Benefits of Early Adoption for MSPs with Rogier de Jong of Kembit

What if the secret to building a successful Managed Service Provider (MSP) lies in the heart of a castle in the Netherlands? Get ready to unravel this secret as we chat with our distinguished guest, Rogier de Jong, of Kembit - a company that has mastered the art of navigating technology integration and company restructuring, all while operating from a castle. Roger's fascinating journey from a Microsoft consultant to an MSP stalwart is sure to inspire and educate tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike.

Striking the right balance between customer needs and quality standards is no walk in the park, but Rogier offers incredible insights into how to maintain this delicate equilibrium. Listen to his rich experience in the early adoption of Azure and the pivotal role this played in keeping Kembit at the forefront of the ever-changing public cloud landscape. Moreover, Roger shares the importance of automation and efficiency in the successful journey of an MSP. His first-hand account of transitioning from a consultant to an MSP is invaluable, making this episode a goldmine of insights for those looking to flourish in the tech industry. Tune in for an educational, inspiring, and captivating discussion.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Sometimes I was a bit too enthusiastic and started using things a bit too early.

Speaker 2: 0:25

This week on. Now that's it. Roger De Jong of Kembe in the Netherlands talks about his journey from starting out as a Microsoft consultant to building a successful MSP.

Speaker 1: 0:34

We're also currently combining the two parts of the company to work together a bit more.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Welcome to Now that's it Stories of MSP Success, where we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they use their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.

Speaker 3: 0:56

I'm going to try to pronounce it correctly Ro here. Yes, I see I made it even worse. All right, we'll go with the Roger, because, as an American, that's the best that can do. Okay, thank you. I've lived in America. For you, they call me Roger. Okay, sounds good. Well, thank you very, very much for being here. Why don't we start off by you introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your role at Kembe?

Speaker 1: 1:20

Okay, well, as I'll pronounce my name right. So my name is Roger De Jong and in English I usually call myself Roger Young. That's the literal translation of my name. I've been working for Kembe, my current company, for almost 15 years now 15, not 50. Fantastic.

Speaker 1: 1:44

I started out as a Microsoft consultant, primarily, and about seven years ago eight years ago we a new director came and wanted to build out the MSP part of our company and he needed a technical conscience, somebody who could have the NSA in what sort of technologies we use and how we implement stuff at customers. So I started talking with him and I said, well, I would like that role. And he said, well, if you want it, please come and help me. And so that's how it started, and along the way we've made some good decisions, I think. Azure we adopted Azure in a pretty early stage, so we had time to make mistakes before the before the customers really had to experience the mistakes. So that's my role as a technical manager. We call it because technical conscience is something that you put on a card or you have to explain yourself every time.

Speaker 3: 2:55

Yeah, that's great. So tell us a little bit about Kembe. You've been there for 15 years. That's fantastic. Tell us a little bit about the company. Who are the current sort of customers that you guys have and how big is the company?

Speaker 1: 3:08

The company combined. So, as I said, it's a combination of an MSP and a consultancy branch. Combined with all the HQ, it's about 120, 130 people and I think about 50 of them are MSP part. As I'm saying this, we're also currently combining the two parts of the company to work together a bit more. So that's the size of our company.

Speaker 1: 3:40

We're located in the Netherlands, in the south of the Netherlands. Really, I don't know if you have a map of the Netherlands in your head that there's a long, small part on the right and we're in the south of that part of the Netherlands. That's our main office. We have an office in Eindhoven. That's a little bit more up, and we have a small branch also there, utrecht. So that's where we're located. We actually are. Our main office is an old, it's a castle. It's not as nice as the castle over here. It's called a castle in the Netherlands. It's very old building, so that's also nice, where we can invite our customers, and it's old meets new. It's the medieval part meeting the new technology. So, yeah, so it's a nice place. It's good to work there and I live only 15 minutes away, so my community time is perfect.

Speaker 3: 4:41

So very good, very good. So you talked a little bit during your introduction about some of the good decisions you made, but talk a little bit about, over the last 15 years, what have been some of the challenges that can be, and maybe even from a technology perspective, that you guys have run into, and how did you get over this?

Speaker 1: 5:01

I think the challenge, one of the things and you said how did we get over those? I don't think we are. We figured it out, it's okay.

Speaker 1: 5:10

But we're working on it, Cause we started out as a consultant company and when you're as a consultant, when you go to a customer, you do what the customer asks, and even if it's if you think, well, that's not to be a smart decision. Or and I think that's one of the things that you think have to be careful with a little bit is the customer is always right, Because I think in our branch that's seldom true and you have to tell the customer that politely. But I think if you keep on saying, well, customer, if you want it like that, we'll do it like that, Then you have to spend a lot of time cleaning it up also, and so I think that's one of the things that we learn to do also. And more made, yeah, suggest to the customer no, you want this as a result. So you should do it like this and not the way you think you should do it.

Speaker 3: 6:13

Yeah, that's great, and you're not alone. What you're experiencing. We see partners running into the same thing the mix between standard and non-standard. From my past experience, right, we talked over breakfast. I worked at an MSP that was 20 employees, that grew to 300 employees over a 15-year period of time, and when we talked to customers, it was a big shift for us to say this is our offer, this is what it looks like, and you either take it or you leave it right Like this is what we feel is the minimum viable stack. This is the security credentials, the security protocols that should be in there, and while you may need not need everything, we know better, right, and so that's a big shift to make that and it's not easy.

Speaker 1: 7:00

Yeah, and also, as you said, to have the courage to say to the customer it's this or it's not us, that's not in our genes.

