Podcasts about enterprise it

Meet Chris Brandt, the new host of IT Visionaries.In this special episode, outgoing host Albert Chou passes the mic to Chris—a seasoned Technology Strategist with a passion for connecting bold ideas to real business outcomes.Chris's career spans startups to global enterprises, from building an EMP-shielded data center deep underground to deploying 200PB HPC environments in Fintech. His expertise includes business strategy, IT operations, security, and network architecture.Outside of work, he enjoys life with his wife Julie, their two kids, Lily and Camden, and their dog, Hobs.Get to know the new voice behind IT Visionaries—and what's coming next. ---Produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

In this Brand Story episode, Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli sit down with Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer at ThreatLocker, to unpack how the company is reshaping endpoint security through a unique, control-first approach. Rob shares how ThreatLocker is challenging long-held assumptions about trust, visibility, and control in enterprise environments—and why the traditional “trust but verify” model is no longer good enough.From Default Permit to Default DenyThreatLocker's philosophy centers on a fundamental shift: moving from a default permit posture to a default deny stance. This approach, according to Rob, doesn't hinder operations—it creates boundaries that allow organizations to function safely and efficiently. It's not about locking systems down; it's about granting permissions with precision, so users can operate without even noticing security is present.Product Innovation Driven by Real FeedbackThe conversation highlights how customer input—and CEO Danny Jenkins' relentless presence at industry events—drives product development. New solutions like Web Control and Patch Management are designed as logical extensions of existing tools, allowing security teams to reduce risk without creating friction for end users. The addition of a software store, suggested by enterprise customers, gives users clarity on what's approved while reducing IT support tickets.Insights and the Detect DashboardRob also explains how ThreatLocker is unlocking the value of big data. With billions of data points collected every hour, their new Insights platform aggregates and analyzes cross-customer trends to better inform security decisions. Combined with the Detect Dashboard, teams now gain not only visibility but actionable intelligence—supported by polished visuals and streamlined workflows.More Than Just Tech—It's Peace of MindWhile the technology is impressive, Rob says the most rewarding feedback is simple: “ThreatLocker helps me sleep at night.” For many customers, that level of confidence is priceless. And in unexpected situations—like a blue-screen incident caused by third-party software—ThreatLocker has even been used to mitigate impacts in creative ways.Whether you're leading a global IT team or managing a growing MSP, this episode will make you think differently about how security fits into your operational strategy. Tune in to hear how ThreatLocker is turning bold ideas into real-world control.Learn more about ThreatLocker: https://itspm.ag/threatlocker-r974Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.Guest: Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer at ThreatLockerOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/threatlockerrob/ResourcesLearn more and catch more stories from ThreatLocker: https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/threatlockerAre you interested in telling your story?https://www.itspmagazine.com/telling-your-story

Jon Harding is the Senior Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer at Conair LLC, a multibillion-dollar consumer products company. In his role, he has driven major initiatives, including implementing a global SAP system and other eCommerce platforms. Before joining Conair, Jon held senior leadership IT roles at Kellogg Company, where he spearheaded enterprise system transformations across Europe and the US. In 2023, he was recognized as the New York CIO of the Year in the enterprise category.  In this episode… Enterprise IT leaders are often expected to maintain flawless systems while simultaneously driving innovation. As digital tools evolve, companies must adopt new technologies while avoiding disruption and risk. How can organizations balance innovation with stability and strategic alignment? When managing IT transformation at the enterprise level, veteran technology executive Jon Harding recommends aligning tech initiatives with clear business outcomes rather than chasing the latest trends. This requires initiating early cross-functional collaboration in tech planning, focusing on change management, stakeholder buy-in, and long-term thinking. To integrate AI efficiently, Jon suggests prioritizing high-ROI use cases like customer support automation and content creation while maintaining governance and budget control. In this week's episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant talks with Jon Harding, the Senior Vice President and Global CIO at Conair, about enterprise-level tech stack innovation and digital transformation. Jon shares change management strategies, vendor selection considerations, and the future of enterprise advisory work.

