Blog

In this episode of the RIA Tech Talk Podcast, we answer some of the questions we get from RIAs about the need for onsite IT support.

Listen To The Audio


Read The Transcript

The answers we give are for RIAs with between 5 and 25 employees. These are the firms we work with most often and for smaller or very large firms, the answers might be different.

Here are the questions we answer in this podcast.

1. Does my RIA need on-site support?
2. Does on-site support offer something that remote support can’t?
3. Is on-site help required when we have new hardware to install or are opening a new office?
4. If we’re using Microsoft and cloud-based applications, will remote support be enough?
5. If our IT partner offers on-site support, how often will someone be at our office?
6. What is the cost difference when we have on-site support?
7. Does RIA WorkSpace offer on-site support?

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Todd Darroca

Hello and welcome to the RIA TeckTalk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and alongside of me is ass always, Mr. Copilot. Mr. David Kakish. I know he’s going to say, don’t call me Mr. So I always call him David. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs like yours. Now in this podcast, we’ll be your tech guides breaking down those ever confusing tech topics into plain old English for you. So join us on each episode as we dive into the latest tech trends, share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of RIA technology. And so today, David, we are talking about remote versus onsite IT support and what is the right choice for your RIAI got a couple of FAQs, frequently asked questions here that we get most often. So David, I’m going to dive right into those. You all set for that?

David Kakish

Yeah, absolutely. Well listen, Todd, good to talk to you. And you’re right, every time you say, Mr, I look behind you and I look for my dad. add, I guess before you start asking the questions, I do want to put it out there that we work with a lot of RIAs nationwide. Most of the RIAs we work with are between five and 25 employees regardless of assets under management. So we don’t work with a lot of, let’s just say solo advisors or RIAs with a hundred plus employees and so on. And so for the sake of today, think of, I don’t know, Todd Private Wealth or David’s Private Wealth, an RIA with nine 10 employees or something like that. That’s kind of a typical client that we’re talking about. I think that’s very relevant because again, there’s a lot of solo RIAs that’s not really who we work with a lot. And there are some RIAs that are very large and that’s not who we’re working with. Think if you’re an RIA with approximately five to 25 employees, regardless of a UM, that’s who we’re talking to and that’s who this is really geared towards. Okay, got it.

Todd Darroca

Alright, sounds good. So let’s start with is onsite support needed for most of the RIAs out there?

David Kakish

So Todd, I guess let me ask you this. You’re not an RIA, right? Nope. What would your thought process be when you ask that question?

Todd Darroca

I always say if I can get the IT guy right down the hall, I’d rather have him on site. But if it’s cheaper and I can still get the same level of service from somebody who’s in Chicago or Austin, then I’ll do it. I’ll do the remote one. So that’s kind of both sides of the coin there. But yeah. Yeah,

David Kakish

So it’s really interesting because a lot of times we’re based out of Chicago, but we work with clients nationwide and we do have the ability to provide onsite support when and if it is needed. Typically, the way we do that for our clients is, let’s just say we work with a client, Austin, you’re in Austin. Let’s just say Todd’s private wealth is in Austin. You’ve got 10 employees. If you want us to be on site, we can set it up so that we’re on site twice a month, let’s just say the first and the third Tuesday of every month for a half a day, we have a network of vetted partners. And so in your local market will have somebody that does that. And the landscape has really changed in the last five years and especially after the pandemic is that people are working remotely, even the ones that are working in the office don’t have onsite servers anymore.

And so in order for me to help you with a challenge that you have, let’s just say your email, I don’t need to access a server that’s in your closet because you don’t have that server in your closet anymore, right? And so what’s really interesting is even though we offer both plans, our flagship plan is the first plan without the onsite support because people look at the pricing and they’re like, yeah, no, it’s okay. We don’t want to pay an extra $1,200 a month to have somebody sitting here twice a month. And from our perspective too, a lot of times when that person is sitting out there sitting in your office twice a month for half a day, they’re usually twiddling their thumbs because all that stuff is already taken care of. So you probably don’t need it.

And a lot of times when I talk to an RIA that’s already working with a local provider in their local market, and usually they’re contacting me or us because they’re frustrated with that local provider, I ask, I’m like, Hey, in the last two years, how many times were they on site? Oh wow. You know what? They’re a 15 minute drive. They haven’t been on site a single time in the last two years. So that’s very common. And what’s happened is, again, I think the main driver for that is a lot of the servers and the infrastructure is no longer sitting in your office. It’s sitting at a data center, it’s sitting at Microsoft or Redtail or Orion or Schwab or whoever that is. And so the only infrastructure you have in your office is a computer network firewall and then a wireless access point. And that’s about it. And that’s typically what’s sitting out there. So

Todd Darroca

Is there any major disaster recovery that would require you to, let’s say they do go remote, but then you’ve got to find somebody there? What kind of examples or do you have any stories of like, well, this is the only reason why we’d really send somebody physically was because of a fire, literal fire or things like that? Anything like that ever?

David Kakish

Well, it’s really interesting because on the previous, literally right before this call, I was talking to a prospect, they’re based out of Portland, and he was telling me, he is like, Hey, look, we want to make sure we have business continuity in place because there’s a law firm and we had a storm and this law firm couldn’t work for a week. And he’s like, we don’t want to have that. We’re five people, but we don’t want to have that if that happens. And I go, no, no, no, it’s all built in our clients. They can be as productive in the office as they are at home. And even if their whole office is wiped out for whatever reason, they can work from home, they can go to a hotel and work and they can be fully productive. They might be missing their setup with four monitors in the office, whatever that is.

But still, you’ve got your computer, you can be up and running, you can be productive and do that. And so after so many years of doing this, the biggest one where people want to, they want the onsite support, it’s usually two reasons. They’ve got 20 employees and it’s just part of their culture to have an IT person in the office. And so that’s where we put, we have somebody that’s sitting in the office twice a month, again that’s just, Hey, we want you to come and look at our conference room or this or that. But again, those tend to be RIAs with 20 plus employees. So that’s number one. And the other scenario where there is onsite support is like they’re opening up another branch office, let’s say in Phoenix, and they want it to be ready for five employees that are going to work out of that office. They just want somebody to plug everything in and get it up and running. And typically that’s a half a day or a full day. We already pre-configure everything remotely, and the person that’s on onsite is just kind of plugging in the internet and the firewall and the wireless access point. So those are really the two main reasons we ever do anything on site. But yeah, so this is a long answer saying you don’t need onsite support because you don’t have all the IT infrastructure anymore.

Todd Darroca

Yeah. So let me go back to you made a point about if somebody is opening a new office or there’s a new hardware. So if I’m opening up that new office for five and 10 employees and I have all these brand new pieces of hardware that may be both Apple and Adele or something, do I need somebody onsite there? Is that better than a remote or are they both kind of the same?

David Kakish

No, you don’t. Let me tell you how we do it sort of. I mean, you can, right? It’s optional, but anytime you have somebody that’s on site, right? There are fees that are associated with it. So here’s how we do that. Typically, again, let’s go Phoenix. You’re going to open up an office and you’re going to have five employees that you’re supporting in your Phoenix office. There’s the network infrastructure that you’re going to need, and then there’s the computer infrastructure for the user, for the employee. The network infrastructure that you’re going to need in that office is going to be number one in network firewall. Number two, it’s going to be a switch. And number three, it’s going to be a wireless access point.

Todd Darroca

Got it.

David Kakish

It. That’s it. And those, we pre-configure all those things remotely. And then in order for us to have that up and running, if you want us to be on site, great, it’s a half a day or a full day, we bill you for it, and we’ll have a vetted partner be on site to plug everything in. Most of our clients, they already have somebody in that market. And so will happen is what will happen is let’s just say Mary is the office manager. We’ll walk her through where to plug everything in, and then she’s up and running, and that’s what most of them end up doing. But there is 10 to 20% that say no, let’s just have somebody here on site to kind of plug that. So that’s the network infrastructure. So Todd, I’ll pause there. Does that make sense?

