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In this episode, Todd and David focus on SharePoint and OneDrive, addressing features that are often overlooked by RIAs. Implementing these features can enhance productivity, strengthen security, and save costs by leveraging more of what your Microsoft subscription includes.

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These are some of the key points covered in the podcast:

SharePoint is like OneDrive on steroids

• SharePoint offers better security and permissions.
• Nothing should be saved on a local device and SharePoint makes this easier.

Real-Time Document Collaboration

• In SharePoint you can collaborate in real-time collaboration in apps like Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.
• Users don’t need to “check out” documents in SharePoint. Multiple users can collaborate simultaneously.

Secure Document Upload

• RIAs can use SharePoint for secure document uploads instead of third-party tools like Citrix ShareFile.

Secure File Sharing with Partners

• SharePoint offers an “external folder” feature for secure file sharing with external partners.
• Flexible sharing options in external folders let you assign view-only access, editing permissions, expiration dates, and password protection.

Versioning and File Archiving

• The version history feature in SharePoint allows users to revert to previous document versions.
• If set up properly, SharePoint has file archiving for SEC and FINRA compliance, with options for archiving periods and versions.

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Todd W. Darroca (00:22):

 Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and alongside me is David Kakish. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. Now in this podcast, we’ll be your tech guides breaking down those often confusing tech topics into plain and practical terms because Lord knows I need it in plain practical terms as well. So it’s always great to have David Kakish here. Hi David. Good to see you.

David Kakish (00:54):

Hi, Todd. Want to welcome you and welcome to The Listener.

Todd W. Darroca (00:57):

Yeah, so we hope you join both David and I as we do these and we’ll dive into the latest tech trends. We’re going to share expert insights, and we’re going to help you navigate the ever-changing world of the RIA technology area. So let’s get dark, man. I’m already sloppy right now, David. It’s, it’s been a long, long day already and it’s only what, 10 o’clock? So let’s get started, David. So let’s talk about what we’re going to talk about in today’s session.

David Kakish (01:24):

Sure, yeah. Title of today’s session is Discover the Top Five Overlooked SharePoint and One Drive Features for Your RIAs. These are features that you are using, or I’m sorry, these are features that you’re probably paying for but you’re not using. And the really big problem that I see, we start working with a lot of RIAs. We see that they’re not using the full subscription from Microsoft, and I’m not going to talk about the full subscription from Microsoft. I’m just going to talk about SharePoint in OneDrive because there’s some really great features that your RIA can use that you’re probably not using. And to make matter worse, your RIA is probably paying for third party tools because you don’t know that these are already included or part of your SharePoint subscription. And I’m going to talk about the five most overlooked features for SharePoint and OneDrive.

(02:13):

And then what you can do with this is, hey, if you’re a do-it-yourself kind of person, great. Go do it yourself. Make these changes. If not, you can go to your IT provider and say, Hey, IT provider, Todd and David talked about these five things. We want to get that or reach out to us and we’re happy to help. I guess, Todd, I want to throw the question back at you. Why do you think it is that so many RIAs just don’t know about these amazing and wonderful features that are part of SharePoint and OneDrive?

Todd W. Darroca (02:45):

Well, if I ever put myself in their shoes, I mean, if I don’t need it in the moment, I’m probably not going to care about it. And even though if there’s something specific, unless I absolutely need it or something breaks, then I’ll care about trying to find it. Or also I just look at a product for the one thing I need to get the job done and don’t even look at the other pieces of it. So that’d be my thought.

David Kakish (03:08):

Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s kind of interesting. This I think, falls in that 80 20 rule, right? 20% of 80% of the time you’re using 20% of the features. And if you look at anything, there’s just so many features and they’re like, but hey, what are the core 20 things that we can use over and over and over again? And what I share is with real world experience, we bring on new clients and like, oh my goodness, we didn’t know that SharePoint and OneDrive could do this, this, this and that. So I’m going to talk about the top five things. Again, you already have this as SharePoint and OneDrive as part of your Microsoft subscription, but you’re not using these things. And as I said, you’re probably paying for third party applications. So I guess one of the things I will say is you can think of SharePoint as one thrive on steroids, and I’m going to talk about that a little bit. But Todd, I know you’re a little bit of a technologist. When I say SharePoint, what comes to mind?

Todd W. Darroca (04:10):

So it’s funny. It’s okay.

David Kakish (04:11):

Be honest.

Todd W. Darroca (04:11):

Oh man. I’ll tell you, it’s a pain. I think. Yeah, finally, it’s just a pain. It’s got a lot of hoops to go through, and then sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. For me, I mean, prime example there was, David and I obviously use SharePoint and share drives and all that, but there’s a little issue with just some multifactor authentication that was frustrating. I couldn’t get to a file. And that’s kind of been my experience with SharePoint over the years is it just seems like this behemoth of a very complex thing. So that’s kind of what I think of SharePoint. Yeah,

David Kakish (04:49):

And when I think of SharePoint, I think of the old SharePoint back in 10 plus years ago, the intranet, that was the big thing for companies internal where you could build an internal website and the intranet was the buzzword and use SharePoint for your intranet and stuff like that. So I’m going to talk a little bit about SharePoint. So you can think of SharePoint as OneDrive on steroids. I really wish Microsoft called it something different, not SharePoint, but they stuck with the naming of that. And that’s fine. Where I’m really going to focus on using SharePoint is as your file folder structure. And one of the, let’s just say the big advantages of Google’s, their equivalent of SharePoint is it’s very easy to share files and folders and things like that. That’s a big plus. The downside is it’s very easy to share that somebody that may not supposed to have access to that could probably easily have access to that.

(05:49):

And I think Microsoft for the RIA does a much better job of locking it down. And I realize that times it could be cumbersome, but generally speaking, Microsoft has really come a long way. And here’s the deal. If you’re using OneDrive, I strongly encourage you to look at SharePoint instead of OneDrive because SharePoint is OneDrive on steroids. OneDrive is great for an individual person for a really small business, but when we think about security groups and permissions, it gets really confusing and clunky with OneDrive. And on SharePoint, you get what I would call that enterprise security or that big business security. And the other really nice thing you can do with SharePoint is you don’t need to save anything local on your computer anymore. And what I mean by that is you can have everything inside SharePoint, and maybe I’ll talk a little about the drive. So the default setup that we do for our clients is each employee gets their own drive on SharePoint. And again, the really nice thing is it’s like File Explorer. And you know what, I’m going to share my screen here really quick. Let me do that so that people can see what I’m talking about.

Todd W. Darroca (06:57):

And those who are listening, we’ll make sure we’ll walk you through it as best we can. Yeah,

David Kakish (07:01):

Todd will translate that for me. So

Todd W. Darroca (07:05):

Sure will.

David Kakish (07:08):

Let me do this. Let me share the screen here really quick, and then we will do that,

Todd W. Darroca (07:14):

Should have some background music in there. So if you’re in the car, just think of your favorite background music as David

David Kakish (07:21):

Pulls us out. Alright, so these are my notes. Let me minimize out of that. So if you look here, this really is File Explorer and this is the file folder structure. These are locked all internally, and this is the external one.

Todd W. Darroca (07:36):

So for those listening, he’s got his share folder up and he’s got three different columns, and now he’s kind of scrolling down up each column going into one folder and looking at some subfolders here. So that’s nothing sexy yet. So that’s what we’re seeing.

David Kakish (07:50):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And what I’m trying to communicate here is it’s really your file folder structure, and this is what people are familiar with. You click on File Explorer on your Windows computer. It also works on a Mac using Finder and things like that. And then you automatically are in that file folder structure and then you can access all that right there. And so what happens is with OneDrive, you don’t have the same enterprise security where you can create groups. And again, by default, and this is what we would recommend for you is you create one file, one folder for each employee. That would be Todd, David, Bob, Mary, so on. And that’s stuff that I’m working on. So it just goes in there, whatever Todd is working on, it goes in there. And then we create another drive. Let’s call that drive too. That’s for everybody in the company.

(08:36):

Everybody has access to that. Those are things that we’re going to share. And then the third one, the third folder or drive would be by department. So sales, marketing, finance, HR, and so on. And if I am part of the HR team, I’m going to see that If I’m not part of the HR team, I don’t even know that that exists. So at a very high level, you’re just creating three different things. A lot easier to do that when you’re doing it in SharePoint versus OneDrive. And you don’t have to worry about, what did I give Todd access to? Now all of a sudden you’re saying, okay, Todd is part of what groups, and then I’m just going to give access to Todd based on those groups. I don’t want to get too much in the weeds, but basically it’s really nice because now you can use big business security as opposed to consumer security. And that’s kind of a big deal for an RIA.

