I want to undertake because you know I had one time at.

13:03 A Department of Defense customers say to me okay So what if you can say me $20 million a year yeah i'm not going to put a billion dollar asset at risk, save.

13:15 You know 20 million a year, so you have to look at what but they finally did it, they did it because of.

13:22 They were getting more value out of making that change if it just came over as is it wasn't worth the risk to them.

13:28 But if they were getting more value out of the system, then it was worth the risk because they were actually getting something that they were unable to do.

13:36 You know, on the prior system, so I would say that you know that is something that it's not just all money, money was the initial.

13:45 thought there, but we were being shut down because it wasn't worth the risk, but when they looked at the value they could get out of it by doing.

13:53 Some of these transformations that would allow them to take advantage of other things that are in the cloud, all of a sudden that became something that they wanted to do so.

14:03 I would say that you know I we still see the customers that are strictly money is is the thing that they're after you still do see that, and they can get a significant savings by getting off the mainframe.

14:16 But more and more customers are looking at okay i've got this core IP that's in this, especially if they've developed the system's themselves i've got core IP.

14:27 Do I really have to rewrite that to maintain it do I have to replace that and Oh, by the way, replacing it is not.

14:35 As simple as it sounds, because these applications could be 20 3040 years old and what does that mean they've done a lot of customizations you know along the way.

14:44 And there's probably not something that they can get from a vendor that has all of their customizations so the ideal case would be.

14:53 That you can save the IP that's critical to your business that is giving you some kind of differentiation, but also be able to take advantage of other systems.

15:03 As they are available and usually going to the cloud, you can do one or two things when you get there going into the cloud I always recommend if you're moving an application.

15:11 really consider moving that data to don't leave the data on the mainframe there's other other reasons than just innovation for that, but.

15:19 let's say that you've made that decision once that data is over, on the cloud, you have a lot of options, but the second is the application.

15:27 Okay, when I have the application on you know off the mainframe I can now interact with it more readily with other systems so.

15:35 For instance, a lot of the technologies allow interfaces into either Java.

15:41 Applications or.net applications pretty easily, and you know, I was already talking about using a spark application that was using scala which is kind of like spark version of Java.

15:53 You know, to run some of those things, so you just get a lot of different possibilities that come up, and you know, as you mentioned all customers are unique to some degree, when they get to be especially the big ones.

16:07 So what we have to do is find you know what is real value that we can do for them, you know as part of making this migration and that brings up a good point that you know.

16:19 Microsoft it's not just about moving you know with my team We work very closely with our account teams that are also very enterprise focused.

16:29 And quite often they already have some other things that are moving into azure perhaps they've got.

16:35 some kind of data systems with sequel server or even Oracle, for that matter, that they're moving into azure and they have some systems that are already set up in an infrastructure in place.

16:46 Well, what we say, is if the applications are being moved into that let's take and incorporate the mainframe into your mainstream way of moving forward sort of your data Center of the future.

17:00 That also extends the life of the mainframe application now it's part of the mainstream of what that customers taking forward.

17:08 So I would say that's the other big thing is, you know don't think of the mainframe is applications living in isolation, when they're brought to the cloud think of them as being you know integral part of everything else that the customer is doing within the cloud.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

17:23We have seen the same thing, where people truly start to see the benefit of not having two distinct environments in two distinct systems.

17:32 But, looking for those points where you can benefit by letting them talk to each other and letting them share data letting them share access to logic, so I totally agree with you about that.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

17:44 You guys were great.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

17:47From your perspective, how do you feel that people should really think about addressing concerns for performance both compute and io and security when they're going through transformations.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

17:59 Well, you know all of them need to be addressed, now, you know quite frankly I think computes the easiest one to to address, I mean you know customers quite often may think well this mainframes just big powerful box, well, it is, but.

18:13 If you look at the power that's in the cloud and really i'd be any clouds vendor but you know we'll just concentrate on azure we've got more equivalent of MIPS now we don't call NIPs.

18:27 You know what we call them as your compute units, by the way, so we've got our own thing from NIPs now.

18:33 But anyway, my point is is we actually have magnitude of more power with the it's actually in the cloud that you have access to, and that can either be scaling up so.

18:44 we've run there's something called the Z ref benchmark, you might be familiar with, but we've run that with a lot of our partners where we can easily scale up to.

