00:01.15
Andy Young
Welcome back to the 825 Technologies Podcast. I’m Andy Young, and I’m here with co-host Tim, our senior tech.
00:08.69
Tim
Hello, hello.
00:10.67
Andy Young
Last week was fun. We covered part one of a two-part series of the top IT stories in quarter one, 2025. And now we’re doing part two.
00:21.50
Andy Young
So let’s get started.
00:21.67
Tim
Part two. That’s right, Andy. This quarter has been packed in exciting developments in the infrastructure’s trends, AI consulting, cloud native technologies. Let’s break it all down for our listeners.
00:35.04
Andy Young
Let’s do it. And let’s start with IT infrastructure.
00:38.83
Tim
I like it.
00:38.80
Andy Young
So every business needs an IT infrastructure, right? That’s your switches and your router and your internet service and your phones and door access and cameras and on it goes, right? There’s so much to IT now.
00:50.97
Andy Young
And now too, we’ve got really cool things in the cloud that are cloud native like Kubernetes.
00:57.68
Andy Young
Kubernetes.
00:59.09
Andy Young
Yeah, serverless architecture. They’re a branch off of Dockers. And so it’s pretty cool that now you’ve got these ways to transform how a company can deploy and scale applications through, you know, things like Kubernetes and just new cloud stuff.
01:17.65
Andy Young
Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing.
01:19.11
Tim
Right, exactly. These tools allow organizations to modernize legacy systems while reducing operation costs. Another trend integration of AI and machine learning into infrastructure management to enable predictive maintenance and optimized resource allocation.
01:37.00
Andy Young
Yes. Because, you know, that’s the fun thing about the cloud is say you only use a server or an application at the month end to reconcile accounting books. Well, you only have to turn it on for a couple days and only pay for the couple days that you have it turned on. Right.
01:52.46
Tim
Right?
01:52.42
Andy Young
So that’s cool because some of these places charge per hour of compute usage. So that’s a win. you really, yeah, you can save lot of money not having something turned on 24 seven.
01:58.98
Tim
Oh, that’s a huge one.
02:03.34
Tim
Right?
02:04.30
Andy Young
Yeah, so that’s pretty sweet. And then, you know, the other nice thing is, you know, you’ve got all of these files on servers, or you’ve got identity management that’s done by your domain server.
02:17.39
Tim
Mm-hmm.
02:17.39
Andy Young
And now you can say, oh, wait, is your Active Directory is included in my Microsoft 365 subscription? If only somebody would have told me that, right?
02:23.12
Tim
Oh
02:25.79
Andy Young
And you don’t need an… on-site server anymore. You know, you move your files to OneDrive and shared OneDrives and you just have a cloud infrastructure.
02:35.54
Tim
my.
02:36.29
Andy Young
Now, if you do that, you still need a backup, right? So that’s where DropSuite comes in.
02:39.21
Tim
Right?
02:41.35
Andy Young
That’s pretty cool little product we offer, right?
02:43.62
Tim
Right?
02:44.39
Andy Young
Yeah, that’s fun. So if you don’t know DropSuite, it basically acts as a third-party backup to Google, Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365.
02:55.84
Tim
Big. Very big.
02:56.92
Andy Young
So yeah, on those, it does all of your Google Drive or your OneDrive files, all of them. It does your email, all of them for all your users. It does your calendar. It does your contact. It does tasks and, you know, the whole nine yards. So it also does QuickBooks, which is cool.
03:13.24
Tim
Oh.
03:14.24
Andy Young
Yeah.
03:14.43
Tim
That is nice.
03:14.40
Andy Young
So if you’re working, yeah, QuickBooks online, right?
03:17.31
Tim
Oh, big one. Yep.
03:18.79
Andy Young
Got to get that backed up. You don’t want that crashing on you and you losing all your financial money.
03:23.91
Tim
Oh, that’d bad. We
03:25.50
Andy Young
Terrible. Yeah. So yeah, if you’re, you know, you’ve got your business, you’re listening to this and you’re like, wait a minute, man, that’s some cool stuff. We might be able to save some money ourselves as a company based on what you’re telling me because we have a Microsoft Office subscription and an on-site server, but we don’t use the server for much.
