00:01.18
Andy Young
Hey, welcome back to the 825 Technologies Podcast. I’m Andy, founder and CEO of 825 Technologies. I’m here with my co-host, Tim, who’s our senior tech.
00:12.56
Tim
Hello, hello.
00:12.79
Andy Young
Tim, how are you?
00:13.18
Tim
Is that good?
00:13.39
Andy Young
How are you there?
00:14.49
Tim
Good.
00:15.28
Andy Young
Good. Well, today we’re diving in to something kind of unique. I think this might be the first time we’ve done this. It’s in like a top 10 on IT trends from quarter one 2025.
00:29.49
Tim
Ooh.
00:30.23
Andy Young
I know. So it’s going to be, this is part one of a two-part series. So buckle up.
00:35.94
Tim
Here we go.
00:37.25
Andy Young
Yes.
00:39.92
Tim
Oh, so that’s right, Andy. The quarter has been packed with transformative developments in AI, mergers, and cloud security.
00:50.54
Tim
Let’s unpack these stories so our listeners can understand what’s happening and how impacts their business.
00:55.69
Andy Young
Perfect. All right. So the first story one is agentic AI, which is on the rise. It’s huge right now.
01:06.39
Andy Young
And, uh, you know, if you’re not familiar with agentic AI yet, it’s basically, you’ve got AI doing, you know, little jobs, right? So, see NVIDIA is coming out with, you know, new computers that will do agentic AI.
01:21.39
Tim
Ooh, that’s cool.
01:21.38
Andy Young
They can learn from interactions and develop, you know, kind of like macros or something in Microsoft Word on steroids, you know, beefed up and ready for, for much more action.
01:32.12
Andy Young
So, One of the biggest ones is in security. So Google at their cloud next conference showcased a bunch of different autonomous AI agents and they make decisions on specific goals.
01:48.12
Tim
do
01:49.14
Andy Young
Yeah.
01:50.29
Andy Young
So it’s really revolutionizing whole cybersecurity strategies because now you can train and interact these agentic models on cybersecurity. It’s a game changer. Hmm.
02:00.37
Tim
Yeah, absolutely. Agenic AI is already making waves in industries like support and HR. Google Unify Security integrates these tools with threat intelligence for unmatched visibility and proactive defense mechanisms.
02:16.38
Andy Young
Yes. Unified just today released their new teaser video for protect and access. I think access is up to five, three and protects it like nine, one or something.
02:27.81
Tim
Yeah, I did see that. That’s pretty cool. All the new stuff that come out.
02:30.39
Andy Young
Yeah, with web hooks now.
02:32.62
Tim
Mm-hmm.
02:34.07
Andy Young
Cameras with hallway view. triggering that you could, based on action in one camera, you could trigger another camera like a point tilt zoom to zoom in on a certain area.
02:45.21
Tim
Oh, that’s awesome.
02:46.45
Andy Young
Yeah.
02:46.58
Tim
That’s really helpful, especially identity. mean…
02:48.95
Andy Young
Yeah.
02:49.77
Tim
It’s
02:50.45
Andy Young
Yeah, like somebody’s coming down a stairwell to go out an exterior door and you can turn the camera.
02:54.28
Tim
like, vroom!
02:55.76
Andy Young
Yeah, right over before they open the door even.
02:58.63
Tim
Smile.
02:58.67
Andy Young
It’s kind of cool.
03:01.12
Andy Young
Yeah. Which is really cool. So if your business, you know, because that’s who we’re talking here with is those people that are decision makers in businesses for IT.
03:12.46
Andy Young
So if you’re looking to leverage advanced AI security or do it like in a secure way, even that’s what we’re here for.
03:20.27
Tim
That’s right.
03:21.13
Andy Young
Yeah. A25 technologies, those managed service type of offerings that we give. You know, we’re really starting to see a transition to where what used to be was good enough.
03:35.58
Andy Young
Sure. But, you know, we’re cutting edge, right? So we’re starting to tackle some of the new stuff, some of the really fancy integrations. And it is fun being like, I don’t know, we’re close to 20 years doing this, you know?
03:51.56
Andy Young
And so to see, yeah, to see the changes happening.
03:51.99
Tim
Wow.
03:54.96
Tim
Right.
03:56.20
Andy Young
I mean, things that we dreamed of, man, wouldn’t that be nice one day if XYZ and now all of a sudden we’re like, man, we got WXYZ.
04:01.76
Tim
Sorry. Way past that.
04:03.44
Andy Young
It’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that’s agentic AI.
04:11.27
Tim
We have a generative AI competition intensifies. The next up is a generative AI open AI’s chat GPT hit an impressive milestone with over 400 million weekly visitors in quarter one.
