Name: Spicy Bytes with Opti9: Putting Cyber Resilience to the Test
Uploaded: 2026-09-22T03:01:06.487Z
Duration: 25 min 6 s
Description: Spicy Bytes with Opti9: Putting Cyber Resilience to the Test

Transcript for "Spicy Bytes with Opti9: Putting Cyber Resilience to the Test": Spicy fun. Yeah. Let's go. We just gotta go hard. Welcome to our new episode of Spicy Bites, where the wings are hot, but the takes are even hotter. Today, I'm joined by Corey McDonnell of Opti9 and Kaylee Optish of Wasabi. Welcome. Thanks. Thank you very much. Have a nice Welcome to historic Fenway Park where we're broadcasting to you from. Today, we're gonna go through seven questions. So this is the seven deadly dabs. Well, I'm gonna direct the question to each person as we eat wings that get progressively hotter. So I'm gonna start out easy, like the sauce on this wing. Corey, for those that aren't familiar with Opti9, can you tell us a little bit about who Opti9 is and who you are and how you fit into the grand scheme of things? And I understand that maybe we both work very closely with a joint partner, ResMed. That's right. We do. Thanks for having us, Andrew. So Opti9 is a cloud services and data protection provider, really focused on making sure that we, work with customers on managing, protecting, and and recovering their workloads. You know, as you mentioned, we, we have a very close partnership with, with Wasabi. And luckily this year, we were named as the partner of the year. We've also got a super close partnership with Veeam, soon to be announced as the partner of the year as well. So it's a great, it's a great kind of, partnership between all three of us. And, really when it comes down to it, we have a, a pretty simple approach. It's to slow down, look at what the client's requirements are, build, and and make sure that we're we're appeasing what their needs are. Slow down. Okay. You don't hear people usually say slow down in the day of AI. Right? So that's an interesting philosophy. Yeah. Absolutely. It's again, we just gotta listen to the customers. You know what they, they know what they want. I'm just not sure how to get there. Mhmm. Yeah. I think the slowdown is huge, especially like you said, in this day and age, and it helps build the relationship. And at the end of the day, nobody really wants to be sold to. They want to be consulted and heard and really just understand what their problem is, where they wanna go. And so I think Opti9 does a great job at getting that whole relationship together, and that's what creates a longer standing relationship instead of just transactional. Right. I I I love that. You know, it's it's get a customer, keep a customer. It's not a transaction. Mhmm. So your first win is 6,200 Scoville units. K. It is, seeing double. So Okay. This is your initiation. Jalapeno peppers only about 8,000, so Scoville units. So this is easy peasy. Well, you've already gone ahead. You seem to be alright. I don't wait. I love Wingnut. Alright. Okay. Let's get after it. Cheers. Cheers, Billy. Oh, gosh. Not bad. Not bad. What do you think? Yeah. Well, that's some good flavor. We've got more in store for us. So Yes. Let's move on to question two. This one, I'm gonna send to Kaylee. We're gonna be eating a kimchi sauce this time around, and it's a mere 18,000 Scoville units. So just three times hotter than the last one. Alright. Kaylee, Wasabi selected Opti9 as our partner of the year, our MSP partner of the year. What makes them so unique and different than anybody else? Yeah. They differentiate themselves more than just pricing, so they do combine the technology, the expertise, and the service delivery. So it is good at understanding the whole solution, like we said, and not just being transactional, so really incorporating all of the pieces to the puzzle. And they understand that Wasabi isn't just an inexpensive cloud storage target. It really is a purpose built cloud storage platform that is designed to be a little bit more or a lot more secure and resilient and really just predictable data protection too. Yeah. And just add add to Kaylee's point there is, you know, Wasabi to us is really not just a storage platform. It really is a partnership that we've got Mhmm. That allows us to really build that solution that solution into or the storage into our solution with multiple different features that are added. Things like covert copy a little hotter, Immutability. It's a little warmer. Yeah. It's not bad though. That one actually tastes quite good. It's good. Yeah. But that's it. Like, in the end, there's there's so many extra pieces to the Wasabi platform that allow us to really, enhance our solutions. And like I said, cover copy, immutability, etcetera. And again, it just gives us the capability to work with the different other vendors that we have to make a solid solution for our customers that's focused on the goals that they have around compliance and security and IT resilience. So again, you know, and then the last thing, the scalability of Wasabi Technologies is just unbelievable. So it gives us that that flexibility to really act fast for our partners. Mhmm. That's one of the things I think is a Wasabi Technologies strength is it's it's got so many unique features of data protection, but it's not bound by a single data protection vendor. And or a particular workload that could be used