Matt Hastings, VP Product at NinjaOne joins us on this episode of the SourceForge Podcast. NinjaOne is an all-in-one IT platform that focuses on automating and simplifying endpoint management processes for customers. The IT industry has seen a shift from centralized to decentralized trends, especially with the rise of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations face hurdles in securing devices, such as a lack of visibility and the need to balance operational and risk priorities. When choosing an endpoint management platform, companies should consider factors like scalability, automation capabilities, and simplicity. NinjaOne stands out by prioritizing customer success, investing in product development, and offering integrations with other tools and platforms. The incorporation of AI in endpoint management can improve efficiency and productivity, but it should be seen as a tool to enhance human decision-making rather than replace human labor.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- NinjaOne focuses on automating and simplifying endpoint management processes for customers.
- The IT industry has shifted from centralized to decentralized trends, especially with the rise of remote work.
- Organizations face hurdles in securing devices, such as a lack of visibility and the need to balance operational and risk priorities.
- When choosing an endpoint management platform, consider factors like scalability, automation capabilities, and simplicity.
- NinjaOne stands out by prioritizing customer success, investing in product development, and offering integrations with other tools and platforms.
- AI can improve efficiency and productivity in endpoint management, but it should enhance human decision-making rather than replace human labor.
- NinjaOne leverages AI to automate processes and provide better insights for IT administrators.
- IT operations management is becoming more challenging, and NinjaOne aims to make it easier and more efficient through automation.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and Overview of NinjaOne
01:47 – The Shift to Decentralized Trends in the IT Industry
03:44 – Hurdles in Securing Devices and Balancing Priorities
06:00 – Choosing the Right Endpoint Management Platform
07:24 – Standing Out in the Endpoint Management Space
12:14 – The Role of AI in Endpoint Management
14:09 – AI as a Tool to Enhance Human Decision-Making
21:49 – Key Takeaway: Making IT Operations Management Easier
22:48 – Conclusion and How to Get in Touch with NinjaOne
Transcript
Beau HD (00:01.039)
Hello everyone and welcome to Slashdot Media’s SourceForge Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton, senior editor and multimedia producer here at Slashdot and SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. Today’s guest is Matt Hastings, the vice president and product management at NinjaOne. Thanks for joining us, Matt.
Matt Hastings (00:25.827)
Thanks Beau, and thanks for having me on the podcast.
Beau HD (00:28.527)
Yeah, of course it’s a pleasure to have you. Now I just want to jump right into this. So the technical description I have of NinjaOne is that it’s an all -in -one IT platform that provides IT departments and service providers with endpoint management and security solutions. That’s a little bit wordy and technical. So could you kind of break that down for us and give us just a high level overview of your company?
Matt Hastings (00:51.875)
Yeah, I’d say, you know, the first thing to think about NinjaOne is like our focus is on our customers. And for us, like we really help our customers focus on what matters most to them by automating and simplifying, you know, the endpoint management processes for them. So our technology is really built with our customers in mind first. And I’ll give you some examples of kind of how that comes into fruition kind of throughout the conversation. But we see that as well as a combined market opportunity with
you know, how the state of the IT industry is kind of moving in terms of moving from a very centralized, structured process and technology stack to much more decentralized trends that we’ve been seeing over the last couple of years. We see a huge opportunity for someone like Ninja to come in and help customers efficiently, you know, manage and secure their devices while being a remaining focus on like what matters most to their business.
Beau HD (01:47.471)
Yeah, OK, that’s great. So let’s start with kind of the big picture. You mentioned the changing space that the IT space is in right now. How have you seen the nature of work and workforce change over the last decade, especially just in the last few years since the COVID -19 pandemic?
Matt Hastings (02:09.827)
Yeah, I mean, you may not be able to tell over video or audio for those listening in, but my patchy hairline as it’s going means I’ve been in this industry for quite a while. And I remember when I first joined the IT workforce, everything was done in office. Everybody was expected to be at their desk. Everything was done on premise through data centers owned by the company.
or you’re logging in via VPN. Everything in that sense was very centralized to the corporate structure. So everything was done within the perimeter. Since then, we’ve seen the explosion of SaaS applications, public cloud infrastructure, which have really pushed what I’m calling the decentralized trend of IT forward.
