Smile. Okay. Ready. Hey, welcome everyone to a new video of our Azure Stack Partner Solution video series. Again, I'm happy to be here with Tibi from the Azure Stack Hub team to talk about different partner solutions. Tibi, first of all, how are you today? Secondly, who I'm going to speak today? Hello, Thomas. Hello, everyone. I'm doing very well. The weather is cooling down, so it's better now. Today, we're going to have a interesting partner with us. CloudAssert is a partner that's working with other partners to enable solutions for the customers. They're spanning multiple workloads and they are looking at the things from a billing side all the way to actually adding RAPs and adding solutions on top of Azure Stack Hub. This is a partner working with partners, in some cases, for other partners. So you mentioned partners and partners and partners. Isn't that somehow confusing for customers at the end? Right. So this is an important distinction. From a customer perspective, a customer would only interact with a service provider. So for them, it would be a bit black box, how the solution is actually provided. In the back, we always have a number of partners that are teaming together to provide that solution for the customer. This is more like a SaaS-like offering. Of course, it depends on the offering, but it's a partnership between multiple partners to offer the end-user, the end-consumer, offer them a flawless experience and offer them a streamlined experience if you want. So even though it's confusing for us, that's one of the points of this video series, to highlight these things and to highlight what goes into these solutions in order to make it seamless for the customer. Okay. That sounds perfect. So for the customer, it is not really like, he doesn't really need to know about all what's going on behind the scenes. It makes it really easy for him. Okay. I'm really looking forward to talking to Cloud Assert and Ravi. So thank you very much for introducing me, and we'll talk with Ravi now. Hey Ravi, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. Can you tell me a little bit more about you and about Cloud Assert? Sure. Thanks Thomas and Tibi for having us, and thanks for doing this series, for highlighting the partners who are working day in and day out on the Azure Stack Hub. So it's a great effort on your part guys. About Cloud Assert, so we are an independent software vendor, product and services company focusing on hybrid and multi-cloud space on cost management. We are a Microsoft Gold partner with a very long-term partnership with Microsoft. We work very closely with Azure Stack Hub team, several other teams to bring comprehensive solutions for the Microsoft partners, and we will talk about various solutions that we have for Azure Stack Hub today as well. That's awesome. I'm really looking forward to that because I remember Cloud Assert was really early involved in developing solutions for Azure Stack, where it was called back then, but now Azure Stack Hub. So I obviously had some very good experience with you as well in the past. I'm really looking forward to that. So TB mentioned to me that you're actually building solutions for partners and customers and so on, and it can be a little bit confusing in the back end. Obviously for the customer, it's very easy to use. But can you explain a little bit more about who your clients are and the customers you're working with? Sure Thomas, that's a great question. So we have broadly three types of customers. So we have customers across the globe. Our solutions have been deployed in all various data centers, both enterprises, service providers, and whatnot. So in that angle, we have three broad categories of customers, enterprises, enterprise IT shops, and service providers, and OEMs. The solutions that we have cater to all these three broad category of customers, and again, today we will give a highlight of how our solutions fit for these three types of customers. That's great. Again, looking forward to that, because I remember I worked with a couple of different service providers in the past, where obviously they worked with Cloud Assert for their Azure Stack Hub solution, but also for the Azure solution and so on. So my first question usually is like a little bit, why Azure Stack Hub and how does it fit in the overall solutions you are building? Sure. Why Azure Stack Hub? So we are like you mentioned early on, so we are a very early promoter of Azure Stack. We worked with Azure Stack Hub team even before it was coined, the name was coined since 2014. So we believed in a strong private Cloud platform that will help enterprises modernize their IT, that will motivate enterprises to kind of adopt the public Cloud, but have a staging area for moving their workload from the traditional virtualized platforms to modern Cloud platform. So Azure Stack Hub was a fantastic, strong answer to that question, right? And who other than Microsoft could deliver that because of the strong partner base and strong footprint in the enterprises? Microsoft was well positioned to have providing this type of service. So we were strongly supported such a platform and we kind of adopted and started adding solutions on top of Azure Stack Hub since 2014. And this we are seeing in the last couple of years, Azure Stack Hub providing that value proposition to enterprises and through service providers again to enterprises and whatnot. So in that aspect, we are very happy that the industry is kind of going towards the hybrid model and Azure Stack Hub has been primed to take it forward. Okay, yeah, that's absolutely true. I believe that that is exactly why I think we're very strong there. Obviously, as you said, we're working very early on with customers in providing them obviously services in their data center, but then also our hybrid portfolio which I always like to quote Jason Sanders who brings up that we're basically saying we believe that hybrid is an end state for our customer and not just an in-between state until everything is moved to the cloud, right? And I think that is a very important part. But now let's talk a little bit about more of your solutions and how you are actually providing value to the customers and partners you're working with. In our previous discussions you mentioned, for example, things like multi-stamp management and billing and so on, but there I know there's a lot more to talk about, right? Definitely. So Azure Stack Hub has a strong portfolio of services and more and more services from Azure are being delivered through Azure Stack Hub. But for service providers and as well as enterprises, there are certain practical scenarios that are still required attention. For example, tracking the utilization and monetizing that Azure Stack Hub resources across multiple stamps is an area where Cloud Asset adds value and has an out-of-the-box solution for both enterprises and service providers to track utilization and monetize those resources. Cloud Asset helps the customers to manage multiple Azure Stack Hub stamps through automation, through single pane of glass experience and a consistent experience. Whether you have one stamp or multiple stamps, Cloud Asset can help you manage them from a single pane of glass experience. We bring multi-cloud, the hybrid cloud, inside Azure Stack Hub. So your end users, the customer's end users, they can use Azure Stack Hub portal as a single portal to kind of access all your data center virtualization platforms like VMware, OpenStack, System Center, VMM and whatnot, as well as the public cloud like Azure, AWS and so on. So we bring that multi-cloud hybrid nature into Azure Stack Hub, natively built inside the Azure Stack Hub portal. We also help extend the Azure Stack Hub to the existing services like, it may be a Dell EMC Isilon. So we have solutions that help you extend Azure Stack Hub storage with these industry leading solutions. We have more such solutions for backup, recovery and whatnot. So we will talk a little bit more on some of that today as well. Okay, that's awesome. So one of the solutions you just mentioned, again, we mentioned before, is multi-stamp management. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, how that works and what that actually means? Sure. We are grateful that the Azure Stack Hub has become kind of one of the leading solutions used by most enterprises today. So because of that popularity, we are seeing more enterprises are deploying more than one stamps, right? It may be for the, having a stamp per region or it may be for different departments or different needs like DevTest lab versus production grade stamps and whatnot. So enterprises are seeing themselves managing multiple Azure Stack Hub stamps. So it becomes little complex operation wise to manage multiple stamps today. So what we have added a value added solution is to enable these enterprises to manage whether you have one or 100 stamps, manage them in a very optimal way to reduce the operator cost for managing each stamps from scaling up. We are helping them to bring the efficiency of managing the stamps. You can have a certain small set of operators manage even 100 stamps through our automation for the multi-stamp management. We bring in consistency across the stamps. So with few clicks, you can make all these 100 stamps have the same marketplace experience, same VM images, same updates and whatnot. So today, if you have to do that, you have to log into each of these Azure Stack Hub portals or log into the PowerShell to manage each of these stamps independently, right? Individually. So we kind of solved the problem of having a single consistent way of doing things through automation and whatnot. This improves our customers, Microsoft partners to bring in the customer satisfaction and engage the customers in a much more consistent way. If you log into a one stamp or another stamp, your end users are