it's software that existed before the pandemic but these days in remote work it seems a lot more vital I'm referring to Microsoft 365 and teams if your 365 or teams isn't working it's pretty well assured your company probably isn't working so how can companies ensure their employees have a great and Equitable 365 and teams experience well that's exactly what a local tech company is working on today we talk with Ottawa based martello Technologies coming up on techopia live foreign [Music] hello I'm Michael Curran from the Ottawa Business Journal welcome to techopia live this is a regular podcast from obj that features the Next Generation technology companies plus we keep you updated on the established players we're doing that today by the way all with a goal of keeping you informed about the local technology sector in today's episode we talk with a technology company that's been on the radar at both obj and Tech opio for several years it's a it's one of ottawa's few publicly traded technology companies it's backstory involves and then other than sir Terence Matthews and these days it's undergoing a very significant pivot to capitalize on a technology platform that's become way more important in the pandemic and as we kind of adopt uh remote work now let's welcome our guest here is the CEO of markello Technologies please welcome John Proctor hello John hi Michael thank you for having me well I'm excited like many come companies these days John you're undergoing some changes and some changes that in part were influenced uh by the pandemic as I noted but before we talk about martello Technologies I want to get to know you a little bit better so uh give us your give us a short bio sure um from my accent you can probably gather I wasn't uh I wasn't I'm not an Ottawa native I wasn't born here uh I'm somebody who chose to uh to be here uh I served in the British Military and then the Canadian military uh leaving in 2010 so like many folks in Ottawa I'm a veteran and then that time I joined a company called CGI and did my sort of post military business apprenticeship with those guys and grew up that way and by then I as you mentioned I'd met uh Terry Matthews and when Terry was looking for a CEO for martello uh he asked me if I would be interested in taking that on and that was about uh uh correct me from wrong seven years ago I should know that after that 2017. so okay it's coming up just coming up on five years five years okay that's good I'm sure it's flown by without any challenges whatsoever John uh anyway uh uh I just want to make sure as we get into the uh the Weeds on martello that people have a sense of of what the company does so can you give us kind of your uh your up-to-date um elevator pitch on martello John uh sure so overall we deliver software that monitors the user experience of communications collaboration and productivity tools and we've got two real focuses we have a focus on the world's leading Cloud communication platform which is Microsoft teams and the one that started martello and brought it brought Martella to being which is our relationship with Michael and really when you look at that a lot of it guys they really sort of look and saying yeah they're working with a blindfold on how do I deliver these services to users um as best I can to allow people to be as productive as possible and it can be any number of issues and we want to give as much visibility to the IT team to solve those problems quickly as possible and the the new product you mentioned are pivot and our change the new product called Vantage DX is the software that gives a complete end-to-end view what's happening in that Office 365 space so people can spot any root causes and fix them quickly and idea without the user reason knowing there's been a problem that's excellent and just a few more factoids on the company before we get into that those pivot questions so give us a sense of your annual revenue your number of employees uh maybe even who you're who a top typical customer of martello looks like yeah so annual revenue and we're public and this is out there it's around 70 and a half million a year um the uh again if I look at number of employees uh you know 50 of our employees are here in Ottawa uh 50 are now global uh we've changed a bit and we're about 95 employees in total um so not huge but certainly enough that you know we've got folks in Singapore folks in India folks in France but you know folks in the UK Etc so we do consider ourselves sort of a small Global Ottawa company um and I think really as we look at sort of where martello will grow certainly some of it will be in Kanata as part of that sort of relationship but at the same time you know we're going to look at these Global and that's also because of the client base um you know we're like many Canadian companies to a certain degree you have to be successful outside Canon to be successful in and that and by your smile that's not the first time somebody's been on this program and told you that so our clients by looking through our you know clients uh US government departments uh UK government departments uh financial institutions around the world uh big food manufacturers Etc uh so it truly is a global offering in that respect so let's talk about this pivot so you know my understanding in martello is it was very connected to my tell my tell of course had lots of uh hosted uh phone systems cloud-based phone systems and initially martello kind of was monitoring the performance of those uh telephone systems effectively is that is that it and now it's changing so tell us about what it was and what it's becoming yeah so we've been with mitel for a number of years we've still got a strong partner we've actually just extended our agreement by three years and might tell themselves have changed they sold off their their Cloud business at ring central and they've gone very focused onto the on-premise business which I think is great um you know it the the cloud business is really busy there's an awful lot of competition for mitel there being the number one player in the on-premise business is is it's not a bad place to be at all and we're very happy to support them but it means we're also more important to them than we used to be as well hence the agreement by three years and it's still you know they represent 50 of our Revenue today but as we watch that space changed and we watched where sort of Microsoft were going with this sort of world domination of that sort of unified communication space uh we realized we wanted to connect to the Microsoft teams environment so right