Unleash IT: A Podcast About Innovation in IT

John Cho is the Chief Technology Officer for Peraton, a leading mission capability integrator and transformative enterprise IT provider that delivers highly differentiated national security solutions and technologies. John has most recently served as the group CTO for Perspecta and has had similar roles within DXC Technology, HPE, and HP. Throughout his career, John has provided technology strategy for financial services, government, life sciences, healthcare, and media & entertainment customers. He is recognized as a futurist at Peraton, particularly around emerging technologies in enterprise-scale intelligent automation using software robotics. John's specialties include a drive for disruptive innovation and elegant solutions to complex problems. Of note, he also has a number of patents pending in analytics, computer vision, energy and robotics.

The market for SaaS tools has expanded dramatically in recent years. Alongside an accelerated delivery of applications in the cloud in large enterprises, there is now an estimated 11,000+ SaaS companies worldwide. SaaS revenue also exceeded $100 billion last year, and it's predicted that 80% of software will be SaaS by 2030. These estimates get bigger every year, and it should come as little surprise to listeners of Unleash IT that SaaS management and SaaS visibility are key concerns of IT and Business leaders throughout industries. Still, strategies and tools for SaaS management are not widely understood – a problem forcing many to rely on homegrown and ineffective solutions. For these reasons and more, I'm pleased be speaking today with LeanIX's very own Dusan Omercevic, VP of Product for the SaaS Management Platform — LeanIX's fully automated SaaS management solution which provides automated views of SaaS applications in an enterprise. Dusan recognized the great potential and challenges of SaaS many years ago, and in response, built and launched the SaaS Management Platform at Cleanshelf, a US and Slovenia-based group which he headed and founded until its acquisition by LeanIX earlier this year. Dusan's innovations are a perfect complement to LeanIX's offerings in Application Portfolio Management and are a necessary antidote to the problems CIOs and CFOs face when keeping track of a company's decentralized software tooling ecosystem. In addition, his previous engineering and product leadership roles at companies like Zemanta and Squrb make him especially qualified to share best practices and insights on SaaS today.

During this era defined by business transformation, companies must continually reinvent themselves in order to keep up with market trends. To support this transformation, enterprise architecture needs to transition beyond being purely technology-centric to being a business enabler. In this episode, host André Christ speaks with Karthik Ranganathan , CTO at SupportNinja, about how enterprise architecture is being redefined today. The two also discuss whether we're expecting too much from enterprise architects right now, what strategies to apply to a business capability map, and how to enable organizations to continuously transform. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can't see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

The advent of virtual care is changing the way healthcare is delivered, bringing a more holistic model to the fore. By connecting data points and services, healthcare providers are now able to make more meaningful contributions to the overall health journey of their patients. In this episode, host André Christ speaks with Claus Torp Jensen , Chief Innovation Officer at Teladoc Health , about how IT is enabling this revolutionary digital healthcare experience. They also talk about the different types of virtual care, the four ingredients of IT enablement, how IT can create more consumer-centric solutions, and bringing the same care to building products for internal users. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can't see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

The digital transformation of Planet Fitness has been an essential part of the business' current and future success; but driving that change early-on required some encouragement to see its benefit. Craig Miller, Chief Technology & Information Officer at Planet Fitness, joins the show to discuss how digital is changing the world of fitness. We talked about Craig's Background and Time at Planet Fitness, Planet Fitness Explained and It's Digital Maturity, Realizing Early Opportunities for the Digital Customer Member Experience, Convincing Stakeholders to Drive Digital Initiatives Forward, Hardware's Role in the Digital Transformation, Regulations For Data , and Expectations for 2022 & 2023. To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to the UnleashIT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

In today's dynamic tech landscape, change is the name of the game. Trends come and go and priorities constantly change. To give us a snapshot of the tech landscape facing CIOs and CTOs today, host André Christ speaks with Yousuf Khan, Partner at Ridge Ventures. Yousuf has over 20 years of experience as an operator and enterprise CIO and now works in venture capital. They discuss the top priorities of CIOs and CTOs today, how CIOs and CISOs can become better partners, moving from a project-centric mindset to a product-centric mindset, setting up resilient and future-proof architectures, the relationship between citizen developers and the IT organization, and what large enterprises can learn from scaleups. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can't see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

With only about 450 people to run 20+ asset management systems for about 65 lines of business, there’s never a dull moment in IT for local government — especially during a pivot from project-based to product-based. Recently on Unleash IT, we spoke with Stephen Heard, CTO at King County Department of Information Technology (KCIT), Washington, which encompasses the Seattle area. Stephen and host André Christ spoke together about how IT helped local government deliver core essential services to citizens while bearing responsibility for about 65 different lines of business in the 12th largest county in the United States. They also discussed digital transformation since March 2020, changes in consumer expectations, local government architecture, and an IT organization shift from project to product. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can’t see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