03:42.80
Andy Young
Well, give us a call, right?
03:45.05
Tim
can help out.
03:45.05
Andy Young
That’s… That’s right. Yeah. So, you know, those cloud type approaches moving from more legacy systems to cloud systems, 20 years, we know what’s going on with that.
03:56.64
Andy Young
We’ve done a few of those in our day.
03:58.33
Tim
No,
03:58.58
Andy Young
And yeah, so that’s all in A25 technologies, those MSP services, that managed service. But we can also do it as a project base too. So Yeah, we’re one of the few companies I think in Ohio still that’s like, hey, you know, we prefer managed service. Sure, who doesn’t?
04:14.29
Andy Young
But there’s companies out there that A, don’t know what it is. B, don’t trust it. And C, don’t want to spend on it. And, you know, we get it. We get it, you know?
04:23.12
Tim
we get understand.
04:23.81
Andy Young
Yeah.
04:24.58
Andy Young
Yeah. Not everybody has infinitely deep pockets. We certainly don’t. So, of course, we get it. You know, some things just don’t.
04:29.87
Tim
Oh, my hole opened in my pocket. lost it.
04:33.04
Andy Young
Yeah. All I have in my pocket’s a hole. Yeah.
04:36.06
Tim
Everything when it comes out.
04:36.53
Andy Young
That’s great, Tim. That’s great, man. Yeah. So, yeah, let us, if you got those questions, let us answer them. And that’s what we’re, we’ll help you out.
04:44.76
Tim
Absolutely.
04:46.64
Andy Young
good at that.
04:48.91
Tim
We’re coming up to our next segment, segment seven, the rise of AI consulting services.
04:54.08
Andy Young
Ooh.
04:55.29
Tim
Next up, AI consulting, a service that’s becoming essential for businesses looking integrate artificial intelligence responsibility.
05:04.12
Andy Young
Yes.
05:04.73
Tim
AI consultants help companies future-proof their operations by designing scalable architectures and integrate AI into core processors.
05:13.49
Andy Young
Okay.
05:14.33
Tim
Okay.
05:14.47
Andy Young
All right. So I think that this is undoubtedly one of those cool trends from quarter one that we’re starting see really come out of the woodwork.
05:15.07
Tim
Okay.
05:25.62
Tim
Thank you.
05:26.26
Andy Young
We started doing this back in 2024 for companies. And, you know, I knew right then, like, this is going to be big. Just dealing with some companies and knowing AI is a whole new branch of technology.
05:43.17
Andy Young
And for somebody that isn’t really interested in technology, to ask them to fully understand the scope that AI can handle effectively. and what it could have maybe in six months handled effectively isn’t a fair ask. And so that’s where consultants come in, right? That’s where we come in.
06:00.68
Tim
No, right.
06:00.94
Andy Young
Hey, hey, yeah.
06:01.27
Tim
What’s this?
06:03.63
Andy Young
So the big things that we’re seeing are digital transformations. So like using and customer service. That’s a huge one. Somebody calls in and your phone system is able to pull up their automatically.
06:19.56
Andy Young
but also yeah able to predict trends on tickets that’s one that we use right like oh it’s a it’s friday at 3 p.m uh you know at this time the month for this client it’s probably something related to a password reset because their domain policy wants them to reset their passwords every 30 days right so yeah things like that is really useful because then you can
06:19.67
Tim
Boop.
06:25.44
Tim
Mm-hmm.
06:39.23
Tim
Right. Mm-hmm.
06:43.89
Andy Young
you know, really get a good idea of context and fill in some blanks with certainty, not just guessing, but with some real certainty. Another big one would be like supply chain management. That’s a great place for Just seeing where it can help is, oh, what’s our usage? What’s our projected usage? What’s happened in the past years trend wise? When do we need to have a larger reserve of this product versus another product?
07:08.57
Tim
That’s good.
