This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

​

Sarah Richardson: Hey, it's Sarah Richardson.

Before we jump in, a quick note. This episode originally aired on Flourish, a show I hosted focused on leadership and culture in healthcare. It Flourish has officially joined the 2 2 9 Project podcast and over the next few weeks, I'm bringing some of my favorite conversations with me. If you're new to my work, I'm so glad you're here.

And if you followed me from Flourish, welcome home. The conversation you're about to hear is one I believe is worth your time. Let's get into it.

Welcome to Flourish Soundbites, and today I am joined by Tyler Barhydt, a seasoned technology executive with deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, finops, and enterprise architecture.

Tyler, welcome to the show.

Tyler Barhydt: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Sarah Richardson: Glad to have you here. Other things, great for our audience to know. You and I have been friends for probably a decade now. We've worked together in previous organizations, stayed in touch, and that's kind of what it's all about. The HIT world's a lot smaller than most people realize.

So let's jump in and I wanna talk about cloud strategy and board engagement because you've been leading a major cloud transformation journey. And I'm curious, what were the key considerations that led your organization to commit fully to shutting down on-prem?

Tyler Barhydt: Yeah, it was really, we'd kind of grown through a lot of acquisition, so we had a lot of fragmentation.

We had data center sprawl, there was, you know, cost considerations. We needed some flexibility in what we were doing to either as we grew or, shrank in that, that manner, right? We had to be able to be there for that and kind of adjust, as well as just making sure that we had, you know, kept the care journey in mind.

Sarah Richardson: And so from a leadership perspective, how do you start to prepare the board and the executive team for such a bold shift? Because some of the business language has to help build alignment and confidence.

Tyler Barhydt: Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, like anywhere else, right? You have your typical kind of business case and intake processes and things like that. So you're gonna do your cost benefit analysis, you're gonna go through ROIs, you've got different financial models. , I will say we went through quite a number of iterations around that, to get kind of this overall migration and , kind of optimization project kind of in play.

, And just really needed to kind of show, hey, if we keep doing what we're doing, what's that look like, right? And that CapEx model, what do you, what if we shift more of a consumption based model? And it was really about explaining it that way and the ability to kind of. Either, again, shrink or, or grow with the business.

So you've got all this extra infrastructure laying there. That you thought you were gonna use and you just walk 'em through that model. And really it was all about data. If you can show that model, show 'em the data and say, okay, here's what's gonna happen. This is what it looks like and we're gonna be able to shift, they, they actually bought it pretty well and they were kind of headed a little down that path when I got here.

So it was a, a little bit easier, I would say, for me 'cause they were kind of somewhat bought in and I was able to kind of just get 'em kind of over the, over the line and understanding in a more data driven mindset.

Sarah Richardson: So you check the box, you're like, we are going. How have you measured the maturity of your cloud platform over time, and how do you adapt that roadmap for the businesses their needs change as well?

And some of those full blown colos, some of 'em, repurposed office space, typ, typical stuff that you we're down to four, we're headed to zero. I used to say one or two, now I'm back to zero. I'm not even sure. I say zero to one anymore. Just because we've had so much success with it.

So in the middle of this, our ServiceNow platform's been evolving. So it's, it's really been around showing the progress of these applications and that we've either rationalized, so we had a ton of d Yeah. A ton of stuff that just didn't need to be there anymore. So we looked at, here's what. We thought it was gonna cost when we migrated.

So as we go live one of the things we implemented here. For this that we weren't doing with a lot of our other projects was a kind of an operational readiness checklist. Something as simple as that, of just going through each of the areas and saying, okay, do we have everything we need to actually operate this thing when we Whether we had it today or not, or before we moved it as another story. But it helped kind of, kind of grow that ability in our we track those types of success metrics as we went through from a project

Sarah Richardson: Philosophy of yours is the importance of not getting locked into technology. And so how do you evaluate the tools and the platforms for some of that long-term flexibility that you need?

Tyler Barhydt: Yep. This is really about just when you set the strategy and you kind of set where you're trying to go to get to, you just have to go back and look at it. Right. How do you, how do you check yourself against that each time? There's times where, you get running your head's down and it's okay, I better, lift your head up and kind of look, am I still heading in that direction?

If you'd asked me, I would've said that's the one. And three, four months later I went, oh, we totally went a different direction. And I was wrong. Right? So my early analysis of something was off and being flexible enough to go, okay, that's. We found the right answer in the end, but you've just gotta kind of remain flexible with it and just not, the beauty of the cloud again, is you're not getting locked into something for, three to five years.