Todd Darroca

Yeah, yeah. No, that does I, I’m thinking about the office manager, Mary. If somebody said, Hey, can you go do this technical thing? I can just see that person, whether it’s Mary or Marcus, they’re like, oh God, what do I have to do technical stuff? This is not in my, but it sounds like, yeah, you can

David Kakish

Here, we’ll ask her like, Hey, where’s the plug coming in from Comcast or from the internet? There you go. Plug that into the firewall, right? Here’s the switch, plug this into the firewall and then here’s this. Plug it into the wireless access point. Those are the three main things we ask him or her to do. But again, if Mary or Marcus doesn’t want to do that, no problem. We have the ability to do it. So to be fair, we’re not asking him to configure the wireless access point on the firewall. I just want to put that out there.

Todd Darroca

So when it comes to all this remote stuff, you’ve got Microsoft and other cloud-based apps. Is somebody remote supporting me enough? Or for example, if I had some big technical cloud-based software, some investment tool or even some CRM, can a remote support be enough or do I need somebody there too?

David Kakish

Yeah, it’s a great question. Let’s use Salesforce Orion as a problem. Those are very specific applications for the wealth management industry. Well, guess what? Salesforce and Orion are all web-based applications. Whenever if I come on site, it’s probably going to be slower for me to support you than if I do it remotely, right? Because remotely I have access to my different monitors. I can look and I can quickly troubleshoot it. There is not, so to support you on something like Salesforce or Orion or even your email, there’s no advantage for me being on site. If anything, there’s a disadvantage because of the travel time, even if I am local, right? It’s going to take me 30 minutes or an hour to get there. So because again, it’s not running on that server in your office or anything like that.

Todd Darroca

Do you see a lot in your line of business where you do have to change a mindset where like you said, the 10 to 20% who just need that security blanket of somebody onsite with them? Are you finding you’re having to change that mindset pretty regularly? Or once that person is in that mindset, there’s no way that they’re getting out of it kind of deal?

David Kakish

Yeah. Well, it’s really changed. After the pandemic. It’s really, really interesting. What’s happened is people went from working in the office to working at home and they became very comfortable with, oh wow, you know what? Remote support. Plus, they didn’t even want the technician to be on site during the pandemic, right? No, no. Support me remotely. So after the pandemic, that’s totally shifted, and the way advisors relate to this is they were doing ria, were doing a lot of their meetings with clients in person, and now they’re doing so many of ’em over Zoom and over online video. And even their own clients, they might be 30 minutes away. They’re like, Hey, it’s more convenient. You don’t have to waste time to come into the office and stuff like that. So that might shift has really shifted. Now where it’s hard for us, and I mentioned that briefly to you, is if somebody is in Milwaukee, for example, and they’re like, Hey, listen, we only support a local economy, and so we’re going to only work with a local company.

Well, this is fine. We’re not physically in Milwaukee. But then again, neither is Orion or Wealthbox or Salesforce. And so for us, we feel like we’re just very specialized with RIAs, but there is occasionally where they say No, it’s a business decision that we need to work with somebody that’s local. And yeah, I respect that. I appreciate it. And we don’t. But most people in this space fundamentally understand that, oh yeah, in order for you to help me, I don’t need you to jump in a car and drive 20 minutes and be physically in my office. You can do it remote. Again, the crazy part is even the people that are working with that local IT company, it’s very rare that IT person ever comes onsite. In the last two years, he has not been on site.

Todd Darroca

So how often would somebody, if I needed someone onsite, how often could I expect him to be on site? To the point here, are you

David Kakish

Asking about us or in general?

Todd Darroca

I guess just in general, if I did want onsite support someone to be at our office, how much would I expect them to be there? We’re just talking about here a local person that could be down the road just a block away, but they’re still not coming in because they’re just going to do it from there. So even if I get an onsite support person, whether it’s we’ll start with your business, but if it’s somebody else’s business too, should I expect them or set the expectation I want you here two times a week, or is it just like an hour a week kind of deal? Yeah,

David Kakish

Yeah. Well, so you’re asking a really good question. The really important thing is the old way of thinking about things is like, oh, they were checking our systems. When he comes on site and he’s coming on site once a week to check the systems, now we’re checking the systems continuously, right? 24 7 every day we have an agent on the computer, it alerts us. We know what’s going on. We look at that, right? So I mean, we’re monitoring the system on a regular basis. We’re not waiting once a week. They’re like, oh yeah, let’s go check out the systems. We know in real time what’s going on with those systems. Here’s what I’m going to tell you, the cadence, if you are 20 and less employees, these companies are very comfortable with having it all remote. That’s just sort of the mindset. Certain companies with 20 plus employees, they actually like to have somebody in there, and that’s why we have the cadence of twice a month for a half a day.

So every basically thing of it as that, again, that first and third Tuesday of every month from eight to 12, they like to have Todd, the IT person there for a combination of different reasons. That would be the cadence five years ago before the pandemic, certain companies like that to be a half a day once a week, and everybody’s sort of moved away from that. And so that’s why we have a plan where we can have taught our IT person in your office physically twice a month for a half a day. And that seems to be work really well. But again, that’s for companies typically with 20 plus employees that want to have somebody that’s on site. The other piece that we see a lot is there’s typically somebody on site, an employee that’s very focused on the software applications. How do I better use Orion or Wealthbox? So they’re actually in it, but they’re very focused on the software, but they know a little bit about hardware and they can sort of alleviate and go plug in the projector in the conference room and stuff like that. So we see that quite a bit.

Todd Darroca

So how much would that, I guess what’s the differential cost here? Am I going to look to pay a lot of more money for that security if I have someone on site? Or is it about the same?

David Kakish

Yeah, no, it’s a bump in price, so forget us for a second. Even if you’re talking to a local IT provider and you want somebody that’s physically there, there’s typically a significant bump in price because it’s pretty inefficient for them to have somebody there. Now, from our perspective, the monthly bump in price is $1,200 as of right now. That’s what that is. Don’t hold it to us. If you’re listening to this in two years from now.

David Kakish

We haven’t changed it for a while, so I imagine it would be pretty close. So we present our prospects and our clients with two options, right? Option one and option two. Over 90% of the time, they go with option one without the onsite component because it’s for two reasons. They feel like they don’t need it, which I agree with. And then B, they’re like, man, that’s just a lot of money, and we’d spend that elsewhere. So yeah, I tend to be very transparent with pricing. I don’t like to waste the prospect’s time or my time or Hey, here’s what it is. If you want to do it, great. There’s a cost associated with that.

Todd Darroca

And so you guys do offer onsite support. Let me ask you, have you ever had a situation where the company’s like, Hey, we’ve got a local guy here, but we want you to work with the local IT guy. Do you guys typically do that, or is that something where it’s like not really, just because we haven’t trained that person, we don’t know what their skillset is, and that’s a liability kind of deal, or

David Kakish

We will, but we have to vet them out, especially from a security perspective. So that’s just something that we’ll look at that, but we definitely need to vet them out because we’re just, at the end of the day, we feel like the buck stops with us. And if we’ve got somebody, they might think that Todd knows what he’s doing, but Todd’s clueless, right? Todd might know more than know that RIA, right? Yeah. We talked to Todd, we’re like, oh my goodness, this

Todd Darroca

Todd guy sounds like my dad. He’s like, why am I paying this person? I can just do it. I listened to Kim Commando forever, so I know how this works. And he’s always like, I’m smarter than that. I could make just as much as he could. So No, totally, totally makes sense. So the big takeaway for when it comes to remote onsite support, what’s the big thing that you want someone to walk away with here? David? The big takeaway, I kind of know what it is. It’s kind of like onsite support may not be the best option for you right now, depending on your size, but what’s your final thought here?

David Kakish

Yeah, so I think what you really want to look at, I think what you really want to look at, whether it’s onsite or whether it’s remote or anything like that, is does that IT provider, does that IT partner have other RIA clients, and does he have knowledge of the RIA industry and knows how to support other RIAs? I don’t get too hung up on remote versus onsite because for me it’s like we do it. Here’s how we do it. It makes sense. Typically what happens is a new RIA breakaway, RIA, they start, they work with a local IT provider. Within one to two years, they’re reaching out to us because they’re frustrated with their local IT provider for two reasons. One, just slow response slash bad customer service because again, you’re small at five employees, but your requirements for cybersecurity is big. So slow response times customer service issues. And the other thing is just not understanding unique challenges of an RIA. And so it generally, I mean, I know the progression. Todd goes and starts as RIA, he works with a local IT partner in the Austin market. Within two years, you’re frustrated, you reach out to us and we talk, and then you end up working for a very long time. So I think it’s like, Hey, whoever you’re working with, whether they’re local or not, do they understand the unique IT compliance requirements of an RIA, do they know

Todd Darroca

And do you want to take that chance too of saying I’ll give them a chance to figure it out? Do you really want that to be the thing you want to have them test out on?

