#194: How Clackamas CC Protected 10,000 Students + [Case Study] Texas A&M's Digital Transformation with Omnissa

Joe Toste: Welcome to the public sector show by tech tables. Super excited to have you both here today. Savi, you've been on the podcast. You were now a returning guest. Oh my God. I must have done something well first time. If you invited me again to be on this, I think it was the 5 gift 

Saby Waraich: card. Guess what? No, guess what?

Saby Waraich: Guess what? Right here for you, man. 

Joe Toste: Right here for you. What a pro. What a pro. He thinks I'm giving that back. I'm actually gonna put this in my wallet right now. So so [00:01:00] real quick for Wayne. So he has contact. Give away some context. You're also a public speaker. That's right. Okay. Tell the audience and Wayne a little context around that.

Saby Waraich: Yeah. I started my speaking engagement about 10 years ago, became a professional speaker about three years ago. That's fun. I love it. But in a full time role, I'm a chief information officer and a chief information security officer. That's my full time gig. And then I get to travel around the globe and speak and Do podcasts with amazing folks like Joe here and get to meet you.

Saby Waraich: So it's always fun. 

Wayne Bridges: Such an amazing side gig. I love it. And I don't know which of those is considered the side gig.

Joe Toste: Wayne quick intro for the audience. 

Wayne Bridges: My name's Wayne Bridges. I am a senior solutions engineer with Omnissa. Omnissa used to be the end user computing division of DMWare. We existed that way from 2004 to 2023. And then DMWare was acquired by Broadcom. They spun off the end user compute division.

Wayne Bridges: So we're an independent company nowadays. I cover state, local government [00:02:00] and education accounts in the central U. S. So part of a 10 man team covering all of SLED in the U. S. 

Joe Toste: Fantastic. Savvy, so I, you've developed this scare to cares framework. Yes. Which I listened back. So he got me the rough drafts because I wanted to pull the transfer before we met today.

Joe Toste: And there's such a funny part where I'm talking like savvy, you develop the scare framework and you're like no, it's the cares for him. Yeah. So I messed that up. It'll actually get cut out. So you won't know it when it actually gets released, but that's helping leaders navigate digital transformation.

Joe Toste: Correct. Break it down for us. What sparked the idea? What is it? And share a story about how this has helped Plaquemist Community College. 

Saby Waraich: This all started in 2018. I was working for City of Portland. And my boss, who was the Chief Technology Officer at City of Portland, one day comes to me and says, Sabi, have you ever jumped from a plane?

Saby Waraich: I was like, no. Are you interested? I was like, no. Guess what? I'm assigning you to this project. And that project was implementing City of Portland's permit system. Going for 10 years, failed multiple [00:03:00] times. So that project I said yes to and once we delivered it successfully, I said this is a great opportunity to help other folks to understand what it takes to deliver these transformations, especially in public sector.

Saby Waraich: So that's where I started this framework because scare is when leaders are put in that role, they get scared and sometimes they want to deliver things by creating a culture of fear by controlling folks. And by micromanaging and I am telling folks you don't have you have to shift that mindset from scared to cares and cares is an acronym which stands for communication, adapt relationships, empowerment and staying calm, right?

Saby Waraich: So any kind of complex transformation. The biggest piece is people. 84 percent of these digital transformations fail. 92 percent of these fail because of people issues. 52 percent fail [00:04:00] because of communication. So what you need to put focus is on people and communication rather than just on technology.

Saby Waraich: So organizational change management is a huge piece of that communication. A stands for Adapt. And we know when in public sector, a lot of things can come at you. How are you going to adapt to that? Yesterday it was cloud, today it's AI, tomorrow it's going to be world ending COVID or something else, right?

Saby Waraich: How as leaders you, you are going to adapt and still able to deliver on those transformations? And relationships is a key piece for anything. How effective you are in building relationships, whether that's with your vendor partners, whether that's your stakeholders, your sponsors, your team, that's a key piece for any transformation.

