The Bridge Podcast with Scott Kinka – Avi Lonstein of Airespring

The Bridge Podcast – Avi Lonstein Airespring

Scott Kinka (00:06)

Hi, and welcome to the Bridge Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Kinka, and joining me today, as we’re kicking off our season two here, is a longtime friend. Actually, we’ve done some business together. Avi Longstein from Airespring, he’s the CEO. How are you?

Avi Lonstein (00:24)

Doing well; it’s great to see you, Scott. We haven’t chatted for a while. It’s fun to catch up. And yeah, talking now reminds me of all those cool, fun things we were working on a few years ago but very excited to be here on your podcast and looking forward to having a fun conversation.

Scott Kinka (00:44)

Absolutely. Avi, you are the CEO at Airespring. How long have you been at Airespring?

Avi Lonstein (00:49)

Well, now you’re throwing real numbers out there, so.

Scott Kinka (00:53)

Let’s get right at it, man.

Avi Lonstein (00:55)

Exactly. You wanna expose my age right out the gate? Okay. Well, Airespring is a family owned and operated managed services provider. We founded the company just over 21 years ago, so time has flown. I was a much younger man when we started, had more hair, and the company has grown over the years. This is actually our second family-owned and operated, industry, or business in the industry. So I’ve now been in the telecom and managed services space for, just looking at, about 35 years. Time has flown by, but it’s been 21 years now. And what I’m really proud of it, we have essentially the same senior management team, family owned and operated over that full 21 year period. You know, it shows the stability and reliability of that team.

Scott Kinka (01:58)

That’s amazing. What’s the secret to 21 years with the same leadership team, Avi?

Avi Lonstein (02:04)

Well, it helps to have them be family members for a few of them, but beyond that, the thing is, I think it’s all about culture. So if you want to take your time, you wanna find the right people who have long-term values who are focused on real customers delight and exceed customer expectations. And so I’ve always looked to find a senior leadership team, individuals who are really in it, not just for advancement, of course, that’s always part of the game, but for what can they do to provide a better customer experience, a better partner experience? And so, a lot of communication really making sure that I’m extremely transparent as a leader, and also keeping really good stability. In our 21 years, I’m proud to say that we’ve never had a layoff at the company, not once. And that’s because we built the company thoughtfully, conservatively with this idea that we build it for the long term, not just you know, for the next quarter.

Scott Kinka (03:18)

Which is crazy if you think about that. I mean, there were multiple periods of tech contraction over the last 21 years. I mean, you caught the end of the doc bomb, the ‘08 recession, the kind of ‘17 slowdown, and the early ‘23 bloodletting, right? Through all that, you’ve maintained you know, no layoffs, and the same senior leadership team. That’s pretty amazing. You guys were headquartered in Los Angeles, correct?

SASE to be a Key Driver for a More Flexible Work Environment

Avi Lonstein (03:51)

We are. Well, actually, things have changed, so, okay. When you and I last talked, our HQ was in Los Angeles. You know, we had team members across the country, but most of our senior leadership and management team were based in Los Angeles. Things have changed over the course of the pandemic, and it’s been very interesting for Airespring. So obviously, we had to, you know adjust very rapidly to the changing environment. Our office shut down pretty much entirely, and we all pivoted very rapidly over to working from home on an immediate basis. Luckily we utilised the same cloud communications and unify communications technology that we sell, and it really worked. I can tell you that. Scott, we were able to pivot in literally 24 hours and move hundreds of people into a home environment. So that worked out well. As we all know it certainly did not take one week to flatten the curve. And so we thought we’d be back in a few weeks. We thought we’d be back in a few months, but that stretched out. And we noticed something very interesting, which is that our productivity did not drop. In fact, we had a very committed and motivated team quite frankly, for many of our team members, the flexibility of not having to make a lengthy commute to the office every day was a benefit to them in some cases, buying them anywhere from one to three hours of lessened time on the road. And so as time went on, we started recognizing that a more virtualized and hybrid environment is working for Airespring. And so we have never really fully returned to a single corporate location. We have, we do have offices in Los Angeles and in Florida. We have offices in the Philippines and El Salvador. But at this point, I would say that in the US most of our team is spread out across the country.