You don't have to get locked into

Tyler Barhydt: So. I think as, as folks are aware, right, the kind of, Hey, we're gonna redo SKUs, we're going to give you a whole bunch of extra stuff and we're gonna charge you more for it, kind of regardless of what you have left in your environment.

So I'll, I'll leave it as that, as the Broadcom situation. We went heavy aggressive from a dcom perspective, and a lot of that had to do with where we were just, and. There wasn't a lot of lifecycle management going on, things like that. So it was a, a very target rich environment from that perspective.

Let's talk to Oracle. They all have some version of, VMware in their cloud, right? And so we went with Azure, AVS which is their version of that. It was extremely fast and very successful. Surprisingly, it was literally zero impact to the business. We could have done this without telling anybody.

They would've not, they would not have noticed. So it went really well for us, but we, we had to kind of convince our own internal folks, get a few of those under our belt, but we moved a significant portion of one of our data centers or all of it basically, and then another significant portion of our other on-prem in.

It's got a couple of things that are kinda locked us in there, but we'll leverage that and it doesn't hurt us. To move from on-prem to Azure AVS. Even though AWS is our primary, we're still going to migrate out of AVS into AWS for the majority So it didn't limit us on kind of our options for how we were gonna migrate

Sarah Richardson: And the win to your point, is doing all of that where you had to let somebody know, but you actually didn't need to let somebody know. So I love the conversations when you get to say, oh yeah, we moved all this stuff over the weekend and nobody noticed, even though they were on deck to be aware of it. So great way to build that trust and collateral to keep doing the things that you want.

Tyler Barhydt: Yep. Jokingly, I I tell people all the time they print money for us. So it's really about the data. They allow you to kind of. Look at this and, and drive decisions based on kind of that, that financial aspect. And then we all know that's how it works, right? Following the money you're gonna follow most of your decisions.

It did immediately build trust with the business and with others in it, and it exposed as kind of his historically hidden costs or the lack thereof, right? So when you. We all joke around that the business thinks that, oh, compute is free. Storage is free 'cause they don't see it, right?

So you get very consistent reporting and everything we looked at kind of instituting monthly operational reviews that were going on, and we got finops kind of tagged into that so they start to see it, right? So the nu the number of folks that kind of don't realize what. Their applications cost.

The business is, it's, well, I don't know if it's surprising or not. It's, most of 'em don't know. They don't pay attention to it. They just kind of, we run and like you leave it up and running and it's all fine, but it's, it is, this is one of those areas where I'm kind of like, I wouldn't go to the cloud without it.

So if you, this is, this is why most people or some people have returned back to on-prem because they think it's cheaper. If you do this right with finops, you're not gonna have that problem. If you're gonna have winners and losers in that mix, right, some stuff's gonna be a little more expensive, someone's gonna be cheaper.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and bringing those groups together for those conversations is so just unequivocally important. To your point, people don't know how much certain things cost when you get in front of the cost allocation models and the understanding of the cloud prior to going there.

Then that desire to have zero data centers, which truly, there's some legacy stuff every once in a while needs to float around in in on-prem or in a, in a closet somewhere. But that ability to truly be able to leverage that environment is a massive strategic win. And so for CIOs and CTOs who might be considering a similar shift, what are the top two pieces of advice that you would offer?

Tyler Barhydt: Be flexible, uh, willing to kind of fail fast. You're used to making three to five year decisions. And the, you know, whether you get in trouble for that or you're either a hero or a zero for that decision you made for, you know, the five year thing, it's gonna change. Um, and you don't have to worry about that as, as much in this case, right?

You can make some quick decisions and go, oops, that one wasn't quite right. But I can adjust it and I can adjust it Um. I know you said two, but I had throw in just if admit when you don't know something, right. Leverage partners, bring them in. Leverage the vendor programs that are out there.

There's all kinds of, you're gonna end up in the double bubble thing where you're gonna have to pay for stuff on-prem and that's always part of that, getting them convinced it's okay. You're gonna be dealing with that double cost of there and in the cloud while you're moving it in your decom before you can actually, you know.

Shut down your data centers and recoup those costs. So I think it's just be willing to leverage those things. There's a ton of programs out there with all of 'em that get you the discounts and commitments and EDPs and all that kind of

Here's what I love though about going to the cloud is to your point, when you have to do, when you have to make that quick correction or something different, it's a keystroke change. It is not the physical labor like it once was, and hours of downtime and reconfiguring, et cetera. It is keystroke configurations when you go to that infrastructure as code space.

