Doug Murray Podcast Transcript
Doug Murray joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Doug Murray. Doug Murray is the CEO of Auvik Networks, an award-winning provider of cloud-based network management software, where he drives company strategy, culture, and growth.
Murray has over 25 years of network and security industry experience, including two years as the CEO of cloud cybersecurity company Baltics, which was then acquired by Cisco. As well as seven years as CEO of SDN Pioneer Big Switch Networks, which was also acquired by Arista Networks. He previously held leadership positions at Juniper Networks, Sun Microsystems, and AT&T, and was a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Northern California in 2017.
Doug holds a BA in History from Colgate University and an MBA from John Hopkins University.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, Doug. Welcome to the show.
Doug Murray: Brian, great to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I’m so excited that you join. This is something that really gives me a lot of joy every day. And Doug, it’s certainly nice to meet you and hope you’re holding into that barrel down at home, you know, with that weather coming through.
But we appreciate you jumping on and hopefully technology will hold up tonight. So, switching gears, Doug, let’s jump into your first question. Let’s talk about your career a little bit in tech, currently CEO of Auvik. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
Doug Murray: Great question. Yeah, absolutely. So first I’d say just regarding my career, I’ve been very fortunate to be blessed by having many good mentors and organizations to lead. So, I will say that. I think the one thing that was different about my journey in some respects is that I took many different opportunities across different roles and functions, including two international assignments.
And so, you’re trying things in product organization and business development and sales and engineering, I think really helped. We get well rounded, which then eventually fast forward in time really helped me transition into a CEO role since I had many of the roles previously in the organization. So I’d say taking some risk and trying to do some different things very much to help shape things.
And I’d say the other thing is the extreme focus on culture. This has been something that whether at more junior levels of the company or even as a multi time CEO now, I had a wise board member. Who years ago, said that the number one role of the CEO is to be the steward of the culture. And I took that really to heart.
And so, it helps when you’re passionate about bringing teams together and building great cultures of success and innovation, you do that well. And as they say, all boats rise. So, I’d say those are probably the things that helped shape me the most.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I love that. You know, we talked a lot about culture on the podcast here as well and certainly resonates with me and many of our audience here in our audience.
So thank you again, Doug. Doug, switching gears, since the pandemic, we’ve seen a rapid increase in companies implementing hybrid and remote work environments. How does Auvik help streamline these operations and protect the end user experience of these workers around the globe?
Doug Murray: Yes, so, so at Auvik, we focus on solving complex challenges for IT teams.
So, you can basically look at us as a Sass based I T operations management play. And so, as an organization, we have a lot of passion about reducing friction for I T teams. We say we want to live in a world where frictionless IT accelerates everybody’s potential. And so, we reduce friction so that IT teams can work really from wherever, right?
Which is probably one of the biggest things from the pandemic. Is that whether you’re in working hybrid, whether you’re in a Starbucks, you’re on a United Airlines flight. The office is now everywhere, and so that’s something that I. T. Teams have had to embrace. And so, our primary focus is an organization is to help people manage and monitor their networks, their Wi-Fi access points, security devices such as firewalls, as well as their staff services.
So, providing an abstraction there to really help them with that. And what we found is that especially over the course of the pandemic, we did a survey partnership with Yeah, E. M. A. Which is, you know, enterprise management associates, and they said that 96 percent of I T organizations are now supporting hybrid in some way, shape or form.
And so obviously this has become a very important thing in the day in the life of somebody, somebody in corporate IT. And so, our role is really to try to simplify things wherever possible. So, you can have a common experience across a multitude of different platforms.
Brian Thomas: Yeah, it’s been obviously everybody’s had to, here’s the five-letter word from the pandemic pivot, but we’ve seen such a, a, a move in this direction.
It’s been great, but as you know, there’s been some articles out there, you saw some hybrid in that environment, the security, cause kind of, there’s some vulnerabilities there that we still need to shore those up. But other than that the total night and day difference from three years ago. So, I appreciate you sharing that.
And Doug, you’re obviously leveraging some new and emerging tech in your business, right? Is there anything you might be able to share with us today?
Doug Murray: Yeah, well, I, I know it’s probably the common theme and answer that you get. But you know, we’re constantly looking at, at new technologies and probably the latest and greatest everybody’s talking about AI.
We’re also doing a lot of work with, with AI really across the company. And that’s I think it’d be important not only for. For us, but I think just in general for the industry. So, you know, if you look at what’s happened in the last 15 to 20 years, the massive amount of change that I. T. teams have witnessed, whether you’re back in the early days of mobile, when you talk about you know, basically the advent of sass, the rise of sass, if you will, cloud computing, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, et cetera.
You have all of these things come together and then you have. A pandemic, which is putting more and more people in a remote sense, as we’ve discussed. And now, on top of that, you have AI. So, you know, if you just imagine the plight of the I.T. team and how things have you know, there’s a lot to that.
And so, we are constantly looking at new tools and systems. We use over 100 SAS applications ourselves just as an organization. And so when we look at things such as AI, that’s an area of investment for us, but also very much as you hit the nail on the head before around cyber security. So we want to make sure as we are delivering a SaaS platform that we’re focused on not only the security within the company, but the security of the platform itself.
So, looking at innovative and unique approaches to solving for the complexity of security, which is always a moving target. So those are some of the things that we’ve been, we’ve been working through out of late.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate you highlighting some of that. Again, we still need to navigate some of these uncharted waters as far as security and the hybrid workforce, but we’re getting there.
I appreciate your insights and Doug, as you know, we are a technology podcast and platform. So, I wanted to ask you tonight if you could share something from your professional experience that would be helpful for those looking to advance their career in the I.T. Sector.
Doug Murray: Yes, I would say the biggest thing is really never stop learning.
I think while in one respect, it’s daunting all of this change that’s been going on for the last decade plus. But the reality is, is that if one embraces it, it’s actually great just in terms of opportunities that. that come about. So whether it’s as an example, you know, embracing AI learning as much as you can in that space, maybe get a certification or two, or if you’re intrigued, if you’re normally working on prem and you know, you want to learn about cloud computing you know, spend a lot of time getting, getting certifications and constantly evolving and learning, it makes you more valuable.
And then it puts you also in a position where you can grow into new roles as new things come about. So, I’m a firm believer in. Lifelong learning, and I think for I T teams in particular, making sure that they’re constantly evolving and learning and going to conferences and participating in the change and actually embracing it as opposed to resisting it is something that could be quite powerful for people’s careers.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. Appreciate the share. Obviously, education will take us a long way and, you know, like you said, embracing it. Jumping in is really the only way to grow, learn and potentially move up that ladder as well. Like yourself in this space. So, thank you. And Doug, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Doug Murray: Right. I appreciate the time.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Doug Murray Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