04:25.23
Tim
Wow.
04:25.18
Andy Young
Wow.
04:26.82
Tim
while channel DeepSeek releases a cost-efficient, that’s a generative AI model that rivals ChatGPT.
04:34.68
Andy Young
Yeah, man. Deep Sea was a game changer in quarter one. That’s for sure. I think that, and then there was one, one day, like in one day, chat GPT had 1 million signups.
04:49.71
Tim
Wow.
04:49.74
Andy Young
I mean, yeah, those two things just kind of, Yeah, 400 million weekly visitors is a lot. So anyway, you got this competition and it is really driving innovation across industries.
05:03.18
Andy Young
So like marketing, I know even our MailChimp subscription has changed as to what can be done automatically now or Canva.
05:12.86
Tim
right oh yep
05:13.08
Andy Young
You know, you think of the AI in Canva now, the customer service, you know, we use Dialpad in-house for our phone system. And the AI, how it transcribes calls, calls out action items, it’s next level. So I think this generative AI, this adoption of this amazing functionality,
05:35.53
Andy Young
I think it’s probably in quarter one, one of the fastest growing trends in professional circles.
05:43.24
Andy Young
yeah, I think, well, I know Stanford, they ran a study and reported that up to 24% of press release content now comes from generative AI systems.
05:55.81
Tim
That’s going up pretty quick. Wow.
05:58.03
Andy Young
Yeah, yeah.
05:59.14
Tim
Holy moly.
06:00.48
Andy Young
So then you go to college to learn how to write press releases properly and it’s like, yeah.
06:07.20
Andy Young
You don’t need it.
06:08.19
Tim
Yeah, it’s fine.
06:08.20
Andy Young
Just let AI do it.
06:09.43
Tim
Yeah.
06:12.03
Andy Young
Yeah.
06:13.41
Tim
Well, yeah, I mean, at Sheepdog Design Studio, we are leveraging generative AR tools like ChatGPT enhance the marketing strategies and SEO for businesses.
06:13.93
Andy Young
So.
06:25.20
Andy Young
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s a real tendency that people probably are looking at it and saying, well, how do I use it to do SEO?
06:26.25
Tim
So…
06:33.81
Andy Young
And that’s where it’s funny. You know, press release is one thing, but actually developing an SEO strategy still requires some advanced thinking.
06:40.72
Tim
Mm-hmm.
06:40.93
Andy Young
about the industry goals and strategic vision of where that company wants to be to make sure that we’re getting the right SEO over a long period of time. So, you know, it gives us more bandwidth to do the high level stuff. And then what is known, I’ve just learned this week, there’s a word called schlep tasks.
07:02.48
Andy Young
Yeah. They’re like low level tasks and uniquely, uh, American United States problem is we underestimate schlep tasks to get a job done.
07:13.55
Tim
that word.
07:15.09
Andy Young
Yeah. But it does help because now, you know, we’ve got these amazing tools that, you know, do so much of the work on the back end.
07:25.26
Andy Young
So, yeah.
07:26.41
Tim
right it was good oh
07:27.70
Andy Young
All right. Generative AI. That was a good one, Tim. All right. Segment section three here. Story three. The tech merger and acquisition boom or M&A boom.
07:38.19
Andy Young
So mergers and acquisitions have been hot this quarter. Google acquired Wiz, which is a security company thing there for 32 billion with a B.
07:48.40
Tim
that’s it okay
07:49.79
Andy Young
Yeah. So which really, mean, the demand for cloud security, because that’s what Wiz is. It’s a cloud security type platform. I mean, that’s huge. And then… Another big one was Turn and River Capital.
08:04.18
Andy Young
They acquired SolarWinds, who is you know, kind of an interesting little… software for managed service providers uh they also do a lot of cyber security and event log sys log sim type stuff yeah yeah and they acquired solar winds for 4.4 billion so now they have very strong infrastructure software capability there in turn so yeah
08:18.76
Tim
Oh, they got real deep.
08:24.73
Tim
Ooh.
08:30.48
Tim
Oh. Interesting. Yeah. Paychex also made the headlines with a 4.1 billion acquisition by Paycor and leader HCM software.
08:41.73
Andy Young
Yeah.
08:42.29
Tim
These deals reflect the surge in the strategic M&A activities across tech sectors. So.
08:48.65
Andy Young
Yes. So, mean, you really see even, know, paychecks. It was, I mean, they do payroll. Paycore does payroll, but more like human capital management.
09:03.32
Andy Young
So you see these technology companies, because I think paychecks is more in theory, a technology company, but, uh,
09:10.13
Tim
Mm-hmm.