Todd W. Darroca (09:28):

That’s nice.

David Kakish (09:29):

Cool. And then we strongly tell people like, Hey, listen, you don’t have people save anything local on the computer because if they do, it’s going to get lost. Now, SharePoint gives you the ability in that file folder structure to just write, if you give employees permission to do that, to save it local on the computer so they can connect if they’re offline, if they’re in a cabin or bad internet connection or something like that, they can basically click and say, Hey, keep it on my computer so they can work. And then when they connect to the internet, they can sync up. But the really nice thing is you do not have to have anything that’s work related at all on that individual computer. It’s all saved inside of that file folder structure inside of SharePoint.

Todd W. Darroca (10:09):

So lemme ask you about storage on that. What’s your opinion on cold storage versus that whole cloud? Should I have an external hard drive on my desk here and I do a lot of things backup, and so let’s say, God forbid if the world ends and Google servers go down or whatever, should I have had something stored locally just in case or what’s your

David Kakish (10:37):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay. Yeah, lemme talk a little bit about that. So I’m going to talk in the SharePoint world, so the way that I operate today, the way that I work, and this is what we set up for all of our clients, and if you are using SharePoint that is available to you at no additional cost, what we do is everything is saved at the Microsoft data center in my tenant, in my company’s private network. And so if my computer crashes, no big deal, nothing’s saved local on my computer, if there is something on my computer, it’s a copy of what’s at the Microsoft data center, right? If I set up that setting and so my computer is lost, stolen, whatever, okay, no big deal. It’s secure, everything’s sitting at the Microsoft data center. I can pick up a MacBook, I can pick up another computer, register it to my company, and I can access that file folder structure. Now, in addition to that, we actually, for our own clients, we do two backups at the Microsoft data center. And so you can do that. Very few clients want to do it at a third party data center, but yes, that’s something that is available. But very, we would strongly encourage you if you’re using SharePoint to do another backup to another data center at Microsoft just so that you have that redundancy. But yes, if your laptop is lost or you have all that, okay,

Todd W. Darroca (11:55):

Yeah, thanks.

David Kakish (11:57):

Alright, cool. So Todd, does that answer your question? Oh

Todd W. Darroca (12:04):

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Okay. It does. Now I feel less anxious about the world coming to an end and having some redundancy there.

David Kakish (12:11):

Exactly. Cool. Alright, so that’s the first feature is saying, Hey, use SharePoint instead of OneDrive because SharePoint is OneDrive on steroids. The second thing I want to talk about, not a lot of people know this, the Google world, people know that where you can have real time document collaboration, where two people can be in the same spreadsheet collaborating real time, and you can do the same thing with Microsoft Excel, word, PowerPoint and so on. You don’t have to check out a document and work on it in the old days. So Todd, you and me can be in the same spreadsheet collaborating real time. Let me do this and let me share my screen here really quick so people can see that.

Todd W. Darroca (12:49):

So again, those listening, yeah. Mr. Kakish is pulling up a,

David Kakish (12:53):

So if you look, I’ve got a document now. I’m on a different device. I’m actually on my iPad. This is me typing on my iPad, so if you look over here, I’m on my computer over here, down, I’m on my iPad so I could be collaborating real time. So Todd, David, and Mary, the three of us can be in the same document collaborating real time. Not a lot of people know that you can do this in the Microsoft world. That was kind of the big thing where I didn Google did really well.

Todd W. Darroca (13:23):

It kind looks like Google OneDrive and it is, I mean, I would say I do a lot of writing and other things on Microsoft Word and Excel. So this is actually pretty cool that you can do real-time collaboration. I honestly didn’t know that. Yeah,

David Kakish (13:39):

That’s the thing. Not a lot of people know about that. And then the other really nice thing since some here that I’ll show you is I can go ahead and I can click on version history. So I can go back and I can say, let me go back to November 15th and restore that document because I overwrote something, whatever it is, so I can restore it and then I can compare notes, I can do all that stuff. I don’t necessarily want to do it for the purposes of the demo, but it’s really nice because I don’t use this feature a lot, but I generally need it once every three, four months. I did five hours worth of work and I accidentally overwrote that. So it’s just a nice way to go back to that. By default for our clients, we actually do 500 revisions of a document. You could do the same thing on that. Again, no additional fee.

Todd W. Darroca (14:31):

Can you assign people or tag people to say at David, what do you think of this as you’re collaborating or

David Kakish (14:38):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The collaboration is really phenomenal. Again, people are sort of stuck in that old mode of what SharePoint and Word looks like. You have full collaboration, and let me say this, for the people that are actually using that, you can actually use the full-blown Excel application on your computer or you can use the Excel and you can still collaborate real time, either one.

Todd W. Darroca (15:09):

Awesome.

David Kakish (15:10):

Cool. Okay. Alright, Todd, any questions or anything you want me to clarify or are you good so far?

Todd W. Darroca (15:18):

I’m good so far. I think, again, this is really helpful for businesses, again, who are trying to, I get asked a lot by clients, which one should I use? SharePoint, Google Drive, whatever. And actually, honestly, I’m not trying to blow smoke here. That’s a new feature I didn’t know that SharePoint can do. Now if I’m not a SharePoint user, can I still collaborate? Can you invite me to without paying for some subscription fee to be able to access that to

David Kakish (15:49):

Collaborate? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you know, let me share my screen again. You’re kind of leading me to the next question. You probably didn’t know that, so let me share my screen here with you really quick. All right, so there’s two ways we can do a collaboration. So you know how sometimes people are using a Citrix share file or another tool to upload a secure document, click here because they want their client to upload a secure financial document or something like that. This is a feature of SharePoint. It’s really nice because it’s all integrated. You need a third party tool. So a lot of RIAs and financial advisors are using something like Citrix ShareFile or Dropbox or another application, and those are good tools. You’re just paying for something that you don’t need anymore. And so if you look here, a lot of our clients are using the app, that’s something it’s available to you. I know additional fee and the way that it works is if I were to click on this link right here and I’m your client and let’s, I don’t know, call me Adam Smith, I would come here, it would bring me in here and this would be branded under your own company, and then I can just upload a document. I would just come here and I would just select that document. Let me just choose a different document and let’s just call myself Adam Smith.

(17:09):

I upload that. That’s it. If I want to upload more, I can upload multiple files at once. What’s really nice now is I’m going to get an email within five minutes saying, Hey David, Adam Smith uploaded a document for you so I can go look at that, see what’s going on, and then drag it to that client folder.

Todd W. Darroca (17:30):

Nice. Yeah, it seemed pretty easy. Again, what David was showing is he had an email up and there’s a link to say, Hey, upload the secure document, click here. He clicks there easily goes to another screen that allows ’em to add somebody securely so they can see the document. And so it’s actually what three steps it looked like there pretty

David Kakish (17:53):

Quick. Yeah, you click on the link, you just click here to add more files, and so you choose the file and then you would just put in your name so that they know who uploaded that. Again, that is your own client. That is your own client that’s sending you a secure document.

Todd W. Darroca (18:12):

And I can easily take people off of a document if

David Kakish (18:15):

Let’s say. Yeah, I mean this is just, yeah, so let me just clarify something really quick. When I had this spreadsheet up, this is just collaborating real time. I shared this with you, we can collaborate real time. This right here is them sending me a financial statement, maybe like a W2 or something like that, that I need to get that. I want to make sure that Adam Smith is not sending that to me in a regular email from a security perspective. So I’m like, Hey, listen, send me your W2 or your financial statement or whatever, or a document that might include a social security. I don’t want you to send that to me via regular email. And so what the financial advisor or the RIA can send their client and say, Hey, to upload it, send that document to me here, you click here and then they just upload that document.

Todd W. Darroca (19:06):

Oh, real simple.

David Kakish (19:08):

Makes sense.

Todd W. Darroca (19:08):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, again, it’s kind of interesting. Again, I’ve been using Microsoft Word for 20 plus years, or Microsoft Office 20 plus years. I’ve never really seen it this contained. Everything seems like it’s in one place, so that’s

David Kakish (19:22):

Definitely, yeah, I mean, listen, to be fair, Todd, this wasn’t available 20 years ago.

Todd W. Darroca (19:27):

And let’s be fair, I was pretty young 20 years ago, right? I was a babe now.

David Kakish (19:34):

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And here’s the deal. Microsoft is constantly innovating. So a lot of these have been available in the last couple of years, but still people have that legacy view of Microsoft. Something else that’s really exciting that is available is, let’s just say you are a financial advisor, you’re an RIA, so David, we have an RIA. We’ve got 10 employees. We don’t do taxes, but we work a lot with Todd and Todd’s tax company. So we’re kind of a partner company where we have a lot of shared clients and we don’t want to send things back and forth all the time. What’s really nice about that is I can come in here, let me maximize that because sharing my screen and I can basically say, Hey, look, this is an external file folder right here. I’m going to right click on that and I’m going to go ahead and I want to share that with Todd.

