In this episode, I'm talking with Tony Emmanouil from Macquarie Telecom about how mid-market businesses in Australia can achieve better technical outcomes through smarter networking, cloud solutions, and cybersecurity. Tony shares why Macquarie is known as the "un-telco," doing the opposite of the industry norms, and how their award‑winning customer service and in‑house customer hub set them apart. We also unpack how their federal government‑level security expertise is now available to the mid‑market, the benefits of a managed Azure approach to control cloud costs, and why their SD‑WAN and SASE solutions are leading the way in secure, cost‑effective connectivity. Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor, the podcast where we explore how the right technology can create better business outcomes, every time. I'm Leanne Taylor, founder of Taylor Made Sales, and I'm passionate about helping Australian businesses connect with the tech solutions that drive success. For more details contact [email protected] or visit www.taylormadesales.com.au Full Episode Transcript:  [(Intro music) Leanne Taylor: Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor, your host of 10 Minute Tech Talks, where we cut straight to the heart of tech for Australian businesses. In each session, we'll spend only 10 minutes with an industry expert unpacking the latest products, services, and solutions to help your business achieve great technical outcomes. Let's get started. (Music fades) Leanne Taylor: Hi everyone, it's Leanne Taylor here from Taylor Made Sales, and I have been looking forward to this discussion today. I'm very excited to have Tony Emmanouil, Director of Marketing and Channel for Macquarie Telecom in the studio. Thank you, Tony, welcome. Tony Emmanouil: Hey, Leanne, thanks. Thank you very much for the invitation. Great to be with you and your, your clients and listeners. Leanne Taylor: Thank you. Who is Macquarie Telecom, what do you guys do, and why do my customers need to know you? Tony Emmanouil: Macquarie Telecom has been around a long time, for about 30 years now, serving specifically the mid-market. We only have uh services for businesses and we only target the mid-market in Australia. We offer IT services, probably the key headlines are three key areas. One is intelligent data networking, or what a lot of people call SD-WAN or smarter data networking solutions, so linking up all your sites in the best way for these mid-market businesses. The second area is cybersecurity and offering a range of cybersecurity services for the mid-market from network security all the way through to SOC and SIEM and other security services. And finally, cloud services. So, anything from our private cloud services offered in our own data centres all the way through to managed cloud services uh in the Microsoft Azure environment. They're the three key headlines. Macquarie Telecom, I guess is part of the broader Macquarie Technology Group. Our group is responsible for offering services to the federal and state government, like 42% of the federal government is powered or secured by us, by Macquarie Technology Group. Our cloud services business also offers services directly to enterprise. And our data centre business is responsible for our wholesale provision of data centre services. So we build our own data centres in Australia. Uh, we've done so now since 2000. We have six operational data centres in various places around Australia and offer wholesale access to those data centres for our hyperscale tenants as well as large enterprise. So a whole series of services. And the thing that ties it all together is our customer service approach, our customer experience, which we've won several awards, global awards for around the world. And we were fortunate enough a year and a half ago, now two years ago, to have one of the leading authors in the world on customer experience write a book about us, the same author who wrote about Ritz-Carlton and Mercedes and Starbucks wrote about Macquarie and what we do differently in this particular space of customer experience. Leanne Taylor: Now, I've had several conversations with the sales team uh with some of my customers around your phone service offerings and the like. Can you sort of dive into some of those more specific products and and what you're seeing in the market? Tony Emmanouil: The Macquarie Telecom business, of which I'm part of, offers, as I said, the core proposition is our secure SD-WAN or secure networking. Our point of difference is that it is smarter technology. So we were the first company to introduce SD-WAN into Australia and and we are the most experienced and the largest player in that space. SD-WAN now, obviously, powered by SASE, which is the security layers across that. We are the number one player in in the market in that particular area. So any of your clients that are interested in a more secure network experience that is still cost-effective and and makes sense in terms of their business, that should definitely reach out to us. So that's the networking layer. Beyond that, we offer the traditional voice services now either Teams and SIP is the way that they're typically delivered. Mobiles, we're powered by the Optus network for mobility, that's available through us as well. And also managed Wi-Fi. So we have a partnership with Juniper Mist. We offer managed Wi-Fi solutions to make it easier to run your, your Wi-Fi hotspots in your offices. So, they're, they're the main propositions of our Telco business. Over and above that, we also offer the full cloud portfolio to our mid-market businesses from managed Azure services, so we're, we're an elite Microsoft partner. We're one of, I believe only two in the region in this particular space, and we have a very close working relationship with them. We're the fastest growing in this space as well. So, as a result, we developed a managed Azure offering. So what that meant was we found that, and you're quite right about the sticker shock as well, a lot of enterprises and particularly in the mid-market, started expanding their cloud footprint and started adding more and more and more to the cloud with the promise that at some point it was going to be more cost-effective than hosting it themselves or doing it through private cloud. And of course, what happened was it spun out of control where they couldn't manage it in the way they would have hoped and costs start going up, and all of a sudden, the original promise of it being cost-effective just evaporates. And that's where we are now with a lot of businesses now retreating from this cloud-first plan and saying, "Well, okay, I might keep this and this workload in the cloud, but geez, I'm bringing all, all this other stuff back on-premise." And now you have a hybrid cloud environment and it's become even more challenging to manage. So this third phase now that that we're really working well in and being and have been successful in is helping businesses manage their hybrid cloud requirements where some of it will remain in in the Microsoft cloud, some of it will probably move to private cloud as well to make it more cost-effective or because you need those services to be resident and managed in Australia. And some of it, of course, will go back to being on-premise, but you're looking for that one interface and one way of managing all of that rather than going batshit crazy trying to manage three different environments in three different ways and losing track of it and losing the ability to extract those savings. So that's where things are at at the moment. We've been successful in reducing costs for a lot of mid-market businesses in cloud. Leanne Taylor: Fantastic. Well, that pretty much sums it up, I think Tony. We're making this a bit of a four-part series, so we will dive into the teleco offerings in the next podcast, followed by cloud, and then the data centre space. So thank you so much for your time today, and I'm really looking forward to connecting you with more customers in the mid-market space that could certainly, firstly need to know who you guys are and and what you offer, and then have some great tech conversations about how you can support them into the next financial year. So thank you so much, Tony, for your time. Tony Emmanouil: Thank you too, Leanne. It's been great to be with you. (Outro music) Leanne Taylor: Thank you for listening to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor and here at Taylor Made Sales, our mission is to keep you, our valued customers, up to date, informed about the latest technology innovations that can support and elevate your business. Stay curious, stay connected, and we'll see you next time. elevate your business. Stay curious, stay connected, and we'll see you next time.  

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