Saby Waraich: Stands for empower. And if you're not empowering your team to execute on those transformations, you're gonna fail. And then my favorite one is staying calm. Many times as leaders, they, when they get into that chaos or in this complex [00:05:00] transformation, They get scared and when they're scared and they're going to show that energy of chaos over the team and their team is going to go and spin.

Saby Waraich: So no matter what happens as a leader, you need to stay calm and deliver those transformations. 

Joe Toste: Yeah, I love that. That is fantastic acronym. So quick follow up. There was a ransomware attack a while ago. Your team had, I think, like 72 hours to respond. Yes. Targeting 10, 000 students worth of data. How did the CARES framework help you through that crisis?

Joe Toste: Yes. 

Saby Waraich: When I initially started this CARES framework, I thought this is for transformation. But then very quickly I realized this could be used even for dealing with any complex challenges which you're having, right? Stands for, again, communicate. How good are you in communicate? Because when that ransomware attacks you need to communicate with the media, you need to communicate with the students, you need to have internal communication.

Saby Waraich: And what tools you have in place to [00:06:00] make sure that you're communicating right out of band communication, don't just stay with your regular school email system. You need to create something outside because you don't know if those attackers have control over your email system and they're watching, right?

Saby Waraich: So having that effective communication is such an important piece is adapt, adapt. And the thing is, when everything goes down and your payroll system is going to be down, your financial aid is down, and people need to get paid.

Saby Waraich: And there are so many things which come along at you, you need to adapt and how as a leader you can adapt to those challenges you're going to make and break to go through that complex challenge or transformation, whatever that is. And relationships is another again, going back, you have to have a stronger relationship with Department of Homeland Security, FBI, MSISAC people, your state agencies, your county people, your other higher ed people, who is on your speed dial?

Saby Waraich: Who are the folks, [00:07:00] because FBI is great, but who are the people who are going to be right there with you because you need boots on the ground? How effective is your relationship with your cybersecurity insurance provider? Because those are the folks who have the resources. And the team to come and help you with that.

Saby Waraich: Stands for empowerment. Again, are you empowering your team to work on those things? Have you provide a clear direction of prioritization? Work with the business to identify what is the priority for the college? Is payroll system more important than financial aid? What needs to come, go off first.

Saby Waraich: And then again, staying calm, man. Because when you go through this ransomware attack, it starts initially with a sprint where you and your team is spending about 12 to 14 hours. Of time sprinting, and then it becomes a marathon and it still goes on. This happened in January and we're still working through those challenges.

Saby Waraich: So that's the cares framework for dealing through this ransomware attack. 

Joe Toste: Love it, Wayne. So you're helping massive university systems like Texas A& M [00:08:00] create these seamless digital experiences at A& M. Students went from juggling 15 plus logins to creating a single unified experience. Walk us through that transformation.

Joe Toste: What did day one look like versus where we are today? 

Wayne Bridges: Yeah. So when you look at a large university system there's a lot of different silos of tools, of applications that they're using. And in, in the way that we handle that you have to have a means of bringing all those tools together into some common broker.

Wayne Bridges: The way we do this is to look at, first off, what are you using? How are you accessing it? Where are users logging in? And in, in many cases, it's a matter of understanding where those different identity providers, those different directories those different multi factor tools might be living within the system.

Wayne Bridges: And bringing those together in a way that makes sense, a policy driven means [00:09:00] of allowing users access to the resources that they need by consolidating all of those tools. And, not necessarily eliminating them. There may be a business need for a particular business unit in the school to need that particular identity provider.

Wayne Bridges: We see Shibboleth a lot for example, in higher ed. But being able to consolidate those and to set rules for the end users of the customer to be able to consume the resources that they need in the way that makes sense looking for security first and foremost, but also an end user experience.