Scott Kinka (06:08)

Fantastic. You know, we’ve heard similar stories too, particularly as you’re aware, the guests on this podcast are all technology leaders like yourself, and we hear a similar story. Hey, we ate our dog food, our own dog food, right, using colloquialism. But you deal with customers every day, and certainly, you did through the pandemic, not focusing so much on the day after, because we’ve talked that to death. Let’s talk about how IT leaders and business executives have determined what their return to work or hybrid work strategy is. Are we still in this mode of as we’re talking to customers, waiting it out and seeing how the employees react?

Avi Lonstein (06:55)

I think we passed the wait it out and see period for most. So I think we’re seeing sort of companies taking different approaches to how they are implementing a return to work policy. I can tell you that we are seeing very little of what I call a hundred percent return to work sort of environment. It does exist, but it’s more rare. In most cases, it’s a hybrid model anywhere from, you know, three days a week, two days a week. So every company recognizes that getting your people together, getting them in person, helps to create collaboration. There are many benefits from having the team together, but I think the days of a strictly in the office environment five days a week is probably something of the past for most of the tech workers and the technological positions. That said, we are seeing more of a return to the office than we have in the past. And I think if you follow some of the statistics out there, they mentioned something as 70% of the workforce is now spending some portion of their time, at least in the office.

Scott Kinka (08:18)

Well, they’re the same people, right? This is a question, it’s less than 30% of people are at home, and 70% are in the office, and more, 70% of people are in the office 70% of the time or 30% of the time. Right? So basically, everybody’s virtual and or in the office, largely speaking.

Avi Lonstein (08:39)

I agree. Yeah. I mean, it’s the same. I mean, the people didn’t change. It’s just the mix of how much time they’re spending. And don’t forget, like even at our company now, for a long time we had no one on the road. And now all of our sales team are nonstop out and about and traveling. So it depends on what the team is doing, as to how much time they’re in an office. It also depends on how much, so there are some teams that it works better to have them together as much as possible. When we focus on that other teams are doing different things where it will work out well for them to be on the road. So I think what’s most amazing about this is we’ve proven across the entire economy that a hybrid environment can and does work. But it has to be dealt with in there is some balance to it, and it doesn’t work entirely one way or the other.

Scott Kinka (09:32)

Yeah. How has that changed business technology conversations? With Airespring, how has that changed the conversations you’re having with clients? You know, it used to be we built WANs and we sort of protected our offices around the walled garden. And we could not be so great at managing endpoints, provided they were in the office most of the time. And then everybody went home and we took a two-year pass, and now we’re sort of in a hybrid. I mean, how’s that changing the business conversations that you’re having with customers now that we’ve started to settle in on the way we think we’re gonna work?

Avi Lonstein (10:11)

I mean, it’s just a different environment, right? So it was simpler in the past, and now it’s become infinitely more complex. You know, managers have to consider the fact that the edge of their network has expanded out far greater than just the walls of their office space, right? So they’ve gotta take into account their hybrid, remote workers, you know, people coming in and out. So security plays a bigger and bigger role. There’s no doubt that security is key to it. Connectivity and having multiple forms of connectivity are key. SD WAN and networking plays a key role. I would say that what’s happened now is things are getting more complex. It does definitely help to start driving this concept of SASE even though I think it’s still in the, let’s call it the hype part of that cycle, but the concepts behind SASE, which is the idea to essentially you move all of the various cloud architecture, infrastructure, et cetera, excuse me, security, architecture, and infrastructure into the cloud that really makes sense, especially as you move to this more hybrid environment. So I think that SASE is gonna be, and we are offering SASE, is gonna be a key driver for this more flexible environment as we go forward. I mean, you’ve gotta have the flexibility, and you’ve gotta have the interconnection to the cloud. And so a lot of the old type infrastructure setting where you’d have a bunch of boxes sitting in an office, that’s probably bit by bit going away.