And then that exploded during COVID. Obviously folks that were kind of dipping their toe into the water with this decentralized trend, like move much faster during the pandemic. And there’s real positive trade -offs to doing that. The first being like employees can be more productive in that they’re available 24 hours a day. They can get their work done anywhere they are. That’s the positive.
The downside of some of these trends is that from an IT administrator’s perspective, you now have a completely decentralized view of how to manage and secure your devices, users, and data. And that’s much harder to do. And so while there are some positive operational trade -offs, you also have some downsides to these trends as well. And that’s certainly what we’ve been saying.
Beau HD (03:44.079)
Yeah, when it comes to that, the endpoint management solution you guys offer, and that is for those listening, that is to say the managing and securing of all the devices connected to an organization’s network. What would you say are some of the biggest hurdles that organizations run into when they’re trying to put together a strategy of securing these devices?
Matt Hastings (04:05.507)
Yeah, I mean, I think the very first one and kind of like very simply like.
they just don’t have the device, they don’t have visibility into the devices their users are using themselves. One of the first questions you could ask or ask is like, tell me all the devices that exist in your network, where are they connected, who are they connecting to? And very few organizations are gonna have a great answer for that. I come from the security and incident response space. And one of the most common reasons for a breach is not necessarily because a machine was exploited by a zero day,
but it was because it was either unknown, unmanaged, or was not in compliance, and therefore it was insecure and then resulted in a breach. So I think just the lack of visibility is the first thing that that’s typically problematic. The second is, and I talked about this a little bit earlier, is having a defined trade -off between operational and risk priorities. Understanding what is the operational needs of the business and what risks do we need to allow or not allow?
in order to put together the right priorities in place to make sure that things are running efficiently, but also securely. And then finally, having that control lever to be able to not only know what’s out there, to know what your priority stack looks like, but then also efficiently go out and securely manage, patch up those devices that your customers, your users are ultimately using.
Beau HD (05:33.903)
Right, yeah, security is paramount these days, especially with remote work. We’re all sitting here remotely from around the world. We have our own devices. It’s so important for them to stay secure, right? And just make sure they’re on top of all the latest patches. Because it seems like every day there’s a new patch, or a new vulnerability and security breach, right? Now, along with that,
there’s been an explosion in competitors in this space. What would you say for those companies out there shopping for an endpoint management platform? What do you think are the most important things they should look for to make sure it’s the right fit?
Matt Hastings (06:16.003)
Yeah, I mean, I would start with kind of.
fundamentals and kind of work your way up the stack. You know, the first thing I think about is, is it a modern architecture that’s going to grow with your business? Is it something that’s cloud native, that’s really scalable, that’s going to grow with you and not have some of the trade -offs that come with, you know, unscalable solutions? Like just starting from that and then kind of going up around, you know, how can you run this thing efficiently? What kind of automation can you put in place? What integrations exist?
so that you can efficiently use this thing as much as you can because there is a cost to anything you bring in -house. You have to help people use it, you have to set them up, it has to be efficient. And so lowering that cost as much as you can is another one of those key indicators. And then the last one being, is it simple yet flexible? Is it simple enough that someone can start using it and getting the value with it within the first couple hours of turning it on, but is it also flexible enough to meet, you know, yeah.
unique needs of every business. So those are some of the key criteria that I would personally be looking for any time I go to evaluate one of these technologies.
Beau HD (07:24.911)
Yeah, I’m excited to ask you here in a second about some of the automations and artificial intelligence you guys are incorporating. But could you just kind of elaborate on some of the tools and mechanisms you are employing to make it easier for companies to adopt your software? And what makes your platform, what makes NinjaOne stand out from the rest?
Matt Hastings (07:51.491)
Yeah, I mentioned this a little bit earlier and I’ll just reinforce it here. We are very focused on our customers. Everything we do is centered around our customer base, what they’re saying, what they’re telling us, the feedback they’re giving us. And that resonates and kind of results in kind of two key areas of investment for us. The first, and that’s something that I’m directly involved in, is our product roadmap.
