- [Narrator] It's lunch time,

and this Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.

(lively music)

I get invited to attend tech events

all the time in Las Vegas,

and whenever I can, I like to make the quick trip

from Redmond and meet with other tech leaders,

and learn about what they're doing.

(lively music)

Today I hit the road with Michele Bustamante,

the founder and CIO of Solliance,

a bonafide cloud expert,

and a long time tech executive.

(lively music)

(piano music)

- Hey.

- Welcome, Michele, how are ya?

- Wow, this is awesome.

Who wouldn't wanna get in this car?

- Right?

In Vegas, in a Cadillac, with Elvis.

- With 500 horsepower.

- Exactly.

- Let's see what this puppy can do.

- You are a busy person.

You are this incredibly sought after speaker

at events like this,

but you also have a day job, in that

you're the co-founder and the CIO of

a software consulting firm called Solliance.

- Yup.

- But you're also a long time executive,

and a Microsoft MVP,

- Yeah, I-- - And a regional director.

I kinda didn't get the memo that you didn't have to

try everything in tech. - You ever sleep?

- Yeah.

- Believe it or not, I make it work.

- Tell us about your company.

- Yeah, so Solliance is a consulting firm.

We're basically a coalition of partners,

and what we do is we assemble teams of experts

and make it look like one team by making sure

we have the leadership around it.

- We're gonna play a little game.

- Tell me.

- The game is called 'this or that'.

- Okay.

- I'm gonna give you two topics--

- K

- And then I'm gonna give you some descriptions,

and you're gonna tell me, you know, is it A or B.

- Okay.

- Okay, so it's slot machine or presidential candidate.

- Okay.

Oh, this is gonna be fun, this is a great year for that.

- Gives a lot of speeches.

- Presidential candidate.

- Indeed. (ding)

Inspires confidence at first but always disappoints.

- Presidential candidate.

(ding) (laughs)

- Is full of money and covered in germs.

- Presidential candidate.

(laughs) (ding)

- Owned by a giant corporation.

- Presidential candidate.

- Alright, (ding)

I'm doing a trend, here.

(laughs)

Was portrayed by Robert Redford

in the movie, 'The Candidate'.

- Oh.

Wait a minute.

What was the other one?

Presidential candidate, or?

- A slot machine.

- Slot machine.

(ding) (laughs)

No...

- So what advice do you give to people on that...

On what should move to the cloud, what shouldn't, kinda--

- Right, so people used to be nervous about

going cloud at all, show me it's safe.

But, now what I see is I have all of these companies

that have, you know, questionnaires from their customers

saying, "How do I trust you in the cloud?".

And you have to like, you know, prove that you have DR,

and that you have, you know, backup,

and that you have good procedures that are secure.

But, we no longer have to answer the question of,

"How do I trust the cloud?", so now it's more about,

"How do I migrate safely?",

and data is always the first story.

You know, let's make sure that you can

leverage that data in the future.

- Yep.

- By treating it as, not a liability, but an asset now,

and then the rest flows from there.

- So when you speak at a conference like this,

and you do this a lot,

can you remember what it was like at your first one?

- What was it like your first time?

what was going through your mind?

- I can tell you that.

When I first started out in this industry,

I was just a developer, hardcore,

and I got really sucked in by it, right?

So, I couldn't work enough,

and I got invited to do these different things,

like teach a class.

First class was like 30 people.

My voice is shaking, you know,

and then I was fine once I got the eyeballs of the people,

I'm like, "Okay, good."

And I decided, after some years, that, you know,

I admired some of these people in the industry.

People we know, like Carl Franklin,

I remember seeing him speak, and I remember thinking,

"I wanna do that one day."

So, I asked this guy who was the chair of this conference,

BCDC, could I come to the conference?

And, I actually said, I think, "You don't really have

a lot of women speakers, I'd like to do this."

And he said, "Just send me some topics."

So, like an idiot, I took the three hardest possible topics,

thinking I wanna get in--

- Might as well go all in.

- No, I wanna get it, I gotta give him some

really good meaty topics.

So, I was doing things at work like D POM optimization,

you know, STL, and WIN I-NET, you know,

communication libraries and things like that.

So, I offered a talk on each of those thinking

one will be a fit, and he accepted all three.

(laughs)

- So I'm like, "Oh, okay." - Wow.

- Now I gotta get three speeches ready--

- Yep.

- And it's my first time, that's lovely.

- Yeah, that's intense.

- So, I get it all ready,

but I over-prepare for the first one,

and I remember, like, getting into the room

before the guy was coming off stage,

there's 300 people in the room,

the lights are shining on this guy,

and I'm sitting there,

and I literally think I started having a panic attack.

- Sure.

- So, then I got up there,

and again, voice shaking at first, 'cause it's like,

lights on you, 300 people.

- Oh, yeah.

- And, it's a funny thing, it's like this fight or flight,

you know, I was over-prepared, and that was the key.

'Cause I knew exactly what I needed to do, so--

- If you're confident, it becomes second nature, it's easy.

- Exactly.

Had I not been prepared, it could have gone south, right?

- So, do you find yourself now, when you do it...

It's just fun?

- Yeah. - And you get up there,

and you just have fun with it.

- It is, it's true.

- [Announcer] Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break:

- I think the whole 'Women in Tech' subject is so complex,

that there's a lot of ways to attack that one, right?

Leadership at the top, if they're bought in,

to diversity...

And this goes across all kinds of diversity,

without just talking about women.

You know, then it will happen.

I think we just built our first outtake.

(lively music)