Join today as we dive deep into the world of Microsoft with Sean Ferrel of Managed Solution. We talk licensing, Azure, desktop, Azure CoPilot, and more. Sean does a great job breaking down where partners can help, common misconceptions, and how some accounts just continue to grow with all the different products Microsoft has available and Managed Solution has expertise in!

Josh Lupresto: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast that's designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus, and this is next level BizTech. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode. Today we're talking about cloud, we're talking about Microsoft. We're talking licensing, security, infrastructure. As much as we can possibly pack into 30 minutes to do this today though, we have on Sean Ferrell, founder and chairman of Managed Solution, who you may know in the Telarus portfolio. Sean, welcome on man. Sean Ferrel: Oh, Josh, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. I'm excited to give any advice. I can Josh Lupresto: love it. Let's, let's talk about, let's talk about you first. I want to hear about your journey. Did you always start out in tech? How did you found this company? How did we get from, from nothing to to here. Sean Ferrel: God, 20 years. We'll just start there. It's, it's, I'm getting old. I wouldn't say the [00:01:00] company's getting old. I'm getting old. But I was, I came to San Diego and yeah, I love tech, but I actually love the business side of running a services organization first. So it was outta school. I mean, I started at, you know, grassroots, living in a dorm, to be honest. And so 20 years later I'll, I'll call it a lot of different evolutions of the company, you know, in, in short kind of hitch star wagon, as if you will. I had to look at what was happening in the world with, with the big guys, Microsoft, with what was happening with the consumer, with Amazon and what was happening with search with Google. And in the end, when it came to tech, we sort of said, we feel like Microsoft's doing a great job. So fast forward, you know, 2023, you know, we're what's called a highly specialized Microsoft partner. They kind of did away with this concept of gold and. You know, we have to carry thousands of certified people, or I should say certifications within engineering. And and it's been a fun journey. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we're kind of tag lining this thing. Like we want technology to have a positive social impact. 'cause a lot of it doesn't. And so whatever that might be, [00:02:00] if it's gonna help a human being, you know, we're here to help him. Love it. Josh Lupresto: Love it. So, so break it down for, for, for anybody that is not familiar with Managed solution. Talk about what you're doing, what your focus is, and we'll get into to some of the weeds here in a minute. But, but break it down at a high level first. Sean Ferrel: Yeah. I mean, so there's, there, just think about it. Simply put, you've got two businesses within one organization or across the country. So we own a US based help desk, a true 24 hour a day. Level one, level two, level three, very technical help desk. We can work directly with suppliers or, or I guess manufacturers like Microsoft and Amazon and some of our partners. But it's, that's, that's one thing we do. And we do it for a lot of companies. Typically, you know, mid-market, a hundred employees and more. But we have a lot of s m B accounts that we deal with, and we do it within the channel. The other side of that is, you know, for better, you know, sake of consulting, we work with Microsoft directly, so there's 500,000 Microsoft partners in the world, Josh, and in that we're in the top 132 I think this year. So it's pretty [00:03:00] special. So you combine those two things and really, you know,