going to have the same experience, same set of marketplace images and whatnot. And we have dedicated team working on delivering value-added services on top of this. So we have monthly releases. So we enable the enterprises and the service providers get to market faster and manage multiple stamps super easily. So the return of investment is realized by the cost savings your team have to do. The enterprise and the IT operations team have to do to manage these stamps. So this is, again, this is great. I love the multi-stamp management. We have a lot of customers asking for multi-stamp management because they're running multiple stamps. And so this is a fantastic solution. I know you also do a billing solution. Does this also span across multiple stamps or how does that work? Great. So that's a great question, Thomas. Basically, the multi-stamp management solution includes billing. So we collect the data across the stamps and provide a single view of all the utilization that's going across multiple stamps. And if you are a service provider, you can put pricing profile rate cards on top of that and generate a single invoice across the stamp resources for your end users. So for that, Arvin will be able to give more information on the billing. Oh, hi, Arvin. Nice to meet you too. I hope you're doing great. You're also working for Cloud Asserts. So can you tell me a little bit more and explain to our customers who you are and what are you working on at Cloud Assert? Yeah, thanks, Thomas. So yeah, I've been with Cloud Assert as part of this journey over five years now and I'm part of the leadership team at Cloud Assert based in the Seattle region. So talking about the Cloud Assert solution for Azure Stack Hub focusing on usage and billing, as you would imagine, managing Cloud spend or having visibility into what exactly are my ongoing usage and costs and being able to control it within my budgets or being able to take timely actions to optimize it, remains a top priority, whether you're investing in public clouds like Azure, AWS or wherever, or even within your private clouds like Azure Stack Hub. And particularly, when it comes to Azure Stack Hub, there are two perspectives. There is the operator and service provider or enterprise perspective that operates the environment. And then there's also the consumers of the service itself, right? So as a consumer, I want to be always wanting to know or have visibility into what exactly are my resources. Am I really utilizing them, not utilizing them? How much am I, what are the ongoing costs that are related to it? And then being able to account for it and take timely actions as necessary to optimize, right? And then from an operator standpoint, from Azure Stack Hub, they need to be able to decide which services they want to offer to the tenants. And depending on who the tenants are and what kind of workloads they're going to be making available for the tenants, they need to be able to set custom pricing to determine how they want to charge for those services depending on the context and depending on what scenarios and those going to be and depending on the size of the instances, what not. And there are various factors that influence how you want to price a particular service. So as an operator or a administrator of the Azure Stack instance, I need to be able to model my services and be able to set custom pricing and say from a service provider scenario when they have multi-tenanted Azure Stack Hub instances, I know like in a CSP scenario, they need to be able to set custom pricing by customer, right? So you need all the flexibility to be able to identify an optimal way to charge back for your services and then be able to also have visibility from an operator standpoint, what your end customers are consuming, what their costs are and how does it align with, say, what you are spending as infrastructure costs for running Azure Stack Hub? Was this, what is it that you're recouping as revenue from your end customers as well, right? That's for an enterprise scenario, it could be not necessarily charged back. It depends on whether it's a large enterprise or a small enterprise, right? So they may just want it to track the consumption for showback purposes or they might want to make their independent business units responsible and accountable and they might want to have their respective units track their own budgets and then they spend against those budgets. So whichever the case may be tracking ongoing costs and spend becomes a top priority for enterprises and service providers, I like. So from that standpoint, the cloud-set billing solution has been architected. Now, in fact, this is something that we've been working with service providers and enterprises for over six years, right? Now, we have the same solution available when Windows Azure Pack, the earlier, take of Azure in your data center story, we have customers across the globe using the solution which has brought all the goodness and the learnings and every single nuanced configuration that a service provider would need in different parts of the world, built into our solution in form of various flexible pricing configurations like pay-as-you-go model or fixed fee model or targeted pricing for customers or running promotions based on seasonal offers, so on and so forth. So just simply mirroring Azure public cloud pricing for a given market, you know, when you offer the same service by Azure Stack Hub, right? Just to make it easy for customers to understand the pricing. So, you know, all the belts and whistles to make our solution really robust when it comes to price. One thing, the usage from Azure Stack Hub for all the services that are being provisioned and then being able to aggregate it on a daily monthly, you know, grains and then being able to provide visibility to their customers or end users on what the ongoing costs are and then generate bills at the end of the month and send notifications if you're crossing a budget threshold or usage threshold and so on and so forth. So this way, you know, as an end customer and operator, I have ongoing visibility and I have ability to view bills, generate bills, approve bills at the end of the month or even, you know, integrate with downstream, you know, centralized billing systems if you want, right? You know, there are enterprises and service providers that have centralized billing systems. So we do have ability to, you know, push the billing data out to those systems so that they can have it done in a centralized manner. And for certain service providers that even want here and customers to be able to pay for those bills at the end of the month, right?  So all of these, you know, end-to-end experience in terms of being able to have visibility, being able to view your bills, drill it down into a specific resource level and then be able to pay your bills, everything can be done right within the Azure Stack Hub portal. That's a key value prop of our solution in that you don't have to go to yet another portal to go and, you know, find, you know, what your ongoing costs are. It's all, you know, integrated with the Azure Stack Hub portlets. Yeah, so I know from working with service providers that obviously everyone has different requirements when it comes to billing and obviously making, creating offers and so on, but also that in enterprises, right? And obviously there needs to be some control when it comes to, for example, deploying new services. You want to allow customers to keep that control and also integrate some approval steps. And I know you have some solutions there as well. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So when we're talking about optimizing cloud spend, there needs to be also, you know, god rails and checks and balances along the way to ensure that, you know, you're not staring off your path, right? So from that standpoint, we provide, you know, a few ways to enable that, you know, at different points in this lifecycle, starting from the provisioning process of a resource, you know, our weaker resource provider enables seamless, end-tier approval workflow. So when you initiate provisioning of a resource and it can go to a, say in the enterprise scenario, a developer or an employee provisions resource, it can go to the business units heads approval from a group specific budget approval, right? And then they approve it. And then it could go to probably a second level of approval to the IT admin who makes sure that there's enough quota, enough capacity available in the system to accommodate that provisioning request. And then they approve that after which the automated process kicks in to go about provisioning the resource itself. That's one level of, you know, control that we can enable through the provisioning, during the provisioning process.  