David Kakish

Yeah. Yeah. So my experience, Todd, it’s almost like this third secret language. They’re like, oh my goodness, we’re talking to RIA workspace and they know what Red Tail is, or they know what is, and they’re like the local person has no idea what that is, and they know that we need to have email archiving and journaling. I don’t have to explain it. So it’s like this secret handshake that they say, oh wow, he’s got, it’s like when you meet a friend that you’ve known for a long time, but you haven’t seen him, right? You’re like, oh my goodness, where have you? So that’s typically what my calls are like. And so they’re actually, I enjoy it. They’re a lot of fun.

Todd Darroca

Yeah, we know your business so you can do your business. That’s kind of how RA works, right? We know how to talk the language so well, hey David, it’s a great chatting with you. And I think if anybody these frequently asked questions, we do have them on the website, ria workspace.com. Just go and search the resources and specifically the title remote versus on site IT support making the right choice for your RIA because that’s what we talked about today. And so we’ve got all those questions and also some really helpful graphs at the bottom of the blog post to really kind of help you make that decision a bit easier. So, hey, look, that’s the end of our episode today. We want to thank as always, David for joining us here today and you for listening in. Hey, do us a favor and hit that like and subscribe button. It really does help us out. And also visit us on the web ra workspace.com. And thanks again for listening to the RIA TechTalk podcast. Feel free to reach out to us anytime, whether it’s in the notes or email. We’d love to hear from you. And stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode. We’ll see you then.

In this episode of the RIA Tech Talk Podcast, David talks about onsite servers and even though many RIAs still have them, they’re unnecessary and better solutions are out there.

Listen To The Audio


Read The Transcript

What does your onsite server in your office do today?

Servers today are largely used for files only. Most of today’s email is “hosted email” and is commonly hosted with Microsoft 365. Most applications RIAs and financial advisors use are web based so an onsite server isn’t required for them. There is less and less that needs to be hosted onsite in most modern businesses.

What are the big problems with onsite servers?

• They are often clunky to manage or old technology.
• Expensive to maintain.
• Access with a VPN works well when you are in the office but less well when remote.
• Backups are required.

What risks do onsite servers bring?

• For many, their onsite server isn’t backed up properly. Request confirmation from your IT partner to confirm when the last time your server was backed up.
• Hardware failures can mean days or even weeks to recover your onsite server, if recovery is even possible.

 

How to move from an onsite server

At RIA WorkSpace, we have an onboarding team that typically does this within the first 60 days of working together. Here are the steps we follow:

• #1 Move your files to SharePoint (not OneDrive)
• #1b Create security groups for your files/folders so everyone has access to only what they need access to
• #2 Set up Active Directory/Domain Controller
• #3 Set up a next generation clientless VPN so your work is the same from anywhere
• #4 Create a security wrap around & IT compliance for your computers so if you are working in the office at home.
• #5 Set up printing, scanning and more so it works the same without an onsite server
• #6 Set up any server-based applications and create Single Sign On to access your web-based apps
• #7 Set up additional advanced settings like data loss prevention, email archiving, and others depending on needs

 

What is the cost to move from an onsite server to Microsoft cloud?

You probably already have SharePoint included in your Microsoft subscription, so there’s no additional cost from a licensing perspective. Check with your IT provider for other costs.

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Todd Darroca:

Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by of course, RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and alongside me is always Mr. 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 for you. And so we hope you join us for each episode as we dive into the latest tech trends, share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of RIA technology. And so today, Mr. David, we are looking at onsite servers. So specifically ditching your onsite server and how kind of a simple guide for RAs to do that, right?

David Kakish:

Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about. And every time you say, Mr, I look behind to look for my dad, it doesn’t matter how old I get, I’m always going to turn around and look and say, Hey, is my dad behind me? Alright, so what we’re going to talk about today is ditching your onsite server, A simple guide for RIAs, and I use the word onsite server. It could be a network attached storage, it could be a shared computer, it could be a shared drive, whatever you want to call that. There’s still a good amount of R talking about the cloud is all the buzz and this and that, but it made a lot of sense for RIAs that invested in an onsite server to go ahead and leverage that, right? So if you bought an onsite server, you want to maximize your investment and go ahead and leverage that.

And today we’re going to talk about how and why you want to ditch your onsite server and move to the cloud and how to do that. And really the best way for you to do that as an RIA. And again, as a reminder, this isn’t going to be a super detailed technical discussion that’s designed for an IT tech person. It’s really designed for you as a managing partner or as a chief compliance officer. We’ll touch a little bit upon the technology, but not too much. We’re going to geek out just enough for a managing partner or a CCO to understand, not for an IT manager to understand. So we always try to do go deep enough but not too deep where we lose you. So that’s kind of how we do that. And so by the end of the session today, you’re going to learn how to get rid of the onsite server while you’ll never want to buy an onsite server again. And to also understand even if you don’t have an onsite server, how does security and how can you secure your cloud environment when you do get rid of your onsite server? That’s a pretty common concern and fear that people have when they move to an onsite server. So go ahead real quick. It sounds

Todd Darroca:

Like you want to question how often do you see clients with onsite servers? I remember my dad when he was running his private medical practice, he had two, three servers in the back room and it was always crazy to me. So how many clients do you see on that on average, or is it pretty minimal? Now

David Kakish:

By the way, is your dad still practicing or is he retired?

Todd Darroca:

He’s kind of like a professor doctor, so best way I can describe it, but no, yeah, he’s retired after 40 some years. Alright,

David Kakish:

Sounds good. Yeah, so to answer your question, in terms of an onsite server or network attached storage or something of that sort, what I see a lot is the email has moved to the cloud, but there’s still an onsite file server or maybe it’s running an application or something like that. I would say there’s still a good percentage out there. Maybe a third of RIAs still have some kind of an onsite server in some capacity. So out of every 10 people I talk to, three people have that. And again, it’s not a bad thing. They’re just maximizing the investment that they bought. So definitely it’s not like a majority of RIAs out there, but still it’s about 30%. But even the 70%, even if you’re listening to us and you don’t have an onsite server, you still want to tune in because I’m going to help you understand how you can secure your cloud environment and really kind of best practices what we’re doing for other RIAs. But that’s what it is, Todd.

Todd Darroca:

Alright,

David Kakish:

Nice. Yeah, so I feel like where we’re at now, it’s sort of an end of an era and it’s the end of the onsite server era, and it’s hard for people to believe this, but in the world of it, it’s like dog years, right? True. And by the way, dog years, is it one

Todd Darroca:

Seven years, years one human year, seven is seven years in dog years? Yes, yes.

David Kakish:

My dog’s what? Six, six times seven. Okay. All right. So that’s how old my dog is today. So when you think about email, right? I can’t remember the last time I talked to an RIA that still had an onsite server that was running email. So if you think about 10 years ago, over 10 years ago, almost everybody, a lot of people started moving their emails from an onsite server to the cloud, whether it was Microsoft or Rackspace or Intermedia. Those are some of the big players. Rackspace was a really, really, really big player for a long time before Microsoft came onto the scene. But if you think about that, your email running on an onsite server, and remember you had to have a lot of redundancy and if you lost power, you potentially lost email. And Microsoft had small business server and exchange server and this and that, and there was just all this complexity and sometimes you had to have multiple servers in your office and virtualize the servers. And so Todd, you know that from your dad’s story,

Todd Darroca:

When I was at his office, I’d always walk into that back closet and literally I think there were six or seven servers back there just humming away and I never understood it. And he’s like, well, blah,

David Kakish:

Blah, blah. So yeah, no, totally remember those totally over it. Exactly. And then when we got really smart, it was one physical server, but then you would have three or four virtual servers and stuff like that. So anyways, that era of having your email in your office is done. Nobody’s really running email in their offices anymore, at least not in the small and mid-sized business space. I can’t remember. I’m trying to think in the last two years, Todd last two years talking to RIAs and we talked to them quite a bit. I can’t remember a single time when somebody was still running an email server in their office. It was hosted, whether it was hosted with Microsoft or Rackspace or Intermedia or whoever, it didn’t really matter. But in the last two years, not a single, I haven’t talked to a single RIA that had an email that’s in their office.