Wayne Bridges: That's going to be, conducive to the way that students want to work, which is typically I want my resource now

Saby Waraich: I would like to add to that because I recently had a conversation with another individual and director of I. T. For a bigger university, right? And he was talking about their like 128 different departments and each team have their own tool system.

Saby Waraich: Yes, I [00:10:00] was like, What are we talking about? Hundreds of tools. So the work that you're doing is amazing work. Just want to join.

Joe Toste: The quick follow up I had for you, Wayne, was we got all these tools, all these logins, but the actual platform, how are you trying to balance that consumer grade experience that the students are looking for with the enterprise security that everyone's looking for?

Joe Toste: Which, honestly, is a kind of a dumb question, because at the end of the day, with the decentralized piece of the university, it's almost an impossible situation, but I'm going to ask you anyways. It's the Wild West. 

Wayne Bridges: You're absolutely right there. What we use is a two sided tool, right? Think of it as a policy engine on the back end that says if I'm accessing this resource from this network, then I'm going to do it in this way, right?

Wayne Bridges: I'm going to use this authentication mechanism to get to that resource. If I'm getting to it from a different network, then perhaps I'm going to authenticate differently, right? Think of it as internal versus external connections, right? I want MFA on all of my external connections. I want my [00:11:00] internal connections to go as quickly as possible to that resource.

Wayne Bridges: So when we look at it that way, that handles the security piece, building those policies that tell us that. The end user piece of this is really great because it allows us to build a consolidated catalog of resources for the students, right? For the faculty and the students. So that they can get to those resources in a unified I don't want to say single pane of glass because I think that term's overused a lot of times.

Wayne Bridges: But that's essentially what we're providing. And that may be access to native applications for whatever device they happen to be using. It could be virtual resources that they're accessing or the prolific SaaS apps that are out there nowadays. That's 

Joe Toste: great. Savi, the Purple Cow, we knew it was coming.

Joe Toste: Purple Cow leadership concepts, I love. So for those who don't know, you walk us through what makes a Purple Cow leader in higher [00:12:00] ed, and share a time when this was a major win at the college. 

Saby Waraich: We're all in higher ed, we're gonna have challenges, budget challenges, students not coming into the college, but still, how can you still continue to provide those innovation services, innovative services?

Saby Waraich: But at the same time, take a pause and look at the team and say, What's important? What is the priority for us? Don't run after the coolest tool which is out there. But let's talk about purple cow first, right? So purple cow stands for leadership model, a framework for help individuals to stand out. P stands for having a positive mindset.

Saby Waraich: We get about 80, 000 thoughts throughout the day. About 75 to 80 percent of those thoughts are negative. So what you as a leader is doing it. It's shifting those thoughts, right? Not stopping those thoughts, but shifting that mindset to be more positive, because if you're bringing a positive culture [00:13:00] within your organization, your team is going to feel more connected, more productive, rather than just creating that negative culture within the organization.

Saby Waraich: And we have seen that a little bit more post COVID, where we're seeing a lot of teams are now talking about burnout, having mental health issues. And so that positive mindset is even more important right now. U stands for unchaining yourself. What are your self limiting beliefs which are stopping you to achieve anything?

Saby Waraich: Stands for relationships. Going back, when I talk about relationships, I say, do you get relationships? Gratitude, empathy, and trust. Those are the three pillars which help to build any relationship. Are you grateful to your team for the work which they are doing? All of us are fighting our own battles, especially post COVID, you need to take more care of your team and be thankful and recognize the work and respect the work which they are doing so that you can build that effective [00:14:00] relationship with them.

Saby Waraich: Empathy is E. Having that conversation with your team member, what can I do to make you successful? Taking that action will help you to build that relationship. And T stands for trust. And if there is no trust, There is no relationship. And then L stands for leadership. When I talk about leadership, I say Sherpa leadership.