Set up and access your Cloud PCs from anywhere with a full Windows experience on any device using Windows 365. Whether you're working from a browser, the Windows app, or Windows 365 Link, your desktop, apps, and settings are always available—just like a traditional PC. As an admin, you can quickly provision and manage Cloud PCs for multiple users with Microsoft Intune. Scott Manchester, Windows Cloud Vice President, shows how easy it is to set up secure, scalable environments, ensure business continuity with built-in restore, and optimize performance with AI-powered insights. ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Windows 365 Cloud PC 00:51 - Benefits to Cloud PCs 02:32 - How to set it up 04:58 - Provisioning process 06:16 - Options to connect to Cloud PC 07:40 - Restore Cloud PC 08:52 - Backups for PC forensics 09:44 - Failover options 11:36 - Change Cloud PC specs 12:51 - Connect from personal devices 14:28 - Wrap up ► Link References Check out https://aka.ms/W365Docs ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft's official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. • Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries • Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog • Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: • Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics • Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ • Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ • Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics  

This episode dives into the fascinating evolution of server technology, from room-sized mainframes to today's AI-powered cloud computing. It explores the innovations, rivalries, and key players—IBM, Microsoft, Unix pioneers, and the rise of Linux—that shaped the industry. The discussion covers the transition from minicomputers to personal computing, the impact of open-source software, and the shift toward containerization, hybrid cloud, and AI-driven infrastructure. With a focus on the forces driving technological progress, this episode unpacks the past, present, and future of server technology and its role in digital transformation.

Generative AI is no longer just a playground for tech enthusiasts. Hosts Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead are joined by Amazon Web Services' Vice President, AI/ML Services & Infrastructure, Baskar Sridharan on this episode of Six Five On The Road at AWS re:Invent. They discuss the journey from proof-of-concept to full-scale production in enterprise IT with a focus on generative AI and strategic partnerships. Highlights Include: Great Expectations: The transition of generative AI applications from experimental stages to production and the evolving customer expectations of AI & data infrastructure Unified SageMaker: AWS is streamlining the journey from data to AI with their next-gen SageMaker platform, making it easier for businesses to build and deploy GenAI applications Cost Optimization: Model distillation and other innovations are making GenAI more affordable, with significant reductions in training and inference costs Data as a Differentiator: Your data is what makes your GenAI applications unique & AWS is providing powerful tools like Bedrock Knowledge Bases to help customers leverage data effectively Trust and Security: AWS is leading the way in responsible AI with its ISO 42001 certification, ensuring that your GenAI applications are built on a foundation of trust Real-world examples: How enterprise IT is leveraging AWS services to scale their generative AI applications effectively

As AI continues to take off – a talent gap persists. Host Dion Hinchcliffe is joined by Amazon Web Services' Leo LaBranche, Director, Global Business Innovation on this episode of Six Five On The Road at AWS re:Invent. They look at how AWS and its partners are reshaping the landscape of AI in enterprise IT through strategic cloud migration, modernization efforts and upskilling existing workforces. Get their take on: The change from lift-and-shift to modernization: Enterprises are increasingly re-architecting or building cloud-native applications The talent gap: Upskilling existing workforces is crucial, and AWS is investing heavily in training and career path development IT Outsourcing (ITO) and Application Outsourcing (AO) in today's business environment Rethinking commercial constructs: How AWS is working with partners to develop more flexible models that enable modernization The C-Suite Perspective: CIOs should seek partners who can deliver tangible business outcomes, not just billable hours. AI is the next frontier: AWS's approach to partnerships in enhancing cloud migration and modernization AI is transforming how workloads are migrated, modernized, and managed.