So NinjaOne has a public product roadmap that’s informed by all of our customers that we take in all of the feedback from.
all of the thousands of folks who use us and then build a roadmap that then we execute against. One of my favorite anecdotes, and this is outside of NinjaOne, is if you’re familiar with the software company Figma, one of the great stories there is the CEO of Figma is known to go in and read Zendesk tickets to get a sense of what his customers are submitting tickets about or asking questions about to better help inform that company’s roadmap. And that’s the CEO.
I don’t want to say we do exactly the same thing, but NinjaOne has a very similar culture in terms of understanding the pulse of our customers and making sure we are building the products that they are asking us and giving us feedback about.
The second part that we really invest heavily in is our customer support. So we tend to invest two to four times more into customer support than your average B2B SaaS company. And that’s because we believe that providing that high level of support, helping customers get off the ground quickly, not only helps them become more efficient at using our product and more efficient at running their own businesses, but they’re better long -term customers for Ninja.
Beau HD (09:32.879)
That’s huge. Customer service is paramount. It makes me think of, I recently got solar panels from my home. And when I was evaluating different companies, one of the main things was just figuring out which company excelled in customer service and how that compares to the price breakdown, how much they charge for panels, installation, et cetera. Because that definitely factored in. You don’t want something that’s going to be on your roof or you’re working with for.
Matt Hastings (09:47.907)
Mm -hmm.
Beau HD (10:01.775)
you know, a decade or two to break down and you’re just going to be left with nothing.
Matt Hastings (10:05.923)
Yeah, no, exactly. And you want someone who’s going to answer the phone when you need something or when you call.
Beau HD (10:11.279)
100%. Yeah. Yeah. So along with that, how does NinjaOne handle connecting with other tools and platforms? Because I know a lot of companies are really focused on integrating their tools and sort of consolidating their tech stack. So how does NinjaOne kind of keep up with these changes?
Matt Hastings (10:31.939)
Yeah, I mean, I’d say we kind of approach it in two ways. The first is, you know, we just have a general automation strategy, which is for any process, for any workflow that we have in our platform, one of the first questions that we ask ourselves when we’re building it is, you know, how do we want to automate this as much as possible over time to make it as easy to set up, to easy to set it and forget it, but also know when something goes on.
And then in terms of integration strategies, we kind of take both an internal and external approach. The internal approach is how do we integrate with other key tools that our customers are using, say, like ITSM products or PSA products, and making sure that we can directly integrate with those internally so that we can support the integrations our customers need so they’re not having to manually copy data from one place to the other or kind of manually build middle layers. We want to remove that as much as possible.
The second is external integrations and that’s empowering third parties who want to partner with Ninja to pull data from our platform to build their own processes and applications. And so we have a robust API set that other parties will use to also integrate with us. And so we kind of take that dual hat approach to both build our integration and automation strategy.
Beau HD (11:44.463)
Interesting. I really like that all in one approach. You know, that is really valuable for any service. I feel like I go to, I always, I always try to grab it towards, towards the ones that offer all the services in, in, you know, in process, in home. What’s the word? So now I’m going to ask you some AI questions. This is a topic that, you know, is, is kind of, I want to say it’s overblown, but it’s, it’s the talk of the town right now.
AI is changing the world in so many ways. And I know you mentioned you incorporate a lot of automation processes in your platform. So how do you see endpoint management kind of evolving because of artificial intelligence? And what is NinjaOne doing to keep up with these changes?
Matt Hastings (12:33.507)
Yeah, I mean, as much as audit, you know, AI and what we’ve seen in the last call it 16 months since chat, she be free. She first got demoed, you know, as a, you know, a huge leap forward, which it is, it’s also a natural progression of kind of where we’ve been moving for a long time.
you know, from algorithmic automations to machine learning, now to AI driven workflows, a lot of this comes down to how do you make better decisions faster? And so in many cases, I look at AI as a big productivity or efficiency boost. You know, whether that’s software companies using AI internally to help them build better code faster or test it for bugs to make sure that QA is of high quality or on the endpoint management side,
How are IT administrators more quickly diagnosing problems, solving them?
problems being automatically surfaced to them. AI is a main driver in helping to solve those challenges. And so any time where you can take large structured or unstructured data sets and get trending analysis or summaries, that’s a great example of where AI can step in and help what would someone then do with a spreadsheet over a couple of days, do in a few minutes. And that’s where we’re looking to really unlock some of the opportunities with AI is around this whole concept around automation,
around efficiency and productivity for our users so that our administrators and Ninja can make better informed decisions for their end users and make sure that the employee experience remains high.