09:10.53
Andy Young
you know, just buying stuff up. It’s, it’s a lot of cash floating around and it doesn’t sound like it when you’re Oh, it’s 4 billion. But when you think that’s 4,000 millions, that’s a lot of money, you know?
09:21.84
Tim
That’s mula.
09:25.44
Andy Young
Yeah. It’s wild. So, you know, if you’ve got a business and you’re looking, because we’ve seen this a lot too, where smaller businesses are buying up other smaller businesses now.
09:39.04
Andy Young
So, I mean, if that’s where you’re at, say you’re in an M&A or you’re thinking about doing a little merger and acquisition or something, And, you know, that happens. You got two different platforms, different technologies.
09:49.71
Tim
Okay.
09:49.85
Andy Young
You got to integrate. And so that’s one of the things we do is our VCIO services help with those integrations.
09:55.59
Tim
Yeah.
09:56.51
Andy Young
And it’s really fun, honestly, you know, because sometimes you need them both. Sometimes you don’t. But having somebody… there with you to walk you through like, well, this is what this product does.
10:07.72
Andy Young
And it’s going redundant. You don’t need both. So let’s just do a transfer or, you know, things of that nature. So yeah, check out bunker cybersecurity. If you haven’t yet, uh, BCIO services, one of the things we do, but we also do expert coaching on technology related materials.
10:22.29
Andy Young
So it’s good to know. Good to know.
10:24.53
Tim
Bunker, bunker, bunker.
10:26.59
Andy Young
Yep.
10:27.88
Tim
Story number four for the day, focus on the cloud data security. Uh, cloud security remains a top priority of businesses in 2025. It’s called zero trust architecture is becoming essential for multi-cloud environments, ensuring only authorized users can access sensitive data.
10:49.11
Tim
Hmm.
10:50.03
Andy Young
Very nice. And I think one of the big things is now we’ve got this automated cloud security, these validation tools that are helping businesses. So before there’s even like an idea that there’s a vulnerability, right? These tools are automatically saying like, oh, no, no, you can’t do this because somebody is going to exploit it.
11:10.07
Tim
Right.
11:10.10
Andy Young
And so, you know, this is, it’s unique because you could have somebody, you know, a level one help desk setting up some more advanced user accounts and these safeguards, you know, catch these problems before they become problems.
11:26.09
Tim
That’s good. Yeah, like that.
11:27.61
Andy Young
Yeah, yeah, like I think definitely you’re seeing it with Microsoft. You see it a little bit with Google, not as much. I know on Amazon’s AWS, they’ve got it.
11:38.40
Tim
Right.
11:39.36
Andy Young
So it’s definitely there. Yeah.
11:42.14
Tim
It’s coming about.
11:43.62
Andy Young
Ooh, before we move too far, other really interesting news that – you know, almost took the place of this podcast, it almost was episode 72, was the stunning news that Microsoft pulled out of Licking County.
12:00.54
Tim
Yes, I did see that on the news. Several several billion dollar project.
12:06.70
Andy Young
Now, you know, not to say we told you so, because that doesn’t help anybody, but we did mention that a few podcasts ago, that based on quantum computing and advances in AI and the lack of need for as strong processing power as you saw with deep seek that there would be less compute warehouses and sure enough it’s like microsoft listened to the podcast and was like oh yeah yeah i guess we don’t need as many so let’s just yeah
12:27.55
Tim
Wow.
12:32.48
Tim
Oh, right. You talked about it. Okay. They saw Intel as well. They’re like, oh, wait, hold up.
12:40.57
Andy Young
wait a minute
12:41.55
Tim
Let’s think about this.
12:42.80
Andy Young
Yeah. So yeah, that, that really stings for licking County and, you know, and we have some clients out there. So that also won’t disrupt, you know, taxes or, or any investments that they were hoping to get out of that.
12:51.06
Tim
Oh, yeah, we do.
12:57.56
Tim
Right. Yeah, at Bunker Cybersecurity, we specialize implementing advanced security frameworks like zero trust to safeguard your businesses. Yes, I agree.
13:07.82
Andy Young
Exactly. Exactly. So that’s pretty good stuff there. Yeah, I think that overall, quarter one has been very busy in the IT realm.
13:19.99
Andy Young
Yeah. I think one of the worthwhile, if I could, flops to mention would be the NVIDIA 50 series cards. Those, yeah. Tim, did you end up getting one?
13:34.00
Andy Young
Did you?
13:34.43
Tim
No, no, no. Yeah, I went with the AMD.
13:36.03
Andy Young
You stuck with the Yeah.