(20:31):

I want to share this sub-folder with Todd, but I want to get really restricted. I can go and say, Hey, anybody with this link can access this. I can restrict it to specific people that work here, or specific people or people that I choose. I can also say, Hey, Todd can only view this. Todd can edit this. I’m going to put an expiration date, so Todd has availability for two weeks. I can set a password, I can block Todd from downloading that for the purpose of the demo. I’m going to keep it really simple. I’m going to say, Hey Todd, you know what? You can do everything. And this link is good for two weeks. And so I’ll just take this copy, this link. I can go back to the email and say, Hey Todd, here’s the link where you and I can access this.

(21:20):

So Todd, you actually have the ability to come in here now, and you can see these documents, you can upload, you can download, you can organize it, you can do all that stuff right there. And so where this is really nice is if you’ve got, because a lot of financial advisors and RIAs have, they work a lot with the same CPA firm or they work a lot with an attorney or maybe an insurance company or even maybe an investment firm or something like that. And so there’s just a lot of different scenarios. And again, you and I, Todd, we’re not sending emails back and forth with attachments or encrypted emails and stuff like that. It’s just a nice way to do that. And again, this is all fully integrated inside of SharePoint.

Todd W. Darroca (22:02):

And so let’s say I am, again, we’re partners, a lot of transfer of personal information data. Can I share the document to someone else? Maybe I’m not the right person to look at X, Y, and Z, but they are, can I share it from this easily or do I have to go do something special to get them added?

David Kakish (22:23):

You can share it easily. It depends on how we have it locked down. I don’t know if you noticed, but I had it locked down to say, Hey, look, if this is really sensitive, I only want Todd to see that in the scenario that I did right Now you can actually share that. So again, this is what we really like is because again, RIAs and financial advisors, some of the things they’re working with are very sensitive and they may not want it to be so easy, like, Hey, here’s a linko access that. On the flip side of that is they might say, Hey, here’s a link with all the forms. We can share that with anybody, so we don’t really care. So to answer your question, yes, you can do that, but also you have the flexibility where you can really lock it down. That’s where you look here, lemme come back over here so you can see that this is where in the settings I could really get very, very granular or not. Right? Okay.

Todd W. Darroca (23:19):

And so if I wanted to share it with one of my team members, let’s say I’m going on paternity leave or I’m going on for a while, can I give somebody, because I want to be able to share, there’s that knowledge base of transfer of knowledge base. Can I easily just say, Hey, from this frame to this frame, he or she gets access and then it expires once I get back?

David Kakish (23:40):

Yeah, you can do that. Yes. It gives you the flexibility to do that. Yeah, nice to answer your question. All the above. You can do it all the above, right? It just depends on how you have it locked down. Okay, nice. Cool. You didn’t know about, you did not know this, Todd, did you?

Todd W. Darroca (23:58):

I did not. I really didn’t. I think it’s, I ask about the whole knowledge base piece. Again, I know if we’re onboarding so many clients, there’s probably so many things that they need to onboard and learn. And I’ve had that experience where somebody goes on maternity or paternity leave and they just forgot to provide access or I don’t know where it is. So that’s pretty cool.

David Kakish (24:23):

Yeah. Nice. Well, listen, I am impressed that you did not know about that. I feel better because to us, this is just like second nature. How do people not know about this stuff? I guess this is part of what we’re doing and that’s why we’re talking is because these are very, very useful features. And again, they’re part of your subscription, you’re paying for it. And in many cases you’re paying for a third party tool because you don’t know that it’s already included as part of your subscription. And I would argue it’s a better tool and it’s a fully integrated tool. So for example, again, Citrix share file, it’s a phenomenal tool. It’s a really great tool and a lot of financial advisors and RIAs are using that. But the problem now is you feel like you have files in parallel. You have it inside of your SharePoint file explorer system, and then you also have it inside of the Citrix share file. And that’s just creates a conflict. You’re like, hang on, where is it? What did I do? And so on. And so this is nice because it’s fully integrated, and again, I know it’s a silly feature, but I love it when it says, Hey, Todd uploaded a document. I get an email within five minutes prompting me to say, Hey, go look at that. So I think it’s fantastic. Yeah.

Todd W. Darroca (25:38):

Alright, so David, help us wrap it up here. What are the key things that again, a person can do right after they listen to us or watch us?

David Kakish (25:45):

Yeah, so let me recap kind of the five things really quick because I jumped around a lot. So I’ll recap that and then I’d encourage you, if you’re listening to actually go do something about this because it will improve productivity, it’ll increase security and it’ll save you money. So number one, I talked about use SharePoint instead of OneDrive. SharePoint is OneDrive on steroids. The experience is very similar, but you get much better security groups and permissions. And I’d encourage you, encourage you not to have anything saved locally on the computer in the sense of something on the individual computer, have it all within SharePoint so that it’s backed up, so it’s also sitting at the data center and so on. And again, you could still work offline if that’s a requirement. So use SharePoint instead of OneDrive because SharePoint is OneDrive on steroids. Number two, real time document collaboration, David and Todd and Mary and Bob.

(26:37):

The four of us can be in the same spreadsheet, in the same word document, collaborating real time. We don’t need to check out a document. We can all collaborate real time. Number three, to upload a secure document, click here. You don’t need to use something like Citrix share file. You can go ahead and you can put that in your email signature and your clients can securely upload a document. Number four, secure file sharing with partners, and that’s labeled external. So Todd, I didn’t talk a lot about this, but all of the other documents are locked in where we cannot share that with the external world. We have a folder that says folder dash external. Now that one is something we can share with a CP, a firm with a law firm and so on. Number five is versioning, right? That’s where you can go in and say, oh my goodness, I worked on this and I overwrote something and I worked on it for four hours, and man, I lost all that, right?

(27:33):

So you can go back and say, Hey, I want to go back to last Wednesday at 4:00 PM and recover that document. And then to meet SEC and FINRA compliance, you can actually also do file archiving. What we do for our clients is seven years and 500 versions of that document and every single one of you, you can do that. Now, Todd, it’s a long way of answering your questions. Now that I’ve mentioned all these things that you can do with SharePoint, number one, go do it yourself. I encourage you to do it. It doesn’t cost you anything, right? You look at some of the stuff that we demoed and that’s cool, go do it yourself. However, I know most clients would probably not want to do that. So go to your IT partner and say, Hey, these are the five things we want. Set it up for us. Or number three, you can reach out to us and we’re happy to help.

Todd W. Darroca (28:25):

That’s right. Well, awesome. Thanks so much, David, for the quick wrap up and the next step. We hope that you guys do take those three actionable steps there. And hey, that’s it for this episode. So we want to thank you for listening to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by ria, a Workspace. For more podcasts and resources, go to staging-riaworkspace.kinsta.cloud and check out the learning center. And feel free to reach out to us with any questions or topics you’d like us to cover for the next podcast. We always love to hear from you guys out there, and we hope you guys stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode. So for David Kakish, I am Todd Darroca. Thanks so much for joining us.

David Kakish (29:06):

Thank you.

Welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast! In this episode, we delve into the tech giants—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple—and discuss which platform is the best fit for your RIA. We break down the pros and cons, focusing on real-world experiences and expertise, especially tailored for RIAs with 5 to 25 employees.

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Read The Transcript

RIAs face challenges navigating the tech landscape, understanding their options, and how to choose the best options.

Here are some of the key takeaways from this episode:

• Devices like laptops, phones, and tablets are agnostic about which platform you use.
• Microsoft and Google are the primary productivity platforms for RIAs.
  • Microsoft is the preferred choice for RIAs due to its robust enterprise security features, bundling of security tools, and ease of collaboration.
  • Google is a good platform, but the need for additional third-party tools for security, make it less favorable for RIAs.
• Apple has a more consumer-centric productivity suite, which isn’t a prominent choice for RIAs, and Amazon’s limited presence in the productivity suite space also limits its use.
• Microsoft offers Office Suite, including Outlook, Word, Excel, and more. Google has its Google Workspace, while Apple’s productivity suite consists of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. However, Amazon, primarily known for its cloud services, doesn’t have a dedicated productivity suite for RIAs.

To recap, for RIAs with 5 to 25 employees, Microsoft stands out as the top choice for productivity platforms, with Google trailing behind. For those interested in learning more or seeking personalized advice, you can reach out to us directly.