In this episode we are looking at how technology is enabling as close as possible to 100% up-time for the most mission-critical business operations. We'll be looking at how software and hardware are coming together to ensure the absolute pinnacle of reliability, and what it means for our organizations.Joining us to discuss is Casey Taylor, Vice President and General Manager of HPE NonStop.This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week we look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations and what we can learn from it. About this week's guest: Casey Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/getcaseytaylor/ Sources cited in this week's episode:TahawulTech report into the cost of IT downtime: https://www.tahawultech.com/insight/why-dns-exploits-continue-to-be-a-top-attack-vector-in-2024/ Siemens report into tech downtime in manufacturing: https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:3d606495-dbe0-43e4-80b1-d04e27ada920/dics-b10153-00-7600truecostofdowntime2022-144.pdf Octopus suckers mimicked for better denture grip: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/octopus-suckers-fix-dentures

In this episode we are looking at how technology is enabling as close as possible to 100% up-time for the most mission-critical business operations. We'll be looking at how software and hardware are coming together to ensure the absolute pinnacle of reliability, and what it means for our organizations.Joining us to discuss is Casey Taylor, Vice President and General Manager of HPE NonStop.This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week we look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations and what we can learn from it. About this week's guest: Casey Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/getcaseytaylor/ Sources cited in this week's episode:TahawulTech report into the cost of IT downtime: https://www.tahawultech.com/insight/why-dns-exploits-continue-to-be-a-top-attack-vector-in-2024/ Siemens report into tech downtime in manufacturing: https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:3d606495-dbe0-43e4-80b1-d04e27ada920/dics-b10153-00-7600truecostofdowntime2022-144.pdf Octopus suckers mimicked for better denture grip: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/octopus-suckers-fix-dentures

Generative AI is no longer just a playground for tech enthusiasts. Hosts Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead are joined by Amazon Web Services' VP AWS, Database & AI Leadership Baskar Sridharan on this episode of Six Five On The Road at AWS re:Invent. They discuss the journey from proof-of-concept to full-scale production in enterprise IT with a focus on generative AI and strategic partnerships. Highlights Include: Great Expectations: The transition of generative AI applications from experimental stages to production and the evolving customer expectations of AI & data infrastructure Unified SageMaker: AWS is streamlining the journey from data to AI with their next-gen SageMaker platform, making it easier for businesses to build and deploy GenAI applications Cost Optimization: Model distillation and other innovations are making GenAI more affordable, with significant reductions in training and inference costs Data as a Differentiator: Your data is what makes your GenAI applications unique & AWS is providing powerful tools like Bedrock Knowledge Bases to help customers leverage data effectively Trust and Security: AWS is leading the way in responsible AI with its ISO 42001 certification, ensuring that your GenAI applications are built on a foundation of trust Real-world examples: How enterprise IT is leveraging AWS services to scale their generative AI applications effectively  

In this episode we are looking at how technology is enabling as close as possible to 100% up-time for the most mission-critical business operations. We'll be looking at how software and hardware are coming together to ensure the absolute pinnacle of reliability, and what it means for our organizations.Joining us to discuss is Casey Taylor, Vice President and General Manager of HPE NonStop.This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week we look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations and what we can learn from it. About this week's guest: Casey Taylor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/getcaseytaylor/ Sources cited in this week's episode:TahawulTech report into the cost of IT downtime: https://www.tahawultech.com/insight/why-dns-exploits-continue-to-be-a-top-attack-vector-in-2024/ Siemens report into tech downtime in manufacturing: https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:3d606495-dbe0-43e4-80b1-d04e27ada920/dics-b10153-00-7600truecostofdowntime2022-144.pdf Octopus suckers mimicked for better denture grip: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/octopus-suckers-fix-dentures

How can you future-proof your collocation? Start by combining advanced AI hardware with global data center capabilities. On this episode of Six Five On The Road at SC24, hosts Keith Townsend and David Nicholson are joined by Lenovo's CMO Flynn Maloy and Digital Realty's Chief Executive of Alliances - Global Sales, Seamus Matthews for a conversation on how their collaboration addresses the increasing demand for #AIinfrastructure and sustainable data center solutions.  Watch the full video for more on

With an observability strategy, businesses can quickly cut through the noise to see key actionable insights. In this episode of The Main Scoop, Greg Lotko and Daniel Newman are joined by Brett Dawson, Principal Mainframe OS Systems Programmer at Fidelity Investments, to discuss observability and how it fits in with AI and hybrid IT strategies.