Scott Kinka (11:59)

It’s interesting. I mean, for a business like yours 21-year legacy, right? Where the unit of measure in client conversations being in the connectivity business at the start was always, how many locations did you have? You know, are you now at a point where the unit of measure in the conversation that you have with it is how many people, not how many locations are we over big shiny buildings? At least as the basis of the conversation?

Avi Lonstein (12:29)

I would say it’s becoming less of a conversation, right? So just say it doesn’t exist. I mean, let’s face it, one thing I do wanna point out here is that we keep focusing on office workers, but there is a whole economy out there that goes well beyond that. Let’s think about healthcare, manufacturing, and distribution. You know, there are so many segments that have to retail, and all of those segments are not gonna be virtual just by the very nature of what they do, right? I mean, those are business segments that still operate in very much the same way where the team members have to be in that location to make it work. And so what we saw actually happen is a significant increase in growth of connectivity demand, especially, for instance, during the pandemic years as distribution and healthcare. I mean, those that went through the roof just skyrocketed and kind of replaced sort of the lag on traditional office space. So what I would say, first of all is it doesn’t apply to everyone. And when we take the entire marketplace, or there are many segments where that is a, it’s a different conversation for those segments where this hybrid environment is available. We are no longer just talking about, what is the size of your pipe to your headquarters. Because that’s not the conversation. How do we connect to all of your team members what is the security stance whether we are gonna be offering it or whether it’s gonna be offered by a different partner, and we work together with them in conjunction, so more complex from that perspective.

Airespring’s Managed Solutions Simplify International Business Operations

Scott Kinka (14:18)

Got it. You mentioned SASE as a focus for you. So let me just hold that for a moment. Let’s take it back. I mean, give us the pitch. Tell us about Airespring in general and your strengths, but as you’re doing that, certainly focus on what’s been an adjustment since we’ve changed the way we’ve worked. Like what are you today, but how has that changed over the course of the past couple of years to reflect this?

Avi Lonstein (14:52)

Got it. Well, let’s start with the pitch. It’s always good to have a high level of what we do. So essentially, we are a managed services provider. And our sweet spot, or our strength, is providing a really wide set of managed solutions. And we cover varying areas. We have a full suite of connectivity products. We offer security. We have SD-WAN. And all of these are primarily from best-of-breed vendors. So, for instance, in the SD-WAN space we partner with VMware and Fornet and Cisco. We have a whole cloud communications and UCaaS suite, and we’ve recently rolled out a full set of mobility and wireless services. The other thing that’s happened over the last three, or four years is we’ve expanded outside of the United States, and we now offer a set of services in terms of logistics, global, and connectivity on a global basis pretty much around the globe. And we have started focusing on customers who really need to pull together a complete global solution rather than just a solution, let’s say, in the US or in the Americas. And so that’s what we do, but our sweet spot and the value proposition is really that we provide a higher level of service and support. We like to call this the Airespring advantage. And essentially, we believe that we can provide our customers with a better overall experience than they would receive from one of the major telcos, you know? And that’s simply just because of the size at those bigger companies. You really need to be a Fortune 100, maybe Fortune 500 customer to receive what I’d call white glove service and support. At Airespring, we are able to focus on the mid-size sector of the economy, and we are able to deliver that level of service and support. And so that is really where we differentiate, where we’re small enough to be nimble, but yet we are large enough, we now have about 325 team members. So we’re large enough to take on really any complexity. We have highly skilled and tenured engineers who can architect any sort of networking, security, or cloud communication solution. So that is really the very high-level view. At the end of the day, it’s been 21 years, and nothing has changed for us, Scott, it’s always been about service, support, and reliability delivering on the promises that we make. To make sure that we have a rapid response when things are not working out as well as they should be, we have an escalation list that goes all the way up to me. And we are highly responsive to our customers. We really do believe in delivering a true white club experience.

Scott Kinka (17:56)

Fantastic. You hit on a couple of things there. Let’s unpack international a little bit. So truth be told, just for fun, Avi and I have a history. He actually sold me a business of his that was in Israel. So we had some fun that way. Great business, great people, still operating frankly under the company that I was working for at the time, but we knew each other from international. That’s certainly a specialty. Is that a pandemic-era specialty, or is that really always been in DNA of Airespring?