Particularly for service providers, you know, when you generate the bills automatically, service providers always want to be able to review the automatically generated invoice and then be able to add any custom items that they see fit, right? That's unique or they want to add a custom discount for whatever reasons they can do all of that and then explicitly approve the invoice at that point in time so that it is then made available for the tenants or the end users to be able to view it. But it all for that matter, upon approval, it could be automatically sent to a downstream centralized billing system, which then can then generate the unified invoice, right? And beyond this, when it comes to invoice and bill generation itself, there's a lot of customizability that we enable in our solution, you know, be it supporting multiple currencies or for, you know, multiple languages, you know, kind of, you know, localizing the invoice itself into language that the end customer would prefer, right? We enable all of that. And then you also can define what is the layout of the invoice, what specific information you want to provide there and what not. And again, all of this can be customized at a customer level if you want, right? So because there's always going to be different needs for different markets in different countries and different customers. So there's a lot of, you know, customizability and configurability that's enabled when it comes to generating invoices as well. No, that sounds pretty cool. Again, it's like, again, a lot of companies and service providers, they need a lot of control when it comes to these things. And obviously this is a great solution to do that. So I want to make a switch back to Ravi to talk a little bit about the actual like implementations like all of these great solutions happening. Sure. Thanks, Thomas. So the solution that we have as you stack are very unique enough in a way that they are built as a native resource provider with integrated UI experience within the Azure Stack Hub portal. So outside of Microsoft, we are one of the couple of Microsoft partners who are able to do that because it's really, it takes a lot of time to implement that. We took the time to do that because it brings tremendous value to the customers by being natively integrated within the Azure Stack platform, right? So how this helps customers is by having a single portal and a consistent experience for their end users to go for leveraging the awesome services in Azure Stack Hub, as well as look at their ongoing cost from within the Azure Stack portal through Cloud Assets building solution to do other operations across multiple clouds and the data center visualization platforms from a single portal. So we are able to do that because of the way we implemented the solution within Azure Stack Hub.  So in way to fulfill the promise of Azure Stack Hub being the consistent experience across Azure and Azure Stack. So we kind of extrapolated that to bring the same experience for building, monetization, as well as to manage the enterprises, other data center resources like VMware OpenStack System Center and public clouds like AWS Azure and whatnot. That's pretty cool. Again, I like that. There's such an integrated part. Now, we briefly talked about your different customers and partners you have, like service providers, enterprises and OEMs. Can you talk a little bit about like the differences and explain a little bit more how you work with them and how you help them and how you build your solutions with and for them? Sure, definitely Thomas. Let me first start with the enterprises, how our solutions help enterprises to leverage and maximize the Azure Stack. So like I said just before, we bring in that consistency, right? Across one stamp or multiple stamps and across multiple clouds and data center through Azure Stack. So for the enterprises, it becomes very easy to have the centralized governance and control through Azure Stack for all their assets across the clouds. So that's a very big value prop for the enterprise IT to be able to have one place to control and govern and at the same time provide the flexibility of modern cloud services for their end users. We bring in tracking the usage and cost out of the box for Azure Stack so that the enterprises can track utilization of their resources by business units, by departments, teams and so on through Azure Stack Hub with the cloud asset building solution. We bring in the ability to generate invoices to do the show back or charge back for the down-level business units or down-level customers if you are a reseller and service provider and whatnot. We bring in this automation and self-service nature through the cloud asset building solution. So the tasks that would have been taking a lot of time through the existing support ticketing system. We through reconnect, we enable that to be automated. We enable the admins to automate any of the support tasks through a wizard-driven experience so that they can extend the functionality if they have a partial script, they can automate and get the inputs from the end users to the UI and all the support tasks can be automated. And in fact, we have seen this happening with one of our major almost top five healthcare provider. So they kind of did this in a mega scale. So they took our weekend solution and then they kind of automated all their support tasks through this automation flexibility and accessibility that we have. And that has helped them tremendously reduce the time for doing some of these tasks as well as bringing that customer end user satisfaction for their customers. And all the solutions that we have, billing, v-correct for the Azure Stack Hub resource providers are built with the enterprise business critical needs in mind with built-in BCDR, business continuity, backups, as well as each of the solutions can scale independently to meet the business demands. So we bring in all of this out of the box so the enterprises don't have to worry about this and maximize the Azure Stack Hub value prop for their end users. For the service providers and OEM, I would like Aravind to talk about that. Talking about service providers OEMs, you know, from a service provider standpoint, majority of the service providers that start offering Azure Stack Hub as a service, one of the first things that they worry about in terms of taking the solution to the market is figuring out a way to offer Azure Stack Hub services on a consumption basis, because it's a lack of a built-in solution to track usage and billing within Azure Stack Hub out of the box. And that's where, you know, cloud as it comes in, in that we provide an integrated solution within the Azure Stack Hub portals, just like Azure Public Cloud, you can go click on billing menu and then be able to see the ongoing costs and, you know, buy subscription and be able to drill it down to the specific resource level in terms of what the consumption is for the given billing period and the associated costs and see unified bills at the end of the month and be able to pay for it and so on and so forth. So in fact, like for one of our customers in Europe, you know, who has been a service provider for three decades, you know, when they started offering Azure Stack Hub as a service and they also became a CSP partner of Microsoft, you know, they have the challenge of, you know, finding a way to offer Azure Stack Hub as a consumption-based service for their end customers. Also, you know, they wanted an integrated experience where they could make the CSP offerings available on a self-service basis as well. So the cloud as a billing solution for Azure Stack Hub also has a CSP self-service add-on wherein you can not only track ongoing, you know, usage and costs for Azure Stack Hub services, but also provide a marketplace catalog experience for the CSP offerings where somebody can go and look at, you know, search for Office 365 or Azure or any of the offers that Microsoft offers via CSP program and be able to purchase them on a single click and then manage the related licenses and assign it to their users within their organization and so on and so forth.  Right? So that was a key, you know, win for one of our customers that we enabled in Europe. And to add to that, they also had these, like I mentioned earlier, they also had these unique requirements because then being part of Europe, they had local regional needs in terms of customizing invoices in a certain way, having regional configurations in the way that invoices and feels the language in which it has to be customized. So we enabled all of that, right? So, and that was, you know, basically all that enabled us from a service product standpoint, it reduces the time to market their Azure Stack up as a service because they don't have to go and worry about, hey, do I have to write something on my own to monitor Azure Stack up, right? They just install a resource provider and they can just start offering Azure Stack up as a service on a consumption basis. And secondly, they're also able to easily, you know, measure the return on investment when it comes to CSP services, right? Because Microsoft is going to charge them for the CSP program, you know, in terms of what they're purchasing on behalf of their customers. And the service providers are in turn able to set custom pricing for their customers, be it for Azure Stack up services or, you know, CSP services, and then they're able to compare what their ongoing costs are in terms of, you know, offering these services. And then what is the ongoing revenue that they're able to, you know, gain from their customers by offering these services and then measure that and, you know, calculate their margins and return on investment, right? Those are key wins. And from end customer standpoint, obviously, as I said, managing cloud spend is a key priority for them. So we providing that visibility to ongoing costs and enables, you know, end customer trust and satisfaction as well as, you know, controlling it within their budgets. So this is kind of the story from a service provider standpoint.  