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Hello. Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and of course, alongside me is your very truly owned David Kakish. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. So in this podcast, we’ll be your tech guides, breaking down those often confusing tech topics into that plain good old practical terms for you. Join us in each episode as we dive into the latest tech trends. We’ll share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of the RIA technology. Let’s get started. Of course. David, welcome back. How’s everything going? You doing all right?

David Kakish (01:22):

I am fantastic, and I love how you introduced me. I feel like a celebrity. So thank you, Todd.

Todd W. Darroca (01:27):

You are the celebrity of the RIA world, so we’ll do some meet and greets soon. When you go out to do conferences, we’ll have a meet and greet panel. But hey, so yeah, so Dave, what are we talking about today? What’s the big topic for today’s audience?

David Kakish (01:41):

The big topic is Microsoft versus Google versus Amazon. What’s the best platform for your RIA and just for good measure? We’ll also throw in Apple and talk about Apple too. I think I’d like to start out with the really big problem or the really big challenge for RIAs is that there’s a lot of a, you’re really good at managing money and running an RIA, not necessarily being an IT professional or a technologist. And there’s just so much conflicting and confusing information out there. And the really big challenge is everybody talks about Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Apple and the cloud platforms, but all that is good and dandy. But what does that mean to me when I have an RIA with five employees, 10 employees, 25 employees, right? What’s the predominant technology and why? And right off the bat, I’m going to say we’re pretty, or at least I’m very vendor agnostic, and we’re going to share with you real world experience and expertise.

(02:38):

Like, Hey, what’s the best platform for your RIA? And there is one, and I’m going to tell you why. But again, we focus a lot on, let’s just say RIAs with five to 25 employees. You could be less, you could be more, but the same applies. We’re not in the business of working with banks and financial institutions with hundreds or thousands of employees. So we’re very focused on this segment and we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of each platform. We’re going to be very transparent, and as I said, there is a clear winner. I don’t want to say who it is yet. And then just for fun, we’ll geek out a little bit too. Not too much, but just enough so we have a little bit of fun. Awesome. So Todd, I guess I want to start with you. I want to share my expertise in real world, what we see out there. But when I ask you this question, what are your first impressions when I talk about Google versus Microsoft versus Amazon? What comes to mind when I ask you that question?

Todd W. Darroca (03:36):

So me being a small business owner myself too. Every single client I work with, everyone’s different. They’ve got either Google or they’ve got Microsoft. I don’t have many, and I don’t use Amazon more than shopping. So honestly, I didn’t realize that Amazon, besides Amazon Web services, there’s a full on productivity suite. So when I think about Google, honestly, I always worry about security. And I’m not trying to make go on the storyline, but I do. There are some parts of me because as a marketer in my small business, I always am like, how much are they tracking of me? Is my documentation really secure? Is this the safest place to put it? So that’s always the first question I have with Google. When I go to Microsoft, I will say I feel safe because many of the companies I work with, that’s all they use is Microsoft Teams because it is more secured and all that stuff. But the negative connotation I have with that is, oh, s locked, it’s old, it’s heavy, and it doesn’t play well with an Apple person like me. So obviously there are things I can do on Apple, but not so much. So that’s kind of the first, when I think about those things. And honestly, I don’t use them for my wealth management, even just personal finances, but also in the business. Again, I use Google Suite if I’m honest, but I’m always really hesitant right now on it. The only thing available to me I can

David Kakish (05:09):

Afford. Yeah, we probably should tell the listener, you run your own marketing company.

Todd W. Darroca (05:15):

Yeah, sorry. Yes, listener. I a marketing consultant.

David Kakish (05:17):

You’re not running an RIA, correct? I mean,

Todd W. Darroca (05:19):

No, I’m not running an RIA, but I’ve worked with people like that in the past. But yeah, no, I running my own small business. So I understand a little bit what you guys are going through.

David Kakish (05:30):

Alright, cool. And what are your impressions about Apple? I’m curious. You are a Mac user, right?

Todd W. Darroca (05:36):

Well, I’ll put it this way. So I have a watch, I have a computer, I have a laptop, I have an iPad Mini, I have an iPad, and I have an iPhone. So yes, and I have an Apple speaker. So yeah, I mean if Apple wanted to sponsor this, that’d be great. But no, yeah, everything in my home is Apple ecosystem and literally it’s just because it’s easy for me to use. It’s just really plug and play for me and my family uses it, but yeah.

David Kakish (06:04):

Yeah. Well, you know what Apple reminds me a lot of is, back in the day, we all bought Sony, right? The Sony Walkman and the Sony stereo.

Todd W. Darroca (06:11):

Sony had a yellow one. Yeah. Yeah.

David Kakish (06:13):

So I mean, we’re old enough to remember that. And I’m sure some of our listeners are and some maybe are not, but Sodi was the consumer brand that you had at home, right? Yeah.

(06:26):

Alright, well listen, so Todd, thanks for sharing. Again, my goal is to talk about the platform or the productivity platform and what RIAs are using and why and what the advantages are. Before I talk about that a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about the endpoints. And what I mean by that is are you using an iPhone or an Android or an iPad or a MacBook or a Windows computer or a Chromebook and things like that? And at the end of the day, from our perspective, it doesn’t really matter because that’s just an endpoint. We’re very agnostic. And what I mean by that is if you think about computers, the big players in the RIA space is mainly Windows computers. And then there’s a lot of people that are using Macs that are by Apple. And so it’s very typical for an RIA with 10 employees.

(07:14):

Seven of them are all using a Windows computer, and then three of them are using Mac. And the ones that are using Macs are hardcore Mac users. Like, Hey, I won’t work for your RIA if I can’t use my MacBook, which is really interesting. So we see that a lot and that’s good. We don’t really see a lot of Chromebooks. Very little people are using Chromebooks. Chromebooks are really big in education, and I’ll just kind of leave it at that. Just my brother works for Google, so I know a lot more than maybe I should, or you know what? That sounds terrible. I know a lot.

Todd W. Darroca (07:54):

So have you read my emails? Are you inside my Google suite? David?

David Kakish (07:59):

Yeah. Yeah. So I know a lot that came up the wrong way. That’s not what I meant to say. So let me correct myself. We have a lot of discussions around this type of stuff. And then on the smartphone and tablet worlds, you have iPhones, iPads by Apple, and you have Androids and Microsoft missed the boat on smartphones and coming up with something like that. But again, these are endpoints. All of our clients are using all the above in a very different way. And just for the listeners, so they know, I personally in the office, I use a Windows computer at home, I used a MacBook, an iPad, an iPhone, and Apple Watch, right? Todd? I got the Apple speaker. I didn’t like it because it’s not wireless, it’s not cordless, I’m not mistaken. It was a cord. And I’m like, hang on, I don’t want an Apple speaker. That’s not cordless. I actually returned that one. But I pretty much like you. I’m at home, I’m in the Apple ecosystem at work for the most part. On the end point, I jump between a Windows computer and then I work on Tuesdays. I work from home. And so when I’m working from home, I’m using a MacBook that’s for work. And so I jump back and forth. So I’m pretty Why do

Todd W. Darroca (09:14):

You jump back and forth if,

David Kakish (09:16):

Because I don’t want to carry my laptop home, right? Yeah, I have a Windows computer at the office. It’s a laptop, and then I have a MacBook that’s at home and I just don’t want to carry it back and forth. I guess I’m lazy, okay. But no, actually, here’s the real reason. The platform we work with, and I’ll talk a little about that, works really well with a Windows computer and with a MacBook. And I wasn’t a Mac user, and so I used to have clients or prospects that would ask me questions and I had to go back to my team. And so my team sent me up with a MacBook and said, there you go, use it. And then this way you don’t have to come to us every time. That was the main reason they gave me a MacBook, by the way. And you’re going to laugh.

Todd W. Darroca (10:00):

You basically said, quit bugging me, David, just take the computer and go away. Very polite way. So

David Kakish (10:06):

I got a free MacBook out of it, but you, you’re going to laugh at me, Todd. I’m a hardcore at the opposite Windows user, and so I know all the shortcuts. I use the keyboard and this and that. And for the first two to three weeks at home when I was using the MacBook, I was just going to go crazy because I didn’t know all the shortcuts. I know how to do the basic stuff, but then after that I’m like, all right, because the shortcuts are the control C and the control B and Apple is slightly different, but in a strange way, I am pretty good now, but the first three weeks I was going to go crazy. Yeah,

Todd W. Darroca (10:46):

Sounds like most people.