18:56 You know just for a single lpr of 25 to 30,000 MIPS now my experience is that very, very few customers, even the 300,000 MIPS customers have a single lpr that using more than 25 or 30,000 MIPS.

19:13 So you know, even if you need to scale up you have that you know compute capability with in azure but even better is taking advantage of being able to scale out.

19:24 that's where, if we can containerized this if we can deploy it in a ks, then we can.

19:31 You know, we one of the customers, we worked with we took them from 65,000 NIPs to a solution that was running in.

19:41 You know our azure Cooper nettie so service aka es where we had you know 20 nodes of.

19:49 For V cpus each and that was doing what the online was doing with in that you know 65,000 nipsa mainframe that they had, and then we then use the.

20:01 cosmos db is the is the data side, and you know we really easily able to meet the compute their net, but that does bring up the next piece, which is what do we do with the data actually think that that's.

20:14 Really more of a thing that we spend time upon, because one thing mainframes do really well is move data around.

20:22 They they they may not be doing all the fanciest compute in the world, you know they're not.

20:28 I don't think of a mainframe is an htc high performance computer system, but you know, some people did that with like fortran way way back in the day, like me.

20:38 But uh you know, these days, if you're doing you know things with our and stuff like that you're probably or you've got it over into.

20:46 you're doing computational fluid dynamics or something like that you're probably doing scale out for that type of compute but the key to being able to have the.

20:54 mainframe do that io is making sure that we got both the I OPS, and the throughput that you need for it, because mainframes are very fast have for that plus a mainframe.

21:08 has to other features that are kind of Nice you've got that a sort of io channel that you've got where they can use something called a hyper sockets to have very, very low latency for doing that io we've worked with customers who, even if it's some where the.

21:29 You know where we don't have high latency with the io with if it's moved into azure.

21:35 One customer had 10,000 you know round trips to the database for a single you know transaction well yeah yeah So even if you that only takes.

21:47 One millisecond I just added 10 milliseconds to my transaction right so so under those conditions.

21:55 You know, you need to be in the microsecond range right, so we had to get it down to more like to the 30 to 50 microseconds Now you can do that.

22:05 What you need to be very conscious of is the proximity of the solutions when you need that kind of performance as well as the overall throughput now as your has something called proximity pinning.

22:16 That allows you to then take like the storage and then have that within we call them stamps that's like the things where the actual physical hardware, is it such that you can.

22:27 move that back and forth very quickly, then also if you really, really need to have a low.

22:35 latency we can introduce things like HP see technology, we do have the EMS that run an azure that can take advantage of things I can find a van.

22:45 And then find a band, you know uses something can use something called a DMA.

22:51 Remote to direct memory access which that essentially bypasses the tcp stack that's how you shave from say like.

22:59 One millisecond down into microseconds so not every customer needs that but, if you do we can architected in a manner, where.

23:08 You know you definitely can have that and then the last topic is you know, particularly of interest these days.

23:15 With the you know all the you know things out there, like solar, wind and all this all that kind of thing that happened recently, is making sure your systems are adequately protected and that's where security is not just about making sure that we've got the.

23:34 You know the authorization being done, you know the authentication and authorization being done it's also about.

23:40 locking things down or hardening things is probably a better word to say everything's locked you probably can't do anything but anyway.

23:48 Making sure that it's hardened in a manner, so you know what I do is I always ask my customers to.

23:55 You know, consider always always consider that you know any system is going to have intrusions you just have to develop it that way, that has to be the mindset.

24:08 of how it's deployed, and if you take that mindset, even if you do have some kind of intrusion in your system, then you're able to do it, and the other thing is.

24:19 If you do require, for instance, federal government.

24:23 We do have special versions of azure which isolate you even more like there's even one that's called air gap essentially what that means it's connected that nothing so.

24:37 You know, so that that is probably the most secure for that you know the highest amount of security, but there's also you know their secret and top secret and then there's regular azure also and what we do is we go through the.

24:55 Even with commercial azure we take, and we.

25:00 have gone through what they call the provisional um you know authority to operate PA to for.

25:08 You know systems, such that we can you know meet some of the standards, you know there's standards for sort of low medium and high for.

25:18 You know, security and even commercial as your can meet the high again it's a PA to because it's always provisional because you have to then prove your specific implementation of it meets the.

25:32requirements, but you know as long as you do, that other part that I was mentioning making sure that it's hard and as part of doing that.