for archiving and other things as well. So And the performance is great. Yep. And I'm detecting it, a trend, just two questions in that it's not about transactions, and it's not about speed to sell something. It's about understanding people's problems. Got it. That's it. And that's it. Wasabi Technologies just gives us that capability to to do it in multiple different ways. Okay. That one was good. How was it? Yeah. It's kimchi. I love kimchi. I do. Yeah. Good flavor. Number three is barbacoa, which is pretty cool. This is gonna be 36,000 Scoville units. Okay. So this question is for you, Corey. Alright. There's no webcast, no spicy bites, no podcast, no blog that can't can't not mention AI these days. But AI is changing the threat landscape and making things actually more complicated. How do you see AI in the in your business and where it fits in with Opti9 and the challenges or the opportunities it presents to you? Yeah. I think you gotta look at it in in multiple different ways. Right? I think the and as a data protection and disaster recovery provider as a primary solution for us is, you know, how do we how do we combat against, you know, the the malicious aspect of AI. Right? Mhmm. You know, a lot of lot of bad actors are using AI to to take advantage of different companies, you know, act faster. So, again, having the capability to to provide a, you know, solid solution that has, you know, features like corporate copy, immutability, and all the data resilience pieces is extremely important to us. I would say also other other aspects of our kind of our solutions from Veeam, etcetera. It comes in very well. So, again, AI, we're really trying to protect against the the malicious aspect of AI in many ways. But not not only that, we also use AI internally for developing stronger levels of protection at the front end. So we're more proactive rather than reactive. So it's, you know, there's always gonna be bad and good, from an AI perspective. It's it's how do you use it best for, for for your organization and for your clients. Absolutely. And I think, you know, AI is powerful. Obviously, we've all seen the capacity of AI and to solve problems and to use it for the parts of the job that you don't really love to make things a little bit more automated. However, you still need a human behind it and you need the human context. And I think the biggest thing that AI doesn't have yet is context and understanding the whole solution. You know, it will tell you the answer that it wants to tell you, not maybe the best answer all the time. So you you do need somebody like Opti9 to understand who you are, who you've been as a company for the last however many years, and then implement the solution accordingly. So it really does take AI plus the human. Tastes like barbecue. That one was the best one to offer. Yeah. And, Kaylee, I understand that you picked out your car using AI. I did. I did. Yeah. I had, a smaller SUV, and I have a growing family. So I needed more capacity, leveraging AI to see which one had the most trunk space and miles per gallon. We're always doing, road trips. So, we ended up with a minivan. So Wow. You know, it was a big ego thing to go into a SUV mini van. Talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta embrace it. You know? It's it's the phase of life that we're in right now. Good sign. Yeah. I think we're we've been talking about the negative side. So now we're going to question four. Kaylee, this question's for you, but let's go through the nitty gritty details here. This is Black Eyed Susan. It is now 126,000. So we're four x the last one. Kayley, from Wasabi perspective, what are you seeing in the marketplace that's making storage more of a security discussion? You know, I I think we say now storage is a security decision Mhmm. Whereas before, it used to be an afterthought. Right. So what are you seeing there? Yeah. I think that a lot of the com companies thought of storage as just an infrastructure cost decision, but now it is definitely more on the security and business continuity decision. So ransomware actors, like we were just talking about with AI, are getting increasingly more skilled, and so you need to differentiate your storage and have that backup copy that is complete completely protected. So we have features like immutability with object lock and, MUA, multi user authentication, and covert copy, which will replicate the data to a different data center and completely invisible to anybody else. So that's huge because you need it separate from your regular infrastructure because the hackers now know that that is the most precious part is the backup. So they're trying to aggressively attack it, and so just having that extra level of security from an object storage provider is always huge. That one's a lot harder. That's for sure. Yes. I've I've, I'm scared. You're right. That one's a good one. But then, you know, to add to Kaylee's side of things is, you know, not only is it about the physical storage there, but it's also about, you know, the physical data center layout. Right? And having all the different compliance measures that are built in the process. Right? So as much as there's there's tools like MUA and multi user authentication, there's immutability, there's scope of copy. These are all things that are great to have. It does provide you with that peace