David Kakish (10:48):

Cool. So I got the end points out of the way. I really want to talk about the productivity platform itself. Think of this as, again, for simplicity, I’m going to talk about an RIA with 10 employees regardless of AUM assets under management or anything like that. And so when you look at it, what’s the Microsoft productivity platform? Think of the Office Suite, office Outlook, word, PowerPoint, OneDrive, SharePoint and so on. What’s the Google Suite? It’s the Google workspace or what used to be called the G Suite, which is their version of Word Excel, and then drive for the files and folders. And then Apple, apple has their own version of the office suite like sheets and I forget what it’s called. Pages.

Todd W. Darroca (11:37):

Pages, sheets. Pages, yeah, numbers,

David Kakish (11:39):

Exactly. And then there’s Amazon. It’s like the hip cool player that the big companies like to talk about. So those are the four really big platforms. Okay, I’m going to tell you something. You’re right. Amazon doesn’t really have a productivity suite for the RIAs. They don’t have the equivalent of Outlook or Word. Where they’re really big is on hosting stuff or if you need a cloud server or this or that. And again, think of a typical RIA with 10 employees. They’re largely using web-based applications, and then they’ve got some kind of a file folder structure and email. And so Amazon isn’t really a player at all in this space. So we can kind of quickly write ’em off, not that they’re a bad company or anything like that, but they just don’t have a productivity suite. And I think it’s funny that when we said Amazon, you’re talking about shopping on Amazon, it didn’t even occur to me,

Todd W. Darroca (12:35):

Hey man, I’ll tell you, I got that app on my phone. I’ve wasted a lot of money with that still. Yes,

David Kakish (12:40):

Yes, yes. I refuse to have the Amazon app on my phone because my kids keep asking me, dad, why don’t you have it? I go, no, I want to make it a little bit harder to spend money with Amazon.

Todd W. Darroca (12:52):

So Amazon’s out of the play here. Yes, exactly. So Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

David Kakish (12:57):

And so I’m going to talk a little bit about Apple. So Apple has their suite, but it’s a very consumer suite. We see very few people using the Apple productivity suite, not the MacBooks, not the iPads. The Apple hardware is really phenomenal and obviously a lot of people are using it, but we are not really seeing anybody use it because it’s very consumer driven and not business driven. So when you think about, again, remind me the names of the Apple.

Todd W. Darroca (13:24):

Yeah, so numbers, pages, yes, those are, yeah. And I will say that I use those personally just as when I write things or I’m doing documentation, but most of my clients, they don’t use it. It it’s just not helpful for them as an organization and collaboration. Again, those people don’t have that. And you have to obviously transpose all these into different documents. Apple doesn’t play well with the others.

David Kakish (13:54):

Yeah, exactly. And what you see, people that are using Apple, let’s just say a MacBook as an example, or even an iPad, what you see is they’re usually generally either using the Microsoft office suite like Outlook, word, Excel, or they’re using the Google G Suite, Google Drive, and so on. And so that’s what you’re seeing. So Apple, from a hardware standpoint, phenomenal. So that leaves, its really two big players is Microsoft and Google. So Amazon is not a player. Apple is great when it comes to hardware, but on the platform, the productivity platform, they’re really not in the business space at all. And I think they’ve come to at peace with that. A lot of individuals personally are using the Apple stuff, but they’re not using it from a business perspective. Lemme put it to you this way, in the last two years, I yet have to talk to an RIA that’s using the Apple Productivity suite, but they’re using Apple MacBooks and Apple iPads and things like that using either Microsoft or Google. So really this leaves the two big players, Microsoft and Google. So that’s really what we’re going to talk about. Okay. Alright.

(15:08):

So here’s kind of my take on this. And again, as I said, my brother works for Google and I love Google. And it’s funny, I use Google sort of on the personal side, but on the business side, don’t, vast majority of RIAs are using the Microsoft productivity suite and the ones that are using Google are looking to potentially move to Microsoft. And I don’t have an actual survey where we’ve actually done this. That’s actually a good idea. We may want to do that, but I would say out of all of our clients, over 90% of the RIAs that we work with, probably even higher than that are using the Microsoft productivity suite. And the ones that are using the Google Suite are coming to us and saying, Hey, we want to move to the Microsoft suite from Google. And you want to know why that is.

Todd W. Darroca (16:00):

I was going to say, why would you, again, and for me, Google is a little easier and it is collaborative and most people are doing it, but yeah, is Microsoft just more secure for them? Is it cheaper for them? Why are they all switching from one to the other?

David Kakish (16:15):

Yeah, so the pricing doesn’t really play a big factor in here because people are saying, Hey, how can I be more productive and how can I be more secure? And what we’re really noticing is that, hey, with Google and Microsoft, you can be really productive. What people are really worried about on the Google side is, Hey, how do I achieve better security and better IT compliance? And that’s the big question that, because again, even an RIA with five employees has over a hundred million dollars in AUM. And so that’s a really, really big concern for them. And to be fair, I don’t want to say that Google doesn’t have that. What Google has in terms of securing your productivity suite, you have to go in and get a lot of third party tools. And so they have these enterprise companies, but they don’t want to talk to you if you’re an RIA with five or 25 employees, these third party plugins or tools. Either you do it yourself or you want to work with a partner. And that partner is really focused on working with a financial institution with thousands of employees, not 25 employees or five employees. So I like the Google platform and I think it’s really good. The challenge is to really secure it and lock it down, you have to do a lot of other things.

Todd W. Darroca (17:30):

So my initial thought of me questioning, not questioning, but thinking about security on Google with all this stuff, I’m not too far off, at least not at all in the normal concern. Okay, yeah,

David Kakish (17:44):

You’re right on the money with your intuition is right, and here’s the deal to switch. So from Google to Microsoft, also your intuition on Microsoft is right, but I want to give you a refresh on that, which is historically yes, but Microsoft has really come a long way where you can easily collaborate and you can share now, but built within that is security. And so the big, in my opinion, if you were to ask me, the big difference between Google and Microsoft is with Microsoft you can get all these enterprise tools as part of the subscription, and you at five people, five employees, 20 employees, you can really leverage and use that technology. Whereas with Google, you have to have all these other third party tools to actually accomplish what you want to do. Now, to be fair with Microsoft, again, most of the RIAs we work with are really good at running an RIA really good at making people more money.

(18:42):

But they’re not technologists, they’re not the best people at being the best IT people. And so what I tell people is like, look, the Microsoft platform, if you’re using it, it’s kind of like you have the right airplane, but to maximize security and IT compliance and productivity, you might want to work with a partner that actually understands what to do with all that. And so you have the right airplane, you just might need a better pilot that sits in the cockpit that knows what to do with all that stuff. And you and I have talked in the past about some of the really neat things that Microsoft has single sign-on for web-based applications, defender for endpoint, which is like a security wraparound, your laptop or your MacBook as you’re traveling and you’re connecting at a hotel or at the airport or whatever, email encryption, data loss prevention where you can send an email and it automatically encrypts if it has a social security number or account number.

(19:43):

And I’m touching upon some of these things because these are enterprise solutions that Microsoft is basically saying, you at five employees you can leverage and you can use this enterprise security. You don’t need to go and get another third party tool to do that. And maybe we’ll include this in the show links, but I know people like to talk smack about Microsoft quite a bit. And again, we’re not Microsoft, we’re just kind of giving our unbiased opinion. But if you actually look at some of the Gartner reports and Forrester reports Microsoft scores really, really, really well, and they’re in the top right hand corner of that Gartner Reports Magic Quadrant. Thank you. You know what I’m talking about.

Todd W. Darroca (20:28):

Oh yes, I do.

David Kakish (20:31):

Magic Quadrant. Yeah, that’s right. So anyway, so here were to ask me like, Hey, just one-on-one, hey, we’re an RIA 12 employees, what’s the best productivity platform that you recommend hands off? I would tell you it’s, and then a distant second is Google, but I wouldn’t be looking at Apple or Amazon or anything like that. So hopefully I’m being transparent as I’m talking about what these are. And again, these are not the endpoints. The endpoints are irrelevant, whether it’s a Chromebook or a MacBook or a Windows laptop or an iPhone or an Android, to me that’s sort of irrelevant. What do you prefer? But the productivity platform itself by far, Microsoft is number one, and then rural would be a distant second.

Todd W. Darroca (21:18):

So when you talk about productivity, for me, part of productivity is not just the email and the writing, but sometimes it’s project management or collaboration in a project in a remote world. So I guess I haven’t, and maybe I’m just ignorant on this, I haven’t really seen Microsoft where they have a project management, for example, you have the Asana out there where you can do dates and due dates and do timelines and all that stuff, or a monday.com or a click up or a Rike. True. And so how did those productivity platforms compare to Microsoft and is there a project management part of Microsoft that if somebody wanted to do that?

