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  • (tires squeal)

  • - [Narrator] It's lunch time,

  • and this Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.

  • (lively music)

  • I get invited to attend tech events

  • all the time in Las Vegas,

  • and whenever I can, I like to make the quick trip

  • from Redmond and meet with other tech leaders,

  • and learn about what they're doing.

  • (lively music)

  • Today I hit the road with Michele Bustamante,

  • the founder and CIO of Solliance,

  • a bonafide cloud expert,

  • and a long time tech executive.

  • (lively music)

  • (piano music)

  • - Hey.

  • - Welcome, Michele, how are ya?

  • - Wow, this is awesome.

  • Who wouldn't wanna get in this car?

  • - Right?

  • In Vegas, in a Cadillac, with Elvis.

  • - With 500 horsepower.

  • - Exactly.

  • - Let's see what this puppy can do.

  • - You are a busy person.

  • You are this incredibly sought after speaker

  • at events like this,

  • but you also have a day job, in that

  • you're the co-founder and the CIO of

  • a software consulting firm called Solliance.

  • - Yup.

  • - But you're also a long time executive,

  • and a Microsoft MVP,

  • - Yeah, I-- - And a regional director.

  • I kinda didn't get the memo that you didn't have to

  • try everything in tech. - You ever sleep?

  • - Yeah.

  • - Believe it or not, I make it work.

  • - Tell us about your company.

  • - Yeah, so Solliance is a consulting firm.

  • We're basically a coalition of partners,

  • and what we do is we assemble teams of experts

  • and make it look like one team by making sure

  • we have the leadership around it.

  • - We're gonna play a little game.

  • - Tell me.

  • - The game is called 'this or that'.

  • - Okay.

  • - I'm gonna give you two topics--

  • - K

  • - And then I'm gonna give you some descriptions,

  • and you're gonna tell me, you know, is it A or B.

  • - Okay.

  • - Okay, so it's slot machine or presidential candidate.

  • - Okay.

  • Oh, this is gonna be fun, this is a great year for that.

  • - Gives a lot of speeches.

  • - Presidential candidate.

  • - Indeed. (ding)

  • Inspires confidence at first but always disappoints.

  • - Presidential candidate.

  • (ding) (laughs)

  • - Is full of money and covered in germs.

  • - Presidential candidate.

  • (laughs) (ding)

  • - Owned by a giant corporation.

  • - Presidential candidate.

  • - Alright, (ding)

  • I'm doing a trend, here.

  • (laughs)

  • Was portrayed by Robert Redford

  • in the movie, 'The Candidate'.

  • - Oh.

  • Wait a minute.

  • What was the other one?

  • Presidential candidate, or?

  • - A slot machine.

  • - Slot machine.

  • (ding) (laughs)

  • No...

  • - So what advice do you give to people on that...

  • On what should move to the cloud, what shouldn't, kinda--

  • - Right, so people used to be nervous about

  • going cloud at all, show me it's safe.

  • But, now what I see is I have all of these companies

  • that have, you know, questionnaires from their customers

  • saying, "How do I trust you in the cloud?".

  • And you have to like, you know, prove that you have DR,

  • and that you have, you know, backup,

  • and that you have good procedures that are secure.

  • But, we no longer have to answer the question of,

  • "How do I trust the cloud?", so now it's more about,

  • "How do I migrate safely?",

  • and data is always the first story.

  • You know, let's make sure that you can

  • leverage that data in the future.

  • - Yep.

  • - By treating it as, not a liability, but an asset now,

  • and then the rest flows from there.

  • - So when you speak at a conference like this,

  • and you do this a lot,

  • can you remember what it was like at your first one?

  • - What was it like your first time?

  • what was going through your mind?

  • - I can tell you that.

  • When I first started out in this industry,

  • I was just a developer, hardcore,

  • and I got really sucked in by it, right?

  • So, I couldn't work enough,

  • and I got invited to do these different things,

  • like teach a class.

  • First class was like 30 people.

  • My voice is shaking, you know,

  • and then I was fine once I got the eyeballs of the people,

  • I'm like, "Okay, good."

  • And I decided, after some years, that, you know,

  • I admired some of these people in the industry.

  • People we know, like Carl Franklin,

  • I remember seeing him speak, and I remember thinking,

  • "I wanna do that one day."

  • So, I asked this guy who was the chair of this conference,

  • BCDC, could I come to the conference?

  • And, I actually said, I think, "You don't really have

  • a lot of women speakers, I'd like to do this."

  • And he said, "Just send me some topics."

  • So, like an idiot, I took the three hardest possible topics,

  • thinking I wanna get in--

  • - Might as well go all in.

  • - No, I wanna get it, I gotta give him some

  • really good meaty topics.

  • So, I was doing things at work like D POM optimization,

  • you know, STL, and WIN I-NET, you know,

  • communication libraries and things like that.

  • So, I offered a talk on each of those thinking

  • one will be a fit, and he accepted all three.

  • (laughs)

  • - So I'm like, "Oh, okay." - Wow.

  • - Now I gotta get three speeches ready--

  • - Yep.

  • - And it's my first time, that's lovely.

  • - Yeah, that's intense.

  • - So, I get it all ready,

  • but I over-prepare for the first one,

  • and I remember, like, getting into the room

  • before the guy was coming off stage,

  • there's 300 people in the room,

  • the lights are shining on this guy,

  • and I'm sitting there,

  • and I literally think I started having a panic attack.

  • - Sure.

  • - So, then I got up there,

  • and again, voice shaking at first, 'cause it's like,

  • lights on you, 300 people.

  • - Oh, yeah.

  • - And, it's a funny thing, it's like this fight or flight,

  • you know, I was over-prepared, and that was the key.

  • 'Cause I knew exactly what I needed to do, so--

  • - If you're confident, it becomes second nature, it's easy.

  • - Exactly.

  • Had I not been prepared, it could have gone south, right?

  • - So, do you find yourself now, when you do it...

  • It's just fun?

  • - Yeah. - And you get up there,

  • and you just have fun with it.

  • - It is, it's true.

  • - [Announcer] Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break:

  • - I think the whole 'Women in Tech' subject is so complex,

  • that there's a lot of ways to attack that one, right?

  • Leadership at the top, if they're bought in,

  • to diversity...

  • And this goes across all kinds of diversity,

  • without just talking about women.

  • You know, then it will happen.

  • I think we just built our first outtake.

  • (lively music)

(tires