Now as an hardware partner, right? At the same time, you know, Azure Stack Hub itself, you know, has certain limitations in terms of offering extended storage beyond what is available out of the box. You know, for example, FileShare is not available as a service or FileService is not available within Azure Stack Hub today, like it is available in Azure Public Cloud. Whereas OEMs like Dell offer, you know, scale out NAS solutions like Isilon, which can easily be used as an external storage to scale out the available storage within Azure Stack Hub. And similarly, you know, there's no native backup and disaster recovery solution for tenant workloads in Azure Stack Hub. Of course, you could look at Azure Backup as a service, but for sovereignty reasons, and customers do not want to, you know, even backup their resources to Azure Public Cloud, they need a solution that can, you know, back it up to a backup target within the data center, right? And that's where, again, Dell's solution like data domain as an example is a great choice for using as a backup target. Now, how do you offer these solutions like Isilon, data domain, as an integrated service or solution within Azure Stack Hub? There isn't a way to do that today, and that's where we come in. You know, with our weak net resource provider, you know, which is built for extensibility and, you know, integrability with all these third-party services, we're able to easily light up integrations with solutions like data domain or, you know, Isilon, et cetera, and offer it as a native service within the Azure Stack Hub portal, you know, in a matter of weeks, not months. And that thereby, when OEMs go and sell Azure Stack Hub to their customers, they don't have to sell, you know, Azure Stack Hub separately and sell data domain separately or Isilon separately. They can, you know, package it all as a single offering as a value-added offering and then send it to their customers. And that's something that we're enabling for, you know, OEMs. And as an extension to that, you also, you know, are able to offer private labeled solutions when they want to offer this as an integrated solution. Obviously, they don't want to have, you know, different names in different places. So they want to offer it all, say, as a, you know, my own OEM brand, right? And we enable doing that as well, you know, with a weak net resource provider. And along the way, you know, we're also able to share with the OEMs our Azure Stack Hub expertise, as well as we work with various vendors, various customers around the globe. We're always able to share our expertise in terms of how we can materialize integration of all these, you know, excellent services into Azure Stack Hub and provide a seamless, you know, user experience. So when we build these experiences for the OEMs, we work jointly with them in, you know, understanding these scenarios and then saying, you know, hey, these would be the kind of scenarios that you would want to materialize in the Azure Stack Adverse Stated Portal. And these are the scenarios you want to materialize on the tenant portal.  So, I mean, the solutions that we currently have in the market for, you know, that we work with OEMs are, for example, Isilon integration, right? Where in, as a tenant, if I want to be able to, you know, store, I know, increase the storage for a given Azure Stack VM and I want to store it, say, in an external NAS storage like Isilon, I don't want to go into a different portal and create a share in Isilon and manually mount it to an Azure Stack VM as a drive. Rather, right within the Azure Stack portal, I'm able to go and create a share in Isilon and then be able to easily mount it as an additional storage for the VMs. So that's something that we enabled for Dell EMC Isilon. And similarly, we enabled an integration with Data Domain as well for Dell, wherein you could easily, you know, configure shares in our storage units in Data Domain to act as the backup target so that then you can use a backup solution to easily point to the backup target and then backup your resources in Azure Stack Hub. So these are, you know, some of the things that we're working with OEMs and we're always looking for new opportunities with various OEMs. So other OEMs that have similar such needs and similar such services and they're looking for, you know, integrating with Azure Stack Hub as a native solution, you know, you should look at Cloud as it as the go-to partner to enable that. No, that's really good. I really like the solutions you offer to service provider, enterprises, OEMs, all the way to actually the end users right of the product. Now that's fantastic. So obviously we talked and I want to ask now if like the viewers want to know more, if they want to know more, where should they go? Where can they find more about Cloud Assert? Yeah. So thanks for asking that question Thomas. You know, there are several other news available for customers, you know, to get to know about Cloud Assert solutions, right? So clouds.com website is a great starting point. It has information about all those solutions and products and then there's, you know, links to go about requesting a demo or requesting price code and so on and so forth. So that's a great way to start.  So we have such regional partners as well in various regions that represent our solutions in those markets. So talking to a regional partner is also a great way to getting to know about the solutions and see how it could be of help for your specific scenarios, right? And then we also work pretty closely with the Microsoft GBB team, the field team at Microsoft who pretty much advocates of Microsoft Azure Stack Hub and helping customers understand the value of what Azure Stack is and how it is relevant to their needs. And they are also made aware of Cloud Assert solutions and the scenarios we can enable as a partner. So whenever they come across as a scenario, you know, that Azure Stack Hub may not fulfill out of the box, but it's a gap that we can come in and address as a custom solution or can be addressed with our existing product. They always loop us in and then bring us to the table for such conversations with the customer. So that's another great way to engage with us. And we also work closely with, you know, MVPs and influences like, you know, Thomas Simsell for MVPs and across the globe, you know, getting to familiarize our solutions so that when they come across, you know, needs for end customers that have to be addressed, they can, you know, bring us in. Beyond this, we also have, you know, as we talked about OEMs, we also share good relationships with OEMs. So the OEMs are also made aware of about our solutions. So when they go and sell Azure Stack Hub, they again have an opportunity to see, you know, if our solutions could be a fit to address some of the needs and gaps of the customer's app. So there are several channels as a result. And, you know, you could contact, you know, who is the appropriate person for a given context and then reach out to us, right? So that's pretty easy. Just hop or two away in the worst case to get through and, you know, help you out. Perfect. Now, thank you very much. Again, we will put all the links. You can connect to Cloud Assert down in the description of this video. If you have more questions, just reach out to us or to Cloud Assert directly. I want to really thank you, Ravi and Arvin for being in this video. Really great solutions we see here. And also thank you to Tibbi for being here and connecting me with Cloud Assert. So thank you very much. And for the viewers, thank you for watching. Hopefully see you in the next one. Thanks. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for having us.


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Ahoy, ahoy, and welcome to the channel. Today we're going to do something a little different than normal. A top 10 list of the most prolific SCP authors on the SCP Wiki. Let's get started. Now our number 10 slot is taken up by a user called Communism Will Win, and he is, I think, unless I am mistaken, the only user on the top 10 list who is actually banned from the SCP Wiki currently. I say currently because permanent bans are appealable, though this one doesn't really seem like it's ever going to be appealed successfully. Communism Will Win is probably better known as Scantron. He changed his name sometime in the last couple of years, maybe a few years. Actually it had to be a few years because he's been banned for almost a year and a half at this point. He changed his name sometime in the last few years to Communism Will Win. I believe he was a political statement. It's not ironic from what I know of the feller. He is an individual who suffers fools lightly, we'll say, and because of that has gotten in trouble numerous times with SCP staff. The thing you gotta understand about SCP staff is they will put up with the most outrageous of behaviors for a very long time if they like you or if you're useful, but the moment they don't need you or they don't like you anymore because of something you've done, those behaviors become less acceptable. And so Scantron, well he was a jerk for a very long time and then he left staff and got banned and then he appealed his ban and then he came back, posted for a while, I think maybe year, year and a half, and then he was a jerk too often and got himself banned again permanently. You can look right here, I'm gonna just put up an image on the screen, you can see his, we'll call it his upvote total as it increases over time. His most popular article was written in 2012 and it is The Procrastination Rock and it is, as of this posting anyway, the third most popular article on the SCP wiki. There's a couple of other articles you may recognize of his, SCP 2602 which used to be a library and bees, which is the source of so many memes. He also wrote the Yellowstone Anomaly, the Telekill Alloy, he's behind obviously Scantron's proposal. There's a few, there's a few things on here that you might recognize, but the important thing to recall about this particular user is there's likely that he's going to fall off the top 10 sometime soon. There's people nipping at his heels, I'm sure. Let's see who's coming up next. We'll give us, we'll go through a couple honorable mentions before we move on here. Yeah, Uncle Nickelini is very active, Dr. Shander's been banned, Zinn is off and on, hot and cold, Famine Pulse is left, so yeah. Our top 15 is either, really it's just Nickelini or Zinn and I would put my money on Nickelini if I had money to bet. So yeah, that. We'll move on from Communism will win to one of the most important founders of the SCP Wiki, not necessarily a founder-founder, but someone who was incredibly influential for a very long time early on on the site and that is Alana. Now I will say Alana's first post goes back to 2008, early, early, early. So yeah, I would consider her to be one of the initial founders of the site actually. Yep. However, her time on the site ended in 2014, very shortly after I actually started posting on the Wiki. I actually know Alana or knew Alana before she was part of the SCP Wiki back in the early 2000s because she created and ran a web browser game called TDZK, which is not really super important, but the person I remember from early 2000s and the person I encountered in 2012-2014, because I actually joined the Wiki in 2012, were wildly different people. Alana is another person who was incredibly harsh and in 2014, when the SCP Wiki was finally starting to move away from that kind of harshness, she left the site, somewhat permanently actually. The most popular thing that she's written is SCP-895, the camera disruption, which is, it's from a containment breach. It's the coffin that if you have, if you look at it on a video feed, it can cause you to have a heart attack and worse. Alana's article total is 115 and you will find, let me see here real quick, that she is, well, she's got other articles that are highly rated. There's the observable time loop, which I believe is the one with these scientists. Yeah, it's the one with, I'm pretty sure it's the one with the scientists that are killed over and over again. Yep, that is it.   