Avi Lonstein (18:32)

You know, it’s been driven primarily by customer demand, right? So what would be happening is we have customers who have locations across the US 2, 3, 400 locations, and then they would say to us, oh, by the way, we’ve got a bunch of locations in whatever country around the world, can you service them? And in the past, we’d have to say, well, we don’t really have the capabilities to do that. And we recognize that this is a need and a requirement for many customers. They really would like to have a single source provider for their SD-WAN, their connectivity, and their security both within the US and outside. And so it really started from that front where we had customers who really asked us, can we do this? And we looked into it, and we figured we could put the team together. So we’ve built a nice team around that. I have a general manager of that team who has deep experience in that space. And we now have relationships with hundreds of international carriers around the world. We also have a global logistics capability together with VMware and FortNet so that we can actually deliver service support to both VMware and Fort with SD-WAN, SASE, and security.

Scott Kinka (19:54)

Certainly, I think customers have a tenant. You mentioned Ucas as an example. You know, historically, it’s always been difficult to build a single solution internationally for a whole host of reasons. So it was always our domestic locations get this set of services, and then the international locations are the redhead of stepchildren, right? They get something else because it’s explaining for our listeners, for somebody who’s been in this for a long time, and as I mentioned, we met each other selling an international business to each other. So we certainly have some legacy there together. Talk to our listeners about why that’s so hard regulatorily. Logistically you think it would be easy, right? Okay, it’s London, right? That might as well be New York. But speak to why that’s so hard, first of all, and obviously, that’ll morph into your story of why that’s a specialty for you.

Avi Lonstein (20:52)

Look, putting aside international peace just for a second, I mean, the reality is if you have a complex set of services, they need to be managed. Any company is struggling with budgets and resources these days. The workload to take on managing 2, 3, 4, 8 whatever a number of vendors, and then having the potential for the blame game, finger pointing, you know, managing all of those things make it really difficult. So take that in, let’s say, the US market, and now multiply the complexity as you go globally you’ve got everything from local regulations and laws, exchange rates, and import, and export controls. How do you handle it if something goes wrong, what do you do? I mean, it becomes sort of a geometric equation as to how complicated it can be. So the whole premise of Airespring is about offloading this management capability, either fully or on a co-managed basis. So we do have some customers who really want to co-manage with us. They would like to, let’s say, manage their SD-WAN, and we’ll give them access to our orchestrator, and they can co-manage it. But anytime something goes wrong, they know that they can turn this all over to us., and so that’s a really powerful value proposition for customers who are trying to deal with this stuff. Otherwise, you gotta go and find the vendor. You gotta go sign a contract in a foreign country, and deal with the currency that controls it. It’s complicated. I mean, we ourselves work really hard to put the resources in place to deal with this. It’s not an easy business.

Scott Kinka (22:46)

Yeah. You know, not to mention privacy and regulation, which is, wow. 

Avi Lonstein (22:53)

And every country has different rules, and you don’t wanna misstep or  make an error that’s gonna get you into the wrong situation. Yeah.

The Future of AI in the Technology and Telecom Industry

Scott Kinka (23:03)

And I mean, those are costly mistakes that are shared by the customer, too, right? Which I think is really important for customers to consider when they’re looking for an MSP or a service provider who can bridge the gaps of international. How much do you trust that this is something they need to think about, right? Because if it does go down, they will bear the penalty for the service provider’s missteps because they’re the one operating in the country. So it’s just one of the things to consider. Avi, I’m gonna shift gears on you, if you don’t mind, with the few minutes we have left and just get to know you a little bit better and ask, have a couple of fun questions, if that’s okay.

Avi Lonstein (23:40)

Yeah. Let’s go for it. Absolutely.

Scott Kinka (23:43)

All right. So here’s the first one I’m gonna hit you with. You were probably moderately prepared for this one. 

Avi Lonstein (23:47)

I’m ready for these. Go ahead.

