Theta Lake Targets UCaaS Compliance Challenges

foreign caravalla from ZK research and I am joined today by Garth Landers who is uh director of product marketing at Theta Lake Garth why don't you say hello to everybody just do a quick intro on yourself and tell us what data Lake does yeah thanks for having museos so again director of product marketing at Theta Lake we are responsible for providing compliance and security for unified and modern collaboration uh platforms today so everything you think of in your organization that really you know took off and accelerated during the pandemic and is really part of the mainstream workplace today everything ranging from Zoom to Microsoft teams to Cisco WebEx RingCentral Asana and as we'll talk today about whiteboards we're there to help regulated organizations provide a compliance solution so that they can unlock the features accelerate the adoption of these Technologies in their organization and know they're using them safe and compliantly we're founded in 2017 with the intention of supporting all of these platforms and not only partner and have over 100 Integrations across voice video text compute any Communications but we're also partners and invested by Zoom Cisco ring central and others Salesforce and slack as well yeah that just I guess goes to show how important this is uh and uh you know you mentioned mural which we'll talk about in a bit but I understand that Enterprise connect you actually won best to show for that and uh you guys seem to win a lot of awards uh which I think underscores the important Security on clients now um You you touched on the pandemic um and I just wanted to level set a little bit here what are you seeing from your customer base there's a lot of chatter are people going back in the office are they not hybrid workers a big focus of conversation at Enterprise connect what are you using from your customer base who tends to be you know very um a lot of the regulated Industries which frankly I thought would never work remotely historically right yeah for sure so obviously Financial Service is a big foundation for us and you can see you know a lot of those large investment Banks and global banking institutions returning to office in many cases and still for many roles um supporting entirely remote work so it really is a hybrid environment that said I think what we're seeing is that you know the important thing is is that the adoption of these tools took place you know accelerated it was happening before the pandemic but really accelerated during the pandemic and they've been cemented right they've been laid as a foundation you know we have a generation of of knowledge workers and users that are far more Adept and familiar with using these Technologies than email for example right we've done some surveys that show you know uh chat and Video Communications virtual meetings have surpassed email usage so that trend is well established and you know to the question of where it's taking place I don't think that's as important so much as you know how it's taking place you know the idea that virtual meetings are you know a part of the foundation of the workplace and that chat mobile Communications SMS are you know sanctioned and endorsed by companies so you know the other thing about return to office and you know life post pandemic now in 2023 is that we have freedom and people are on the go they're on the Move they're traveling so for example you know you were an Enterprise connect and we've communicated many times you're often on the go in an airport in a coffee shop however it is and we're using all of those tools so that applies to you know the fabric of work as well yeah and uh I'm assuming as people move as people move from the office out to their home or wherever they were working from vacation or you know wherever uh compliance got harder correct like okay could you just walk through some of the challenges that companies May face yeah so you know the looking at this through the backwards you know historical lens that everyone really rushed out regulated organizations as well let's get empowered let's collaborate let's get people up and moving and productive when the pandemic occurred and compliance and security while not an afterthought you know was secondary right and so now time has passed and Regulators have certainly noticed right we saw in the last year over two billion dollars worth of fines U.S dollars against five very large investment Banks and you know the warnings of many of potentially more to come on a global basis so Regulators have taken note um from a compliance you know challenges standpoint organizations historically have built um infrastructure you know to support the monitoring and capture of communications like email and chat you know certainly as well as that's been around for some time but these virtual meeting platforms are a new a newer challenge for those organizations and so what to capture what are people using you know you know as well as anyone large organizations for example may have between three and six different platforms they're taking best of breeds approaches so from a compliance standpoint you know those internal compliance teams have to really get an understanding of the landscape what are they doing what are we sanctioning you know what are users potentially doing that's unsanctioned right with those fines a lot of it was WhatsApp usage and we'll talk about that for example but so it's it's really a quantity and acceleration and volume of of communications that's really overwhelmed uh some organizations and really not knowing what they have and and what's what's taking place you know uh both from a sponsored and sanctioned standpoint to a shadow I.T perspective yeah and you're uh from what I understand I've seen your two interactions very sophisticated it can actually look look for watermarks on documents it can recognize images on the screen and yeah so it's not just text right it's it's really any type of communication and uh you know you you'd mentioned that companies use between three instances collaboration tools I think also you've probably seen this here on customer base I you know it seemed like uh last year at this time we were all talking about how companies might consolidate down to one and that's not just that's just not happened in fact I saw a city by netscout a little um maybe a year or so ago that said companies are actually looking to increase the number of collaboration tools that we have so I think multi-vendor is certainly the way forward and that just adds the complexity correct yeah you know that's that's I mean you you and I have seen all these Trends before every time there's a new you know Advent of Technology there's a desire to streamline it and the reality is lots of these platforms they do lots of different things there's different modalities different use cases and uh organizations you know think about that as an ideal but it remains that and ideal and so I think probably the the realistic trend is you know maybe during the pandemic when