25:40 Then you know you can have a pretty secure environment so like I say it's a little bit of a journey, you have to think about it from that perspective.

25:49 mainframes were sort of fortunate and, but they were a little bit more isolated, but one of the things you want to take advantage with in the cloud is the fact you're not as isolated.

25:58 Well, if you're doing that, then you have to make sure that you have a hardened such that you are still having the same that same degree of.

26:06 Security so as, more specifically, most of my customers who are in financial services, for instance let's see if i'm doing access to a financial services system that has you know.

26:20 Personal identifiable data, you know pii data there's really three steps that are gone through with that is the minimum this is even before we get into extra hardening is number one having that.

26:33 You know authentication and authorization done properly.

26:37 But the second thing is i'm going to authorize you know also and authenticate also the devices that they're coming from it's not just the people it's the devices so i'm going to expect a certificate from those.

26:52 devices and if you don't have a certificate that I recognized then i'm going to refuse that connection, you know before you even get to say who you are right.

27:02 So you know you so you're going to have certificates and you know set up so that you can have you know pls transport layer security setup even before I do anything else.

27:14 And then the last thing is that this is where we can you know work with you know the end to end encryption.

27:22 of you know, the systems, so if my stuff is in the end encrypted, even if I have people who are getting access to it they're not going to do much with it they're going to see a lot of encrypted.

27:35 data, but it has to be in the end I don't know if you will remember, a few years ago, one of the.

27:41 You know, big box stores had had an issue with one of some of their systems well without going into too much, the issue was the end device, it was actually the end device in the store that was you know the.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

27:54 unsecured it was weak link.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

27:56 yeah it was the weak link it wasn't the main systems so that just shows the importance of going in the end, with all these things and and there's one other thing that I would say.

28:08 Is that a number of the customers, we work with technologies that we have that are also available through third parties.

28:15 That will you know obfuscate the actual pii data, so what you're seeing has gone through a transformation, you know, by the time it even gets off of where it's.

28:27 You know, you know stored in an encrypted manner so that's kind of a long winded answer, but those are the different steps that we take to make sure that we have.

28:36 You know the type of security that you need in Microsoft we call that security in depth, because.

28:42 You know it's not just any particular thing that we're depending on as the, the only way that you can get in its every piece along the way, has to be hard and such that.

28:52 You know if you're not authorized to do it it's a mindset way back when we used to keep the bad people out, you know we would program things to keep the bad people out the mindset now is only left the good people in that that's that's a completely.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

29:0 7different way of paradigm yeah yeah absolutely different way of looking at things so that's what we do to make that happen.

29:13 make sense of like a question that I always find intriguing I would really like to know your viewpoint um.

29:21 Do you feel that there are mainframe technologies that just really don't fit in the cloud are there, people who are doing something so unique that the cloud might not be an option for them.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

29:33 Well there's two types that don't fit really well in the cloud one of them would be, I have no source code for it okay and.

29:43 And that does happen, and I don't have a solution, there are some vendors that can take load modules cross bought, they have to have the underlying.

29:53 systems that support those load module so in order for that to happen, for instance, if the load module You see, I see so they have to have something that would implement cic s calls so.

30:04 If you've got systems that are using a third party system, you know that is not directly like you know what the gift from IBM like I am master cic s and you don't have source, those are really difficult.

30:20 yeah those are tough now if you're looking at things that maybe you don't want to move on one of the ones that i've seen people not move is that.

30:31 they've got something that they've got a lot of integration with third parties already with, and one of them would be like encryption.

30:40I have a number of customers who have you know there's specific hardware, you can get for mainframe that does you know the encryption.

30:48 chips and devices that you can have some customers have that already in place and it's just it makes more sense, just to use that as sort of the gateway into their.

31:01 system and they just they just leave the mainframe there for that one reason, and then they move all the applications, because you still need to have sort of that that that's in essence they're.

31:12 encrypted firewall, if you will, to get into their application so you know I see those is difficult to move, and then the last one is you know, remember, I talked about what's the value.

31:25 of moving some of these systems, there are some systems that i'm not going to get a whole lot of value, you know from moving them in and is it really worth the risk to move that and in, in particular, we have some systems that i've run into with governments were.

31:46 Without getting into details that I can't share it just doesn't make sense to disturb those things, and so we'll just keep them and let them be sunset as opposed to trying to move them.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

32:00 So those are the risk reward.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

32:02 Right yeah it's it's a whole risk reward so now if you're if you're going into other things which.