Alana was one of the drivers of the early Project Foundation, which is something that the SCP Wiki has been trying to do for years and probably never actually accomplished, but it's the idea that the SCP Wiki can be hosted on its own independent website and not wiki. They've been trying it for literally almost a decade now. It's been a concept for almost 10 years straight and at no point has it even come close to being a possibility. So every time you hear anyone say, well, Project Foundation is right around the corner. Remember that they've been saying that for 10 years straight. So I'm just saying. Anyway, Alana left the site. She was behind the, Alana, oh, this is important. Alana is actually behind the theme of the site, the main theme of the site. So that's a little tidbit sort of important. I don't know how much work altogether she did on it, but she's the one who's got her name signed to it. So, and now we're going to move on to number eight. Number eight is this guy, me. I have all, as well as Alana, technically I've got one more article in here that's not showing. And at this, the way the system works, if you're tied, it'll actually just randomly move you back and forth. At the current time of showing me is number eight, but I have an article that puts me at 116, not 115. For some reason, one of my translated pieces that, or one of the pieces that I helped translate and move to the Wiki, is sometimes credited to me and sometimes not. And in this particular iteration of the list, it's not being credited to me, but in other iterations of this exact same list it is. So I don't know. I consider myself to have 116 articles, which puts me one above a lot anyway, regardless. It may surprise, I don't talk about it a lot. I do talk about myself being an author on the SCP Wiki, but it may surprise you to know that I am the eighth most prolific author on the SCP Wiki. And the one on this list that I know the most about. One thing I'll tell you, if you look at my chart here, you'll see that there's a lot of posting after, let's say in the early part of 2017, or no I'm sorry, the early part of 2018. And then from then on for the last two years, it's just been almost constant posting. But before that, there's a lot of gaps. And there's a good, good reason for that. And if you look behind the gaps, there's another period early on where I posted tons of articles in a row. This big area here where there's just a sparse collection of articles. And in fact, there's a, let's see, this one is, yeah, there's a whole six-month period where I didn't post anything. It wasn't because I was banned, but simply because I was working as SCP staff at the time. And boy howdy was I unaware. I didn't think about it until afterwards. I got suspended in the early parts of 2018. And the amount of free time I found myself having was so amazing. I just, I think I spent two weeks on suspension and then was like, I'm done. I can do without being staffed. That's fine. I'm here to write for the SCP wiki, not to do work for other people, for no pay. So my most popular articles, I have unlike most people on this list, I don't have a uber popular article.  Well, this isn't exactly correct. This is actually, discounts a lot of upvotes. I think anyone who has a deleted account, a couple of people. But I have, you know, I've got some decent stuff. I've got the SCP RPG, which is approaching 500. The Sumerian cactus joke proposal, 431. How I got to Memphis at 402. Everything below that's 300, 200. There's a bunch of 200s, actually. Let's just look at the whole, well, I can't look at the whole list because it only shows 100. I have a lot of articles on here. That's always been kind of my thing is just to keep posting articles. If you keep posting articles, you're bound to get hits every once in a while. And I don't know, I have to, if you, if you count, it's like a successful article is plus 70 or more, which is generally, for most new authors, a pretty good dividing line. Over half of my articles are above plus 70. It's actually more than that. But so my time on the wiki has actually been, that's the best way to put it, fraught with mischief and a little bit more drama than I would like. But sometimes you can't get away from it.  Even the people who love drama. But always seems to find me anyway. So maybe it's just, maybe it's me anyway. I have a policy generally, well, since I left staff, I have a policy generally of at least two articles every month. This month I'm actually behind, but I'm working on something. If you can, you actually see a little bit of a gap there, but generally, I consider it for month to month. So there's been a couple of times where it's like, I might post on the first and the second, and then I might not post until the 31st of the next month. So there technically is like 50 or almost 60 days between the two postings, but still you do two per month. That's just the way I try to, if I get to the end of the month and I know I don't have something up, I post something. I try to write size, sit down, force myself to write something and post it to the wiki. A lot of people will tell you my stuff has declined in quality over the years, but I think that's bullshit.  I think I can move on though. You know about me. I'll talk about the next person on the list who has rocketed it up to the top. Well, not up to the top, up to number seven. Yeah, number seven. And that is Tanhoni. Tanhoni is the author of the new SCP-5000. So that is actually, they're currently their most popular article at 1315. Second most popular article, something you may recognize is the Bobble the Clown. Then you've got a hole to another place, Tanhoni's proposal, a couple other articles as well. You have no idea how alone you are Garfield. I've seen means of that. I've heard of it, but I don't think I've ever actually read it. But yeah, he's an author of quite a few iconic SCPs, which is the big difference between me on this list and most of the other people you're going to see. Almost every one of these other article authors is the author of something that's iconic.  It's iconic amongst my community, especially on my Discord. I wouldn't really consider it like an iconic SCP, and that's my most popular article. So it's always been a thing that I've been something I've been seeking out for a long time. This isn't about me anymore. It's about Tanhoni. Tanhoni has a posting habit that is infuriating. So I would guarantee at a future point, I will pass him. And then at some future point, he will pass me because Tanhoni will, as you can see here, his path is super weird. Starting in late 2018, he started having what are essentially active phases where he would post, and then he would post like 30 things one a day, and then he would just stop for months, and then he would come back and he would do it again. So while I do, I'm just trucking along two of the two articles at a time, we've been competing back and forth for a while. And right now he's five articles ahead, but I think could be wrong just saying this out loud, maybe changing that, but I think he's at the end of his cycle. So I've got some time to catch up, and catching up to five articles is only three months worth of work, and technically two more because I still have one article to do for this month. And it's almost over, so really it's only about two more months worth of work, which none of it matters. But you know what, meaningless statistics matter to me a little bit. Please like and subscribe. Anyway, Tanhoni is a good guy. I've talked to him a few times. I mean, I don't know him super well, but what I've encountered, what I've interacted with him, he seems like a decent sort. And as far as I know, hasn't gotten in trouble with staff at all, which makes him different than everyone else so far, let me see. Scantron banned, Alana constantly in trouble over her harshness and eventually left, probably at the point where she was close to being banned, anyway. I've been censured by staff, suspended by staff, prevented from joining contests by staff. Yeah, Tanhoni is the first one on this list who hasn't gotten in trouble with staff. That's fantastic. And in fact, the only one I'm going to do today, because I only really have time for one more, the next person has been in trouble with staff. The only person so far on today's list who hasn't gotten in trouble with staff. Maybe it's his long periods of inactivity that have avoided this problem because, well, no, most people I think in the five to one category haven't really been in too much trouble with staff. Well, anyway, let's move on to the last one before we run out of time here. Dijork or Jork. It's really hard for me to know exactly how this should be pronounced since it's just sort of a made up word. We'll go with Jork. I think I've always pronounced it Dijork, but now that I'm saying it out loud to like a camera, I'm thinking it's just Jork. Anyway, Jork has, well, that's the best way to put this, man. Jork is not as harsh a critic as he's made out to be. But every once in a while, maybe when he's mad, maybe I don't know what the what causes it. But every once in a while, he just goes off on someone new who doesn't know any better in a way that makes it very unlikely that that person will want to stay on the site. And that usually gets him in a lot of trouble. He has gotten in trouble with staff numerous times. I believe he has independently left the site without being banned. But I could be wrong about that. Jork's most popular works are 1860.  