this first happened you know they had a half dozen or they had eight and now they're streamlining to three or four and taking a best of breed approach so um consolidation has happened but it's consolidation from a very large you know starting point yeah and uh um the cost of non-compliance actually you you talked about some issues um and and I've always said that as an organization the security team can't be the department of no right because users will find way and you mentioned WhatsApp and I imagine they were using Whatsapp because they weren't allowed to do what they wanted to do with one of the corporate tools and they've always likened uh consumer Behavior to be a little bit like if you remember the old Jurassic Park movie where uh you know life finds a way right users find a way right they're going to communicate now but so you know sometimes companies look at the cost of compliance has been overwhelming but uh some data from a report that you and I worked on together which I'll make sure the links included below but the average cost of compliance there's some data points uh was about five and a half million per organization but the cost of non-compliance was about 10 million more in that was it 14.8 million the average cost of a non-compliance in fact is increased 45 in 10 years and the remediation costs uh for uh every event is about formula and revenue so there this is an expensive if you get compliance wrong it can be extremely expensive right yeah that the cost and that's you know that's a very important lens to look through right I think when our customers our prospects you know the the folks that we talk to in the industry think about this they look through that lens and they see those worst case scenarios you know what's going to look what could it look like on the other end of those spines and sanctions and judgments and along with that comes a lot of bad PR and loss of brand and reputation and you know bad news cycles and all of those things and that's important I think the other thing that they're seeing and to your point which was you know being the department of no you know users are going to find a way water finds a way you know people are going to adopt those consumer-based behaviors and Technologies they use that's another cost and that cost is you know there's a few things going on there one is most of our customers and Prospects have invested in multiple platforms and you know they've made the decision to adopt these and then they're saying no and they're restricting functionality so they're not getting the full economic value of that investment that in many cases they're paying for functionality whether it's chat or in meeting chat or polling or whiteboards and they're not reaping the rewards right so that's a lost productivity cost that goes on and then there's other costs as well um from a productivity standpoint compliance Personnel you know they need to review this and if it's not easy to do if they're losing the context of those Communications if a chat is truncated into a series of emails which is what Legacy approaches do or if they are not able to capture emojis and emoticons and reactions and likes and gifs and memes and understand the context for compliance folks you know that becomes very challenging burdensome and they get bogged down you know they lose the ability to detect that risk and they spend more time reviewing content than they they would than not using us so there's a lot of different cost factors to look look at from a compliance and productivity standpoint and really unlocking the value of those unified communication Investments yeah I think the other aspect too is if you do try and review it manually you really can't do all of them right now you're doing spot checks where your system can actually see every conversation and every system so I think that's just 100 coverage the other benefits so um uh now I think it's in some ways it's obvious the benefit you provide the company and even the compliance department but what about the user does your software get in the way and make the user's life more difficult no you know it's completely transparent to users um there's no uh you know it's happening from a infrastructure standpoint we seamlessly integrate with the communications platform or collaboration platform capture we call it smart capture capture that data in its native format you know preserving the context and Fidelity as I was alluding to and that travels Downstream to the compliance teams and archives doesn't have to be our archive it doesn't have to be our compliance system we can route that content Downstream um and for the end you you know for a user there's no impact on their work they don't have to log into something they don't have to check a box completely transparent for the administrator of theta Lake you know this is something that is deployed in in hours at most days although I haven't seen multiple day implementations and not weeks or months or quarters you know you know we do use Technologies um Downstream when customers decide to utilize risk-based detections that utilize artificial intelligence machine learning natural language processing all of that is even from a marketer standpoint you know which I am is out of the box right so we have 85 Plus detections uh that come out of the box and you don't have to really do anything to configure and make those go so there's not a lot from a end user stand nothing from an end user standpoint from an administrator standpoint pretty easy doesn't require the work of an FTE or anything like that and and obviously as a SAS provider as a cloud vendor we're not you know we're not Services based yeah yeah that makes sense and so um this allows companies to meet the requirements without actually getting in the way of the end user which is kind of a rare they're Trust Systems right they ask they ask the end user to buy into um utilizing a WhatsApp and you know require them you know maybe to log in or or whatever um but we're not doing that that's great now um I know um you had talked about the mural partnership which which is what you win the award for can you talk about that partnership and what it brings the user and how it works yeah I do have to make just one um one correction we we did win the award it was for best overall so I guess correct yeah yeah I couldn't say that they didn't want that to get away because we were really proud to win um a best overall award at Enterprise connect which you know as you know is is one of the Premier Events for unified Communications and as a company that's primarily compliance or Security based we're used to winning words like that that are compliance and Security based so we were really proud to win it best overall award at the conference we didn't actually just free everyone on that I've been part of that event for years and I've seen these Awards go on for 20 and I believe you're the first actually security company to win that because it it does usually it goes to the shiny new to room system or whiteboard or something like that