of mind Mhmm. That you'll get in terms of an issue. But, you know, for vendors like us, we're always looking to choose someone that's also focused on compliance, both from a physical as well as a process perspective. And we know that was probably provides that to us. So it gives us that level of comfort with our customers. Yeah. From what because your answer. That was not. That was not. From a Wasabi Technologies perspective, no. We get a lot of attention on price. Right. But where people stick with us and expand with us is because they realize we're more than price. Yeah. You get a higher you get a much richer TCO, and we continue to add that was hot. Advanced security features that people are able to leverage and build upon. Yeah. Also, you know, it's funny. The the story behind these Who is this? I was leaving. I was watching the new, the new episode of Hot Ones with, with my kids. And they were watching everybody struggle with it while they were drinking yogurt drinks. So my my kids both told me that I should be drinking yogurt drinks while I'm here. So there you go. Cheers to that. There we go. Yeah. That one was rough. Okay. Everyone's favorite sauce, the bomb. Oh my god. I'm sweating. Yeah. You know what? We're right in the middle. Let's check-in. How are you doing? It's, it's good. So far, I'm alright. I'm scared of this one, though. Yeah. I built my confidence up. I was like, oh, this is easy. I can do this. And then Wait a little more time. That one hit. And yeah. I'm scared for the next three four. K. On to question five. Everybody's favorite sauce, Da Bomb, at a 135,000 SCO units. Yeah. My nose is running. I was just So, Corey, this one's for you. Alright. Organizations today have all kinds of cloud choices, all kinds of security tool choices, all kinds of data protection choices. Where does Opti9 fit into that? Well, I think the key thing around there is that there's so much choice out there. And when it comes down to organizations choosing an organization, it's it's how do we make it easy for them. Alright. So, you know, if you've got, you know, 500 different options as to what to choose, it's how do you choose the right right one and how do you package them together. Because it's not just about choosing the best of breed one solution because often today, it's multiple solutions brought together. So it's how do you how do you build those together? And can you build it yourself? Can you manage it yourself? Can you integrate it yourself? Can you, essentially deliver to customers yourself? And in a lot of cases, they can't. So that's why, you know, working with organizations like OptiNine, where we bring that process and we do a significant amount of testing. We combine best of breed technologies like a Wasabi Technologies and Veeam as well as Opti9 processes to really bring together that solution that gives them that full data protection methodology rather than them trying to figure it out themselves and do it in a relatively efficient manner, that is also provided with managed services that we provide. That's how I was gonna work. Yeah. That was rough. Yeah. I mean Your lips are covered right now. Yeah. Here we go. Couple of things jump out at me there. One is, more and more people just don't have the resources available to them. They can't get the skills or the talent to do it themselves. And the other one is there isn't one data protection solution that supports all workloads. And as more and more SaaS comes out, there's more and more necessity to have multiple tools. And I just said, if you need multiple tools, you need multiple resources that have expertise on those. I understand you guys have, like, a gazillion million Veeam certifications. Right? That's right. I think, you know, we that's something we take very seriously, in the organization. You know, all the way from tier one all the way through to, you know, our our high end our high end The bomb's fun, isn't it? That one is, that one just doesn't taste very good. Yeah. Yeah. It's, again, our, like, our tier one support team, we wanna make sure they're certified because when it comes down to it, our message for our partners is you're gonna get high level support right from the start. Right? It's not that you have to go through multiple different levels. So to your point, you know, at one point, I was a a being certified engineer, and I'm just a sales guy. I think it's also for the customer and the partner to be able to do what they do best, and they're doing all the work. Obviously, it's a full time job and then some to do all the research, to get all the certifications, to really just have that level of knowledge. You can trust one person doing all that work for your company instead of having to cut the cost just involving all of that would be insane. And I'm crying. I forgot. So, like, if I'm an insurance company focused on insurance, not on Yeah. Staying up to date on all the technology. Right. Right. Oh my gosh. That was lost. Yeah. My eyes are watering. I need to, like, blow my nose too. Just don't don't put your hands on it. Right? Don't go to the base. I use a new napkin. And I'm not that. Okay. You ready for question six, Kaylee? I guess so. This one is, peppers blackberry peppers and blackberry. It's 700,000 Scoville units. So it's a mere four to five times more than the last one, which was a piece of cake. Oh my