07:09.17
Tim
like that. That’s
07:10.00
Andy Young
Yeah, it’s great. It’s even getting into help with economic modeling sometimes of, hey, you know, one of the big parts of maybe processor chips is silver and silver is down. So this is a great time to buy processors or, you know, it’s one example. There’s a lot of them out there.
07:26.34
Andy Young
But it does help if you don’t know the industry very well. Finance is a huge place.
07:30.37
Tim
a big.
07:31.09
Andy Young
Yeah. Predicting cash flow. And yeah, one of the most fun things that we do is use to integrate systems to get a better projection of cash flow.
07:43.48
Andy Young
So, you know, we use QuickBooks, but then being able to also integrate it with our mileage software.
07:46.05
Tim
Yep.
07:51.58
Andy Young
And integrate it with our spending accounts and integrate it with, you know, I mean, there’s some amazing things that we can do as far as even expense tracking so that we get a better picture cash flow and know what’s going to happen before it happens, which is great because then you’re not.
08:02.46
Tim
Yeah, that’s nice.
08:08.61
Tim
You’re right. Especially going out and buying whole bunch of other softwares out there. Just like getting more confusing and
08:14.44
Andy Young
Right, exactly. So it does help with that whole subscription spend, which is huge. So I’d say overall… Getting into more AI in a company can make it more agile.
08:26.43
Andy Young
The company, like your NG user, you know, like our listeners right now, how it can help you, right? This is talking you.
08:32.29
Tim
Hey, you.
08:33.45
Andy Young
Yeah, you guys.
08:34.81
Tim
Talking you.
08:34.90
Andy Young
It can make your organization much more agile and give you some real-time insights that previously have only been dreamt about. And what’s amazing is some of this is, like,
08:46.21
Andy Young
super approachable price-wise where you might be in software AI costs when you’re working with somebody that knows what they’re doing, you might be at $40 a month spend to do some of this, which is unheard of.
08:55.57
Tim
Mm-hmm.
09:00.67
Andy Young
I mean, if you’re a nonprofit, to be able to get insights into that. Now, you know, the consulting fee is a whole different thing.
09:06.52
Tim
Oh, right.
09:07.33
Andy Young
Once it’s set up, it’s set up. Right. You might pay 10 hours consulting up front, but then you have a model that you can use for the whole year. And it’s only 480 bucks a year in licensing through those, uh, you know, APIs and such for the actual AI usage.
09:22.94
Andy Young
So it’s a win, definitely a win.
09:26.09
Andy Young
No.
09:26.51
Tim
When. Yeah, well, you’re a bunker cybersecurity. We are virtual CIO, That includes guidance of adopting AI solutions securely and effectively.
09:37.71
Andy Young
That is right.
09:37.86
Tim
So, mm-hmm.
09:40.00
Andy Young
Definitely worth checking out.
09:41.35
Tim
Check it out.
09:42.18
Andy Young
All right. We’re on the story eight. This is kind of cool. We now have cloud native technologies that are starting to drive innovation.
09:52.82
Andy Young
For instance, all right. We talked about serverless architecture.
09:58.83
Tim
Mm-hmm.
10:00.05
Andy Young
these new applications that you can build with these is where things are changing. Not only do you have vibe coding, have you heard of vibe coding yet? It’s like all the rage.
10:09.68
Tim
Oh, no.
10:10.22
Tim
Oh,
10:10.56
Andy Young
You sit down with an AI chat bot and you start like coding with it. So you say like, oh, I want to do this. And then it spits out code and you throw it into your compiler and you test it. Okay.
10:20.81
Tim
no. Fail, pass, fail.
10:21.18
Andy Young
not quite working right. Let’s try this now.
10:22.49
Tim
Oh,
10:23.11
Andy Young
And so, you know, where it used to be, you’d have to really sit down and think about, we used to have to think, Tim, believe or not.
10:30.83
Tim
it hurts.
10:32.22
Andy Young
Back when I was a kid, we, no.
10:32.39
Tim
remember those days.
10:33.56
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, no, you’ve got this where you can build new applications. the really nice part is you don’t have to manage underlying infrastructure.
