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Mark: Hey, Paul. Thanks for joining us today. How are you doing?

Paul: I'm great. Thanks for having me, Mark. Glad to be here.

Mark: Yeah, I know. It's great to speak with you and I really love this idea of Digital Workspace Alliance. I'm curious, what attracted you initially to this idea of this Alliance?

Paul: It's a great question. And frankly, candidly, there's so much confusion simply around the term "digital workspace alliance," where you say, "Oh, we're trying to improve our digital workspace," does that mean you're going to have free candy in the office or your dog can come to work or you want more ergonomic seating or you want a better VDI workstation or you want to do more testing or you want faster hypervisor or you want your apps to perform? It's just such an incredibly all-encompassing term that several of us got together in the industry and thought, "Let's take a vendor-neutral approach to trying to simply add some simple human language around what a digital workspace is and what people do and what are various ways you can improve your version of digital workspaces in your own enterprise."

Mark: It makes sense. Even prior to the Alliance, had you seen that your customers are starting to understand what a digital workspace is a bit more or do you still think they associated, kind of to your point, to maybe a VDI solution only or something?

Paul: I think it's an evolution. I think two years ago, it would have been my first tongue-in-cheek answer about the dog in the office. I think last year, people would have been, "Oh, well, you need to make sure that my PC is working okay on my desk." And I think really, in the last year or so, people have really come to understand that it encompasses VDI, it encompasses application performance. It encompasses testing which is what Login VSI does. It encompasses all those things. So I think, you know, we're on a journey. I'd say, you know, if the two points on the hour or a 0 and 100, you're probably a 40, maybe 50, but we're not there yet, hence the need for the Alliance.

Mark: Yeah, I know. I mean in my shoes, I get to talk about it all the time, from an analyst perspective, so kind of getting to the bottom of what a digital workspace is very similar. But I would agree. I think a lot of people take and adapt into what they mean. You mentioned Login VSI testing. So specifically kind of give us a little bit more insight, what do you mean by testing there?

Paul: Sure. So we take an approach of the end user is paramount, the end user's experience. The end-user experience at the digital workspace is where the company's productivity is gained and lost. It's where the employees are able to do their job, run their SAP application, run their Epic application if they're in healthcare, if it's on a VDI or if it's on Windows Virtual Desktop or Windows 10. All of those digital workspaces need to perform. So what we do is we test the end-user experience and we do that by testing the ongoing experience. If you're rolling out, for example, changes to your Epic environment, you don't want them to send them live from preproduction to production without testing. So we test in preproduction, and then again, we test in production, then we kind of do a smoke test in preproduction and continuous testing on the production side. So if you're an airline and you have someone at a remote airline location, a terminal, you know, Wisconsin, coming in at 4 in the morning, you want to make their digital workspace, which is in a PC, is live and up and running at 6 am so they have time to troubleshoot if there is a problem. So we test every aspect of the end-user experience on the digital workspace.

Mark: That makes so much sense. I think that's such good evidence how important it is to have that Alliance because there are those different components or pieces that truly make that up and some folks need to lean in further to understand, in these different scenarios, as work from home or hybrid or back to office becomes more important, you know, how are they ultimately testing for those scenarios and making sure, to your point, how are they delivering that optimal user experience each and every time. So I love hearing it. It makes so much sense.

Paul: And that's a great example of the Alliance. In the Alliance, not that I'm trying to promote others, but I'm trying to promote the Alliance, you can have a very well-known vendor that does endpoints. They ship out endpoints. We test endpoints. That's a great example of two different vendors in the Alliance working together to ensure optimal end-user experience. We have a company in the Alliance that is about print management. So what good is the job endpoint and the testing of it if you can't get your printing to work. So it's really about helping one another but really more so empowering the community at large to understand where their role is and who can learn more about what specific aspects in the digital workspace ecosystem. I think that's why it's saying the Ecosystem Alliance because it touches so many facets of the enterprise.

Mark: Yeah, it's kind of like the reason my kids take a village, right. It takes an alliance, in this case, to make it happen.

Paul: I have a couple myself and I would agree wholeheartedly. The endpoint is a really good example of multiple people coming. We test endpoints. We have people in the Alliance that provide endpoints. It's a real good kind of hand in glove use of the Alliance.

Mark: It makes more sense now, Paul. I appreciate your insights. Let's certainly stay checked in. It's going to be interesting how customers actually take this Alliance or digital workspace in general, start to familiarize themselves with that term and ultimately put it to work for them over the next coming months. So enjoy the day and then you very much for joining me today.

Paul: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to talk about something that we all feel really strongly about to helpfully, you know, not only has a commercial gain but does a little bit of the overall marketplace, and that's the goal.

Mark: Agree. Thanks, Paul.

Paul: Thank you.