- Welcome to The Shiproom,
where we learn from tech leaders
at some of the world's most successful companies.
I'm Brad Anderson, I'm the vice president Microsoft 365.
Today's guest is IGM vice president
of infrastructure services, Keran McGuire.
Welcome to the show.
- Thank you, thank you for having me.
- IGM is an organization, and one of
the largest financial organizations in Canada,
with more than $160 billion of investments that they handle.
So tell us a little bit about IGM,
and just tell us a little bit about the scale.
- One of the things that we were talking through
as we wanted to innovate the infrastructure,
was how do we make the back end
and the front end more friendly?
We talk about cloud a lot of the times, but to the end user,
whether that be our clients or our advisors,
it's all gibberish, to be perfectly honest.
We can talk about VMs, and CASBs,
and all of these great pieces of technology.
So, what we started talking about is,
we probably need to start changing the front end experience
sooner rather than later,
so that we can actually show why
it's important to go on the full journey.
So we adjusted our conversation to
how do we change the front end experience,
the end user experience to be more modern,
to be more like their home experience?
I think I get a thank you for Teams almost every day.
- Yes.
- And the reason being is, when I joined the organization,
it was a bit of a dog's breakfast
when it came to collaboration tools.
We had a little bit of everything.
We had conference bridges, we had Skype,
we had BlueJeans, we had Zoom,
we had CenturyLink, bell lines,
you kinda name it, we had a flavor of it.
So the start of every meeting took about 15 minutes
because we didn't know how to get
the meeting off the ground.
'Cause we were using one thing for video conferencing,
another thing for audio conferencing.
And it was very, very painful.
Teams has completely adjusted that.
A very powerful statement was made to me,
probably about, I'd say about a month ago.
The majority of our team is in Winnipeg,
and we have one or two people in Toronto,
who have, for a long time, felt left out
because we couldn't see them.
Or we'd call them on the phone
and they couldn't really hear us.
And we'd give 'em a bridge
and we'd forget they were on the phone.
And the Teams experience has removed all of that.
The team actually feels more connected.
And they said, you know what?
Even when we go back into the office,
we're going to keep having Teams meetings
because we feel so much more connected.
- Hey, it looks like we're getting a call here.
Hey you're on The Shiproom,
here with Keran, who is this?
- The name's Naismith, James Naismith,
inventor of basketball.
The greatest Canadian export
outside of syrup and moose jerky.
- This is an honor.
Do you have a question for Keran?
- Just this morning I was hanging another peach basket
for the purposes of throwing an inflatable ball through it.
So, since you have a fellow engineer there with you,
I'll rattle off a few historically important inventions.
And you tell me if they were created right here
in our fair country, in the North.
First one up, electron microscope.
- No?
- Oh, I am so, so, so sorry.
Juice boxes.
- We're gonna lay claim to that one.
- Java programming language.
- Ooh, Java programming language.
I'm gonna say not Canada.
- Here's a good one, meat lovers pizza.
- I'm gonna go with Canada.
- Any pizza without moose meat will never be loved here.
Ah, walkie talkies.
- I'm going to go no.
Wow, oh my god.
Can we start over?
'Cause I wanna change my answers.
- That high five, where you do it up top,
then swing it around, and do it low.
- That seems very California to me.
- Last but not least, CPR mannequin.
- I'm gonna say Canada.
- A valiant effort.
But I do have one last question.
I know that right now your organization
is piloting the Microsoft Managed Desktop.
What got you interested in using MMD?
And what makes this a good fit
for a regulated financial institution?
- Couple of things.
We were moving away from
a current partner that we work with.
And one of the things that we were talking through
was changing the image itself.
And when we were talking through what it would be
to build out a whole new image, with all net new tooling,
and then of course the people that go behind it.
How much did we as an organization
wanna take on, and what was the best use
of our resources, time given.
We're not a technology company, at the end of the day,
we are a financial institution.
We really kind of need someone else to be doing that.
Microsoft Managed Desktop hit so many of our points.
It made the image itself much easier to use.
The security aspects of it,
which is paramount when speaking to a financial institution,
was so well thought through.
And the Microsoft Managed SOC that comes with it
was another thing that we were just kind of blown away with.
'Cause you know, to know that the devices would be managed,
or managed and monitored 24 by seven,
and taken out of circulation if certain parameters
were ever met, or if things, or certain attacks
were ever placed against the device.
It became pretty apparent to us pretty quickly,
that partnership was actually going to make our lives
a lot easier than they are today.
The containerization, the innovation,
and then frankly, just the ease of use,
were so top of mind, when we started talking about MMD.
- You talk a lot about user experience,
as you simplify all those back end pieces,
the user experience dramatically improves.