gosh. What is Wasabi Technologies approach of not charging API requests? Why is that so critical in the data protection space? No lack of egift fees and API fees. Yeah. I think oh my gosh. This is a lot too. Yeah. It really saved the fun I know where I'm talking in. A customer shouldn't be financially discouraged to access their data. You know, they they need to be testing it. They need to make sure it's not corrupt, and just predictable pricing in that. If you do have to test it a lot and understand that, you don't know what cost will come into play every time you do that. With Wasabi Technologies, obviously, it's very predictable. So you can access it as little or as much as you want. API fees, you can do more with the data too. So you don't have to just keep it in the silo of backup if you need to explore other use cases. You can obviously do that. So, it is really, really huge for that. Struggling. Well, I want that on spot. Oh, I'm scared. I already can struggle with the last one. Yeah. I mean, it all comes down to testing. Right? You you back up so you recover. You you wanna have faith that you can recover, and you do that through testing. Wasabi Technologies doesn't charge your charge what I call a recovery tax. Yep. Right? And that part of that is you can test as much as you want. I've never found anybody in the Doctor side of the house that thinks they test too much. Yeah. Every everybody tests significantly less than they should. That's for sure. You know, being a disaster recovery business, we we encourage our customers to test on a, you know, pretty regular cadence. We assist them with runbooks and updating them and make sure that that make sure that there's a plan there to do it. But every everybody is always worried about time and cost and for all types of purposes, when you don't have that concern, you work with a provider like us and you work with, you know, our our Wasabi Technologies based back storage. It gives us the capability to go to our customers and give them, no no reason not to. Right? So we really help you facilitate testing by not by lack of egress fees and likely lead by calls. Mhmm. Except when you're bringing, you know, massive amounts of data in to do those testing and do those tests and doing it on a somewhat regular basis, you know, again, there could be big cost when you're using, you know, people that are charging you for for that, that egress tax. We all know who those people are. Yeah. Let's say we, you know, we're we're big fans of the fact that we we don't have to worry about that. So Yeah. The hidden one is the APIs because to put content you know, people like being break it up into small chunks. So every time you put a chunk there, that's a different API call. And then immutability, you've gotta set the immutability. You've gotta test it. The people say, well, it's only pennies. How much can you add up? We've done some research, and it adds up fast. Not just pennies. And in fact, the cloud storage index that we report we we produce has consistently shown that people pay 50% of their cloud storage bill is not for storage. Right. It's for all the others. All the transaction. We how we doing on this? I'm trying to stall all the time. Yeah. Please. That'd be appreciated. You know what? I found I found the That one was worse. Yeah. I found the, That's universal. I do wanna say that ahead of time. Oh, good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. The Gabb is one of the worst. That one looks like I mean, that that bum. The is it blackberry on that? Yeah. It's nice. Got a good flavor. Alright. Kaylee, you've reached the end. We're on question six. Man, I know. It's the last dab, and it's your tradition that we dab these together. So why don't you, you can hand us the bottle and put a little dab on. And while I'm doing that, the last question is for you, Corey. Alright. I almost forgot your name. That's alright. That's what gets good. I watch it in. I'm I'm waiting number two, so you're good. For a company or partner watching today that needs better backup ransomware recovery protection, disaster recovery capabilities, what's the first conversation they should have with Opti9? I'm gonna dab this first just to get it get some confidence here. But And you're stalling. Yeah. I am definitely stalling. I think when it comes down to it, you know, what what we like to do is we take like, take a consultative approach to all of this. And it's when we're talking to customers and they're they're they're trying to understand what we do, what we what we're well, our consultative approach there is really to understand what are they trying to solve. What's your problem? Is it a compliance issue? Is it is it retention issue? Is it a peace of mind issue? That was a Is it a hard sauce issue? It could be a hard sauce issue. I'm gonna have that today. But real realistically, it's understanding what their problem is. And if we understand what their problem is, we can then curtail a, you know, custom solution for them that really meets their requirements because it's not a one size fits all solution. And, again, when we have as many different functionalities as we do with all of the different solutions that we we pair together, we can really give, you know, the right the right solution for what they're trying to solve. Again, it might be compliance. It might be Doctor. It