Scott Kinka (23:48)

Alright, well, here we go. The first one is a shameless prediction. I’m looking for, call it, 18 to 24 months. It doesn’t need to be in tech. Try to stay away from it being about Airespring. Obviously, you’ve already given us some conjecture about your own company, but macroeconomic political sports and entertainment doesn’t matter to me. You know, put your Nostradamus hat on and tell us something that’s gonna happen in the next 18 to 24 months.

Avi Lonstein (24:15)

Well, I wish I could tell you whether Bitcoin is gonna be worth nothing in 24 months or with a million dollars.

Scott Kinka (24:23)

If you have the answer, please share.

Avi Lonstein (24:26)

I’ve heard both arguments, and they both sound compelling, so I’ll stay out of a discussion like that. I gotta focus on the things that I understand and know. And I would tell you that to me, the most compelling sort of trend that’s going on right now, and I know it sounds like a broken record cause you’ve probably heard it 50 times in the last few months, and that is AI and just what’s going on. So obviously, yes, we all know about ChatGPT, and you know, that’s kind of exciting, but the repercussions going through all of the technology with regard to what can be done with AI and what will be done with it, it’s gonna roll through everything. I mean, essentially, I don’t think there’ll be any B2B SaaS software or any software of any sort that will not have to have a fairly integrated AI component to it. And I believe even in the, let’s call it, the security and telecom industry, I believe we’re gonna see AI take a big play and a big part in this over the next few years. I mean, for security, it’s a no-brainer, right? Think about it. I mean, you’re dealing with tens of thousands of data points flowing into your soc or your knock or, or any, you know, system. Can you imagine if all of that data can be analyzed in real-time and true artificial intelligence applied against it? That’s one example. I mean, I’m sure there are many others, so I’m really excited about that. And I think that 24 months from now, while we might not have full blown products out the door, you’re gonna see a lot more, you’re gonna see this much more, you know, positioned out in the marketplace as to what it means. So there’s one

Scott Kinka (26:12)

Yeah. Avi, feelings on governments trying to jump in now and curtail while they can get their heads around this? Or is the genie outta the bottle?

Avi Lonstein (26:26)

When any government tries to curtail or try and essentially bottle down technology, I mean, we’ve seen a lot of the plays. I mean, funny enough, I mentioned Bitcoin. I mean, that’s a technology that really the government is trying to do some things about, but honestly, it’s not that easy, right? So, yeah, I think there needs to be some regulation for some smart thought around safety and making sure that this technology is not used in an irresponsible way. So yeah, there probably will be some of that. But the technology itself is, I mean, what it can do, and the promise in terms of setting up every single interaction from a consumer or business perspective. There’s no way that anyone’s gonna be able to sort of lock that down completely.

Scott Kinka (27:23)

It’s gonna be an interesting time frame of life imitating art or art imitating life. I’m not exactly sure. I mean, I feel like we’re, I feel like we’re in an Isaac AOV novel right now in terms of negotiating the five laws of computer-based life. And I mean, it’s gonna be really, really interesting , so we’ll see. But I think I agree. I mean, I think the genie is outta the bottle, people are seeing the applications, and they’re too valuable. I think the challenge and getting back to the life-imitating art thing is we’ve got a lot of sci-fi that tells us this could go bad. And the question is, when is the singularity? I’m not exactly sure. I think it’s probably not in the next 18 to 24 months. So in the meantime, let’s see what happens.

Avi Lonstein (28:09)

We can ask Elon Musk about this. He has a lot of opinions, probably far smarter than mine. So all I know is obviously there’s always a potential for any technology to have a negative effect. And who knows, maybe we better start learning machine language cuz that’s the language we’ll have to be talking in, in 50 years from now if we wanna stay. 

Scott Kinka (28:34)

Potentially. All right, two more fun questions, and we’ll let you get outta here. This has been very entertaining. Alright, so something, maybe eventually it is the robot apocalypse, but whatever the next, you know, great human stumbling block is, right? It’s whatever that happens to be. This occurs, and there’s only one application that continues to operate on Avi’s phone. What is the need to have the remaining functional app on your mobile device?