However, as I said, about a third or still running an onsite server. And we’re sort of at the end of the era of you having an onsite server anymore. And again, an onsite server could be a server for files or an application, or it could be a shared computer or a network attached storage, whatever term. I’m just going to call it an onsite server. So we have that. Now, one thing I did have in my notes that I want to make sure I share with you as a listener is one of the things that we consistently do with Microsoft, we don’t go with version one or V two, we go with V three. And what I mean by that is when Microsoft first released their email in the club, and this is over 10 years ago, just I’d have to go back and look specifically, we didn’t all of a sudden take all of our clients said, great, let’s run you on the Microsoft email.

Actually, we were heavily partnered with Rackspace. We used Rackspace a lot because they were great. And then once Microsoft was on V three of their hosted email, we started moving all of our clients there. And the way we say it is we want to make sure we’re playing in the leading edge space, but not the bleeding edge. Because in bleeding edge, that’s where all the bugs are. And we don’t want that for us or for our clients or anything like that. So again, with Microsoft, when Microsoft releases something, we generally wait for V one, V two, and then V three we’re on the bandwagon. You’re on it. Yeah, that makes sense. So alright, so the people that have an onsite server in their office today, what is it doing today? The main thing that I see, actually, it’s two main things that I see that that server is doing.

It’s files. So a lot of times an RIA will be using Redtail or wealthbox is their CRM. They’re using a lot of web-based applications, but they still have that server to access files, like client files, different things and things like that. Think of that as your file explorer. So that’s number one. The second thing is a lot of clients still have an onsite server and they need to have it there because that server is kind of like the brain computer or what we would call active directory or a domain controller. And that’s sort of like the master computer or the brain computer that controls, let’s say the 10 other computers for the advisors that work in your office. So those are kind of the two big ones. And then some form of a print server so they can share a printer or so they can share a scan or something like that. Now what I don’t see, but I see it occasionally is it’s running applications. And the really simple one is I like to use Juncture. A lot of people are using Juncture Server based and then they move to Juncture Cloud or another type of CRM or something like that. But that’s kind of most of the time now when somebody is using an onsite server, they’re doing it’s files, it’s active directory, and then maybe it’s some kind of a shared printing or shared scanning. Those are kind of the main things that I see. Okay, got

Todd Darroca:

It. When you go in there and you see these servers in there or what you’ve heard from clients, what are the big backdrops or problems with those onsite servers?

David Kakish:

So it’s a combination of things. Number one, it’s clunky. Number two, they’re expensive to maintain. Number three, and this happens quite a bit, the VPN. So what happens is a lot of, again, depending on the RIA, the typical setup, you’ve got 10 people that work and they’re in the office 80% of the time, and then they’ll occasionally work from home. So when they’re working from home on a company laptop, they can easily access all the web-based applications, CRM, again, wealthbox, red Tail, so on. However, in order to access their files, they need to VPN into the office. So the typical, the ideal setup is to VPN into the network firewall in the office. And then from there you can access the files and the folders. It’s just clunky. It doesn’t work. It’s slow. A lot of IT providers are not setting up. What they’re doing is they’re leaving a loophole in the firewall basically, and then you remote directly into the server.

So we’ve seen a lot of different things. The point being is one of the biggest problems with an onsite server is if you do work remotely, now you have to VPN or you can remote into the office to access your files. The other thing to think about is the backup. You’ve got a server that’s sitting there, where are you backing it up? Ideally you’re backing it up to the cloud, and then it’s just old technology. If you have an onsite server now, you didn’t just buy it last year or two years ago, it’s probably been 3, 4, 5 plus years where you’re using that. And I would say, listen, the two biggest risks with an onsite server risk number one is I can tell you it’s probably not backed up properly. We see it all the time. There’s backup problems. Oh, you think it’s backed up and it’s not. And so my question for you is, when was the last time your IT provider gave you a backup report showing you that Oh yeah, hey, so the backup is a big problem. Yeah,

Todd Darroca:

Never seen one of those before. Yeah,

David Kakish:

Heard

Todd Darroca:

Of them but never seen them.

David Kakish:

Well, it’s that trust but verify, right? Like, oh yeah, we’re backing it up for you. Great, what report can you show me that it’s backed up? And then the other risk is just hardware failure. If something happens to recover that it could take days or even weeks. And I know this in intimate details back where we were working with clients and it was mission critical. What we did is we set up a primary server and then another a replication server or hot standby or whatever term you want to use. So we had a primary one because it was mission critical, but then, and think about your email, you couldn’t afford to have your email down or your application or any of that. And then you had the second one that was essentially kind of a replica. If the main one went down, the second one would kick in and stuff like that. Today, if you have an onsite server, I can guarantee you, you don’t have a replica that’s sitting there. And so how fast can you recover if that server fails? So anyways, listen, it’s an end of an era. It was great while it lasted, and I feel like if you have an onsite server, you’re still stuck in the 1970s basketball.

Todd Darroca:

What is the main reason why people are keeping those onsite servers? Is it just because they’re scared to switch or is it just because they don’t want to?

David Kakish:

So a couple of things. Number one is they want to maximize their investment, which I get, and I feel like right now you’re sort of at the end of a life of that investment, three years, four years, five years, and so on. That’s number one. Number two, and rightfully so, hang on, all this cloud stuff, I don’t understand. How can I control it? How does it sit? And I’ll talk a little bit about how we set it up for our clients and really how you want to set it up for your own RIA. But those are very legitimate things. Like, Hey, listen, we invested money. I want to maximize the investment. But the other thing is I have some real concerns about cybersecurity and IT compliance. The cloud is a generic term. Remember? Hey, it’s on the internet. I read it on the internet, right? Well, so I mean, you can’t just say that, right? And I feel like today I’m like, oh yeah, move it to the cloud is so generic. Oh yeah, I read it on the internet. So anyways, so maybe what I’ll talk about, Todd, I’ll come to you if you have any questions or insights talk about on how we move our clients and then how we maximize security. Because again, even if you don’t have an onsite server, we’re going to talk a little bit about how you can maximize your security. So I’ll kind of turn it to you. I don’t know if you had any questions or if you want me to keep going along.

Todd Darroca:

No, I think that’s just kind where I wanted. I’m always interested to know why people hold onto to relics or things that they know are absolutely obsolete. And I’m going to pick on my dad here. My dad keeps everything back in the technology, even if it’s not working, just in case like VHS players, he’s still got that just in case. He’s kept these servers for old servers on five, seven years, whatever, just in case. And he just, now, I’m not kidding, you just now has destroyed them all and it’s crazy. But now I’m just more asking about the dads of the world out there of why are you keeping that? Just throw it out.

David Kakish:

I’ll share this story and then I’ll kind of get back to the topic at hand right here. So in a previous lifetime, I used to work a lot in the healthcare space. So we did work with doctors. Again, this was the era where you still had to have the onsite servers to run your practice management and all that fun stuff. And then we had a doctor and it was like we’re talking about seven, 9-year-old servers. It is like, all right, I want to go and I want to sell this on eBay. I’m like, oh. I’m like, listen, the risk of you potentially just putting it on eBay with patient data

Todd Darroca:

Information

David Kakish:

Is huge. Plus don’t take it the wrong way. Nobody wants a 90-year-old server, nobody’s biased. But the way that the brain of doctors, they think they’re really trying to recycle that. Now, luckily in the wealth management space, the mindset is different, and that’s why we’re in this space, not in the healthcare space.

Todd Darroca:

So let’s talk about how you help clients move on and how do you get over that fear and make sure it’s really smooth for them to transfer?

David Kakish:

Yeah, so we’ve got an entire sales process, but I’ll talk about what we do. So the files, right? The way that we basically do, it’s like, look, you’ve got a server that’s sitting in your office, it’s running all these files. We actually do that during our onboarding process when a client becomes a client with us, and then we take all the files that they have and we move it to SharePoint. Now, this is just a fancy way of basically saying, look, if I am an employee, I click on File Explorer on my computer, and then all of my files are there. What’s really nice is the way that we do that is it’s indexed locally on the computer, but it’s all actually saved at the Microsoft data center. And so that’s how we do that. And again, if you’re using a Mac, you would use Finder to go ahead and access that.