He does have an iconic piece, Lord Blackwood. I forgot about this one. It was called 1867, A Gentleman, but I actually forgot that this is actually incredibly popular. And then we've got 10 30 am. I believe it's a shark punching center thing. Okay. So we've got Lord Blackwood and a shark punching center article at 890 and 708. Those are his two most popular. And I would consider Lord Blackwood to be an iconic SCP most if not maybe not most offsite people, but I definitely would think most on site people are aware, at least aware of Lord Blackwood. The slug that it believes it's a 1800s explorer. I've spent a really long time since I read that article. Unfortunately, though, Jork hasn't posted an article since mid 2018. And it doesn't seem likely that he'll come back the way he has in the past come back. So he is either he's inactive from the site. And one thing you're going to learn as we go to the rest of the top five in the next video, because this is already incredibly long. But when we get to five through one, you're going to learn that at least two of those are also either inactive or just so sporadically active that the likelihood is they're going to get passed as well. That's where most of these people on this list are going to fall. You've got Communism will win, Alana and Jorick who are just not posting anymore. But you've got me and Tanhoni fighting back and forth for, you know, slots. And as we fight back and forth for slots, we're moving up the list past these people. So certainly how that goes. I actually thought, again, honorable mention to Dr. Chandra. I thought Dr. Chandra was going to beat me out. But unfortunately, they have not been able to get there because they got themselves banned from the Wiki for was it a plagiarism thing? I think it was plagiarism. Don't quote me on that. I would. Oh, I do remember it was a plagiarism charge, but it was a bit more complicated than that. That's a whole video in and of itself. It's complicated. Definitely. Important thing to remember here, though, let's talk about the averages of these five people and you'll you'll see something very important about the guy who doesn't have an iconic SCP. So if we rank these five people by their averages, you will find me at the bottom. In fact, I believe by average, which I don't really care too much for because like it's pretty easy to get a shitty article to plus 1000. I'm sorry, especially if it's super old. A lot of these people are super old users. But if you go by rankings of just rating on the SCP Wiki, I'm a number 15 rather than number eight. Because my average is 105.6. And my average, my total rating is 12,000. Looks like Jorick. Yeah, Jorick would be next, even though he's sixth because his rating average is 133. I don't put too much stock in total up. A lot of people do, especially the people who are ahead because of it. So like I look at articles and I consider, you know, the top 10 authors by most article count. But that's easy for me to do because that puts me in the top 10. If we looked at it by total votes, I'm like 15th, I think, and other people would be moved up into the list. So of course, other people put way more stock in total upvotes. And in fact, I think our highest rated author would be Cactus probably. Yeah. Of course, I chalk a lot of that up just by not having a truly iconic SCP article, but I'm going to get there one day. It's only a matter of time. I can't, all I gotta do is keep posting articles. Eventually one of them is going to hit. This is how it works. Anyway, thank you very much for watching.  Then take a look at the scroll through the products that we have on sale, we that I have on sale on Teespring. They are high quality. I'm wearing the you're wrong about this hoodie hoodie. We've got the you're wrong about this poster poster. Somebody was asking about this poster. I really need to get a new design and replace it because this is just something I picked up at Walmart. Anyway, maybe I should make something like this, but for me, there might be a good idea. I actually was thinking about something like a warning, like a safety warning, or a, you know, see something say something sort of style poster, but SCP themed. Anyway, after you've done that, check out the products. Like I said, and then head on over to patreon.com forward slash D Sumerian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has and join. Let's double check our peoples here. Probably wizard and definitely not a scientist and Manuel Noltorp as $40 backers to your name read out loud or join on at any level. Anything 30 or above, you'll get your name read out, but anything below that is incredibly helpful gets you discord benefits, some access to behind the scenes footage, bloopers, variety of things. And my eternal thanks. Seriously though, thank you very much for letting me know that I'm not alone out here and just for the record, neither are you. I'll see you all again on Tuesday.


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The Headcutter. That's what they called him. I always thought it was a little on the nose, even as a child. Then again, it was also children who named him, so maybe I shouldn't have expected anything more. The Headcutter was one of those urban legends that everyone had a story about. A story that didn't happen to them, but definitely happened to their mom's friend's cousin's son. So it was undeniable. The story behind him was as follows. He was a tall, sickly, thin man with a piercing laugh. You would always know when he was coming because you'd start hearing that cackle echo from streets away, getting closer as he wound around each suburban house. That and the rumble of the engine. He supposedly drove one of those ride on lawn mowers. He'd sit on the top laughing hysterically, the engine growling like some sort of grotesque backup singer. Now you might be guessing that he uses the lawnmower to do the titular head cutting. That wasn't the case. It was never actually specified how he cut people's heads off. And the lawnmower didn't seem to serve any purpose in his description, other than being sinisterly bizarre. What was specified, however, was what he would do with the heads. The head cutter was said to have a doll, a wonderfully intricate doll that had taken years to craft. Its porcelain face was painted to be so lifelike it practically moved. He treasured that doll for whatever reason. The reasons always changed depending on who was retelling the story.  Other times it was a gift from his dying mother. And yet other times it had been his only friend in a lonely and isolated life. Regardless, one day, the doll was broken. Its delicate face was shattered, destroying the illusion of life it had once held. And with that illusion, any sanity the head cutter had left was shattered as well. He tried to no avail to replace the doll's head. He searched far and wide for an artist that could recreate the convincing detail the porcelain had once held. Each artist fell short. As he grew more desperate, he turned to darker methods.  At first, he thought he'd done it. Human heads don't keep well, however, and before long he realized he'd have to find a new head for the doll once again. From that day on, he stalked the streets of suburbia, looking for the perfect new doll head.  I'd always been something of a scaredy cat. The first time I heard the story, I started crying and later told my mom about the frightful tale. Never one for sentimentality. She laughed. A deep, hearty, comforting laugh. There was nothing like the maniacal cackle described in the story. Well, that doesn't even make sense. She said, he rides a lawnmower. Someone cruising around these neighborhoods on a damn lawnmower would never fly under the radar. The homeowners association won't even let us park a red car in the driveway. Nobody stalking children with a lawnmower and going unnoticed. Your friends might as well have said, he comes by on an elephant. At least that would have been interesting. Her amused rejection was effective in calming my nerves and my cries slowly turned into sniffles. There's no head cutter. I asked hopeful. Of course, there's no head cutter. She replied, I wiped a sleeve across my wet face. If my mom thought it was ridiculous, it must be ridiculous. I reasoned. After all, she was a grownup and grownups knew everything. Still, even though I now knew rationally that the story had been deemed farfetched, it lingered in the back of my mind. I'd been in the habit of sleeping with my drapes partially open. There seemed little risk in my second story bedroom. And I liked watching the stars and moon shift into view as I dozed off. After I'd heard the tale, though, I would make sure they were pulled tight every night. My mind had convinced me that I'd wake up to a mechanical whirring one night, that I'd go to the window to investigate