It’s a challenge to transition to the cloud under most circumstances, but the unique nature of manufacturing poses even more difficulties. A recent guest on Unleash IT is Arila Barnes, Chief Cloud Architect at Standard Industries, a company with a 140-year history in industrialism. Arila and host André Christ discussed, among many other things, how manufacturing can transition to the cloud without stopping the production line or while managing terabytes of data per week. They also spoke about the benefits of adopting the cloud in manufacturing, challenges of cloud adoption, data storage concerns, the optimal team for cloud adoption, and cloud technologies in manufacturing in the near future To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can’t see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

Peter High, president of Metis Strategy, has spent the past couple of years interviewing IT leaders in a variety of organizations for his podcast, Technovation. Through these conversations, he has gained a lot of insight into the IT challenges and trends facing CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs. He joined us on a recent episode of Unleash IT for a wide-ranging conversation on the topic. We covered some valuable topics in this episode, including how to make plans in a world of rapid change, the evolution of IT priorities, five aspects of digital transformation, and how cloud infrastructure benefits organizations. Check out Peter’s podcast, the Technovation Podcast, and his new book “Getting to Nimble”. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can’t see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

Traditional enterprise architecture gives the impression that documents and decisions are made in an ivory tower. Transformed EA, on the other hand, involves CIOs asking, “How can you deliver on my business outcomes?” In this episode of Unleash IT, we spoke with Kalpesh Sharma, Director and Principal Enterprise Architect at Capgemini, about IT transformation in the insurance industry. We talked about the operational resiliency of IT applications, business capability modelling for aligning strategic management goals, innovative new ways to sell insurance products by adopting open APIs, and the shift from project to product organizations. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website. Listening on a desktop and can’t see the links? Just search for Unleash IT in your favorite podcast player.

It’s generally better to start from scratch than to retrofit when it comes to enterprise architecture. But how do you build an entire EA setup from the ground up? In today’s episode, we speak with Tim Terry, Enterprise Architect at Sargento, about setting up an enterprise architecture practice. We talked about setting up enterprise architecture with a business outcomes approach, continuous digital transformation, the need for agility, and his advice to vendors about EA. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

Enterprise architecture requires understanding your customers to give them a competitive edge. In this episode of Unleash IT, host André Christ speaks with Christian Richter, LeanIX Senior Vice President of Customer Success. Christian shares his insights on EA trends among LeanIX customers including: How mapping the business strategy and objectives builds a bridge between the business and IT Why the LeanIX business transformation module helps EAs with long-term architecture roadmap planning The importance of an ecosystem approach using an integration API To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

When you think about cloud transformation and moving to a hybrid cloud environment, you have to focus on the value of what it means to undertake this enormous effort. In this episode, we interview Matt Lyteson, VP, CIO Global Infrastructure at IBM, about his perspective on improving the hybrid cloud experience for application developers and making it faster for operations teams to deploy the applications. We also discuss the impact on enterprise architecture when organizations consider their cloud migration strategy. Some of the things we discussed are: Priorities for CIOs about the cloud How moving to the cloud affects architecture Three criteria for cloudTo hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

We tend to think about EA as the guy in the Ivory Tower. But when we dive into what that role really means for implementing tech, the enterprise architect resolves into the person who ensures that technology is available to support the business needs. In this episode, we interview Jeffry Nimeroff, CIO at Zeta Global, about the role of the EA within the big picture of transition. In this episode, we discussed being product-focused with an engineering framework, the role of the EA during a transitional time, the talent search in 2020, and thinking outside the product management box. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

Privacy and security go hand-in-hand…but sometimes, they can contradict each other. How could this conflict influence organizations? In Episode 9 of #UnleashIT, we spoke with Anne Hardy, CISO at Talend, about how shifting attitudes towards data can affect privacy, security, and enterprise architecture in organizations.  A huge component of Anne’s role is communication. She knows exactly how to reassure her peers that their data is safe, teach them to be more conscious about data, and keep track of changing attitudes towards data management and governance. In this episode, we discussed how to quell people’s fears about data security, how to treat data like any other asset, what it really takes to shift to the cloud, and whether the 2020s will usher in the rebirth of the CIO. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

The relationship among data science, strategic IT roadmaps, and the world of enterprise architecture can be complex to say the least.  That’s why we asked Shawn Rogers, VP Analytics Strategy at TIBCO Software, about what it means for EAs and the C-suite to use data for the IT landscape.  In Episode 8 of #UnleashIT, we interview Shawn about all things data science. We discussed why data science is the sexiest job, signs that you need a data scientist, data organization and archiving, data organization and archiving, and how EA is driving digital transformation. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