Saby Waraich: How you can start asking that question to your team. Hey, what do you like to work on? Like maybe your systems engineer is not interested in system work anymore because it's stressing him or her out. How you can start helping that individual. Maybe they like scripting more. Maybe they like automation more.

Saby Waraich: How you can work with that individual to say what can What do you like to do? And how can I make you successful? So that's very important. And then E stands for energy. What kind of energy you are bringing in, into the team? Is it the positive energy or is it the negative energy? How are you driving? How are you showing up to the work every [00:15:00] day?

Saby Waraich: How are you looking at those challenges to run away? Are you looking at those challenges as opportunities to say, Yes, we can do it. Let's try to figure out a way to do that. 

Joe Toste: I love that. So Wayne, this made me think. With you and your team, who's a purple cow. How are you, how is am Missa in your organization helping individuals stand out?

Joe Toste: You don't need to break it down by the acronym, but just who's being a purple cow there? Of 

Saby Waraich: course. 

Wayne Bridges: Wayne, right here, man. Yeah. I'm not the purple cow. I think much of our leadership is, we're all getting in front of people a lot of people. We are, we're a new brand not a new company by any means, but definitely a new brand.

Wayne Bridges: And I think in a lot of cases. We've, the company has empowered all of us really to tell the company's story, to get out there and to, be in front of people and to help us to rebrand Omnissa as the company it is today. And now you're inside the Karasov booth.

Wayne Bridges: Look at this. Just as a note, one of our primary colors is purple. 

Saby Waraich: [00:16:00] Just a high five 

Joe Toste: for that, man. Love it. Love it. Primary color is purple. I love that. Wayne, so we talked about Texas A& M. I think you mentioned LSU on the podcast, if you recall. Walk us through how these flagship universities are approaching their digital experiences differently.

Joe Toste: And we're going to have LSU on tomorrow, by the way. What unique challenges did each of those universities face and how are you helping them navigate? 

Wayne Bridges: Yeah, obviously both of them, large university systems, they're decentralized, so there's a lot of tool sprawl. We see adoption of our own products even in a continuum.

Wayne Bridges: There is, there are some who are using one piece of our portfolio, some who are using another. I don't want to get into the product stuff right now. But really the way that, that we get them onto this journey of digital transformation and start to, to help them to rationalize those apps, give those users the resources they need is [00:17:00] really by onboarding them.

Wayne Bridges: We use this central tool. I mentioned the portal before. Being able to give those users that portal is a big piece. It speaks to customer experience, right? I think that is the key. Is that you have to have that winning customer experience. You have to bring those customers in.

Wayne Bridges: Your end users, your students, your faculty. So that they're seeing this as the means by which they consume those resources. Then on the back end there's lots of moving parts, right? Maybe it's digital desktops or virtual desktops that they're bringing in, right? And we integrate that into this portal so that when users consume those resources, they're going to the same place.

Wayne Bridges: The interesting note of this is that, because these are distributed organizations, oftentimes there's different branding across different schools that can be a challenge many times for organizations, but we have the built in resources there to allow for that branding so that I get my colors for my [00:18:00] particular school, I'm seeing my logo, I'm getting to my home page when I click on a link within the portal so that familiarity for the students along with, authenticating in the same way that they always have just through this centralized marketplace.

Wayne Bridges: Becomes a little more of a a win for those organizations. In other cases, it's a matter of compliance security. We want to lock down devices. And at the same time, we're able to manage those devices. The portal application that lives on the device also acts as the agent. I'm I have another win there in that in that not only is it providing policy for me, it's providing that security on the device side.

Joe Toste: The brand identity is such an underrated piece, a hundred percent, because for a lot of folks, they think brand is It's the nice color or it's purple. It's actually how Savvy makes you feel when he gives a [00:19:00] talk.

Joe Toste: When you come on the podcast, it's the whole experience before it's the experience after you end up on tech tables. com. You're in the promo video, right? The entire experience, it's Tim looking fresh over there right now. Yeah, it's the entire experience, but seriously, even within a school and any platform.