What is Agentic AI? Steven Dickens of Six Five Media is at BMC Connect to discuss BMC's pioneering introduction with BMC's Ryan Manning, Vice President of Product Management, and Josh Nichols, Sr. Manager Corporate Applications, at CoorsTek, Inc. to discuss Agenic AI and its role in revolutionizing how enterprises manage their IT work. Their discussion covers: The evolution and strategic importance of AI in enterprise IT management Insights into BMC's latest Agentic AI offerings and their unique benefits Case study insights from CoorsTek, Inc. on implementing BMC's Agentic AI solutions Future trends and predictions for AI in the enterprise IT space Best practices for businesses looking to leverage AI for IT management  

AI PC Insights and Strategies for CIOs! Join the Six Five On the Road for part three of our four-part series with Intel. Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman are joined by Intel's Todd Lewellen, VP & GM of PC Ecosystem, and Insight's Megan Amdahl, COO of North America for an in-depth look at how CIOs should navigate the emergence and integration of AI PCs within their organizations. This insightful discussion reveals the anticipated benefits, preparation strategies, and the balancing act between innovation and security that accompanies the adoption of AI PCs. Their conversation covers: The benefits Insight expects from the adoption of AI PCs Intel's support strategies for enterprises preparing for AI PC integration Insight's plans for merging AI PCs and software into their existing IT ecosystems Addressing AI-specific privacy and security concerns with AI PCs Strategies CIOs are employing to analyze costs and benefits for AI PC implementation  

In dieser Episode des AWS Cloud Horizont Podcasts spricht Oliver mit Uli Stärk, Leiter der Cloud-Plattformen und Enterprise IT bei der Deutschen Kreditbank (DKB). Uli gibt spannende Einblicke in die strategische Cloud-Transformation der DKB, einschließlich der Herausforderungen und Vorteile, die mit der Migration von einem eigenen Rechenzentrum in die Cloud einhergehen. Die beiden diskutieren, wie die DKB ihre IT-Infrastruktur modernisiert, um agiler und kosteneffizienter zu werden. Uli erklärt, warum die Entscheidung getroffen wurde, das Rechenzentrum der DKB abzuschalten und stattdessen auf cloudbasierte Lösungen zu setzen. Dabei beleuchtet er die Veränderungen in der Organisationsstruktur und Arbeitsweise der DKB, die erforderlich waren, um die Cloud-Strategie erfolgreich umzusetzen. Erfahren Sie mehr über die Bedeutung von Mitarbeiterentwicklung und den Einsatz moderner Technologien, um innovative, sichere und effiziente Bankdienstleistungen zu bieten. Eine inspirierende Episode für alle, die sich für Cloud-Transformation und IT-Strategien im Bankensektor interessieren.  

The summer lull has us reflecting on how the evolution of cloud computing has shaped the existing era that's trying to figure out AI. With a special guest introduction. SHOW: 848SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #848 TranscriptSHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW NOTES:WE HAVE A SPECIAL GUEST LEADING OFF THE SHOW - AFTER 13 YEARSWHAT PARTS OF THE CLOUD EVOLUTION HAVE LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR TODAY?[BAD] Shadow IT set Enterprise IT back 5-10 years, with the same responsibilities[GOOD] Technology experimentation has become the norm, from technologists to business leaders. [BAD] We still don't really know how to measure the cost or return (ROI) of technology spending.[GOOD] We have a new appreciation for the power of software and software development to change businesses and markets.[BAD] But we still haven't figured how to normalize great software development[GOOD] Open source communities (e.g. CNCF, etc.) provided a blueprint for bringing new innovation to the marketplace[BAD] We saw how long it took for Cloud to be disruptive, but now that valuations are so high, we haven't learned patience for new disruptions.[GOOD] The “cloud” way of doing things has laid the foundation for what might/will come next. FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @cloudcastpodInstagram: @cloudcastpodTikTok: @cloudcastpod