10:46.64
Andy Young
One really good example of this is Bubble, Bubble IO.
10:51.30
Tim
Oh, yes.
10:52.17
Andy Young
Kind of like a drag and drop application editor. So you build web apps in a matter of… hours that are fully functional, fully backend database supported, secure, scalable.
11:07.95
Andy Young
So you can have a proof concept and then keep building on your proof of concept for production. So that’s a nice little feature too.
11:13.59
Tim
Wow. That’s a very nice feature.
11:15.78
Andy Young
Yeah.
11:15.96
Tim
Yeah.
11:17.68
Andy Young
Yeah.
11:19.79
Tim
How you say that? Communities.
11:21.42
Andy Young
Yeah. Kubernetes, Kubernetes.
11:23.48
Tim
Communities. This also plays a significant role in containing container orchestrations, making it easier for developers to automate app development and scaling.
11:30.08
Andy Young
Yes.
11:34.88
Tim
These tools are essential for businesses aiming to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced environment.
11:41.55
Andy Young
Yes.
11:42.68
Tim
Yeah, it’s nice.
11:43.14
Andy Young
So that orchestration’s big, you know, that, you know, you build it up and then actual, you know, the hard work is starting to kind of disappear. The drudgery, the schlep task, as we were talking about last week, schlep task.
11:57.24
Andy Young
Yeah. It’s really starting to kind of change to where AI can do it, you know, like, yeah,
12:04.20
Andy Young
Yeah, we need more resources. We need backups. We need whatever. It takes care of this and gives you confirmation, which kind of nice. So if you’re considering to look at more cloud-native platforms, that’s where Sheepdog Design Studio can help on the design and understanding, oh, you want to start with something small and move up.
12:13.62
Tim
It is nice. Ooh.
12:24.53
Andy Young
This is a great platform to look into. So you also are good at optimizing your digital presence. So Sheepdog Design Studio, give us a call, right?
12:35.76
Tim
Go, go, go. we’re on to segment nine, the role of AI native startups, enterprise growth.
12:42.62
Andy Young
All right.
12:45.21
Tim
AI native startups are reshaping enterprise software by focusing on outcome-based pricing models rather than traditional licensing fees. This shifts in creating opportunities for businesses to adopt more efficiency tools tailored to specific needs.
12:55.73
Andy Young
Yes.
13:05.09
Andy Young
Pretty cool. Yeah. So you got these startups and they’re doing new scenarios for things like CRMs.
13:13.40
Tim
Oh, yeah.
13:14.22
Andy Young
I mean, imagine instead of paying, you know, that’s $40 per month per user for CRM.
13:20.20
Tim
Oh.
13:20.20
Andy Young
It’s now a 10% of deals closed for that month.
13:25.97
Tim
Not bad.
13:29.61
Andy Young
Yeah. Now you’ve got a different pricing model, right? That’s based on, well, what do you get out of it? You know, or, you know, maybe it’s a mail email newsletter program and it’s like, hey, it’s, I don’t know, $20 for every 1000 click throughs on this ad, you know, so, yeah.
13:50.20
Tim
Ooh.
13:53.77
Andy Young
Pretty nice little thing. So they also do things like different multimodal platforms, whether it’s processing text or images or voice or video. So you could, well, Chad GPT, now you can throw out videos.
14:06.28
Andy Young
Gemini, Google Gemini, you can upload videos and you can ask it to critique stuff, you know, like…
14:11.02
Tim
Ooh, that’s nice.
14:12.04
Andy Young
Yeah.
14:12.28
Tim
That’s a creepy.
14:12.24
Andy Young
Say you’re an athlete you’re out there throwing discus. You could be like, hey, here’s a video of me throwing discus.
14:15.06
Tim
It’s,
14:17.38
Andy Young
What can I improve? And it’ll sit there, look at the video and spit back legitimate stuff to you. Yeah. Baseball player, like look at my swing. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.
14:27.32
Tim
Your Arnold voice is wrong. You gotta get the uh…
14:30.80
Andy Young
That would be great. We should do that.