Beau HD (14:09.423)
So yeah, you mentioned the efficiency and productivity gains. Do you see the incorporation of AI as a way of replacing any current labor force or any customer service representatives? Or do you see it as like another tool to help expand your services?
Matt Hastings (14:32.195)
I see it as an unlock. It’s a huge unlock. So think about if I could give you 30 % of your day back to go do something else, what bounds could you push? What thing could you do next? How could you better secure your devices? How could you go and tackle the next problem that’s been sitting on your to -do list? It’s not like saying AI is going to solve everything. It’s just going to allow you to go solve the next thing that you just haven’t been able to get to.
You know, we see from IT administrators and budgets, it’s not like they’re growing at an exponential rate. If anything, they’re staying the same or even shrinking a little bit. And so it’s how do you get more from less or the same? And so AI is a huge opportunity to take your existing people and leverage them more efficiently to go after additional problems that you just haven’t been able to tackle in the past.
Beau HD (15:20.879)
Yeah, because I feel like a lot of the fears from a customer -facing standpoint is like, everything’s going to be automated. We’re just going to have to be dealing with machines and talking to automated representatives. How would you respond to that particular concern?
Matt Hastings (15:39.363)
You know, I still think you’re going to always have the human representative behind it at some point, you know, and I’ve seen this, you see this in almost every technology revolution, right? Like when we moved from the horse -drawn carriage to the gas -powered car.
You know, there was this, well, what are we going to do with all of these people? Or is this going to go away? And like the answer is no, actually more jobs get created. People are able to then do more with the brain capacity that we have that can never be replicated by AI. So do I think AI is going to be unlocked to help people, you know, like you said, respond to help desk calls more efficiently by being able to say, Hey, we looked at every help desk ticket that’s ever been created in the last decade in this company. And based on what this person is saying, we think you could respond in this way or.
you think you could resolve this issue in this way. And that’s a much faster resolution that a human can deliver to another human, but it’s all powered by AI processes and data fueled by AI.
Beau HD (16:37.775)
That’s definitely reassuring. Because I feel like when you don’t know what’s ahead naturally, you’re fearful. Change is scary.
Matt Hastings (16:47.779)
yeah, for sure change is scary. I mean, like, you know, I’m scared to change all the time, but it’s also exciting. You know, the opportunity to get to do something new or to be able to solve things you haven’t been able to solve before. Is that really exciting? And frankly, like you said, it can be scary at times because you don’t know exactly how things are going to turn out. And we’re definitely in that, that don’t know phase right now when it comes to AI.
Beau HD (17:12.175)
Yeah, yeah, and I think that there’s going to be naturally a little, I mean, naturally there’s pushback, but I also think that there’s going to be kind of a growing trend around like human customer service representatives, human created content media, you know, not so much, I think, applicable to the tech IT platform that you guys offer, but just kind of a.
Just an interesting observation, I think, and that’s coming from someone who’s covers a lot of the current events and the developments on the surface level. Yeah, so it’s just an interesting space to keep an eye on. And there’s so many players involved working on this technology. Do you guys see yourselves developing AI in -house or are you partnering with some of these other companies? I think like OpenAI or Anthropic or Google.
Matt Hastings (17:48.355)
Museum.
Matt Hastings (18:09.891)
You know, it’s definitely one where I would say we’re going to take a crawl walk run approach where, you know, leveraging the expertise of third parties that we choose to work with versus building our own is certainly something that we look at whenever we talk about bringing something new to market.
exactly how it gets implemented. As TBD, as you know, there’s lots of ways that you can use AI from the infrastructure providers up until, like you said, chat, GPT -4. My guess is we take some kind of middle ground approach where we can use AI both internally and externally to fuel not only our customers, but also the efficiencies of our own employees.