and lock eyes with the head cutter himself as he cruised by looking for victims. My short walk from the bus to my house went from pleasant to anxiety inducing to any sound of a car, power tool or other engine would send my heart jumping, my eyes frantically scanning the monochrome suburban streets. Previously, I'd been proud that my mother had trusted me to walk home alone, even if the reason was based more on her work schedule than confidence in my maturity. Now, I found myself wanting to ask if she would meet me at the bus stop. I didn't. Maybe out of pride. I didn't want her to think I was a baby. And maybe out of knowing her answer would be no anyways. Instead, I'd exit the bus, carefully composed and begin walking as quickly toward my house as I could. I never ran for some reason. I thought that if the head cutter was out there, running would only draw attention to my status as a scared and alone child. I kept my head up, trying to look how I imagined an adult would walking a futile exercise for a third grader, but one that distracted me for my anxiety at least. And slowly, as I completed the walk home over and over with every growling engine explained by a passing car or a neighbor doing yardwork, my confidence began to become real. My mom was right. I began to believe not just on a rational level, but also emotionally. It was just a silly story. I watched Penelope the next door neighbor write another complaint about the man across the street. His trash can was too close to the curb or too far or something like that. I wasn't really paying attention. If a few inches of trash can positioning couldn't go unnoticed, a man laughing maniacally while riding along more around definitely wouldn't. My growing confidence was shattered when Layla Thompson went missing. A bubbly, extroverted third grader, I hadn't known Layla well, but I'd known of her. She'd been playing in the cul-de-sac in her front yard in broad daylight. Her mother was the overprotective sort and usually kept an eagle's eye on Layla. That day, she'd forgotten cookies in the oven. She rushed inside to try to save them, probably figuring that Layla would be fine bouncing her pink ball in the driveway for a few minutes. When she returned, the ball was rolling to a stop in the center of the cul-de-sac. Layla was nowhere to be seen. It didn't take long for the police to be called in a frantic search to start. By the time Monday rolled around, rumors were flying. Teachers tried their best to stifle any hearsay, but talks still spread on the playground. By the end of the day, I'd heard at least five variations of what had definitely incontestably happened to Layla. They ranged from the generic a kidnapper promised her free candy, to the more far-fetched she ran away to join a gang of fellow children who wanted to be free from adults. However, a frontrunner in the theories was quickly emerging. The headcutter had struck again. His daughter looked just like Layla, you know? That's why he took her. James, a fifth grader, told my friend Jesse and I with great authority. By Tuesday, this seemed accepted as the gospel, despite the lack of any verifying reports. My old anxiety rushed back in with these new events. I found myself once again jumping at a sputtering car engine, once again having to force myself to not race for the front door. This time, though, my concerns seemed shared by my mother, at least in part. She sat me down after school one day. Now, I know you already know about stranger danger, but it's extra important you remember not to go anywhere with anyone while you're walking home. You're to walk from the bus to the door, no going to friends, not even stopping by the park, at least until this blows over. It's better to be cautious.  She said, I nodded with wide eyes. I understand. I hesitated. Do you think the headcutter took her? The headcutter isn't real, but other bad people are okay. Sometimes the scariest people aren't the boogeymen, sometimes they can look just like you and me. And that's why it's important you do what I just told you. She replied. I said I understood again, but remained quietly convinced of the headcutter's existence. A day turned into a week and a week into a month and still no trace of Leila was ever found. The search parties dwindled to just her parents and some family friends and police cars stopped driving by. Even with all my fears, I found myself becoming a little more lax on my walk home each day. Then it happened. It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon, blisteringly sunny. I was walking a little more slowly than usual, not wanting to exert myself more in the already stuffy weather. Still, I was only two driveways from my house when I heard it. A steady mechanical growling emanating from a street ahead of and perpendicular to my house.  I reassured myself. Then it was interrupted by a tinny off kilter laugh. The blood drained from my face and I felt cold wash over me despite the oppressive sun. The growling was growing closer. It sounded like it was coming towards my street.  I took off running for my front door. The couple hundred feet had never felt so far as I raced down the sidewalk earlier concerns about drawing attention to myself gone. Any rational thought was gone. Actually, I just knew I needed to get out of there. Time seemed to move in slow motion as I reached my door pulling my key from around my neck. I felt like the air was suddenly made of syrup as I tried to slip it into the keyhole. Another laugh echoed behind me. Definitely closer. I didn't dare to turn around and look instead ripping the key from the door and shoving it open as soon as I heard the lock slide from its place. I practically fell onto the tile entryway. I slammed the door shut behind me. And I sat there for a moment back against the door. And then I realized I hadn't locked it. I reached up and slid the deadbolt back into place then scrambled against the hallway wall. I felt some relief that my mom had closed all the drapes before leaving for work. I sat there back against the wall hyperventilating as I tried to process what was happening. Outside the warring grew louder. It had to be on my street now. And I said a silent prayer that it would continue down the street without passing my house. Thankfully, my prayers seem to be answered as the noise began to grow fainter. There was another laugh, this time barely audible over the fading warring. Was this real? This couldn't be real, I thought, and suddenly found myself rising. I don't know what was going through my head, but I felt that I had to peek out the window. I had to prove to myself that it wasn't real, that it was just a local teenager trying to scare kids or a neighbor trimming their trees. It couldn't be real. I crept to the window, slowly shifting the curtain to the side, just enough to see the road outside. At first, it looked empty. Then, towards the end, movement caught my eye. He was real. I saw him clear as day, just like the stories described. Tall and far too skinny, sitting on top of a lawnmower that was currently turning the corner. I slammed the curtain shut, sinking to the ground. My mother found me still sitting on the ground, a mess of tears and snot when she got home. Her worry was replaced with subtle annoyance when I told her I'd seen the head cutter, but she still tried her best to comfort me. She insisted he wasn't real, that I must have just seen one of the neighbors. I knew what I'd seen, though. The head cutter was real. After my mother had refused to believe me, I was hesitant to tell anyone else what I'd seen. Jesse noticed that I was quieter than usual the next day, though. What's wrong? Are you sick? She asked, eyes widening at the potential of me getting her sick, too. You need to tell me if you're sick, so we don't share juice boxes later. My mom says that's how you get sick. I shook my head. I'm not sick. It's nothing. I don't believe you, Jesse said. I sighed, looking around for anyone who might be listening. Jesse was my best friend. Surely she should be warned about what I'd seen. All right, but you have to promise not to laugh at me. Is it a secret? I paused. Was it a secret? Maybe the other kid should know what I'd seen, too. So they'd know he was lurking out there. Then again, maybe they just laugh it off as my mom had. And they all already knew the story anyway. So it's not like it was new information. Still, an actual sighting they would know where to avoid then. I guess not. I finally said, and I took a deep breath. I saw him. Him? I lowered my voice to a barely audible whisper, chills creeping down my own neck as I said the same name out loud. The head cutter. Jesse gasped. No way. I did. I was walking home from school and I started hearing the lawnmower and his laugh just like the story said. What did you do? She asked. I ran to my house. I thought he was going to see me, but I got inside just in time. Then I went and looked out the window. I saw him turning the corner, but it was really him. Whoa. He could have gotten you. I shuddered at the thought. She seemed to be taking me seriously, at least. I know. My mom doesn't believe me, though. I said, why not? Jesse asked. Her mom always believed her. Or in hindsight, at least said she did. I don't know. I was worried you wouldn't either. Somehow, by the time afternoon recess rolled around, practically everyone was talking about my sighting. Three separate kids, none of whom I'd ever spoken to before, came up to ask me about my encounter. The next day, the fuss had spread. My mom was waiting for me at the bus stop when I got off an unusual sight. So, I got a call from one of your teachers. You've been telling kids you saw the head cutter. She asked as we walked towards the house. I nodded, nervously wondering if I was in trouble.  