Joe Toste: If you've just got a bunch of different, disjointed, experience and design and there's no brand guideline, it just fumbles the whole thing. So nothing worse for me. I, and we actually had a, not you so much, but at Seattle city hall, a great podcast with the entire basically product and design team at Seattle, the city of Seattle it, and just how they think about product and shipping to users.

Joe Toste: And they have an entire portfolio of City of Seattle logos that are a little bit different. The mayor's got one. The Seattle IT has one. Each department has their own. That kind of rolls up into the [00:20:00] larger brands, which is so good. I actually have the podcast named The Public Sector Show by TechTables for a reason.

Joe Toste: It used to be called the TechTables podcast, but I may not always host this podcast. I may host several other podcasts or other people will co host with me. So maybe savvy because he's so good. Maybe he'll co host with me. And so then there are different, maybe there's a CISO podcast by Tech Tables, right?

Joe Toste: So there's this whole kind of brand identity, but even for colleges and universities, it's so important. 

Saby Waraich: It is, especially the newer generation. They have that eye for the brand, right? So if you're disjointed, they're not going to feel connected to your organization. So putting that focus in there is such an important piece.

Saby Waraich: And recently I got an opportunity to get to know an organization put so much effort in brand and even before they, they hire a design anthropologist. Think about that. I was like, wow, that is next level, right? Giving so much focus on. So totally right. And providing that [00:21:00] focus on brand awareness.

Joe Toste: And it's great for recruiting. It's great for. Hiring, both recruiting students and faculty, but, even now it's just it's so important to have that critical eye to detail, and anyways, thank you for sharing that, Wayne, that was super great Savvy, looking at the rapid pace of change in higher ed, and you've got a front row seat, you're right there, AI, automation, cyber security, design, product, that guy how are you preparing Clackamas Community College for what's next?

Joe Toste: And what are you most excited about in the future? 

Saby Waraich: Yeah, I'm totally, I'm very excited about the opportunities which AI is gonna, is providing and is gonna provide us. It is totally changing the way we look at work and how we respond to work. But also, at the same time, it's scary to see how threat actors are gonna use that to damage a particular organization.

Saby Waraich: Yes, there is so much going on within any community college or any higher ed. What [00:22:00] are you doing? What are those small steps you are taking right now to help you to take that leap right in the future? So we're doing small proof of concepts with AI based chatbot tool where we can say, okay, this is a great one, right?

Saby Waraich: Somebody has an issue. Hopefully there is a self serve where they are able to resolve that issue by themselves. But let's say if they're not able to resolve that issue, they submit a ticket. And it goes to a tech person, support tech. And even before going to the support tech, AI bot has that information and looks at all that information, what's going on with that particular individual and that particular machine and has all the data and has already provided a recommended solution.

Saby Waraich: And gives to your tech and say, this is what I recommend. So all your tech is doing is, okay, has done all the legwork which was supposed to be done by them. Saving so much time so that they can focus on higher [00:23:00] value things. That is what excites me right now. We are using AI for cyber security. Anytime somebody submits, we get a phishing email.

Saby Waraich: Who doesn't get phishing email? Thousands of Get them all the time. All the time, right? So there was this So every time we get a phishing email, we ask our folks, Hey, forward this, or we have a submit phish button, right? Every time all those emails will go, and there was this tech person, Who was looking at each and every email to figure out whether that's a fish or whether that's a real thing was taking so much of their time.

Saby Waraich: So we use now AI to where we grab that email. It's not fully automated yet. That's my vision. It's gonna be get there, right? Yeah. But grab that email for now. Run it through AI based tool. AI based tool will analyze that particular threat will go and provide a step by step process. And then also draft an email back to the user saying, Hey, this is what I found in easy [00:24:00] to read English, no technical jargons, anything, so that they can understand it.