so I do think that that is a notable achievement for uh you know for you thank you we were really honored and flattered to win it and um you know probably maybe some somewhat surprised as well uh so the the news that we announced was on day one our integration and support for mural and we thought this was really important to announce at the conference as you know whiteboards are one of the fastest growing you know dynamic segments of unified Communications to today they allow you to you know create Dynamic visual content and collaborate and idea eight and you know do this in a persistent manner build content over time that that grows and accumulates and changes and so from a regulated industry standpoint this is one of those technology groups that and it was befuddled um you know Regulators um you know see this as a potential challenge particularly as there hadn't been anyone to date that supported Dynamic visual you know communication and white boards like Theta lake so we announced that with our friends at mural and they're great obviously they they've had a lot of news of their own and have seen a lot of growth and Adoption of of their tools and you know the value proposition for both of us is is similar you know from a partnership standpoint and that is if you're in a regulated organization you might be hesitant to really adopt and fully Embrace what mural can do but knowing that they have a partner integration you know seamless not complex that works with Theta Lake and that they can do that work and fatal lake is there in the background you know it allows those groups like financial services and health care and public sector and others to fully embrace it whereas before they were you know they didn't know what the Regulators were going to say in the future and they didn't have a solution to really Safeguard and monitor and protect that data so in some cases they just weren't doing it so we're hoping and looking forward to a lot more renewed interest in the regulated markets around whiteboards and dynamic visual content yeah and I think that'll continue to be an area that companies invest in you know one of the interesting data points that came from Cisco WebEx one last year was that 95 of meetings would contain at least one virtual participant so you know whiteboarding is a very standard tool and um it's interesting because it's it's not like digital whiteboards are new uh but I've always thought they were a bit of a solution looking for a problem but the problem came in the form of covet I guess which which gave it a a reason to exist and so that and the technology Frank had come a long way it's not those I think a lot of people that use the older systems didn't really like the experience but they're very good today yeah it's pretty it's it's like everything else I mean just there's just such a so many new ways of working and they're they're just more intuitive than they've ever been right they're not programmatic they're not complex they're entirely gooey and you know um user based so it's it's an amazing thing and there's just so many examples of that taking place it's um users have tremendous choices now yeah now the uh the other partnership I wanted to dive a little deep in is the one with ring central uh again I I wrote a paper for you guys on that and I'll make sure the links included below ring central though the you know the market leader in ucas has been for a long time they also you know provide some c-cad Services what are you doing with rings well RingCentral is a partner and an investor in fatal Lake and we've been supporting and working with them for you know the the entirety of our uh you know founding as a company so in short we really support all the use cases across ring central so everything from RingCentral SMS which we talked about as a you know safe alternative sanctioned approach towards mobile messaging that you can use to their virtual meetings to voice uh and more most recently we uh this month we actually announced support for contact center and so with contact center you can get screen recordings and you know video recordings and preserve them and do risk detection and and potential you know data loss protection and e-discovery if you need against that content contact center is another emerging growth outlet for not only ring central but I think unified Communications in general um it's becoming more those contact center applications are becoming more of a decision Matrix as organizations start to you know in some cases if they're going from an on-prem Legacy um platform to the cloud you know that contact center has a lot of CIO implications and interest and so that's an important Avenue and outlet for us so that was the most recent use case that we're supporting with RingCentral and we work with ring central across you know they're they're amazing I think because they really support the full spectrum of organization types everyone from SMB to Mid Market to large large organizations as well which is that's not easy to do right from a Sales Management Salesforce standpoint that's that's challenging but they do it really well yeah I think those are Partnerships they have in place too with the advisor might tell something which helped them move up Market as well and the contact centerpiece is interesting too because without a doubt contact center agents are staying at home and I think a lot of people thought you might see those those re-emerge back to the office but um I think one of the things that contact center managed to found out is they can attract better people and better areas they've got flexible hours but the one thing that comes up every time I talk to contact center managers they need better tools to manage because they cannot walk around and listen to calls and so you provide a lot of those tools yes absolutely and and those contact center you know workers for ring central and other in other platforms you know they're using not only the stuff in contact center but they might be using other elements of the platform as well so you know everything from SMS and outbound messages and you know mobile chat and chat and in meeting chat so they need that full spectrum of support from a um you know Downstream the compliance teams need to really be able to capture all of those in a unified way when they're working with one platform or many platforms all right Garth well thank you very much for the introduction to data Lake and all the great Network that you're doing uh if you're watching this and you have a hybrid Workforce which everybody does today uh Theta Lake isn't just for regulated Industries I know you have a pretty broad customer base across all verticals and so if you want to be able to understand what your workers are doing without getting in the way I think you guys provide an excellent solution for that so on behalf of gartham's es caravello from ZK research saying thanks for watching don't forget to hit that subscribe button and I'll see you next time on another zcax thank you

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