There is no head cutter, alright? I know Layla's going missing has been scary, but that doesn't mean a scary story is real. But mom, I saw him on a lawnmower. I did some digging. Mr. Johnson down the street said he has a ride on lawnmower and he said you can come over and see for yourself. I was thinking we could head over there right now and put this whole business behind us. My mom offered. I frowned. Mr. Johnson was a short round man who prided himself on doing things himself. It wasn't surprising that he would have bought a lawnmower instead of hiring people to take care of his yard. Home owner's association be damned. But I doubted he was the person I'd seen. Still, my mom seemed pleased with her solution and not wanting to let her down. I nodded. We walked down the street and around two corners before finally arriving at Mr. Johnson's house. He was sitting outside on the previously mentioned lawnmower. My heart sank when I saw him. There was no way this was what I'd seen. It was all wrong. His height, his silhouette, even the color of the lawnmower, green and gray instead of black. Still, not wanting to get in trouble with my mom, I decided I would just go along with it. Mr. Johnson gave me an exaggerated wave as we approached. Well, hi there, he said. Hi. I said, hoping my quietness would come off as shyness. I wanted to get this over with. I'd now decided that my mom wasn't going to understand and it was best that I just figured out how to handle this myself. I heard you might have seen this lawnmower the other day and gotten a bit spooked, eh? I guess so. I said, well, I can promise you the only thing this lawnmower cuts is my grass. And real evenly in that too. He let out a laugh. It was nothing like the tinny frantic laugh I'd heard yesterday. Yes, there was no way this was what I'd seen. So look, it might sound scary, but there's nothing to be afraid of. You can even come sit on it yourself. He offered. I took him up on the offer and forced a smile and what I hoped looked like relief. My mom seems satisfied that the whole thing was behind us as we walked back to our house that afternoon. I didn't correct her. The week drew on and there was still no sign of Layla. By the following Wednesday, talk about my sighting had died down to replaced by Kyle's parents buying him his own dirt bike for their summer camping trip. He hadn't stopped talking about it once. I had to admit, that sounded pretty cool. I couldn't imagine my mom buying me an actual vehicle. Even a normal bike was pushing it. I was walking home Thursday, watching the bus disappear and thinking about the cool dirt bike tricks I could totally personally do if I just had one, despite my lack of experience. When I heard a familiar whirring sound again, my heart dropped. Just like last Tuesday, it seemed to be coming from around the corner, not the direction of Mr. Johnson's house by any means. The ear splitting laugh echoed through the air. This time, I was still at the end of the road from my house. My heart pounded against my chest as I considered my options run from my house. The corner was only two driveways down. If I didn't make it, he'd seen me for sure and be only a couple hundred feet or so from me turn and run in the other direction. I was in the middle of the street. The corner was definitely a few minutes run away. I decided I'd race towards my house. I took off running for all I was worth, legs pumping as I passed one driveway, two driveways, my house was growing closer. The whirring was to three driveways, I could see the details of the lock on my door now for driveways to to go. And then my worst nightmare became real. I saw the shadow enter the street moments before he did. Time seemed to slow as the bony too tall man rode onto the street, a wide and sinister smile plastered across his face. His smile grew even wider, almost impossibly wide. When he saw me, he let out an overjoyed laugh and then another and another as he yanked the steering wheel of the lawnmower to the left. It turned towards me. He turned towards me gaining on me faster than I thought was possible. To my credit, I didn't stop running. The door was less than 50 feet from me now and then a bony hand grabbed my shoulder. I wasn't sure how he'd caught up to me so quickly, how he'd maneuvered his ride so smoothly.  When I woke up, I was in a small dark room. It was almost entirely empty, save for a single overhead light. Outside, I heard a raspy sing songy voice. I'll find your head and that's what I said.  The voice repeated the disturbing rhyme over and over for what seemed like forever. Finally, it stopped. The light shut off at the same time. I sat there in a sudden dark silence shaking as the full extent of my situation dawned on me. That's when I noticed something glittering in the door frame. When the light had been on, it wasn't visible. The dim rays of light slipping under the door, however, reflected off of it. Curious, I stood up, walking closer to see what it was. It was a sparkling metal barrette, the kind you could buy in bulk at Claire's or target. More importantly, it had been wedged in the lock of the door, imperceptible from the outside and just barely visible from the inside. It had prevented the door from locking. I realized this was possibly my only chance to escape this situation, at least with my head. I held my breath as I listened intensely for any movement outside. There was nothing. Slowly, I placed a hand on the door knob. Still no noise outside. I pulled the door open to see a relatively normal looking basement. Dust covered rows of plastic storage crates. A bike leaned against one wall. If it wasn't for the heavy door I just opened, it would have looked like any family basement. Trying my best to remain quiet, I pulled the door shut behind me and began walking through the rows of shelves. The stairs had to be around here somewhere, I figured. As I walked, a dim ray of sunlight caught my eye. It peeked through the rows of shelves, landing on the floor at my feet. There must be a window, I thought. I changed directions, instead climbing through one row of shelves to head towards the light source. I stood up in the next row and froze. The facade of a normal basement didn't continue in this row. Instead, shelf after shelf was lined with human skulls. There had to have been at least two dozen, all pristine and white. I felt bile rise in my throat. You have to keep going, something urged me. I nodded and took a step towards the row of skulls. Forcing down the vomit in my mouth and trying to remember to breathe, I pushed one of the skulls aside and crawled into the next aisle. There, the window. It was about five feet off the ground with a desk covered in dusty tools sitting just below it. With a boost from the desk, I was confident I could make it. I was pulling myself up when I heard a scream behind me. A raspy, infuriated scream followed by rapid footsteps. My heart leapt out of my chest as I struggled to pull myself up more quickly. I stood on the table and it shook as I did so. The window was just within reach and I grasped the lock, pulling with all I was worth. My finger slipped once. The footsteps grew closer. The second time, they didn't slip and the window opened with a blast of dust. I grabbed the window sill, trying to pull myself up. I almost had when I felt my foot slip. Three things seemed to happen at once. I felt a jolt as I plummeted behind the desk. Searing pain filled my face as something cold slammed into it and a silhouette appeared in the aisle behind me. Running on adrenaline now, I pulled myself from behind the desk as quickly as I could manage.  He froze as he caught sight of me. I raised a hand to my head and when I brought it down, it was covered in blood. Ruined. He spat. Ruined. He yelled, slamming a fist into the nearby shelf. It shook. I didn't wait for him to make a move. Instead, I turned and jumped for the window sill, this time managing to pull myself halfway through it and knock the wind out of myself as the frame pressed into my ribcage. I expected to feel a bony hand wrap around my ankle at any moment. I wriggled through the window, no doubt scraping my stomach and legs as I did so. The cold grasp never came and in another moment, I felt cool grass beneath me. I rolled over. The head cutter stood just below the window, motionless. He stared with two cold eyes as I scrambled backward, but never made a move to grab me. Go. His raspy voice said, I didn't have to be told twice. I gathered myself to my feet and raced through the empty streets. Once I felt like I was far enough from that dreadful house, I knocked on a door. A young man holding a baby answered. His face went pale when he saw me and he quickly shouted for his wife ushering me inside. They called the police who called my mother. The police were eventually able to find the house based on the description I'd given of my escape route. It was empty when they did though. The owner was an elderly woman who'd passed away years before. It had officially sat vacant ever since. They never found the man who'd kidnapped me. And they presumed also taken Leila. I ended up needing several stitches for the gash going down the side of my face. When I was in high school, my mother offered to let me try a laser scar removal.  As long as I had that scar, I was ruined in his mind. And I was glad to be considered as such. It felt like a safety net in a way. Not something that had ruined me, but something that had saved me. That wasn't all that had saved me though. They never did find Leila, but her mother confirmed that the barrette wedged in the door had been hers. I'm still eternally grateful to her. If not for her quick thinking, I wouldn't be here telling this story today. So, if you live in a drab, suburban neighborhood and hear a whoring followed by a tinny laugh, walk a little faster, lock your doors when you get home, pick your kids up from the bus stop. It's probably just Mr. Johnson out doing yard work, but I wouldn't risk it.