David Kakish (22:01):

Yeah, yeah. Well, I can’t resist. You’re just ignorant.

Todd W. Darroca (22:08):

Alright, I’ll take it. Okay, good. So tell me where it’s at then.

David Kakish (22:14):

You’re right, I couldn’t resist Todd. I wanted to say that.

Todd W. Darroca (22:18):

It’s good. Oh man. Okay, so teach me something then, David. So take away my ignorance here. I’m

David Kakish (22:28):

Turning red. See, I said that and I can’t even keep a straight face. I’m feeling guilty now.

Todd W. Darroca (22:32):

Don’t feel guilty, everybody. We’re friends. It’s okay. You can make fun of me. It’s all good. Don’t write in,

David Kakish (22:40):

You’re not. You do have a good point, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. So the productivity suite that Microsoft has is think of the office suite, like word, Excel, outlook, PowerPoint, but also your file folder structure. You don’t need to have a Dropbox or Citrix ShareFile or all that. You can really do that inside OneDrive or SharePoint. So the core productivity suite that Microsoft has works really well for an RIA. It’s simple, you’re productive. Most RIAs know how to use that suite. And then also your file folder structure, you just click on File Explorer on a Windows computer or you click finder on your Mac and you can work. And it’s all saved privately at your Microsoft data center, your private cloud or your private tenant that you have with Microsoft. Now, to be fair, Microsoft has some other third party applications. I forget the name of their calendar.

(23:38):

It’s similar to Calendly. I don’t even use that one. I use Calendly because it’s a cleaner interface Microsoft has to do. So they have all these plugins, but to answer your question, like monday.com, Asana, Trello, any of these, those are third party and those are specialized and it makes a lot of sense to use that because Microsoft doesn’t have the equivalent of that. Now, what we do for our clients, for example, that are using that, and by the way, it’s the same for something like Redtail or Orion, any software that’s specific to the RIA business, we just take it and we do something called single sign-on for web-based applications or SSO. And so what happens is once you log into your computer, you open up the browser, you can go in and you can click on Asana and it automatically logs you in because now we’re leveraging your Microsoft credentials so that you don’t have to have another credentials.

(24:40):

And think of Todd like you hired Mary and she’s starting with you. Great. She can log into her computer or MacBook, open up the browser, and then she can access all the web-based applications without having to remember the passwords for all these other applications.com and so on. So yes, Microsoft isn’t the all be all. There are applications, software, apps that are much better than what Microsoft has. Again, Asana, Trello, any of these right there. And we would just plug ’em in into the Microsoft ecosystem so that an employee at that RIA can click on it work and use that. But that’s how we would do that. But yes. Got it. There are a lot of third party applications that are beyond the scope of what Microsoft or even Google would provide for that.

Todd W. Darroca (25:30):

Got it. So let’s go back again and let’s make sure that we talk about what some needs to walk away with today and what they can do today to put what you’ve taught them in action. Obviously for me, I’m going to look more at Microsoft and see about the productivity place. So what about the other ones though?

David Kakish (25:53):

Yeah, yeah. Listen, here’s the deal, and if we weren’t talking to an RIA, I think Microsoft and Google, it would be neck to neck, it would be difficult. And it’s funny, I say this with my brother all the time. I’m like, look, in the education space, I think Google is really dominating for in combination of different places. But I go, look, if you’ve got a generic business with 10 employees, I’m not sure that it matters that much if it’s Google or Microsoft Productivity Suite because that’s just sort of a generic business and what do people know and this and that. But in this space we’re in, because you get what I would call these big business enterprise security bundles that Microsoft allows you to have at five employees, at 15 employees by far. I would highly recommend Microsoft where you can go ahead and you can do that. So again, in your marketing space, Todd, I don’t know how much it matters if I got a copy of a logo you designed,

Todd W. Darroca (26:57):

But if I’m working with defense contractors or financial institutions, this is still something I do. And that’s really important then for me to be thinking about. Yeah,

David Kakish (27:08):

I would definitely give that a second thought. Again, not that Google is bad and not that you can’t accomplish the same thing with Google, but to get that enterprise security with Microsoft, it’s bundled in. You might have to upgrade to from an E three to an E five or something like that, but you don’t need to go out and get all these third party applications and stuff like that. Got it.

Todd W. Darroca (27:28):

Okay.

David Kakish (27:29):

So again, I’ll leave with this for an RIA with 5, 10, 25 employees. By far, Microsoft is the number one productivity platform. Google is a distant second and I’ll just leave it at that. Okay. No, no, no. I’m happy to answer more questions. I’m kidding.

Todd W. Darroca (27:51):

Now, if somebody did want to pinging you or ask you some more questions, what’s the best way for ’em to do that? Email, text carrier

David Kakish (27:57):

Pigeon? Yeah, I mean I would say the easiest way is we have a lot of content if they want to sort of read about this and learn more, obviously they can get ahold of us anytime and we’re happy to help. But if they go to our website@www.riaworkspace.com and click on the learning center, we’ve got a lot of content. We know our clients or prospects like to learn more, but if they want to just hit contact us on the website, Hey, here’s my question or schedule a call, we’re happy to do that. We’re more than happy to do that. And it’s always a fun discussion that I have when somebody has come from a company where they were standardized on Google and that RIA has made a decision to go to Microsoft and it’s just, you see the dynamics and I’m like, look guys, we’re agnostic. I’m just kind of trying to tell you what the advantages are and here’s why. And then it all sort of begins to register when we do that. But yeah, go to our website if you want to read on your own, go to the learning center. If you want to talk to me, just hit the contact us button on our website and then we’ll schedule a call. And depending on how smart you are, I may need to get one of my engineers on.

Todd W. Darroca (29:10):

Yeah, you don’t have to be smart people, you just have to be inquisitive. And if you’re ignorant, it’s okay. David will check you. Alright, well anyways, everybody, thank you so much. I’m for listening. Todd,

David Kakish (29:24):

I’m still feeling guilty about saying that. I just thought you,

Todd W. Darroca (29:26):

I feel guilty personally. I think it’s funny. So it’s all good. I’m glad you called it out. But anyways, yeah, don’t write in people. It’s fine. David and I were friends, it’s all good. But so speaking of that, we want to thank you so much for listening to us, to Crazy Guys here talking on the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by of course RIA workspace. And as David mentioned, go visit them at the website and check out that learning center for more helpful resources. So feel free to reach out to any one of us for any questions. And we always want to know what topics do you want us to cover for next time and make sure you follow us, like us, subscribe for us, all that good stuff. And stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode for David Kish and everybody else, I’m Todd Rocha and thanks so much for listening. Have a great day.

Speaker 4 (30:13):

Thank you.

In this episode of RIA Tech Talk, hosts Todd Darroca and David Kakish unravel the world of virtual desktops, exploring why this once-popular technology is becoming obsolete for RIAs. They delve into the challenges faced by RIAs using virtual desktop infrastructure, shedding light on video and audio latency, security concerns, and the pitfalls of doubling up on cloud resources. The episode unveils a modern solution, urging RIAs to embrace Microsoft 365 for a seamless, secure, and integrated tech experience, fundamentally reshaping how businesses operate in the digital age.

Listen To The Audio


Read The Transcript

Here are the highlights from this podcast:

Problem with Virtual Desktops for RIAs:

   – Outdated technology with challenges such as confusion between local and hosted browsers.

   – Keyboard shortcuts may not work, and there’s latency in video and audio.

   – Employees find workarounds, defeating the purpose.

   – Double payments for cloud resources and Microsoft licenses.

Advantages of Virtual Desktops (in the past)

   – Relevant when RIAs had server-based applications in their office.

   – Useful for multiple offices and accessing server-based applications.

Why Move Away from Virtual Desktops

   – Most RIAs now use web-based applications, making virtual desktops unnecessary.

   – Virtual desktops create more problems than they solve in the current scenario.

Recommended Solution: Leveraging Microsoft 365

   – Entire RIA business can run on the Microsoft 365 platform.

   – Use Office Suite, email, encryption, archiving, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, single sign-on, data loss prevention, and e-discovery.

   – Security and productivity are integrated into the Microsoft 365 subscription.

   – Similar experience for Mac users.

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Todd W. Darroca (00:08):

Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and alongside me is Mr. David Kish. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technologies for RIAs just like yours. Now in this podcast, we’ll be your tech guides breaking down those often confusing tech topics into plain and practical terms. So we hope you join us and in each episode as we dive into the late trends, we’re going to share some expert insights and also help you navigate the ever-changing world of RIA technology. So let’s get started. And we’ve got David Kish here, obviously. And so today we’re talking all about the end of virtual desktops. Dun, dun, dun. And what’s next for RIAs? So David, let’s bring you in here. So what’s the big problem and why is it important for the RIA that’s listening to take heat of this and take some notes down?