Now that organizations have to pivot from 80% work from the office to 100% work from home, the need for an agile IT landscape is crucial.  With almost 70 offices worldwide, Collabera needed made sure that their employees, users, and clients had secure connectivity and uninterrupted access to their core business applications. Sounds pretty intense, right? Lucky for us, Viral Tripathi, Global CIO at Collabera, can give us some insights on how to elevate your IT without an office.  In Episode 7 of #UnleashIT, we interview Viral about how enterprise architects can adapt and scale to the newfound demands of working from home. We discussed four important topics: how enterprise architects can relate to their CIOs, emphasizing UX above UI, building a progressive IT organization, and pivoting to the cloud to ensure security. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

To say that the internet has exploded is a vast understatement. Today, we generate 22 exabytes in 4 hours — which was the size of the entire Internet in 2002.Yet we only use 5-10% of the data we collect. In Episode 6 of #UnleashIT, Jags Kandasamy, Co-founder and CEO at Latent AI, explained the future of data science and the explosion of IoT. We talked about: Making all devices intelligent — even offline. How to become a data hoarder Whether your org needs an AI ops role What constitutes true digital transformation A couple of resources we mentioned during the podcast: "HBR on not waiting to adopt AI" and "The Economist bills data as the new oil". To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

Leaders do not have the ability to predict the future, no matter how transformative their leadership might be. An innovative leader isn’t distinguished by perfection but by understanding the inherent contradictions of these 4 pillars of greatness: ideas, methods, technology, and people. In this episode, Jose Pires, Founder & CEO at Global Excellence & Innovation, sits down with Unleash IT host Claudine Bianchi, to discuss the attributes and strategies of transformative leadership.  We talked about key features of enduring organizations, practical applications for technology innovation, how CIOs can change culture, the need for value creation, collaborative leadership, and human relationship skills To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

As we try to sink into some sense of “normalcy” within the abnormal pandemic conditions we exist in, seasoned CIOs are peering ahead past COVID, and beyond the inevitable economic impacts to position their organizations with strength and agility.  Tim Crawford, CIO Strategic Advisor at AVOA, sits down with Unleash IT host, Claudine Bianchi, to share his thoughts on what that means for CIOs and enterprise architects everywhere. We talked about four main topics in this episode.  How the CIO role has been impacted by COVID, managing technology risk challenges in remote environments, data security, and compliance across the enterprise, and the role of the enterprise architect in today’s world. To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

Sue Bergamo, Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer at Episerver joins show host, Claudine Bianchi, to discuss the role of the CIO/CISO in a COVID-riddled operations environment, securing your business and not just relying on the inherent security of cloud services, impactful trends and some candid looks at what her C-Suite peers should do to invite a stronger partnership with IT to everyone’s benefit company wide. Sue represents not only the strength and stature of women in tech today, but personifies the emergence of C-level IT leaders from “geeks behind the scenes” to business strategists and influencers at the table. Whether you were ahead of the pack with a fully fleshed out business continuity plan or are still playing catch up, this interview will leave you armed with valuable IT and marketing leadership insights. We talked about many insightful topics this episode: Why cloud adoption still means securing your own environment, how CIOs and CISOs can successfully collaborate with the rest of the C-suite, challenges for women in the CIO space, Industry trends surrounding IoT and machine learning, and business continuity planning- Are you playing catch up?  To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.

As the world transitions from panic mode to a new normal, the IT community, and in particular, CIOs are faced with unprecedented challenges and “we need it done yesterday” directives. Sitting down with David Kenner, General Manager & Global Head CIO Strategy and Advisory of Wipro Ltd. led to some relevant insights into what it’s like to be in an IT role right now. How to transition your organization to a “business-anywhere model” is just the tip of the spear on this episode of Unleash IT.   We talked about the CIO’s role as a strategic partner in business planning; enterprise architecture’s place in the IT landscape; and, anxiously prioritizing digital transformation, thanks to Covid-19.   To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on our website.

James Rinaldi, Chief Information Technology Advisor, Jet Propulsion Laboratories joins us for a fascinating walk through his commanding career heading up IT for Marriott International, the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Food & Drug Administration, and JPL.   His current role at JPL gives James a new perspective, and he shares his projections for where the tech is headed, as well as some impactful leadership insights that CIOs both seasoned and new won’t want to miss.    We talked about where IT is heading for the 2025-2030 timeframe;  how the fluid nature of IT displays itself in an IT organizational structure; and, leadership reflection and advice for new CIOs.    To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on our website.

Claudine Bianchi, an industry leader in IT marketing and CMO at LeanIX debuts as the Host of Unleash IT- a brand new podcast developed to explore innovations in IT and the evolving business transformation of the IT community.     As the industry watches enterprises IT organizations adapt to function more like agile, software development operations, Unleash IT will feature people from all corners of the IT landscape, getting their perspectives on what their roles look like during this transformation and beyond.    We talked about the rapid transformation within the IT industry; how current and emerging tech influences business; and, 2020 being the decade of the CIO.   To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe to the Unleash IT Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on our website.