And then the other, so the two big things that they’re doing is one is bios, and then two, it’s kind of like the brain computer that manages the other 10 computers. So what we’re doing is we’re using Azure directory services, active directory, and all that that is, is we’re using a Microsoft tool to be able to manage all these other computers. And what I mean by that is, hey, we need to make sure that Bob and Mary’s computer meet the IT compliance for your RIA, right? Is it encrypted? Does it have the security? And so on. And so those are probably the two big things that we do at a really high level, but I’m happy to expand and get into the details on that. Yeah, okay. So again, the way we do that for our clients, and we’re partnered with Microsoft, you could do that with anybody else that you want, but this is how we do it with our clients.

And Microsoft’s really the 800 pound gorilla in this space. Like I said, 80 plus percent of RIAs are using the Microsoft platform. And so the way that we typically do it is I want you to think that what we do for our clients is we set each client up. So if you’re an R-I-A-B-C advisors, we set up what’s called your own private tenant at Microsoft. Think of it as your own private network at Microsoft. So it’ll include your email, it includes your office suite, it includes your files and folders, and it includes the active directory and a lot of the security that we talked about. And so what we’re essentially doing is we’re saying, look, your RIA, you have your own private tenant or your own private network at Microsoft, we’re making sure that that’s secure, and we’re setting up everything there for you on the other end.

We’re making sure all of your endpoints, your computers, your iPhones and so on are secure. And then the connectivity in between is secure, and everything is in your name. It’s not in our name, it’s not in Microsoft’s name, it’s not in the broker dealer’s name or anything like that. And the reason for that is we want to make sure you as an RIA, you have ownership of that private tenant or that private network that you have with Microsoft. So number one, what we do, we move the files, right? We use SharePoint, not OneDrive. OneDrive is good for you if you’re a consumer or a really small business, but as an RIA, there’s a lot more security, lots of security settings that we can do for you on SharePoint that are not available on OneDrive. So that’s something that we do. And again, this will work really well with Mac. A typical environment, they have two, three hardcore Mac users and they’re like, I’m not going to work for your RIA unless I can use my Mac. So we do see that, and we do have some clients that are all standardized on Macs. Those are the exception. That’s not the norm.

And then I guess from the folder, file folder perspective, at a really basic level, what we set up for our clients, and I would encourage you to think about it this way, if you don’t have it set up that way, is file, let’s say folder number one is for everybody at your company, folder number two is just for you. So it’s for Todd, it’s for David, it’s for Mary, it’s for Bob. I’m working on stuff. You don’t see it. And then folder number three is by department sales, marketing, hr, finance, and so on. If I’m part of the HR team, I’ll see that folder. If I’m not, I won’t. So at a really simple level, it’s basically just like three folders and then sub folders from there. And so that’s kind of how we do that. So anyways, so that’s kind of the files. We’re going to move it over to SharePoint, make sure it’s set up the right way.

The second piece, which is the brain computer or the active directory or domain controller, you hear a lot of the IT guys talk about that. I’m like, your computer is a domain controller or the active directory, great. We use Azure directory services. You don’t need to have that server. So that’s a common misconception among IT people, oh yeah, you move to the cloud, you can’t do that. They’re like, no, no, we can use Azure directory services. And we do that. And then the third thing that we do for our clients is that next generation clientless, VPN. And what I mean by that is in the onsite server space, when you worked from home, you had to click on the SonicWall or the Cisco VPN to access your file server in the office. Now your work experience, whether you’re working in the office or you’re working at home is the same.

It doesn’t matter. You just click on that. You have a work laptop, you’re working in the office, great. You take it home, you’re working great. All you do is you power up that computer, that computer, we make sure it meets your company’s IT compliance requirements for your RIA, and then you click on File Explorer, and then you open up all the files, you work, you’re productive, you’re doing all that. And again, nothing is sitting locally on that computer. It’s saved at the Microsoft data center. So I could be using a, so my setup, just so you know, in the office, I use a Windows computer every other Tuesday I work from home, I have a MacBook for work, and I work off of my MacBook and I don’t miss a beat going back and forth. And then we, as another layer of security, we’re putting a security wrap around, we’re using the next generation defender for endpoint.

And so we put a security wrap around your laptop because we make an assumption. You’re probably working in the office, you’re probably working from home, you’re probably working on the road when you’re traveling. So we want to make sure we’ve got that security wraparound and then all the printing and the scanning and more, all that. You don’t need the onsite server to do that. And then there’s some other things related to the applications and advanced settings and stuff like that that I can talk about, but those are advanced things. I just wanted to talk about the basic things that we set up. And I know for me, I talk about it, this is basic, but these are pretty advanced for an RIA with five employees, 15 employees and so on that we set up for them.

Todd Darroca:

Yeah. When you say security wraparound, what does that mean? I’m thinking almost a bubble around your computer or something like that. Is that what you’re trying to that explain that to

David Kakish:

Me? Yeah, it’s like the bubble boy, but for your laptop, and it’s a security. And what I mean by that is what we’re really doing is, if you think about, again, so RIAs fall in two categories. You work in the office most of the time and you’ve hardly ever work from home. And then you have ones that are all remote and travel around a lot and in between. So our assumption is like, look, whether you’re in the office or at home or traveling, we need to protect that. And so what we’re doing is, and I use a security wraparound analogy because that’s perfect. What we’re doing is we have the next generation firewall, intrusion prevention, antivirus and anti spyware on that computer to prevent any attacks from happening. And so there’s some very advanced things that we can do, and we’re leveraging all the defender products from Microsoft Defender for endpoint.

We’re also leveraging making sure that that computer meets the IT compliance requirement. So Todd, as an example, if I’m working and within minutes I’m logging in from Chicago and I’m logging in from Austin, it’s going to look at that and raise a red flag and then force me to do the multifactor authentication because all of a sudden now it noticed something. And if there’s even very suspicious activities, it might lock out my account altogether. And all that’s intentional. And so really we’re leveraging a lot of that advanced security, even though you might be nine employees, 15 employees and so on, because to us, we know that you still need that big business or that enterprise security.

Todd Darroca:

Got it.

David Kakish:

Got it. Yeah. Alright. Sorry, I know hopefully I’m not getting too much into the weeds, but I just wanted to talk it at a high level so that again, if you’re listening to us, some of this makes sense. And even if it doesn’t just say, Hey, listen, I was listening to Todd and David, they were talking about this thing. Go to your IT provider and say, Hey, look, we want to make sure we have this. We got Microsoft, we don’t have this.

Todd Darroca:

So typically, how much does this migration cost? And when you compare it to the onsite server versus doing all this, and not only cost in dollars but in time, what’s the downtime versus uptime and all that stuff? Yeah,

David Kakish:

It’s a great question. And the irony of that question is, I am trying to remember the last time we migrated somebody from an onsite server to another onsite server. We just don’t do that anymore. And so I’m like, hang on, I’ll put it to you this way. For us, it’s a lot easier to migrate Todd’s wealth management services from an onsite server to the Microsoft cloud than it is to migrate you to a new onsite server. I’ll just kind of put it at that. For us, it’s easier, it’s less expensive, it’s faster, and then for you, you get a lot more scale, you get a lot more security, you get a lot more stability to go along with that. So the answer to your, I don’t have hard numbers anymore because at some point, if I go back five years ago, yeah, we could potentially go here or we could potentially do this depending on the unique environment of that RIA, we might, I’d say 80% of the time we still put ’em in the cloud, but there were times when it made sense to say, no, let’s buy you an onsite server and put you there.

Todd Darroca:

So how long does it take then, from an onsite server to the cloud when you do that migration? What’s that typical?

David Kakish:

Yeah, so we do that all during our onboarding process. We have a team that just specializes in onboarding. And the way that we typically do it, we do it within 30 days from the kickoff meeting. And what we’re typically doing, Todd, is we’re actually syncing everything in the background. So you work like you do every day. We’re syncing everything in the background, excuse me. And then we’re going to say, okay, Friday the 10th, we’re going to go live. So Thursday at 4:00 PM please, you and your team don’t access your files, we’re going to do the final sync. And then Friday morning when you come in at 9:00 AM you can just start working like you have. And so the quote downtime is essentially one evening because we want to do the final sync, but we really accomplish all this and many other things within 30 days from the kickoff meeting. That’s how we do that. But again, you’re working in parallel, you don’t notice you’re just working like you are today. And then we’re building a parallel environment as you’re working today, and then you do the final sync.