David Kakish (01:02):

Hey Todd, I really like that drum roll. That’s pretty

Todd W. Darroca (01:05):

Good. I know, right? Let’s see if we can add some audio in there. Audio’s sound effects.

David Kakish (01:09):

We’ll bring into problems next time with us. So, alright, well listen, this is definitely focused on the RIA, whether you’re an office manager, whether you’re the partner managing partner, chief compliance officer, chief COO, chief Operations officer. This is not geared towards an IT professional, right? We’re not going to get into the technical weeds if you’re an RIA with, let’s just say roughly between five and 25 employees, this is for you. This is important for you if you’re an RIA that’s already using virtual desktop technology or if you’re exploring what are some of the other technologies out there provided by other IT providers. And I’ll dive into some of the details, but it’s really an outdated technology and we’re seeing RIA a sort of flock away from that technology. But then we’re also seeing some people that are exploring what are some of the other options and there’s some really great salespeople out there selling it, and then I feel like people are falling for it. So I just want to talk about that and what are the options. So again, whether you’re using the virtual desktop technology or whether you’re exploring to use that, this is going to be really beneficial for you.

Todd W. Darroca (02:21):

Okay, so just to recap here, so hopefully by the end of this session, what you guys are going to learn from David is why so many RIAs are flocking away from this type of technology. And if you are exploring other options, why VDI and the cloud computer should be at the bottom of your list. And actually I wouldn’t even have it on my list if I were in your shoes. So let’s get started. So David, first question off the bat, obviously, what is a virtual desktops and what’s the big problem with virtual desktops for an RIA?

David Kakish (02:53):

Sure, sure. Yeah, the whole idea of a virtual desktop, and I want to say some people will use different like VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure or HVDI hosted virtual desktop infrastructure or a cloud computer. Some people might call it like Citrix workspace. And so a virtual computer, a cloud computer or virtual desktop, a hosted desktop depending on who you talk to, the whole idea is you’re not using your local computer’s operating system. It feels like the operating system for your local computer is actually hosted at a data center someplace. And so everything is happening someplace else and nothing is really happening local on your computer. Your computer is essentially a dump terminal. So when I talk about virtual desktop or virtual desktop infrastructure, that’s what I mean on that. So you log into your computer, your computer is a dump terminal, you’re accessing another computer that’s hosted at a data center someplace and your local computer becomes irrelevant.

(03:54):

So from a security perspective, it was kind of nice, it didn’t matter about the endpoint, but what’s happened, and for a while we were using this technology, but we really have not been using it for five plus years and we’ve moved people away from that. And I’m still shocked to see that people are still using that. And again, we’re seeing RIAs coming to us not wanting to use this technology. And this technology, to be fair still makes a lot of sense in the healthcare industry. It makes sense in some other verticals where you have a lot of what I would call like legacy software or server-based applications. And what I mean by that is a lot of the software applications for financial advisors and registered investment advisors today is web-based. And so you really don’t have a need for a local server or the virtual desktop infrastructure, but that made a lot of sense when you were replacing a local server to go to a cloud computer.

(04:54):

But that just does not make sense for so many people. And we’ve migrated away from that. And again, the two things that I see consistently is people coming to us that want to get away from it. That’s number one. And then number two, I see people that are exploring some options and there’s some IT providers out there that are really great salespeople, I got to give them credit, they’re very personable, they’re very nice, they’re doing all the right things. And I go, oh my goodness. When somebody goes with that technology, I’m like, even if you don’t go with us, it’s okay. Just don’t go with that technology, right? Yeah. So I see that quite a bit and I want to help and educate advisors and RIAs.

Todd W. Darroca (05:38):

So what is the big problem with VDI?

David Kakish (05:42):

Yeah, so for the people that are using it, they know that. So if you’re using the virtual desktop VDI technology, be patient a little bit. Let’s assume somebody doesn’t know what that is. So a couple of things that happens, one of the really big things that happens for an employee that’s using this technology, they’re like, hang on, am I using the local web browser or am I using a hosted web browser, right? Am I using the local browser or am I using the browser that’s sort of hosted in the cloud? And it’s hard for ’em to tell the difference between the two. A lot of the keyboard shortcuts that you and I use all the time are not available. They don’t work when it’s in a hosted environment. The other thing that happens is video and audio, there’s a lot of latency. So the whole economy has shifted to Zoom meetings and video meetings and things like that.

(06:39):

No exaggeration. And I don’t want to say the name of this firm, but a couple of weeks ago I was talking to them over a Zoom meeting like this and his audio just went out because he was using the virtual desktop VDI technology. And so what happens is, in theory, it was really good for security because separated and this and that, but because there’s all these problems, employees find workarounds. So they’re presenting, but they can’t present Zoom in a cloud computer environment or in a virtual desktop environment. So they’re using the local environment, zoom to present locally, but then they email themselves the files and the documents so they can access that. And they’re like, well, that defeats the whole purpose. The other thing that people don’t realize is you’re actually doubling up on paying for cloud resources and for Microsoft licenses. So when you think about something like Microsoft Outlook or Word or Excel, the way that Microsoft licenses, that is for your local computer, but then you can also have it hosted on a virtual desktop, but Microsoft makes you pay that again.

(07:50):

And so anyways, looking at that, you’re paying extra money, you’re not getting the benefits of the security that supposedly you were sold on. And the third thing is there’s a lot of problems with latency when it comes to video, when it comes to audio. And then people are constantly finding work around and people are confused like, am I local? Am I not? And here’s my recommendation. If you decide that you want to move forward with that, talk to two clients that are using that technology and say, how’s the video and how’s the audio? And that’s going to answer the question.

Todd W. Darroca (08:25):

So obviously a lot of people went to VDI, they adopted that it worked for them. So we’re talking about all the challenges right now. So why did they even go to VDI in the first place? What were the big advantages of going with VDI?

David Kakish (08:40):

Yeah, and the key word was what was the big advantage, right? Not what is the advantage. Now, again, I think if you go back in time, four or five plus years, there were big advantages. Number one is, so let’s go back in time. 10 years ago, a lot of financial advisors and RIAs had a server in their office, and that server was running server-based applications, think QuickBooks, think juncture, think Black Diamond, take the name of whatever software, and it was running locally on that server that they had in their office. And it made a lot of sense to say, you know what? Let’s decommission this server that’s sitting in our office and let’s have that server hosted in the cloud, but then to add security, let’s use that virtual desktop technology. So when you had server based applications and when you had servers in your office, it made a lot of sense, especially if you had multiple offices and especially if you had people that needed to connect in and access that. If you look at today, the vast majority of RIAs and financial advisors are using web-based applications. Some are still using server-based applications, but that’s less than 20%. I’d even say it’s even less than that. But if you don’t have a server-based application, there’s absolutely no reason for you to be using this technology anymore. And even if you are, there’s a better way to do that. And you don’t need to use Virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI or HVDI or cloud computer.

Todd W. Darroca (10:18):

So what do you, yeah, no, that definitely answers the questions of why people were using VDI or what was the big advantage of what kind of got there, that sparkly, shiny moment of, Ooh, I need that. So now my question is, so what do you recommend here?

David Kakish (10:37):

Yeah, so I want to put a quick disqualifier. We could set up people on VDI if we wanted to on a virtual desktop. We just don’t because it’s not that we don’t know how to do it or we can’t do it, we can. We just made a decision that does not make sense and we’re not doing it for our clients or prospects or anything like that. So if somebody comes to us and said, I want to move forward with this technology, we’re like, Hey, thanks, but no thanks, go find a different partner. That’s the decision that we’ve made. So here’s again, I want to keep it high level. I don’t want to dive too much into the weeds because I’m not talking to IT professionals. I could, but I don’t want to do it. I know that I’m talking to, if you’re listening to us, you’re a managing partner, you’re ACCO, you’re ACOO and so on.

(11:22):

You’re not unquote an IT professional. You’re dangerous enough to know what you’re doing, but not. So what’s interesting is you could run your entire business on the Microsoft 365 platform. And what I tell people all the time, and there’s a lot of people that are using the Microsoft 365 platform, I use this analogy all the time where it’s kind of like you have an airplane, but you’re driving that airplane, you’re not flying it. And in order to fly that airplane, you want somebody who can sit in the cockpit that knows what to do with all those gadgets. So if you think about most advisors today, they’re using the Office Suite Outlook, word, Excel, PowerPoint, maybe they’re using SharePoint. There’s so many other things that you can do that. So again, at a really high level, you can run your entire RIA securely and productively. You can run it securely and productively.