at the start of the pandemic so great timing uh we acquired a Swiss company called GSX which had software very some of the capabilities we provide to mitel but focused on Microsoft 365 and teams so we brought them into the fold we added in this capability that we had with mitel already so now we can see that complete end-to-end from Microsoft in the in you know in the home environment to Microsoft across the internet service to Microsoft in the network into you know Microsoft in the phone system and we can see across all of that and it's very timely of course as he indicated Microsoft 365 and teams is probably the biggest remote work platform that existed of course before the pandemic but now that you know people's offices still to some degree are are empty you know micros these Microsoft tools are effectively your business like if if they're not working uh your employees aren't working yeah I mean I'll extend it with if you're a CEO CFO you've bought this tool set you've bought a degree of you know expectation of productivity our job is to measure that and say are you getting the most productive you can from the tools you have bought and you're absolutely right um Microsoft growth is fabulous uh they've got 270 million monthly active teams users so that's our Market space that's we're going they're also announcing this piece called operate it connect and they're announcing up you know constantly announcing new partners in that space which is their connectivity in the phone systems so you won't need a phone you just use teams and teams can help you communicate whether it's on a cell phone a desk phone or your laptop or your iPad it doesn't matter Microsoft is going to dominate with this team's environment and then bring more applications into that environment to allow enable even more productive capabilities and John I want to better understand your value proposition but we're going to pause our conversation in just a second here to recognize today's sponsor number crunch number crunch is an ottawa-based firm that allows you to Outsource your financials especially if you're a technology startup or early stage company number crunch Services range from bookkeeping accounts receivable and monthly reconciliations to full virtual CFO services including investment preparation and cash flow forecasting number crunches led by Susan Richards and Craig hung combined they have more than 40 Years of financial experience in this market having advised dozens of firms number crunch will help your company mitigate Risk by ensuring proper accounting procedures provide you with strategic input and scale along with your business to get a quote on Outsourcing your accounting please visit numbercrunch.ca and we're back with the CEO of martello Technologies John Proctor so John as I was saying I want to get into the weeds a little bit here so you know it's the the the sense that martello is looking to work more with customers who use 365 and teams is not new to me what I didn't understand for the longest time is I was I was assuming that because those are cloud-based platforms for most people that if for example I or my company had a problem with teams or 365 then I would just pick up the call to pick up the phone and call Microsoft and say what's going on but in fact uh you know there's my misunderstanding of Technology world or the networking world tell me in a bit more detail without getting too geeky as we say uh what martello is doing to help people monitor their 365 and teams networks sure I mean you're absolutely right when teams doesn't work people go I'm going to phone Microsoft wise and it's working but you're making the Assumption it's a Microsoft problem and the analogy I'll give you is Microsoft and I'm I'm a formula one fan so I'll use a Formula One analogy is Microsoft have built this really capable Formula One sports car and if I take that on the on the track a race track it will go as fast as Lewis Hamilton or Max verstappen will allow this car to go it'll fly down this racetrack if I try and drive that race car downtown Ottawa you know 9 A.M Monday morning it'll do 20 kilometers an hour because the environment it in isn't optimized for it to run at its full capacability and that's where we come in so we allow an IT team to actually look and say is the infrastructure the environment including the home network including the internet service provider all the way through is that delivering uh the best environment we can to optimize The Office 365 that we have paid for uh and I'll give you an example we've recently got a new client uh they're a very large uh car dealership across all of South America one of the largest car dealerships in South America and the Microsoft the solemn Office 365 and to your point teams didn't work properly and of course they found at Microsoft and said teams doesn't work properly and Microsoft look at their environment and go looks good at our place man you know not sure what's going on so we were introduced we installed our tool and we found out a whole series of issues reigning from ranging from the internet service providers not routing their traffic correctly to their internal network not being configured correctly and we solved the problem we solved the problem really quickly so again if you think about that from a value one we've delivered a higher level of productivity but two the IT team can solve their problems quicker so you've upscale the IT team and you've you know enhance their ability to resolve quickly but also you've taken that noise away from Microsoft right so all that makes the it teams and Microsoft really happy and you've also made the company more productive so that's our basic value proposition right there okay and as we heard before I'm generalizing a little bit it's almost a 50 50 split between Michael the kind of uh Legacy Revenue if I could put it that way still important but this this new kind of shift to Microsoft uh clients um what does the future look like a little bit as we look at deeper into 2022 and 2023 in other words what's the market opportunity yeah so if I go back other Legacy so from companies we've acquired so consider that sort of the bottom layer of martello the middle areas the mitel piece which we'll just keep going we've closed you know deals with with mitel recently so that that you know middle layer of mitel keeps going but the growth is on with the Microsoft business we're seeing that growth we're seeing that the exciting part of what we're doing uh and really that's where we will focus as you know Microsoft and use produce their results