Todd Darroca:

So can you talk about the typical network equipment that an RIE needs in their office to make this actually work?

David Kakish:

So I’m going to go back to some of the other things that we set up for our clients, because kind of a geek, and these are cool things. So just by default, we also set up our clients with single sign on for web-based applications. We set them up for data loss prevention for email. So if I email a social security number, account number, it will encrypt it, it can notify your chief compliance officer and so on. We set up teams archiving, email archiving, and then file archiving. And so with a lot of our clients, we’ll even provide them with an attestation letter from Microsoft saying you meet the SEC and the FINRA compliance requirements and stuff like that. So anyways, and then I will say the cost of SharePoint, you’re probably already paying for that with Microsoft, you just don’t know for your files. 90% of our clients are already paying for SharePoint. They just don’t know that they are. So alright, now back to you. Sorry, I had to put all those things in.

Todd Darroca:

Good.

David Kakish:

So once all this stuff is in place and you have that, again, whether it’s with us or somebody else, it doesn’t really matter. The typical equipment for an office, whether you’re five people or 25 or 55 is this, you have your internet line right after that, you’ve got your router from your internet company, but then the pieces that we manage for you, you would have a network firewall, you would have a switch, and then you would have a wireless access point. That’s it. Network, firewall switch, wireless access point. So from a network infrastructure perspective, that’s really all you have. And again, if that’s your core office, that’s what you’re going to have. I’m not talking about the printers and the scanners and stuff like that. I’m just talking about the network equipment. If you open up a satellite office, it’s the same thing. Network firewall switch and a wireless access point and that’s it. Yeah, that’s kind of, yeah,

Todd Darroca:

It’s three things. It’s pretty

David Kakish:

Simple. And by the way, I think it’s pretty cool that we are tech guys and we’re telling you, get rid of all your onsite servers, don’t buy all this onsite stuff. We’re not asking you to buy more stuff. We’re actually telling you there’s a better solution. Get rid of this stuff you have in your office and save money at the same time. So usually us geeks we’re like, oh no, go buy this gadget and this gadget and that gat buy this. So yeah, we’re telling you don’t buy more stuff, save money.

Todd Darroca:

So David, as we wrap up here, key takeaways for someone looking to get their ias from an onsite to a cloud or to stay in the cloud, what are your big takeaways that they should remember?

David Kakish:

Yeah, I think listen, if you have an onsite server, it’s an end of that era. Just like you moved your email to the cloud, we can move your files and your onsite server to the cloud, much better solution. You’re going to be a lot happier. And then even if you don’t have an onsite server and you thought you’re okay, we shared some very specific things that if you don’t have these things in place, go contact your IT provider and say, Hey look, these are things that Todd and David were talking about. Let me go and set those things up that’s in place. But I think the big takeaway is like that’s it. If you have an onsite server, I’m almost positive you’ve maximized the lifetime of that server. Let’s go ahead and let’s move you to the Microsoft cloud environment. Again, on your own, a provider with us, whatever. And I guess I’ll just share this last tidbit, we don’t see a lot of clients doing it themselves because a little bit, there’s some complexity that’s involved in that. Most of our clients are either hiring us or they’re hiring an IT provider to do that because again, there are some complexities, but plus they’re not skilled in this area anyways. And typically an RIA doesn’t have an onsite IT person anyways, right? They don’t have somebody on their payroll, that’s their IT guy or IT g, but yeah,

Todd Darroca:

Well great. So also ditch the server guys, ditch your onsite server. That’s kind of like the main theme that we’ve been covering today. So David is always great stuff. And look, David is always here. He’s the real better expert than I am on all this stuff. So feel free to shoot David an email or even post it in the comments below. He’s looking at that, we’re looking at that. And so we’re happy to answer any questions you guys have on that kind of migration. So hey, another episode for us in the cans. So we want to thank you for listening to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. And for more podcasts and resources, make sure you go to staging-riaworkspace.kinsta.cloud and check out the learning center. And like I said, make sure you like us, subscribe to us and put some questions out in the field there. We love those. And also there’s something you want to hear from us as far as an episode goes. Please, please let us know and we’ll do our best to make that come true. Alright, and also stay tuned. More episodes are coming up with RIA Tech Insights in more episodes. So for David and myself, thanks again and have a great day.

David Kakish:

Thank you.

Microsoft’s array of subscriptions can be overwhelming and lead to confusion for RIAs. Additionally, many RIAs are not fully utilizing Microsoft’s features, instead opting for third-party tools that may not be as effective.  In this episode, we talk about the differences and which one fits your firm best. 

NOTE: While Microsoft’s subscription offerings may change in the future, for now, this is the current landscape.

Listen To The Audio


Read The Transcript

Subscription Options

Microsoft offers a productivity suite called Microsoft 365, which can be categorized into three main groups:

M365 for Home

• Not recommended for RIAs.

 

M365 for Business

• Commonly mistaken for what RIAs need, but not the optimal choice.

 

M365 for Enterprise

• Specifically, the Microsoft 365 E5 subscription is recommended for RIAs, despite common advice against it due to perceived overkill. However, RIAs have unique needs that align more closely with enterprise-level requirements.

 

More information  

• Ensure you own the tenant for your Microsoft subscription.
• Consider the flexibility of monthly vs. annual commitments, especially when dealing with seasonal employees or interns.
• For more information

 

M365 for home

M365 for business

M365 for enterprise

Microsoft 365, Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Windows 11 Subscriptions for Enterprises

 

Despite Microsoft’s confusing subscription structure, their products offer great solutions for RIAs. While the naming conventions may be perplexing, opting for the Microsoft 365 E5 enterprise subscription is the best choice for RIAs.

Listen To The Audio:

Read The Transcript:

Todd W. Darroca

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 are 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 plain and practical terms for you. And so we hope you join us every episode as we dive into the latest tech trends. We’re going to share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of RIA technology. So let’s get started today. Today, David, what are we focused on today? What are they going to learn today?

David Kakish

Alright, so the title of today’s session is What Microsoft Subscription Should I get from My RIA? And I was joking with you, Todd, before the call like, ah, this shouldn’t be a topic of a podcast. I said, why is it so confusing to just go order office, right? Or the productivity suite with Microsoft? And yes, it is a little bit confusing. There is a perfect and ideal one for the RIA and that’s what we’ll be talking about. But initially I’m like, ah, this shouldn’t even be a podcast topic. And yet I compare it to Apple. You go to apple.com and they’ve got their seven products, seven, eight products listed right there, Microsoft, they make some great products, but it’s really confusing what to buy and what’s the right one for my RIA.

Todd W. Darroca

So why does it even matter for the RIA? I mean, what are they going to take away? What should they learn? Why is it important to them?

David Kakish

Yeah, so two things, right? There’s two big problems that I see. Number one is just, it’s really, really confusing to hey, what’s the right subscription for my RIA and there is the right one. And then number two is this. Microsoft has some really great features that an RIA could really leverage and use. And again, most RIAs are not using those features and some are using third party tools that are more expensive than even subpar, I would say to what Microsoft offers. It’s just that not a lot of RIAs know about that. And to make it even worse, not a lot of IT providers know about that because again, most RIAs from a headcount perspective, if you think five to 30 employees, we’re not talking about hundreds or thousands of employees and things like that. So it makes a pretty big difference. So listen, by the end of this, you’re going to know what’s the best one for your RIA and I’ll even say it upfront.

And then if you want to tune in and learn more, great. If not, that’s okay, I’ll just share that. But when you go to Microsoft’s website right now, there’s the Microsoft Productivity Suite, like what we think of Office 365 or Microsoft 365 and things like that. It really falls in three categories, right? Microsoft 65 for home, Microsoft 365 for business, and then Microsoft 365 for enterprise. Those are kind of the three that you look at and I’ll kind of dissect each one of them, but if you want the big takeaway and not listen to the rest, go with Microsoft 365 Enterprise E five subscription. If you’re like, Hey, listen, I just want to know what it is, I’m going to go to my IT provider and get it, get the Microsoft 365 E five enterprise subscription and then you can disappear. But there’s a lot of insights that I’ll share with you as a listener that I think you’ll get out of this.