Avi Lonstein (29:05)

It’s really sad, and my kids make fun of me about this, and you probably know what I’m gonna say already, but honestly, sadly enough for someone who works with so much technology, I still use a lot of emails, way too much email than I need to. So probably look at this, at this point, my kids don’t wanna talk to me on the phone anyway, right? They want a message. So I don’t really need one, and, you know, I don’t really need a phone anymore cause no one wants to talk to me on the phone. I guess I could, I am a little beyond that. I probably keep on going on doing a lot of things that I do with email. So we’re talking about technology. I dunno; how old is email right now? Is it 50 years old? 40? I don’t know. We’d have to go back and figure it out, so I don’t know. What would yours be? I’m sure you’ve asked this question a few times, but I’m interested to know.

Scott Kinka (29:56)

You know, it’s so funny, I’ve heard everybody else’s answers, so I get the luxury of having considered all the implications of the fact that if this next event happens, I guess that’s how broad that event is, right? Like people have said, oh, I need my ESPN app. I’m like, well, they’re not playing games. So that’s not very valuable. I think for me, it’s something to keep me busy. It’s probably Apple Music at the end of the day because I’m not sure who else is around to get my text messages, but we’ll see. I guess that’ll depend on the extent of whatever that next event is, right?

Avi Lonstein (30:29)

Yeah, I wasn’t quite clear that your singularity was quite there to that extent, but now that I’m saying it, maybe the most useful thing would be the flashlight on the back of your iPhone

Scott Kinka (30:37)

That’s the best answer I’ve heard yet. I love it. Alright, well, the last question for you, then we’ll let you get out here. What’s on your end table right now? What are you reading? Is there something that you wanna share with everybody? And if you don’t have something that’s current, maybe you can just share with us your sort of Avi’s essential reading for business executives. What does everybody need to get their face in?

Avi Lonstein (31:05)

Yeah, I mean, I’m always so scared to throw this out because the truth of the matter is every book that I’ve come up with is not a book that was an idea of my own. It’s something that someone else has thrown at me. So, I’m trying to think about what is on my shelf right now. It’s funny, my wife tells me I need to get away from reading business books and try just to read some fiction. So, you know, I don’t know. I go back to things I’ve read before; whether you like it or not, I like Ingram. So, we get to hit so much these days with so much business. I’m in business all the time. I think it’s a good idea for us all to take a break and just try and focus on a few other things, a few other areas of interest in life. Even though I do love to read up a lot about the business environment. So right now, I’m kind of touring back through some, books that I’ve read in the past and just enjoying

Scott Kinka (32:18)

Getting back to your classics, words of wisdom. And I appreciate that we spend so much time listening to fantastic podcasts, like The Bridge and reading business books. We could take a break now and then, and I certainly agree and appreciate that. Avi, tell us a little bit before we go. For people who are a bit more interested in Airespring, maybe thinking about how it could help their business, how best to find out more?

Avi Lonstein (32:41)

Well, look, obviously, you can learn a lot by just going to our website, www.airespring.com. but we have a long and very strong relationship with the folks at Bridgepoint. We work with a lot of very experienced partners there. And honestly, I believe that any of these processes it’s a consultative discussion. Anyone who’s gonna walk in the door and try and sell you something right off the shelf without having a true detailed, you know, discussion as to what it is that is your require, or the customer requirements are, how are they evolving? What’s important to them? That’s what’s key. So that is why we believe that the best way to do this is to work with a true technology professional, an advisor who can help you out. And then Airespring may not be the entirety of the solution. We understand that we’re only one part of a full stack of technology. We fit certain pieces, but I think the best thing ever is that an advisor can assist you like an advisor from Bridgepoint who can assist you on the entire technology stack.

Scott Kinka (33:54)

I appreciate that, Avi, thanks very much. And I appreciate all of you hanging in with us for what’s been a really informative session here. My guest today on The Bridge has been Avi Lonstein, who is the CEO of Airespring. As he said, check them out at airespring.com. And obviously, if you’re interested in learning a little bit more, our friendly neighborhood Bridgepoint strategist is also available to help. So thanks for your time, everyone, and thanks for your attention and listening to this episode of The Bridge.

Avi Lonstein (34:22)

Thank you so much. It was great. A lot of fun.