This insightful episode explains the secrets to expanding your website's success in other demographics. Discover how to unlock the potential of your online presence and achieve your goals.STEPHEN TYLER has over 30 years of experience in product development in a wide range of sectors, from GovTech to Energy to Enterprise IT management. As Chief Product and Technology Officer, Stephen leads vision, strategy, development, and delivery for MotionPoint's product and technology platform. Stephen aims to ensure MotionPoint is an industry-leading innovator in driving forward the state of the art in enterprise translation and localization, harnessing the new wave of AI technologies to drive superior outcomes for our customers. MotionPoint is a managed translation platform that delivers concierge-level, end-to-end translation to meet the needs of brands across desired languages and local markets. MotionPoint's concierge-level managed translation service has led the industry for 22 years.Learn more at Website: https://www.motionpoint.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenjtyler/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/motionpointcorporation "What an innovative conversation. As an IT professional, I did not know such a company existed to support businesses in translating their website to other markets. WOW. Thank you for sharing Stephen." IdaRemember to SUBSCRIBE so you don't miss "Information That You Can Use." Share Just Minding My Business with your family, friends, and colleagues. Engage with us by leaving a review or comment.  Your support keeps this podcast going and growing.Visit Just Minding My Business Media™ LLC at https://jmmbmediallc.com/ to learn how we can support you in getting more visibility on your products and services.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT I have been aware, forever, of an Australian digital signage software company called Ryarc, but through the years - and maybe a little because of the distances - I've never met or chatted with its founder and CEO Fergal Ó Ceallaigh. It's one of those submarine companies that kind of operates below the waterline and mostly out of sight, but Ryarc has been around for many, many years - and has done well despite its admitted marketing deficiencies, because the software is all about substance rather than sizzle. That has appealed to the IT people who get involved more and more these days in scaled screen projects. I was reminded of Ryarc during InfoComm, when an industry friend mentioned on a panel a technology he'd come across that would and could use broadcasting technology to move around digital signage content, instead of broadband internet or  mobile data networks. That sounded interesting, and I wanted to know more - as it sounded like satellite content distribution, but different. When I found out Ryarc was the company that was doing proof of concept trials in the U.S., I reached out to Fergal - now based in Seattle - and we had this chat. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Fergal, thank you for joining me. I've been aware of your company for a long time, but we've never actually spoken. For those people who don't know what you do, what the company does. Could you give me the elevator pitch?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Thanks for inviting me on. RYARC was founded as a digital signage application, with the starting point of their need for a digital signage platform that combined enterprise capabilities with knowledge worker-level skills by the operator. So this was in an era when digital signage was moving from what was a highly specialized and fairly rare thing, to something where at least from our perspective, the requirement was going to be that digital signage was just going to be another tool in the armory of an enterprise and, as such, it would require rather than a specialized team to operate at a knowledge worker level.  This goes back 20 years, right?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, it does. We divert a little bit into kind of my backstory. I worked for Microsoft in the 90s in Dublin and I had a fantastic time there. It was Microsoft where the Nvidia of the day, Windows 95 was coming out. So it was a fantastic place to work, and I couldn't have asked for a better start in my career, but I had an itch to try and start something of my own, and I happened upon digital signage. I could see the way trajectories were going in terms of connectivity. If you combine connectivity, availability, and cost & display, availability, and cost, two lines on a graph are going down and to the right and human labor is going up, and to the right. So those three factors combined to make it apparent to me that digital signage was going to be a thing. If it was going to be a thing, it needed software to go with it. So I quit Microsoft, and I did my Asian Odyssey backpack and thing, and I was actually writing the code for version one. I got so bored sitting on the beach in Thailand that I took to actually writing code. I'm serious. That is dysfunctional.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: I guess. Yeah, it was extraordinary. I'm not a beach guy, which is, another strange story for someone who ended up in Sydney for as long as he did, but, yeah, so it was with that desire to have a go with that.  