And so we've seen, for example,
an 85% decrease in the boot time,
the battery lives are doubling.
And just the end user satisfaction is just through the chart
because it, their PC now feels like their phone
in terms of the performance and the snappiness.
It just feels modern.
- Absolutely.
- I wanna go back to one of the things that you mentioned,
you talked about, you kind of had a little bit of everything
and it would take 15 minutes for a meeting to start.
One of the reasons why a lot of organizations
struggled with that is it had to do with
how they thought about what the best solution was.
And there's kinda been two lines of thought.
The one is, hey, I'm gonna think about
best of breed in kind of a narrow band.
And one is, I'm gonna think about best of ecosystem
in terms of, I think about it more end to end.
Tell us about how you think about that,
and has your thinking evolved over the last few months?
- Best of breed is interesting when it can be siloed.
If it is a siloed product that is, has a special niche.
But when you talk through the end user experience,
an ecosystem is so important because you need the device
to work with the tooling, to work with the collaboration,
to make the end user's life easier.
Because as technologists
we're responsible for more than just,
am I happy with the experience?
We need to be responsible for managing those devices.
We need to manage the security of those devices.
And when you put contending products on it,
you actually degrade that user experience.
Whether it's collaboration tools
that don't talk to each other correctly,
whether it's management tools
that don't talk to each other correctly,
or whether it's security tools.
If you don't develop a strong ecosystem,
you absolutely impair the end user experience.
And you actually cause the business to slow down.
I can talk to many instances where what we've deployed
from a best of breed product in a siloed view
has impacted productivity.
I am a super strong believer
that you have to have a strong ecosystem.
- The city of Toronto,
like a thousand other places, has a coat of arms.
And in these coat of arms, there's a bunch of artwork,
there's a bunch of symbolism in it.
So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna read off to you
items that appear on the Toronto's coat of arms.
And I want you to tell me,
does it actually appear on the coat of arms?
Or is it a fake?
Is there a beaver on the Toronto coat of arms
that represents industry and hard work?
- No?
- There actually is a beaver. - There is?
- There is a beaver.
How about a honeycomb symbolizing energy and productivity?
- Yes. - Yep, you got it.
Two people exchanging vague compliments
represents Canadians' excessive politeness.
- I would agree with that, yes.
It's a fake thing, but it's a true statement.
- Is there a bear for strength and determination?
- No.
- Is there a 6-string guitar to represent
the summer of 1969?
- No.
- Is there a city wall to show the authority of the city?
- Yes, there is. - There is.
And then finally, a top hat
representing Canada's place on America's head?
- No.
- I would just love to hear some of your thoughts on
the importance of STEM, STEM education,
STEM careers, for girls.
- I'm a very strong believer that we need to encourage girls
to take math more than we do.
Generally speaking, girls are inundated with images
and things where they need to be pretty,
or they need to be a certain way.
When I was in high school,
I had the option of advanced math or regular math.
And I remember the teacher saying to me,
you're not gonna need advanced math.
So you just, you're fine in regular.
It's stuff like that is very discouraging to girls.
And the reality is, without having
the mathematics behind you,
particularly in the earlier grades.
So through high school, and into going into university.
If you haven't taken the math courses,
your options for what you get to do in university
are very, very limited.
And it resonates very much with me
because I was one of those people.
I got through college,
and when I went to go pick my university courses
I didn't have the math.
So I actually had to take a year
to get the math courses I needed
to get into information technology management.
I think it's really important,
and it's one of the things I actually speak about
whenever I get the chance.
Take the math courses.
You may not use them,
but at least you've given yourself the option.
- And one of the great parts about The Shiproom
is we have AI that listens into the conversation
and comes up with the most pertinent questions
that related to the conversation that we've had here.
So we call this the database dozen.
How many legs can something have before it's creepy?
- Six.
- What's more embarrassing, dancing or singing?
- Singing.
- Do you have a favorite Ninja Turtle?
- Michelangelo.
- What's the most complicated recipe
that you can cook entirely from memory?
- Butter chicken.
- What's the longest you've ever waited in a line?
- Two and a half hours.
It was for a Revlon sale.
- I waited about 12 hours to get into
a Depeche Mode concert back in 1988.
Would you like dogs more or less if they hatched from eggs?
- Um...
I don't know.
- All right, well hey, this has been fantastic.
Keran, thank you for coming on The Shiproom.
If people wanted to learn more about you,
get in contact with you, or more about your organization,
where would they go?
- You can find me on LinkedIn.
- Thank you for watching The Shiproom.
This is Brad signing off.
- Hm.
I'm not so sure about these Canadian peaches.
- All right, let's cut.