Saby Waraich: And then able to say, Here are the few things which you should be, not be doing, right? So that's taking so much of the time, like productive time, to my support tech to do other productive work. So I'm very excited about automation, AI, and other things. But at the same time, I also want to emphasize, Take care of the team there.

Saby Waraich: There's so much going on right now, and there's so much coming in. What is your priority and putting that focus working with the business to understand what is the priority? Maybe for some chatbot may not be the priority because student facing technology is in some kind of a hole. That's much more focused.

Saby Waraich: So work with them. Identify those things so that it's we can make it beneficial for our end users who are basically students. 

Joe Toste: Hello. It's fantastic. Wayne. Any closing thoughts? 

Wayne Bridges: So I'm very excited to [00:25:00] hear what you're doing up there. It's it's pretty exciting stuff. And it's great to meet you, Savi.

Wayne Bridges: I'm a big fan now. I wasn't before. I didn't know you before. I apologize. 

Saby Waraich: Thank you, man. Okay, just for that. Is there a 5 gift card in there? Just for that, man. He's a fan now. You're a fan. Now I'm your biggest fan. Anybody who's a fan gets a Star Wars gift card. That's how we do it.

Saby Waraich: That's how we do it, 

Wayne Bridges: right? That's how we do it. That's how we do it. That's how we do it. That's how it was done. Thank you for having me, Joe. This has been a highlight for the show so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how bad this came out. My, I'm not a public speaker definitely excited to to see the show.

Wayne Bridges: And to tell all my friends to either look or avoid based on what I see. So this is your very first podcast. On video. Yeah, very first. That's awesome. Yes, man. You 

Joe Toste: did amazing, man. I'm telling you. Thank you. You did 

Saby Waraich: amazing. No, thank you. Thank you. So you're, 

Joe Toste: you're almost done. You're not quite out yet, but we're almost there.

Joe Toste: Wayne, who else should I should come [00:26:00] on the show? Who else should be, who else should be telling their story? 

Wayne Bridges: Who comes to mind? I think it's some of these big university systems who who just need the exposure of what they're doing because. They're the ones truly doing the transformation out there.

Wayne Bridges: They're the ones taking all of these parts and looking to make something out of them and looking to tell a cohesive story in their branding and their user experience. I think that's the right answer. And I can refer you a ton of those if you'd like. 

Joe Toste: Oh yeah. Savi, who 

Saby Waraich: else should come on the pod?

Saby Waraich: Okay. I'm going to tell I'm a big fan of Andrea Bollinger. I want her here. And the reason for that is She's the C. I. O. for Oregon State University. Okay. Okay. There are two reasons for that. One, you're wearing the orange color, which is the color for Oregon State University. The beavers! The beavers go bees, right?

Saby Waraich: I'm not a beaver. Oh man, that's okay. I know, but you're wearing the orange. So that's the number one reason, right? You connect right [00:27:00] there with the brand right there. Number one. Second, she's doing an amazing job. Recently, I'm part of SimPortland chapter. Yep. So I'm the president of SimPortland chapter. So we give awards like Oregon CIO of the Year and Oregon CISO of the Year Award.

Saby Waraich: This year, Andrea Bollinger won the CIO, Oregon CIO of the Year Award. I love it. She is a rock star and I want her to be 

Joe Toste: here. So we gotta get her on the podcast. I'm here till tomorrow, till whatever, 5 p. m., something like that. Something random like that. Yeah. Yeah, no, this was awesome. I appreciate you both coming on the Public Sector Show by TechTables.

Wayne Bridges: Thank you. 

Joe Toste: Thanks 

Wayne Bridges: for having us. 

Joe Toste: Yeah, absolutely. Always have an amazing time, man.

Speaker 2: Hey, what's up everybody. This is Joe Tossi from techtables. com. And you're listening to the Public Sector Show by TechTables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIOs, CISOs, and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county, and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders.

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