14:36.69
Andy Young
Back to Arnold. This is a, when was that?
14:39.56
Andy Young
Episode 71.
14:40.36
Andy Young
I think we had the end of it. We had our Arnold off.
14:44.04
Tim
it’s
14:45.11
Andy Young
Yeah, man, that would be critique my Arnold impersonation and see what it says.
14:50.93
Tim
Good.
14:51.13
Tim
Yeah, that’s true.
14:52.84
Andy Young
wonder how, yeah, how detailed would it get, you know?
14:56.48
Andy Young
Yeah, man. Well, and that’s the other thing too. It can actually, Hey, I want you to make this picture. Okay, sure. I can make this picture for $2. Right. So it’s kind of like some of these new AI native startups are kind of replacing the gig economy.
15:12.06
Andy Young
You know, Fiverr used to out to Fiverr and be like, Hey, I, you know, I’ll pay you $50 for four good logos to pick one. And, you know, somebody be sitting there making logos and Photoshop. And so now that’s not really necessary. Yeah.
15:25.97
Tim
That’s right. Yeah. Well, here at Sheepdog Design Studio, we’re going to be leveraging these advancements to help our clients create smarter marketing strategic power by AI.
15:36.86
Tim
So…
15:37.22
Andy Young
Yes, exactly. So, you know, we can help you come up with the strategy and then we can say, use this platform and use these instruction sets that we designed to help hone in the exact reproducible, you know, brand identity through AI.
15:53.78
Andy Young
So that’s pretty cool. Yeah. Well, for segment 10, here we go. Ready? The big flop of quarter one, in my opinion, 2025, all of the freaking tech layoffs.
16:05.54
Tim
Oh, he is.
16:06.64
Andy Young
yeah so what you’re looking at conserve or i don’t know if it’s conservative generally accepted estimates was towards the end of 2024 and so far into quarter one 2025 there were close to 300 000 layoffs in the tech industry it’s a ton yeah
16:25.84
Tim
That’s a lot.
16:28.90
Tim
That’s a lot. Is that part of the intel? Or is that…
16:33.37
Andy Young
Well, I’ll tell you some of the companies here in March, just in March, March alone. It’s like trending up by the way, 88,000 tech workers were laid off.
16:42.75
Tim
Oh, geez.
16:43.66
Andy Young
Yeah. So Google laid off a ton, Microsoft automatic, who are the founders of WordPress, Canva laid off bunch, not a bunch, but for them, a bunch.
16:49.07
Tim
Right.
16:53.56
Tim
Geez.
16:56.83
Andy Young
so there was like North volt. They laid off 2,800,
17:01.91
Tim
Geez.
17:02.59
Andy Young
Yeah. Block laid off around a thousand Siemens 5,600.
17:02.72
Tim
Wow.
17:08.10
Andy Young
Yeah.
17:09.93
Tim
Wow.
17:10.50
Andy Young
Yeah. hello, fresh. They’re laying off 273 full-time employees. NASA’s laying off, uh, Wayfair HP enterprise laid off 2,500.
17:22.73
Tim
Wow.
17:23.49
Andy Young
I know, man. TikTok, obviously 300 worker. Yeah.
17:25.96
Tim
Oh, yeah. Obviously.
17:28.33
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. HP has been laying off people like mad. Google has as well. Facebook meta has laid off a bunch because of advancements in AI, right? So eBay, Starbucks, Expedia, Zendesk, blue origin, red fin, which red fin and Zillow just got a real,
17:49.60
Andy Young
wake up call because they aren’t allowed to list some stuff. Now, realtors are kind of revolting against them and are, are purposefully pocket listing stuff on local websites first because the market’s so hot.
17:56.46
Tim
No.
18:02.16
Andy Young
They don’t have to rely on those, but yeah. So foes, Sonos, man, Sonos,
18:11.71
Tim
No.
18:15.09
Andy Young
don’t know if they’ll be around in a few years.
18:16.80
Tim
but
18:17.80
Andy Young
Okta, who does identity management, Amazon, Stripe. I mean, it’s just been nonstop, nonstop, large list of tech layoffs. So I would say that in quarter one, 2025 has been the biggest tech flop.