might be a combination of all of those. So, again, going back to the the first question is we like to slow down. We like to understand what the customer's issue is, what the partner's requirements are so that we can let them know how we we really bring our solutions together and do so. Yeah. And on our end, you know, we're recommending Opti9 to the customers that come to us, sometimes already with a backup application in place. And so we're just solving one piece of the puzzle, but having a trusted partner, they will have another issue in three months. Or something else comes up, a different use case in six months, or the renewal comes up, and maybe the first service that they had wasn't the best service or, you know, their needs changed. So having the best of breed approach, you can mix and match and have another piece of the puzzle in six months and with a trusted adviser too. So it's a long standing relationship. Before I add to that, let's do the last one. Alright. Laurie? Do what you got. Okay. How much you got out of there? I know. I'm doing dab is a dab for me. You know? I know. I'm not I'm not gonna I'm here for a reason. Go figure go home, I guess. Go after it. Alright. Get after it. I'm not gonna do this again in my life. How do you do this all the time? I spaced them out. Fair enough. My whole entire mouth is on fire. That is That's hot. So if if there's a takeaway from all of this, couple things I've learned is, slow down, ask questions, find out what the problem is the customer's trying to solve. Don't just look for a transaction. And I think I read somewhere that you want customers for life. Exactly. And that, I think, is an important philosophy. And in this day and age and AI, when everything's going faster, it's kinda, refreshing to hear somebody, well, no. Let's slow down and do what's right, not just do it and move on. Yeah. And, you know, just to add to that point, this is something that, you know, from the founders down from when we started, the whole thing was give customers choice, but also give them flexibility. Right? So that's something that, you know, working with Kaylee and team that was Savio on this organization that makes it that much more flexible. Month monthly contracts or monthly monthly, terms. There's no real contract commits. Mhmm. So we give them that flexibility where our true mantra is if we are doing things properly, they won't leave. And if we're not doing them properly, they should be able to leave without any penalty. Mhmm. And I think the, one vendor theme is more common now. They're trying to consolidate their efforts, and that's what Opti9 does. It's consolidating all the efforts. So you're not tracking down a whole bunch of different contracts, a whole bunch of different vendors. You know, you have one person that you reach out to, and if our reps change, you know, go to move on, get promoted, you know, that's that's something to juggle. But, you know, somebody at Opti9 will always be answering the emails, reaching out to you, really just providing that that one on one input individualized service too. Right. I I look at you providing an incredibly invaluable service. People need confidence that they're protected, that they're gonna cover their data, and they want to go with somebody with the expertise that can assure them they'll get done. They can't do that themselves anymore. That's right. It just can't. I mean, unless you're in an incredibly large organization with a deep, deep, deep IT bench, It's getting more complicated. AI, like we said, speeding things up. Right? It's making it the problem even more acute. Right. And it's making their they're finding new new attack vectors. They're making it harder to detect the fish. Mhmm. I know. I always say the number one cause of ransomware, and it's true, is human error. You got it. And unless we until we get rid of humans, which AI might bring might help, we're gonna have the ransomware issue. So you wanna work with somebody that's got the expertise and the skills to to solve the problem. Well, that's it. And it's it is that. It's it's the whole data protection strategy to your point. You gotta test it. You gotta have that peace of mind and confidence. And not only do we do backups and disaster recovery, but we've also got the full product structure that's there for them to to use in a test. So How was the last stab? That one was I think I just blacked out after the The bomb they killed. Well, thank you both. I found this very informative. I'm gonna try to slow down as I go out into the world today. Yes. Maybe slow down on the wings. Yeah. And, maybe take a break from the wings. But, no, really, Corey. Thank you for coming to the store for my part. It was so great to have you. Kaylee, you were a first timer. And now we expect you to come back for do more episodes. I mean, at least six months. I see Corey sweating over here. Any last party words from YouTube? I just wanna say thanks to the team at Wasabi Technologies. It's been a great partnership and look forward to doing more with you. Yeah. And absolutely leverage them as much as possible. Great partner. When you're trying to understand the complexity of IT and services, definitely go to them and they'll do all the work. Alright. And congrats on partner of the year. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Yep. That's a wrap. Alright.