Todd W. Darroca

I think it’ll be important too, keep listening because sometimes IT provider’s going to say, Hey, that’s too much bang with E five. So hopefully you guys stay tuned and some tips from David, I have to have that conversation. But yeah, David, as a normal person looking at Microsoft, I do. I am not kidding. I was buying Microsoft Office last week because my subscription ended and I honestly didn’t know I wanted the cheapest version, but then I kept seeing E three, E five, and so I was really like, well, what are these now? Do I need to have these as just a consultant and small business owner? So I get it. This is kind of one of those topics where it’s like, really? But I think in the long run it’s definitely helpful.

David Kakish

Yeah. So I’m going to keep it really simple, right? I’m going to pretend you’re an RIA with nine employees, right? You could obviously have a lot more or a lot less, but whatever you’re an RIA with nine employees, what’s the right subscription? What’s the best subscription I should say for your RIA and why? Now, you said something really important. I am talking about the Microsoft Enterprise E five, which for many businesses that nine employees is an overkill. And the IT provider that tells you that it’s an overkill, they are absolutely right. It’s an overkill for a business across the street with nine employees, but not your business. Now because you’ve got millions and sometimes billions in assets under management, you’re a lot different than that business across the street that has nine employees. And that’s really the fundamental difference for that. So they are right when they tell you it’s overkill, but it’s overkill for that other business, but it’s not overkill for you because there’s a lot of enterprise or big business security features that you can leverage and then you can go ahead and you can use.

So there’s a couple of things that I really want to share right off the bat before I talk about the different additions, but I want to make sure that if you’re listening to us, you want to make sure you do it this way. And again, it doesn’t matter how large or how small your RIA is. One of the fundamental things that you want to make sure that you do is you actually get your Microsoft subscription and you get what’s called your own tenant or think of it as your own private network. And what I mean by that is you don’t want to be under your IT provider or under your broker dealer. You don’t want to be under their account. Think of them being a parent account and your child account because they actually would own that. And the reason for it is, A, you want to make sure you own it.

And then B, if you ever want to leave that broker dealer in the future, you ever want to leave that IT provider. Everything is in your name. Let me contrast that to analogy, an analogy that the listener will relate to. It’s like when you get your own domain name, right? ABC advisors.com, you don’t let your web company own that. You get ABC advisors.com and you own it with GoDaddy, network solutions, whoever, and then you let the website company build the website, but you actually own that. What we sometimes see in this space is people are getting the Microsoft licensing as if they’re a child or a sub account of the master account of the IT provider or the broker dealer. Do not do that because what happens is if you ever want to leave them, you’re really locked into them and it’s a pain in the butt to leave them because you basically have to create a new separate account if you do it under your own tenant or under your own name. What that basically means is, Hey, look, five years from now, two years from now, whenever you want to leave that IT provider or you want to leave that broker dealer, that tenant or that private Microsoft network is in your name, you just change the partner of record and then you don’t have to move everything around and you’re not locked in or tied into that broker dealer or that IT company. So I wanted to touch upon that a little bit because it, it’s subtle, but it’s really key that you do that.

 

 

Todd W. Darroca

Is it typical for the IT provider to say, no, you’re going to be a child account under mine and is or is it typical where it’s kind of a tough conversation to have with them like, Hey, no, no, no, I want to own that. What’s your experience on that been?

David Kakish

Great question. From a best practices perspective, most IT providers really should set you up with your own tenant, but I’ve seen it where they don’t necessarily do that or they set it up but they own it, but it’s in your name and you want to make sure it’s in your name and that you own it, and then you put them as a partner of record. So they extend that analogy so people can understand that. For example, you’re going to buy a network firewall for your office. You want to make sure when you’re buying it that it’s in your RIA a’s name, not in your IT provider’s name because who owns that after the relationship ends? And so it’s that same analogy, but the one that most RIAs are very familiar with is the domain name. You want to own that regardless of who does your website.

It’s the same thing. And so it’s not a tough discussion to have with the IT providers. Most of them understand from a best practices perspective, that’s what you should be doing, but some of ’em are goofballs and they don’t want to do that. So I’d be careful from an IT provider that does not want to do that. And then the other side of it is too, some RIAs, not all of them, but they’re working with a broker dealer, somebody that helps with a bunch of other services, and many of these companies will put you in as a sub account of theirs. Don’t do that. It’s like I’m telling you, you’re going to be locked into ’em, and if you ever want to leave and change a broker dealer or change who’s providing all these value ads, we do it all the time. So we’re pros, we’re experts at it because we have to go in and do it. But what that basically entails doing is building another environment or another network, private network at Microsoft and then moving everything over. If it was done the right originally, it’s yours, you own it, you’re just changing the partner of record, but none of the data is moving or the email or any of that type of stuff.

Todd W. Darroca

Got it. I’m going to ask you about paying for it. And there’s always this healthy argument I guess of do I buy something month to month or do I get locked into a contract so I get stuck with it? What is your recommendation here? Because right now I have done the annual plan just because I know I’m going to use it as part of my work.

David Kakish

Listen, so the way that Microsoft does their licensing, you can pay month to month or you could do an annual plan paid monthly, and I’m talking about their enterprise plans, the home one, I think it’s a one-time thing. So the way most of our clients, it’s not like six months from now or two years from now, you’re going to stop using Word, Excel and Outlook. So my recommendation is like, look for your full-time. Regular employees, just get the annual plan and you pay it monthly. So again, you’re paying it monthly, you’re just locked in for a year. If you have part-time employees or seasonal employees, think around tax season, maybe you have interns in the summer, things like that. You want to get the month to month subscription for those employees. So keep it simple. You’ve got nine employees. You hire an intern in the summer for your regular nine employees, get the annual paid monthly subscription for the intern in the summer for three months, get her the month to month subscription, and then after three months you can cancel that because if you don’t, the only time you can downgrade your license with Microsoft is at the renewal date, the annual renewal date.

So that’s what I would recommend. So you can mix and match the annual and the month to month.

Todd W. Darroca

Got it. So let’s dive into the whole multiple names for the same kind of thing. E five, E four sounds like a tornado coming at you. So let’s walk me through what the difference is for all these products they’ve got.

David Kakish

Right. I don’t think Microsoft is listening, not our audience, but Microsoft, if you’re listening, please go to apple.com/store, learn from Apple to what they’re doing because they’ve really spelled out what you can buy. So you go to microsoft.com/store, you’re like, oh my goodness, what am I getting? An Xbox A game? It’s so confusing. Alright, so just to recap really quick, there’s Microsoft 365 for home. There’s the Microsoft 365 for business, and there’s a Microsoft 365 for enterprise. I’m going to talk about each one of them. Let’s start out with the first one, Microsoft 365 for home. This is fantastic. If you are using it for home, I would not use it for my RIA, I would not use it for my business if I were an RIA and Microsoft gives you two options here. You can buy it, it’s $70 if you’re an individual or it’s a hundred dollars if you’re a family. And a family can be anywhere from two to six people. I want to say that you can put it on many devices. It’s not tied into the number of devices or computers. It’s the number of people. So at home, personally, I have the home package, but I’m also a goofball. I have the Google package and I have the Apple package and stuff like that.

 

But anyways, yes, and some people really like to do that so they can create the separation between home and work. And I would highly recommend that you do that if that’s what you do. But again, this is great for personal, for your home. I would not use this for my RIA. Okay. Alright, so we’ll set that aside. Now, the second subscription that they have, if you sort of look at the overall category is Microsoft 365 for business, which is different than Microsoft 365 for enterprise, right? I’m going to get to the enterprise, that’s the third one. But Microsoft 365 and noticed I said Microsoft 365, not Office 365. Those are two different things. So yeah, so what Microsoft has here, they basically have four options. Option number one is Microsoft 365 basic. Option two is Microsoft 365 applications for business. Number three is Microsoft Business Standard.

 

And number four is Microsoft 365 Business Premium. That’s why I said it gets kind of confusing, but let’s talk about the first two, Microsoft 365 basic. That’s basically the web-based version of the Microsoft applications. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook, and then you get teams in OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange. So think of it as that’s the web-based version of the Microsoft apps, Microsoft 365 apps for business. That’s where you just get the apps like the desktop, the web and the mobile version of the apps. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook, and OneDrive. That’s somebody who wants to use Generally speaking, that’s somebody that wants to use the Office suite on their computer. So these two are not very popular. The two big ones under Microsoft Business is Microsoft Business Standard, very popular. And then Microsoft 365 Business Premium, again, very popular and most businesses with nine employees, either one of these is actually really good for your RIA.