Speaker 3: 7:09

So the one thing I'll say and hopefully this is what Embed is sort of experiencing as well is there is some room for flexibility. It doesn't have to be. This is the end-to-end solution, right, and so the more standard an offering can look like, the better things are gonna be, obviously from an efficiency perspective and a scalability perspective. But to your point earlier, I mean, when you walk into a specific industry and they say, well, we really need this, this is really important from a data protection or from a security perspective, I think it's really important that you obviously keep your ears open and yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Yeah, and also that's interesting that you say, because the last couple of years we have more focusing on healthcare pharmaceutical industry and well then, you, we're not experts in that field. But then when the customer says, well, we need this much on auditing information, then our first thing for a technician is to say, well, do you really need that much? But if they need it for compliance, that's the things that you have to. You can't say, well, we don't do that at all. You can, but then you don't get the customer. So, yeah, you still have to adapt to the needs of the customer. That's great.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Roger, what was the point over the last 15 years? Or was there a point where you sort of realized this is it, I made the right decision, I made the right spot? What was that point when you just sort of realized now, that's it, I figured it out.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Well, one thing I think that was a good decision was the adoption of Azure. I think that when I because I'm well, I'm a very Microsoft minded man. I'm also a trainer, a Microsoft certified trainer. I have almost 40 Microsoft certifications, so I know the world and some of the products maybe we got into early and they died. The system sent the products. I don't know if you know them. I was a very I liked them, very enthusiastic person about them too, but they slowly I don't know if they even exist still anymore.

Speaker 1: 9:29

But again, azure, we started using it. We also. We have a small development we're small, we have a development department also and they needed to have a stable platform. And, yeah, windows service, they aren't as stable as possible. So that was one of the very first commercial uses that we had for Azure to just use the SQL platform as a service part of Azure. We use that for a long time without expanding to the rest. And then one time I said, well, I think we should use more, especially when Office 365 came up, of course, and then you have Azure AD already in the back and I said, yeah, we should use more of that, because this is where the world is going to, and maybe sometimes I was a bit too enthusiastic and started using things a bit too early for Microsoft.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Everybody knows Microsoft. You only get in after version 2.0. Version 1.0 is not, it's a tryout for Microsoft. And then they say, okay, we did a lot of things wrong, we're gonna start all over and then it's good. So version 2.0 of Azure well, how do they call it?

Speaker 1: 10:44

The resource variant instead of the service variant that they started out, that was stable and still you learn things and you progress. But I think, as you, yeah, we made mistakes, but it was before the customer noticed anything, and so we had early adopters of customers and the like. They were pretty pretty good. So I think it's funny because we're I think I'm one of the customers of Enable who's been asking for the Azure SSO for the longest time, because that was for me and all our other tools they already added. And the funny thing Enable they kept saying, yeah, it's gonna be there, it's gonna be, and this year, really, really, and now it's finally here. But then I hear in the audience that a lot of other companies they say, well, yeah, we don't know, we're not sure. So that's a bit strange for me because I think they're yeah, not as far with.

Speaker 3: 11:46

Azure. You were an early adopter and I would agree that even in the States we see there's a mix of MSPs that have gone all in from a cloud perspective and early on they figured out a way to to bundle their services on top of public cloud and use some of those as a service type offerings from Microsoft and some of the other major providers. But there's still a lot that you know, for one reason or another just haven't moved maybe as aggressively, and you know from my experience, cloud isn't going anywhere. It is continuing to progress and that's great that you were sort of an early adopter.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:24

Roger, tell me what's something you're really really passionate about and what do you bring to your team. I mean, you've been in technology for a long time, but what gets you really excited?

Speaker 1: 12:37

Well, I've always been. You know, kickstart the old, really, that's one of the first well, I don't call it programming language, but scripting language I came in contact with and that has always been. Well, you know, kickstart kind of let it go the last couple of years, but I was very enthusiastic about that. And then Phoebe Script In kickstart. Actually there's a user board of kickstart, you know it. Yeah, look up the name Drill Sergeant, that's me. I've.

Speaker 1: 13:11

Well, I'm gonna have a lot of talks about kickstart, but there was a championship of kicks golf. They called it, and the object of the game was to write a program, write a script and then make it as short as possible. And I've won that, I think, two years in a row. I was the champion of kicks kicks golf. So that was a long time ago, but I had to get back to now.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Scripting was always very helpful for me Because, as Bill Gates says, good administrator is a lazy administrator. That's right. So I always use kickstart to ease my tasks, phoebe Script to ease my tasks. But if I was okay, I thought, well, this it's gonna be, this is a very important step for you.

Speaker 1: 13:57

And for a long time I've always said well, if somebody comes to our company and they don't want to learn PowerShell or they don't know PowerShell, then they're not right for us, cause I think that's it's such an important part of the technical baggage that you need to have to script, cause nowadays, yeah, if you only can in Azure, if you can only configure things through the portal, it's too slow, it's too. Yeah, you make too many mistakes. You can make a lot of mistakes with PowerShell too, but I think that's one of the things that I'm passionate about also, and that's sometimes when I'm not, yeah, last couple of years, I'm more writing papers and things, and then I miss just writing scripts and then, but yeah, sometimes do it and I still got it a bit, so it's really smart.

Speaker 3: 14:52

The most sort of successful MSPs have, in my opinion, gone sort of all in on automation and they're finding a way to do things more efficiently, and that obviously shows up in the bottom line when you can support, you know, four times as many devices with one person that maybe the normal MSP can, and so I'd love to hear that you've put an investment in that and that you're passionate about that, and I wish you the best of luck on that too. Thank you, yeah, thank you very much for being here, roger. This is a great session, and I'd love to hear about your history and a bit more about KEMBIT. Thank you, well, thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 15:30

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