yesterday uh they got 12 million teams units users connected to the psdn network those are fabulous environments for us to be in so basically Microsoft is growing an even bigger total addressable market for martello to go at but we're also announcing Partnerships uh We've we've got obviously Microsoft but now we've got our range Business Services uh we announced Datacom and we've got more Partners in the hopper and they they're starting to come to us because now we have the relationship with Microsoft being introduced to these Partners but for the first time we've actually got co-branded material with Microsoft so it shows Office 365 and martello and how we can all come together to deliver what we spoke about and that's really why it's in the future we'll see the Legacy stuff you know still sort of Decay over time as as it should its Legacy material mitel stay strong and consistent to repeatable and then the growth really on that Microsoft business where Microsoft themselves see the growth and the usage as well so does that mean John then that as far as growing revenues is concerned that you're dependent upon Partners or is there still an aspect of direct sales where Martello's going uh directly like the the great example you gave us uh just a minute ago to the car dealership yeah very much both I mean the moment um we're selling through Microsoft so you know they you know it's still considered a direct sale to us Microsoft introduced the partner is up to us to you know go and have the conversations and introduce martello and the product and if they want to trial we'll configure that up but again ideally we're going quite they normally have a problem if they've come to us already they want to go fast uh so direct is still a huge aspect of what we're doing but yes partners are part of our future uh and because that's the Microsoft ecosystem yeah yeah that's great that's great and and you know what a partner uh would a company be aligned with um before we wrap up John I want to take this opportunity to ask you a little bit of a uh to comment for a second on the economic landscape we've we've been through a pandemic I guess we're still in the pandemic um what always surprised me uh many technology companies and perhaps martello whether the pandemic quite well now we're kind of in this post-pandemic economic phase where we're seeing you know inflation go through the roof or maybe more pertinent to martello uh very significant shifts in stock markets uh very significant changes in the valuation of technology companies so I'm wondering um you know you're sitting there out in Canada and and get to speak with the great people at Wesley Clover and Terry Matthews and that on occasion what do you think this uh changing economic climate might mean for ottawa's technology sector well I don't think any tank company is is going to be immune to what's going on I don't think they can be whether it's they see the spend reducing from their clients where they see the pipeline reducing or just you know overall the the economy slowing uh and we saw Shopify announcements yesterday on head cap reduction so I mean if I look at this and I look at sort of the start of the pandemic what my my research and what we've looked here is companies that whether these storms are those that do defensive and offensive you can't just cut you know you can't just do cost reductions that's a defensive move you've got to do you know a offensive move which is why we moved into Microsoft we certainly cost you know we did our own cost reductions right we sold off part of the company uh but we also pivoted as an offensive move and again I think a lot of companies are looking at the same thing how do I do my defensive moves but also my offensive moves and then I mean you mentioned the stock market um you know martello we're at it's you know historically low price right now um and you see you know that's nerves that's people being risk adverse which is normal for this kind of uh economic uncertainty but it'll also give strong potential for those willing you know to say I can see this you know I'm not sure how long a recession lasts but you know I can watch the patterns and Trends and say you know the stock market will recover historically that's it always has so actually buying stocks now and looking at those you know deflated stock prices makes sense to make my investments now because they will recover uh into the future so I think again it's like anything it's We There are opportunities for those willing to take it but you've got to be somewhat careful and manage that risk as you do so I think that's great advice particularly the offense defense it can't be all defense it's got to feel a little bit of offense and then just uh just a heads nod uh nodding as well when you're talking about the uh the cycle that we're we're living through and and the economy we've been in kind of a bull uh market for a long time but uh you know things things will bounce back so listen John I want to thank you for all your time I know you're a busy guy running the company out there uh thank you for your time and uh best of luck as 2022 unfolds great thanks Michael appreciate your interest in martello that was John Proctor martello Technologies a big thank you to him before we wrap up let's take a look at some of the other great companies that champion techopia tecopy is brought to you by many great sponsors such as ey building a better working world number crunch offering virtual CFO services for SAS companies pearly Robertson Hill and McDougall a leader in business and technology sector law TD Bank specialized programs for technology companies the University of Ottawa faculty of engineering creating the next generation of technical Talent kalian innovative solutions delivered with integrity tecopy is not only a podcast we post new articles daily at obj.ca tecopia if you're on Facebook or Twitter you can find techopia at techopia Ott and if you're on YouTube please subscribe and click the Bell icon [Music] thanks once again to John Proctor of martello it's been a little bit slow over the summer with techopia live we've we're we've been resting up a little bit but I just want to signal to you we've got lots of episodes coming up booked right up into September now so you should be able to see a episodes coming up on the once every two weeks basis I want to thank you for watching or listening we hope techopia is helping you stay connected to the local technology Community let's keep Building ottawa's Technology Utopia that's techopia see you soon bye-bye [Music] thank you
2022-07-31