Rockin' IT - Where technology leaders talk.

To put a cap on a great first season, we bring the CEO of Flexera, Jim Ryan to explore the relationships between software vendors and consumers, together with the evolution of the software industry in general, the role of Software Asset Management in tough times, and a career view on CEOs coming from sales backgrounds. We finish the interview with a first for this podcast: a rapid fire personal profile on Jim.

With the recent cyber attack on a Florida water treatment plant, the conversation about critical infrastructure resilience heated up. Sara Freeman, an expert in these topics just released a book that helps organizations be better prepared to defend and react, and has been in the speaking circuit of many events, including RSA ’21. We loved her position on how the language that we use about cyber attacks matters, and her arguments about how society and IT professionals might be numb to cyber security, aided by how vendors flex marketing language. Sarah works at a pioneer in critical infrastructure and nuclear energy, the Idaho National Laboratory.

We've never had a guest that plays their own intro song. Scott is a different guy. He spent 30 years at Navistar, a Fortune 500 manufacturer of trucks and Diesel engines, in management roles of Security and Asset Management for IT. He shares with us his song, Fortan Blues, to open the episode, and we dig deeper into how security and SAM are in need of working together. He also shares his point of view on Microsoft, Oracle and other vendors when it comes to software licensing audits. "Some work as partners, and some are just plain aggressive" he says. Episode Sponsored by Flexera, which offers the best solutions for Technology Value Optimization in the market. Go to Flexera.com for more information.

You could say that Jason is a SAM pioneer. From his days at IBM and to his most recent stint at Nike managing a global team of Software Asset Managers, he has started, funded and managed global projects. In this episode, we explore his career, his view of IT Service Management and SAM, and an opinion on centralizing or federating these teams as well as some ideas on the "periphery of ITAM". Now, as a recent addition to Flexera's Business Value Advisory team, Jason looks to share his experience with practitioners around the world.

This episode explores "obsolescence as a terrible disease in IT" and how important it is to both "run the business and change it at the same time" in an industry that usually evolves at a fast pace, while balancing their customer's needs to stay solidly reliable, as Angeles Blanco puts it. She is the Global Product Owner of Enterprise Service Management at Santander Global Tech, which serves the global IT projects of Grupo Santander, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Not only she is quite a consummate professional, she is also a Barça fan, which makes her my favorite guest so far :). Tina Turner - "The Best" was her choice of song and it's quite adequate for the conversation. This episode is sponsored by Flexera.

When it comes to leading large global projects, Bryant knows a thing or two about getting buy-in from leadership to implement transformational projects for managing IT assets around the world. We talk to him about the possibilities that SAM offers for efficiency and security, not just for audit protection. We also explore the differences between ITAM and SAM, and how he believes this industry is continuing to evolve on SaaS and Cloud. Bryant is a senior leader of Global Software Asset Management at P&G, but also held similar roles at Great American Insurance, Cintas and Toyota. You can find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryantcaldwell/ Flexera is a sponsor of this episode because they help leaders like Bryant find savings through SAM in Datacenter, Desktops, SaaS and Cloud so organizations can fuel other initiatives. Check them out at www.flexera.com

Carlos is one of those very active IT executives who is working on more projects that we can fit in the description here. He is a strategic advisor and Board member for 9 organizations, but we focused on asking him about his recent past as a Global CIO for The Hershey Company, yes, the one that makes the Kisses. He also occupied a couple of regional CIO offices at P&G, including Latin America, when he was based out of Caracas, Venezuela. I met Carlos at HITEC, which is an organization I was a member of, which has immense star power amongst their ranks of high tech executives that just so happen to be hispanic. In this interview we talk about digital transformation (he doesn't like that term), the value of data, the software supply chain and leadership advice for modern CIOs. Stay until the end to hear stories about what he calls "some of the happiest years of my life". This podcast is sponsored by Flexera, which helps inform IT so that leaders like Carlos can transform it. Find Carlos here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosamesquita/

Liz works at Mastercard in a position with the coolest title you've imagined. Think about leading a league of superheroes around the world that help the organization manage their IT assets to save money, reallocate investments to strategic priorities and reducing exposure to risk. She mixes a background in sourcing with a new way to organize IT Asset Management with great efforts to build community, get buy-in based on early and continuous success Find Liz on: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizreich/ Her choice of song brought us back to the late '80s. "Anything Tom Petty", she said, and we had to go with "I won't back down" from the album "Full Moon Fever

In this episode, a veteran IT rockstar from Switzerland chooses "Smoke on the Water" from Deep Purple as the background to talk about his experience in Software Asset Management. As a global Head of SAM for a Fortune 50 life sciences organizations, he has done a ton of good for our industry and inspired many colleagues, including a recent interest (and really good advice) on Free and Open Source when it comes to licensing and vulnerability risk management. Find Jochen at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochen-hagenlocher-ba2b574/ Flexera sponsors this podcast, learn more at Flexera.com. They are Gartner's MQ leaders for Software Asset Managers and recently released a great report on the State of IT Spend. Can't miss it!.

Our rockstars are also dot-connectors, community creators and story tellers. Bill Nelson, CEO and Chairman of the Global Resilience Federation (GRF) joins us to talk about cybersecurity communities created around the world to share information and improve the resilience of entire industries and verticals. Bill has travelled the planet carrying this community message and has countless anecdotes to share. Before joining the GRF, He led the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) with an impressive growth that led him to become a point of reference in the IT world, and was also an executive VP at NACHA, leading the evolution of electronic payments across institutions. He chose "I can get no satisfaction" from the Stones. A classic!/ Find Bill here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-nelson-6b4b174/ Flexera sponsors this podcast. To learn more about their Vulnerability Research, visit https://www.flexera.com/products/operations/software-vulnerability-research.html

We are very proud of what we are putting together for you in Rockin'IT, so Mark Delisi and Alejandro Lavie introduce the concept of this podcast to you, walk you through what to expect, and they also introduce themselves. Like Simon Sinek would say, "start with why". This is our "why", and our "what" and "who".