32:09 it's more of a you know the difficulty if i've got something that was written entirely in assembler.

32:16 Okay there there aren't a lot of good solutions there's some solutions, but it may or may not be good for moving that assembler because it's extremely efficient and.

32:26 Even the systems that you know work if you're going to move it across there's some vendors, who have them they're not going to be as performant as the assembler.

32:34 On the mainframe so maybe those you might want to rethink if that's a you know a good thing to do, and then the last one my favorite is Z tps if you've gotten ctv tpm systems.

32:48 You might want to think about you know how am I going to re architect those as opposed to.

32:54 How am I going to move the applications more or less as he is now that's all primarily assembler based to, but it could also be in C or c++ So those are probably the ones that i've hit that.

33:07 You know, we have to really think you know get what's the best way to do it, and maybe we're not going to move the applications just the way they are.

33:15 Across we're going to have to do something in the process for being able to do it to run in the environment when you bring it so those are probably the main ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

33:26 Okay perfect I would add the ones that I encountered that are always a little challenging if someone has 3040 years ago written their own version of ci CS or Ms DC or they've created their own database architecture, those are some unique challenges, not to.

33:43say they can't be moved, but they they're ones that always kind of make a scratch our head was about the best way to handle it.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

33:51 yeah I had a customer at a via the BSC application that they wrote they sort of wrote their own hosting for VSE for their customers and in the process of doing that they have a really nice dsc multi tenant system.

34:07 But it's just like you said you know the effort to do that, you know, is really, really hard.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

34:14 Absolutely, so there any parting words of wisdom for people who are listening in who are interested in exploring their cloud journey from the mainframe.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

34:23 Well, I think that um you know i'm going to go back to what, what do you want to do when you land on azure because a lot of customers.

34:31 You know, have issues beyond just the fact that they want to get rid of the mainframe maybe they've got applications were there it's hard to replace the programmers like if they're in cobalt, or something of that nature.

34:44 And you know they look like they really do want to refactor those applications, maybe they would like to change the languages is moving forward so we actually seeing a lot of that is.

34:56 You know it's not just moving things over, is as easy as it used to be like maybe 80% moving the cobalt, for instance, as is now we're seeing it more like 6040 maybe 60% still the cobalt, but another 40% that.

35:12 want to refactor it is part of moving it because, again that's where they get the value and from my understanding there's some news the stadia has about being able to sort of expand capabilities in that manner.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

35:24 yeah so we're really excited, thank you for mentioning that, with our recent acquisition of n you backs our goal at sad is to recognize that.

35:33 You know, as we talked about before No two environments, are the same know to pain points are the same, so we want to provide solutions, no matter what people are looking to do.

35:43 And by acquiring and new backs, we now have the ability to help refactored cobalt and cic is applications ID Ms applications natural a database to the cloud.

35:56 Of utilizing different languages, so we can go from assembler to a different language, we can take co ball and go to C sharp or Java and it just.

36:07 expands the portfolio and, as you know, from having worked with so many organizations as potential clients over the years it's important to have that flexibility so yeah really exciting times for us here right now.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

36:20 And I just add i've worked with any pets in the past and we've always found them to be a good partner for what I would call the refactor type technologies and moving across you know to cloud systems.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

36:33 Absolutely, well, it looks like we've come to the end of our time, I really want to thank you for taking the time for sharing your thought leadership and experiences.

36:43 I know that this will probably raise many more questions as people kind of digest everything that you shared and I hope that you know as they come up with these questions that they would.

36:53 You know, want to reach out to you, to be able to kind of learn more about what azure can do for them.

Larry Mead- Microsoft, Principal Program Manager, Azure Global

36:59 Okay, no I’m happy I’m actually I’ve got a really simple email it's Larry me la Roi me at Microsoft COM, so if anyone has any questions follow up be happy to have him reach out and try to answer them as best as possible it's been my pleasure to have this discussion with you, Walter.

Walter Sweat - Astadia, CTO

37:18  Larry it's always a treat to get a chance to talk with you, I sure do appreciate it, and for everybody in the audience again, thank you for taking your time out of your busy day to join us.

37:28 Please visit us at www.astadia.com to check in for upcoming podcasts of shows that we have planned we have quite a few plan for heading through the summer, and I hope you will join us for them, thank you all and have a great rest of your day.

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