 

I’m going to talk in a little bit why you want to look at Enterprise, but back to Microsoft 365 Business standard. It includes the Office suite, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook, and so on. It includes the services like OneDrive, SharePoint, exchange for email, and that’s fantastic. The Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes everything in the standard plus security. So it adds cyber advanced cybersecurity and device management like computers and iPhones and things like that. And if this is really confusing, it’s okay, I’m going to talk about the enterprise. That’s really what you’re going to focus on. And then we’ll also include some links in the show notes. But again, the two popular ones under the regular business package is Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

Todd W. Darroca

So I’m dumb here. So what is the real difference then between 365 apps for Business and 365 Business Standard? It seems like they have the same features, but maybe just different services.

David Kakish

That’s where you start adding OneDrive, SharePoint exchange for email and stuff like that. So think of the apps for your computer as you’re just, it’s really the old way of buying the office suite for your computer. Remember we used to buy it on a CD and install it,

Todd W. Darroca

Go to Staples, get that big old box. Yeah!

David Kakish

Think of it as this way. That’s basically what the apps for business are. It’s for people that don’t necessarily want to use Microsoft email and SharePoint and OneDrive, but they want to use the applications. So for example, Todd, in your case, and I don’t know if this is still the case or not, but somebody that is using the Google G Suite, right? Google Workspace, but they absolutely love Outlook and they absolutely love Word and Excel and stuff like that. What that allows you to do is to have your email and your calendar all sort of in Gmail, but then you’re using Outlook and Word and Excel and things like that. So that’s where it’s pretty applicable. That’s why I said it gets kind of confusing, but most businesses, they’re either looking at business standard or business Premium, but your RIA, we really want to be looking at the enterprise.

Todd W. Darroca

Got it.

David Kakish

Thanks for that. Alright, so I covered a lot and I talked a lot and I hope it wasn’t confusing, but Todd, I’ll come back to you. Any questions or anything you wanted to share before I talk about Microsoft 365 for Enterprise?

Todd W. Darroca

The only one is, so if I do all of the 365, the basic standard, do they all come with teams or is that only the basic that comes with the teams?

David Kakish

Yeah, no, they don’t all come with teams. Okay. Yeah, they don’t all come with teams. Okay. It’s helpful to know what I’m doing. My team there, think of Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange as a service. So if you were to break it out in applications and it’s services, the applications or the Office suite, like word Outlook, stuff like that, the services is where you’re using Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and then the actual email. Got it. Anyways, it gets kind of confusing and that’s why I said Microsoft, if you’re listening, go to apple.com. So just so you know, this should not be a podcast topic, but here it is, they’re talking about this and if you’re a visual person, we’re going to include some links. You can kind of go in and that really helps me because there’s a whole matrix of everything that’s spelled out. And then for those that are very, very, very analytical, there’s a spreadsheet with, or I’m sorry, there’s a PDF and it spells out every single line item.

I’m not really going to talk about it on the podcast, I’m going to lose some people, but if you’re super analytical, there’s a PDF, we included, and it spells out every single line item. That’s the difference. Okay, got it. Cool. Alright. Alright, so now finally do the part that I want to talk about, Microsoft 365 Enterprise. So if you look on the Microsoft website and you click on Microsoft 365, there’s a whole section for small business or business and then home. Go to the other section that talks about Microsoft Enterprise, and I’m not going to show it because Microsoft keeps changing their website, but go to the Microsoft 365 for enterprise section, and this will make a lot of sense if you go on that section. Microsoft is going to have four broad categories, office 365, Microsoft 365, and then they have nonprofit and then government and stuff like that.

So we’re not going to talk about nonprofit or government or education. Those are different. So the Microsoft 365 enterprise, it generally falls in two categories. There’s Office 365 and there’s Microsoft 365. We do not want Office 365, we want Microsoft 365. What Office 365 is basically the office suite and they have different variations of it. They call it the Office 365 E three and the Office 365 E five. This is not what you want. What we want is the Microsoft 365 E five. And if you look under that category, there’s a Microsoft 365 E three, and then there’s the E five. The E five includes everything in the E three plus a lot of advanced security and compliance capabilities. The other thing that it includes is if you want to use Microsoft Teams as your external phone system, like your hosted WIP system, you can absolutely do that with a Microsoft 365 E five.

Some of the advanced things that this really includes that you don’t need to pay for third party tools anymore is like single sign on advanced endpoint protection on your computer. The next generation, like firewall, intrusion prevention, next generation clientless, VPN archiving for your email and for your teams and your files. Again, you don’t need to have a third party tool to do that. Data loss prevention for email files, teams, and endpoints. And what that basically is, is at a very basic level, if I send out an email with a social security number, it’ll detect it, encrypt it, send it out, and then notify your CCO.

There’s just so many advanced security features that are in here, geo blocking. And what I mean by that is, hey, we can block access from outside the US if all of your employees are working here. And so there’s just a ton of security features that are built in there. So again, Microsoft 365, not Office 365, there’s an E three subscription and there’s an E five subscription. You want to get the Microsoft 365 E five subscription. And again, again, I’m touching in broad strokes, but we’re going to include A PDF that spells out every single, again, not everybody’s interested in this, but I know there’s a couple of people that are very analytical that want to see every single line item that’s there. And we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to include that there. So you can go ahead and take a look at it. Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. Alright, Todd, I hope that this makes sense to you. I hope this makes sense to the listener. I wanted to circle back with you to see if you had any insights or questions for me that you wanted to ask.

 

Todd W. Darroca

No, it feels like Microsoft, I mean they give you a lot and they got to figure it out a little bit, but it sounds like though the main takeaway that you’re giving our listener here is Microsoft enter 365 E five, that seems to be the best bang for your buck and really what’s going to make your business be stable and have all the tools they need. And that’s what it sounds like.

David Kakish

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So that is, again, and I hear this all the time, where somebody will go in and say, Hey, I talked to my IT guy or my IT person or my local IT provider, and they told me this is overkill and I hear it all the time. I go, absolutely, it’s overkill for a business with nine employees that’s across the street from you, but it’s not overkill for you because these are all the advanced security features that we want to make sure that we have enabled. And one of the really big ones is the cloud identity security. If you think about that right now, so many things are tied into your work email, think about single sign on into Orion and Salesforce and e-money and all that stuff, whether you’re using single sign on or not, but all this stuff that’s tied into your email in the advanced security to go along with that. So identity management, and for those of you that are familiar with Microsoft, the old name was Azure Active Directory or Active Directory Services, and Microsoft recently changed its name to intra id, which is very confusing. Geez,

Todd W. Darroca

Microsoft, call me, I’m a marketing expert. Let’s get this fixed for you, man.

David Kakish

That’s right, Todd. So you know exactly what That’s right. I forgot you’ve got a strong marketing background.

David Kakish

Drives me nuts. It’s insane. It’s insane. And why they would call the business one and the enterprise one, E three and E five, I don’t know, call it like E seven and E nine or something to make any sense.

David Kakish

Yeah. So anyways, very confusing. I guess, Todd, before I go back to you, Microsoft makes some great products. It’s confusing. I wish I didn’t have to even talk about this. I can’t believe it’s been 20 minutes that we’ve talked about this, right? I’d rather be talking about other things, but for your home on the personal side, yes, get the home edition for your RIA for your business. Again, whether you’re three or 30 employees, get the enterprise E five subscription that’s going to make a really, really, really the Microsoft 365 E five subscription that includes everything in office and more. And I’ll just sort of leave it at that. And if you have questions or if you want to know more about it, look at the PDF or contact us and we’re happy to answer.

Todd W. Darroca

Awesome. Well as always, David, bringing the expertise and making sure we get to our goals successfully with the right tool. So thanks again for joining us, David, and obviously thanks again for you for listening to the RIA Tech Talk podcast brought to you by of course, RIA workspace. And hey, if you like the show, make sure you like and subscribe it. It really does help. And so also for any more resources or any of our other podcasts, go to RIA workspace.com and check out the learning center. And feel free to reach out to us with any questions or topics that you’d like to cover. Again, this is a two-way conversation. We’d love to hear from you, and we hope you join us next time for more insights into the RIA world and we’ll see you next. Thanks so much, everybody.