18:35.41
Andy Young
Yeah. And I think that it’s been heavy on AI, right?
18:37.41
Tim
It’s crazy. All
18:39.93
Andy Young
This, these, these 10 stories really, really heavy on AI. And I would say that’s one of the many things that we have to figure out is as jobs get replaced, what is replacing those people’s opportunity to work, be creative, something they’re proud of, right? Like,
19:02.00
Andy Young
That’s one part. The other part is what’s replacing their income.
19:05.79
Tim
right.
19:07.08
Andy Young
Yeah. I mean, so if is so wonderful and it’s so much cheaper to use, should there be a tax or a system that you pay into for universal basic income if you’re using AI to help offset I don’t know.
19:23.25
Andy Young
That’s just a top of my head solution.
19:25.06
Tim
Yeah, I thought.
19:25.27
Andy Young
That’s probably not the best solution out there. I mean, you could really come up with some good solutions, but I think there needs to be an answer to, yeah, there needs to be an answer to a very apparent problem of, you know, you’re laying off.
19:31.32
Tim
Andy. Andy.
19:38.07
Tim
Right.
19:42.09
Andy Young
I wouldn’t be surprised by halfway through the year if over a half a million people haven’t lost their jobs in the tech industry alone from AI, let alone manufacturing.
19:49.57
Tim
That’s crazy.
19:51.43
Andy Young
Do you need a worker there anymore when you can do genetic AI on robots and it can figure out how to put these things together? These cars or these widgets or these phones or
20:01.24
Tim
put the top on the toothpaste.
20:03.97
Andy Young
true that man. And I’ll tell you what, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you’re not putting it back in.
20:10.100
Tim
Nope.
20:12.65
Andy Young
That cat’s not going back in the bag and it’s out of the bag and it knows that it doesn’t want to go back in the bag.
20:14.90
Tim
That’s right. Right.
20:18.75
Andy Young
So yeah. No, so that, you know, think that’s the big flop. We got to figure that out.
20:25.08
Tim
right
20:26.11
Andy Young
Maybe we’ll have a whole podcast about our ideas of what does humanity do with AI? Because what?
20:35.54
Tim
Ooh.
20:36.13
Andy Young
Yeah, the idea was we’d use technology to take care of our mundane tasks so that we could art and creative stuff. But it seems that what’s happened is we still do the mundane tasks like laundry and unloading a dishwasher while AI is the one that’s doing the art
20:51.74
Andy Young
Just a thought.
20:52.15
Tim
Wow. Yeah, it’s…
20:54.19
Andy Young
Yeah. But anyway, that wraps up part two of our top IT stories and trends from quarter one, 2025.
21:00.92
Tim
Mm-hmm.
21:02.58
Andy Young
And we hope you enjoyed the deep dive into the latest developments shaping the tech world.
21:07.97
Tim
Yeah. If you miss part one, be sure to check it out. It’s packed with insights of agentic AI and digital health funding trends. Don’t forget to scribe so you never miss episode.
21:17.18
Andy Young
Yes. Thank you for tuning in. If your business needs support, remember, we got 825 Technologies doing MSP stuff, whether it’s IT projects or just streamlining your approach to AI.
21:28.28
Tim
Mm-hmm.
21:31.05
Andy Young
We got Sheepdog Design. We’ve got the virtual private servers, all US-based.
21:35.54
Tim
Mm-hmm.
21:35.88
Andy Young
We’ve got cutting-edge tools to help you utilize generative AI. And… Bunker cybersecurity. So when you need security in your IT realm, when you need some expert advisory services and consulting, VCIO services, or need some advanced frameworks like zero trust, that’s where Bunker steps in.
21:58.79
Andy Young
We do that real heavy lifting on that end.
21:59.13
Tim
That’s right.
22:00.43
Andy Young
So, yeah. So reach out to us anytime we’re here to help. And once again, Thanks so much for listening. We appreciate Be sure to subscribe and to like, to let your friends know.