It is a pretty fascinating and fun place to be, harder to get to in some cases. Mm-hmm. But you've shown time and again, that it is possible, I mean, decades of doing this, and that's one of the reasons I always appreciated working with you is, oh, well if Tyler's involved and his teams are on this, then here's what we can expect.

I'm serious. I mean, think. 12 to 20. That's like a win. We've came from environments together where 50 rounds of conversations and you're like, by the time you get approval, you're like, I don't even wanna do it anymore. But yeah, you have got, you have shrunk that equation significantly. Yeah.

Tyler Barhydt: Yeah. And we, we had little, I mean just a little m and a example, right?

You give 'em, they give 'em their credit card and off you go and your 10 KA month or whatever that thing was costing you, it just go, it went away, right? It didn't, it's not there the next day. So there's, you know, there's this rapid, now again, the reverse of that. You know, without finops, you spin up a whole bunch of stuff and you're not paying attention.

The bill can rise pretty quickly too, so you gotta keep an eye on It's good stuff. I, I, I love the model. It's been, it's been fun to make that shift even in my

Sarah Richardson: Yep. So people listening are be like, finops what? I need this whole finops team like, call Tyler, he can help you and, uh, really work through some of the ideas for certain.

Are you ready for speed round? Sure. All right, here we go. What is one tech trend you are most excited about right now? And you can't say the cloud.

I do think there's so much potential with it which is a good thing and a bad thing. We, I would say there's still a lot of kind of. Fragmentation with even our use cases and what, where we're thinking about using it. And you've got a whole bunch of folks that are just kind of out, so you gotta get some control of it, but you want to kind of let folks experiment.

It's just been, there's again, huge potential. There's a lot that can be done. I think we're, you know, you run some risk of where you get lock in again, like, you know, there's all these little ones out there. Somebody eventually is gonna buy 'em and gobble 'em all up and. So it's a little bit of a gamble on some stuff, but there's so much potential and, and really cool stuff that's going on with it that it's like how do you dive in and get more involved with it.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah, no, I totally agree. What's your go-to method for stress relief during a high stakes decision cycle?

So there's, you know, it's super easy for me if I'm like, you know, sometimes it's just colder in my basement, so I'm like, all right, I gotta go upstairs and go outside and warm up. Um, but being able just step outside and step away from it for a little bit is typically enough. I'm in, you know, kind of a treat area, so that's nice.

The other one that's kind of funny is, uh, there's a little local barber shop. And in my, uh, the town that I'm in So I go down there, I get the straight razor shave beard trim up and all that. So the hot, tall shave thing's pretty nice. I'd say that's my one, self-care thing that I do, which is kind of fun.

But that'd be my go-to, I guess.

Sarah Richardson: I like hearing that guys are basically going to the beauty shop to get a little bit of a, you know, no,

Tyler Barhydt: it's a barber shop. Barber

Sarah Richardson: shop, get coifed up, get ready to go, et cetera. Well, your beard looks very well, very nice today. So there you go. There's a win. All right, last one.

Tyler Barhydt: I, it is, I'm not quite sure if I'd call it a trait or not. I think it's really realizing that infrastructure exists to support the All the blinky lights, all the stuff that's really cool and the technology and some of that stuff is we only exist to support the business and to like implement those things that actually matter.

So I don't geek out too much on some of that technology or it's really not why we're here. The whole, I've worked at a couple places now that talk about it for it and it drives me nuts 'cause I'm not a fan of that either. But I would say it's having a core that's built on kind of servant leadership.

Creating teams where you empower them, um, you need to enable 'em to make decisions and to make mistakes. And, you know, I'll say, make the right, I didn't say make the right decisions, um, because they have to be able to fail, right? You have to be able to allow your folks to fail, but also be empowered that, and know that they're not gonna, you know, get beat up or whatever if they make the wrong decision kind of thing.

Sarah Richardson: No, that's a great trait and also one of the hallmarks of why whenever you go somewhere, people follow you. And uh, a lot of people we've worked with in the past are all with you where you are today.

And, uh, it's always fun to know that I can make one ping to like five of the guys that, uh, used to be able to hang with every day. Thank you so much for just your vision, your leadership, your time today. It's really a testament to the constant reinvention of the infrastructure space, the things we need to be learning and doing, and you building teams and working for organizations that allow you to do all of those things.

So thank you for being on the show today.

Tyler Barhydt: Yeah, thank you for having me. It was fun.

Sarah Richardson: Or see you a city tour at dinner soon. And for all of you listening, thanks for tuning in. That's all for now.

that's flourish soundbites, find your community at this week, health.com/subscribe. Every healthcare leader needs a community to learn from and lean on. Share the wisdom.

That's all for now.