Coming out of Microsoft, I felt I had a decent handle on usability and what's needed for a knowledge worker-level software product, by which I mean a product that it became. It seemed obvious to me that digital signage was going to become a bigger thing and as a result, it needed to be a kind of a productivity-type app rather than some highly specialized thing that you'd need a broadcast engineer. I think the early software that was available did come out of broadcast if I'm not mistaken. I think that was Scala's backstory.  So, I managed to get my hands on one of those. I can't remember exactly what year it was, but I was like, oh, okay, I can see how this works, but you're not going to be able to give this to Joe in marketing and ask him to start operating it. So that was the kind of genesis of why I chose that particular route and why I started writing code to get there. But it took a few years, from building the thing in my apartment to actually launching the company.  When did the business start, like when you were out there selling licenses and everything?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: I think the first license we sold was in 2006 but I had gone full-time about two years before that.  So you're pretty happy to start selling.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Oh, I was. But it's funny. I was working for a company that was bought by Match.com in Sydney, and that was an interesting place to work at the age I was at the time. But then, I met some folks there who are independently wealthy folks and the particular gentleman I approached is named Neil Gamble, a very well-known Grandi in the Australian business scene, South African guy, lovely man. But, a serious business guy who is running one of the largest software companies in Australia, such as they were back then. But he was chairman of the company I was working for, which was acquired by Match, and I pitched him my idea. I turned up in the boardroom office of this large software company at seven o'clock in the morning in Sydney. So I think it was 2003 or maybe 2004, it doesn't matter, but I pitched him the idea, and he said, “Fergal, that's brilliant, but fuck off and come back when you've got some customers.”  So, I duly fucked off and I think he ruminated on the idea for a while and came back to me a couple of months later. I was still working as a contractor at the time so I was fine. He said, “You know what? I've met some other people who are doing certain things in the retail space, and what you said clicked even more. So I'm going to take a swing on this”, and so he put in just enough money to basically pay for me and some other young guy to take the code from what was something I could, demonstrate to something that we could actually sell and the first customer was Zimmer if you've ever heard of Zimmer Frame?  No.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: The Zimmer frame is kind of like that. It's a mobility tool for people with generally older people. It's like a walking frame.  Unfortunately, maybe I'll learn about that soon enough, but not yet.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Not yet. May it be many more years, but we put the website up and boom, that was the first one, and then, out-of-home started to take off in Australia and had a pretty decent clip, compared to other markets, and Neil was very well connected in the Sydney business scene.  He started to open doors into places like I could get meetings now with people, and my experience of that, and again, maybe it's reflected in our website and our kind of general low-key profile, generally, I found it, if I could get in front of a customer and showed them the product, we tended to do well. It was the getting the customers part, which was the trickier part for us, but Neil was instrumental in that, and that's how we started.  Back then it was trickier for everybody.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, it was. Coming from an engineering background, I found it quite interesting, the whole scene at the time. What you had was advertising guys who were in the billboards business and suddenly there was, foist upon them this need to transform into an IT company, and that created a particular set of issues at the time, I think, where you had companies that whose experience and interaction with IT was about, “fix the printer” and “why is my email not working?” So they weren't tech companies in their DNA, they were marketing companies, and I tend to think of those years as like the cowboy years, by which I mean, there were an awful lot of platforms out there. What I tended to see, although not uniformly, was a thing I noticed is that oftentimes, the decision makers because they didn't have a mature IT section within their company, it wasn't a traditional thing for them. It wasn't integral to their business in the way it is now, you often had people making software decisions who didn't really have the experience and wherewithal to assess software and what that led to properly, and I think this is partly what led to the massive proliferation of solutions out there was that the thing with digital signage is that it's fairly straightforward to get a piece of software that will reliably get a flash file or a JPEG or a video from A to B. And when the software assessments were being done by people who didn't really have experience in enterprise software or edge management or remote device management, stuff like that, it was very easy for the smoke and mirrors guys to do well quickly, because no one was asking the boring questions about the plumbing. So that was something that took some adjustment for me with my background.  