13:41.30
Andy Young
Oh yeah.
13:42.20
Tim
Last one I did. Yeah, so I do have a 4070 on the laptop I have.
13:47.53
Andy Young
Yeah. What made, this is interesting here. What made you go with the AMD?
13:53.50
Tim
Performance.
13:54.57
Andy Young
Yeah. That’s,
13:55.38
Tim
Yeah, cost and performance about the equivalent something that costs about $300 $400 more or something.
14:01.79
Andy Young
that’s wild.
14:03.05
Tim
So it depends on pricing of things and charts and reviews. And that’s how I went with it.
14:09.79
Andy Young
Yeah, man. Makes sense. Makes dollars and cents. 300.
14:16.12
Tim
Right. It’s just 300.
14:18.73
Tim
yeah
14:19.43
Andy Young
Oh, man. Oh, well, hey, if you’re out there listening and you’re like, man, how do we support Tim and Andy? You know, they make such great content and it’s so fun listening to them, you know?
14:33.01
Andy Young
No, if you do, you know, here’s some big things.
14:33.57
Tim
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
14:36.31
Andy Young
Some of the services, because we really are more in service. We have 825 technologies, mainly managed service provider there. So we do managed services.
14:48.06
Andy Young
If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a way to standardize IT costs and also ensure that you’re getting high quality care for all of your IT infrastructures. And we really drive ourselves on doing our best, being kind, and packing a lot of value in there, going that extra mile.
15:06.24
Andy Young
So whether it’s everyday stuff or complex IT projects, we’ve got that expert support 20 years of
15:07.02
Tim
That’s right. Right.
15:14.18
Andy Young
you know, killing it out there. Then we’ve got Sheepdog Design Studio. So that does lot of marketing. So whether you’re looking to do some SEO, some advanced marketing, you know, we can help you find the people for ads and things of that nature. But we definitely are more on the side of helping you with marketing strategy.
15:34.39
Andy Young
And then we have our own virtual private servers. And what’s unique about them is they’re all US-based. Sabam.
15:41.88
Tim
Win. Big win.
15:42.83
Andy Young
Right.
15:43.67
Tim
Big win.
15:43.68
Andy Young
So our pricing won’t change no matter what the guy in the office decides to do tariff wise. You know, our stuff’s US based software is US based. You know, we do the service on it. So US based.
15:58.17
Andy Young
And, you know, they’re great servers sock to it’s secure.
15:58.41
Tim
Right back to it.
16:02.22
Andy Young
It’s great to, you know, you’re working directly with us it’s a win-win and then and the portal is pretty flipping sick if i can say that like the the client portal where you go in all of your billings there you’re able to access security tools you’re able to do file management and uh check on log i mean it’s just mean we’ve been in it 20 years we’ve hosted our own site we know it like man we wish we had this and uh
16:11.92
Tim
Right.
16:23.99
Tim
Mm-hmm.
16:29.64
Andy Young
So that’s what we’ve got in there, which is pretty sweet. And then of course there’s bunker cybersecurity. So whether you’re trying to get compliance or you just need some high level strategy, like with VCIO services, you can’t afford a full-time chief technology officer, chief information officer.
16:44.49
Andy Young
That’s where we come in, right? We come in and you pay for like a small fraction of what you’d pay for the big dogs and you get us.
16:45.76
Tim
That’s right.
16:52.51
Andy Young
I mean, don’t know.
16:53.12
Tim
You are the big dogs.
16:54.59
Andy Young
Yeah, I mean, especially for small businesses, we’ve seen every mistake firsthand, and we’ve made probably 80% of those mistakes and had to fix them. So you learn a lot when you get yourself behind the eight ball.
17:08.40
Andy Young
And then when you dig yourself out, it says something about your character, too. You know, like, we’re not going to give up and leave people high and dry.
17:14.11
Tim
That’s right.
17:14.90
Andy Young
Yeah. So that, that about wraps it up, you know, part two, next week, we’re going to cover more exciting developments, including infrastructure growth, the rise of AI native consultancies.
17:28.08
Andy Young
Hold tight for that.
17:28.54
Tim
Ooh. Oh, yeah. In the meantime, check out our services at A25 Technologies for MSCB Solutions or Bunker Cybersecurity for Compliance Coaching.
17:30.85
Andy Young
Yeah.
17:39.48
Tim
Thanks for tuning in.
17:41.21
Andy Young
And, you know, don’t forget, Subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’re on Spotify. We’re on Apple Podcasts. Catch us on Castro’s and on our website, a25technologies.com.
17:51.72
Andy Young
Thanks for listening.