Beau HD (18:50.255)
Right. And you want to see what works, what doesn’t and make changes accordingly. Right. You don’t want to rush something out and then find out it just isn’t working. And then you hurt, you know, the end user experience.
Matt Hastings (18:54.531)
Exactly.
Matt Hastings (19:01.123)
Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen, you know, very public examples recently of, you know, AI products coming to market and being just wrong and giving wrong advice and just being, and having a lot of backlash. And that’s, you know, in consumer space.
And the business base doing that can cause catastrophic harm. And so that’s something that we’re very aware of and something we’re very cautious about whenever we roll out any kind of feature. Think about the implication of being wrong on something and causing someone to do something that does take down a network or causes operational harm. We would never want to do that. And so that’s why you’ll see us roll things out.
very carefully and with purpose after we’ve had enough time to be comfortable and confident in the functionality.
Beau HD (19:48.495)
That makes sense. Yeah. Cause it’s like, if you have a customer facing AI that tells you to put glue on your pizza, you know, for that, that’s one thing I think people can figure out. That’s probably not the most wise solution there. But if you have like a, an AI telling a business incorrect information about how to secure their network, that could lead to a whole much bigger implications, right?
Matt Hastings (19:55.075)
No.
Matt Hastings (20:10.883)
Exactly.
Beau HD (20:12.719)
Now, I think also incorporating AI is a competitive advantage. You kind of are forced to incorporate it to some degree just to stay relevant and again, competitive. What would you say is some of the ways NinjaOne is doing to stay ahead and just stand out from the crowd?
Matt Hastings (20:32.707)
Yeah, so the couple that we mentioned around just really being zealots about customer success and our customer feedback and making sure that drives our roadmap is probably one of the first ones. The second one I touched on is really around automation and efficiencies.
And then the third is ultimately about product investment and investing in our products such that we can both improve our existing products, but also continue to build new products and meet our customers where they’re going. And so that they can continue to have a single pane of glass for IT visibility, management and security for all of their different device types, users and data. Ultimately, that’s where we’re making lots of investments and how we continue to differentiate.
Beau HD (21:19.535)
Thanks for sharing that. I know you mentioned some of these things, but I want to kind of continue to have you reiterate because I think that the whole reason this podcast is just to help kind of shed a light on NinjaOne, what you guys are doing and how you guys are helping businesses. So, and one more kind of question along those lines. If you had to boil down just one key takeaway for potential customers about IT operations management, what would you say that would be?
Matt Hastings (21:49.795)
The key takeaway is that job, because of the trends we talked about earlier, is not getting easier for many people. In fact, it’s getting harder.
And NinjaOne’s mission and our goal is to help make that as easy and efficient as possible by automating the process by which endpoints are managed and secured. And so for us, that’s really our North Star and what we think about whenever we go to build a new feature or to work with an existing customer, we need to understand where their problems are, what they’re trying to achieve and help them do that as efficiently and automatically as possible.
Beau HD (22:26.607)
Thank you for that. That’s really interesting. I’m learning, I’m constantly like learning more about this space and the different solutions that are out there. Now, for those of our listeners listening wanting to learn more about NinjaOne or get in touch with you and your team, where would you direct them? Where should they go online and what’s the best way to reach out?
Matt Hastings (22:48.515)
Yeah, I’d say, honestly, we’re pretty simple. The best way to get in touch with us is just go to our website, you know, NinjaOne dot com. From there, you can get access to a number of different resources. You can request demos. You can, you know, sign up for trials. So go to our website and get in touch with us. We’d love to talk to you.
Beau HD (23:06.671)
NinjaOne dot com. All right, that’s easy enough, straightforward enough. Well, thank you so much for your time, Matt. This has been really insightful. And I hope our listeners got something out of this. We really hope to have you back one of these days.
Matt Hastings (23:19.427)
Really appreciate you having me, Beau. Thank you.
Beau HD (23:21.903)
It’s been a pleasure. All right. Well, thank you guys all for listening to the Slashdot Media video podcast. I’m your host, Beau HD. make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of the upcoming B2B software related podcasts. And I will talk to you in the next one. Thanks again, Matt.
Matt Hastings (23:36.323)
See ya.
Beau HD (23:37.295)
All right.