Todd W. Darroca (12:21):

It’s morning, David, are you sure you’re good here? I mean, man,

David Kakish (12:27):

I’m serious. It’s only water.

Todd W. Darroca (12:29):

I’ve got water in here. Water is Canada. Alright, so productively. There you go. Yes, yes.

David Kakish (12:36):

So you can run your entire RIA on Microsoft 365 in a productive and a secure way. Number one, you can use the office suite word, Excel, outlook, PowerPoint, right? No brainer. Number two, you can use email. You don’t need to have your email hosted with a third party like Redtail or Rackspace or something like that. The other thing that you can do is you can actually use email encryption and email archiving. Again, your RIA. You don’t need to pay for a third party tool like Smarsh, global Relay or somebody else to archive your emails and be compliant. You can if you want to, you don’t have to Microsoft Teams and the archiving that goes along with that. You can also use SharePoint for files and folders. We recommend SharePoint over OneDrive because there’s a lot more security that you can do. So you don’t need to have a third party tool like NetDocs or Citrix ShareFile or Dropbox or box.com.

(13:34):

And then you can use single sign-on for web-based applications. So you don’t have to have a third party tool like Okta. And then if you want to get some of the advanced tools, you could use features like data loss prevention and e-discovery for your email. So for example, data loss prevention. That’s where if I send out an email with a social security number or a bank account number, it’ll automatically detect it, encrypt it, and send it out. It can also notify your chief compliance officer endpoint protection for your computers and your iPads and your iPhones and your Androids.

(14:13):

Basically, you can put a security wrap around those endpoints because we know that you’re probably connecting when you’re at the office, maybe at home, maybe at a hotel when you’re traveling. So these are all things that I just mentioned that are part of your Microsoft 365 subscription. You might have to up your subscription from Business Premium to the enterprise or this or that, but you could run your entire business on that and you can be secure. So I know I’ve kind of, I guess Todd, I went through a list of things. Maybe I’ll come back to you. You might have some questions and

Todd W. Darroca (14:48):

The list you might have. So let’s stay at the level here. I’m in the plane. I’m not in the cockpit looking down, so keep it pretty high level. So how does it all work?

David Kakish (14:58):

Yeah, that’s a great question. So it’s a beautiful thing because the way that I do that, and I tell people I personally work very similar to an RIA and I’ll talk on a Windows computer, but it works on a MacBook exactly the same way. When I power up my Windows computer, I need to put the password for the encryption, my computer needs to meet my company’s IT compliance requirements. Do I have patch updates? Do I have an antivirus and so on. And so if it does, fantastic, it’ll let me connect. But again, to simplify it, I put in my, going back to your question, I’m getting ahead of myself. So number one, I power up my computer. Number two, I type in the password for the encryption. Number three, I put in my PIN to log into the computer. Once I’m in my computer, I open up Outlook, I open up Word, I open up PowerPoint and so on, and then I can access that.

(15:57):

All the software applications from Microsoft are installed locally on my computer. But then when I save a file or I save a document, it’s saved at my Microsoft data center in my own private cloud. So the files are indexed locally, but none of that is saved locally and it’s saved at the Microsoft data center. And what this allows me to do is I could be working on my computer in the office and then I can collaborate real time with you where both of us can be in the same Excel spreadsheet. And then if I go home and I want to work on my work MacBook, I can jump on and not miss a beat at all. So nothing is saved locally on my computer. It’s all saved at my own private cloud at the Microsoft data center. And I’m fully productive and it’s fully integrated. And I think that’s the beauty of it is it’s not like all these third party, it’s not a Frankenstein with all these third party tools, it’s all integrated, it’s all in one place, and I’m able to be fully productive and use all these tools. And again, it’s simple, right? There’s simplicity, but there’s a lot of advanced security that’s in the background too.

Todd W. Darroca (17:03):

So I use a Mac. So is it the same for the Mac user or is there different?

David Kakish (17:08):

Yeah, so for Mac users, you know how you have Office for mac, you would just go ahead and you would open Outlook for Mac, Excel for Mac, you would work, you would open up Finder, and that’s integrated with SharePoint. So you’d open up Finder and then you’d open up the file. But again, it’s saving it at the Microsoft data center, but it’s indexed locally on your Mac. So to answer your question, the experience is exactly the same. You’re not turning. So with virtual desktop technology, the one that people are moving away from your Mac becomes a dumb terminal because you’re remoting into a Windows virtual desktop. With this solution that I’m talking about, you’re using Mac and the full functionality of it, of your Mac. Again, you open up Outlook for Mac and your work email is there, you save a file, it saves it within Finder slash SharePoint and it’s saved at the Microsoft data center. It’s really a beautiful, simple integrated solution.

Todd W. Darroca (18:05):

Got it. So as we’re coming up to the end of the podcast here, can you real succinctly tell us what the key points again are when we talk about the end of the virtual desktops and what RIAs should do?

David Kakish (18:20):

Yeah, so again, I think what’s happened is the technology and some of the stuff that I’m talking about might seem a little bit sort of confusing, but I think a simple demo can, and maybe we should do that maybe next time we should just have a demo and say, Hey, here’s how it works. And rather than talk about it, maybe we show that, right? So maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe we’ll have that as a follow-up Todd, but put simply with the old virtual desktop infrastructure, VDIH, VDI, whatever you want to call that, that era is gone. I’m done. People are moving away from that. There’s a lot of challenges with it. It was good while it lasted. It’s been really, in my opinion, that era should have been gone like five plus years ago. The way that you can work today is you can fully leverage the Microsoft 365 platform to run your entire business, and you don’t need to have all these third party tools to do other things for your files, for your archiving, for any of that right there.

(19:19):

The big challenge that I see out there is not a lot of advisors and RIAs know about that, and not a lot of IT consultants and IT professionals know about that. The IT consultants and the IT professionals that know about this, they usually work with really big businesses or the enterprise. So think about companies with 500 plus employees, the IT consultants and the IT providers that work with what I would call small and mid-sized businesses, say zero to 30 employees. They don’t understand. They don’t know how to run some of these enterprise technology because if you’re not an RIA and you’re 10 employees, you don’t need to have all this. You’re okay with not having all this, what I would call big business security or big business IT compliance. But if you’re an RIA with even just four employees, you still need to have these things in place. Yeah, I know I could talk about this stuff forever, so it’s good that I pause and come back to you.

Todd W. Darroca (20:18):

Yeah, no, it’s always helpful. Again, what am I learning today? What am I taking away? Okay, great. Any last things that you want to make sure that somebody walks away with? Again, virtual desktops, they can always come to you to talk about it, but again, you’re moving them over to an alternative to keep them, I guess, in the game or ahead of the game and modernizing their tech. Anything else? Any final words from you?

David Kakish (20:43):

And I’ve seen this, we are really good at what we do, but we’re not like that classic great salesman where we’re like, ah, let’s send you some donuts. And you know what I’m talking about Todd, right? Like, ah,

Todd W. Darroca (20:56):

Yeah, I haven’t been sending donuts in a while though, David, but I got you. I gotcha.

David Kakish (21:03):

No, no. And I say this because I remember we lost a deal because they’re like, David, you’re great. We like your technology and all that, but Todd is local to my city, and he came in with some donuts

Todd W. Darroca (21:17):

Gotcha form

David Kakish (21:18):

With that, right? I’m like, oh my goodness. So whatever. From a salesmanship perspective, the other company, the other local company, did really well, which is great. And so what I would say is, number one, do they have other RIAs or financial advisors using that technology, right? Ask about that. And that’s key number two, if they do talk to them about their experience using that virtual desktop infrastructure specifically, what’s it like to make video calls and audio calls and how does that work? Those are the two things if you ask. I think setting all salesmanship aside, I think you’re going to get a lot of clarity around what that is, because what happens is they move forward with it and then they’re stuck because they signed a three year contract and they can’t get out of it. So they make the best of it and things like that. So anyways, so that’s my story with the donuts and that’s why I brought that up, Todd.

Todd W. Darroca (22:19):

Well, thank you so much, David. Hopefully next time we do our demo, we’ll have demo and donuts. That sounds like a pretty good next show. But hey, we want to thank all of you for listening to the RIA A Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by of course, RIA Workspace. For more podcasts and resources, go to www.riworkspace.com and check out that learning center. And feel free to reach out to us with any questions or topics you’d like to cover. We always want you to be engaged in the conversation, so if there’s a topic you want us to talk about, please just send it on over. And of course, stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode. So for David Kish, I’m Todd Darroca, and thanks so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful day.

David Kakish (23:01):

Thank you.