I think it's maybe part of what led to the proliferation of often these things. I don't want to denigrate or be down on the industry or anything, but there were a lot of solutions out there that were really something that someone had put together in response to a request from someone and then they came up with a logo, and said, we're a digital signage company, and often these solutions, if you ever got to peek behind, to look under the hood, as they say in North America, you'd be shocked at what was there, and I had several experiences in those early times of being Gesamt or someone with a fantastic sales pitch, which is something that no one would ever accuse us of.  I was thinking these guys don't know what they're doing anyway. Anyway, I think that's calmed down a good bit because you have to be sustainable and, eventually, if your stuff keeps falling over, that's going to, with the best sales pitch in the world, that's not going to last forever.  Yeah. I think there were a lot of companies, for a whole bunch of years, who signed on with a service provider, some sort of software company, and then three years later moved on to another one after they learned what they really needed and learned about things like device management and scalability and all that stuff. But first go around, they were attracted by the pretty pictures and the WYSIWYG UX and all that stuff, and as a consultant, I saw it first hand where I would say this thing is boring and ugly, like a Subaru, sorry, Subaru owners, but they're not the sexiest cars, but they just work, versus a Range Rover that looks sexy as hell, but it's going to be a nightmare.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, that was it. And I guess it was inevitable. If you looked at the factors feeding into that, you had an industry that was being dragged, kicking, and streaming into the world of it and you had a lot of people who saw an opportunity and needed to go quickly, but I couldn't believe some of the stuff that I saw pass muster, and I was because sometimes I get a peek under the hood and it was literally, The wizard of Oz, they're furiously pulling levers to keep the thing up. But we learned, I think, that the company that was the first major out-of-home company we thought was iCorp.  Australian company.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: That's right, and they were also based in Sydney, and so we, very quickly, felt their pain when things would go wrong and that was an excellent kind of learning curve for us. But what helped embed in the company was this engineering mantra that we had, which was, if it can be avoided, never have the software operate In a manner where if a truck roll can be avoided, it's not avoided.  There's this focus for us on remote manageability so it's different. I know some people in the early days tried to use browsers for digital signage, but that failed for reasons that we don't need to get into, but when there's a huge difference between an application and this even goes all the way up to major, big sticker stuff like Microsoft, an application which leaks memory or does something like that and, yeah, it's annoying when you have to kill the browser and restart it, after a few hours, which used to be the case a while ago, but that kind of level of tolerance for unattended execution, you could see it didn't exist.  It's different if the program falls over and you ring Mark in IT, and he says, yeah, just reboot the machine. But if you've got three-quarters of a million-dollar screen in an airport, that's a really expensive proposition and the failure is immediately public and embarrassing. That helps embed for us that learning experience we had with out-of-home, of the importance of just reliability at the edge and going on from reliability to manageability. So we spent a lot of time finding bugs in Microsoft Core DLLs, that's just through the usage scenarios we had, they just weren't common enough even for Microsoft to have identified some of these issues with things that will leak a little bit every time they're used. It's a software term. If the software isn't carefully crafted every time it runs through a certain given set of routines, it can capture a bit of memory and then fail to release it, which isn't a problem if you're closing your laptop at the end of the day but if you're wanting to run 24/7 in twenty feet up in airside and an airport, it's a different proposition. So anyway, that was all a learning curve, but it helps embed for us this fanatical focus on stability and manageability.  You talked about the people in the meetings in the early days, the visual merchandisers and people from the marketing department, business communicators, those kinds of people, but that's changed, right? The people across the table now, quite often, are IT people.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, they are, and I think that's just an inevitable consequence of the pain of failure to not do that. It was like Mad Man so the whole focus was on the flashiness of the advertising and the creativity and all that, whether it's on a billboard or TV or whatever. But now they were in a new world where boring stuff like Enterprise IT management was crucial, a factor in their ability to succeed. It was cruel as well because of any failures they had. If you're even running a service and your website goes down, maybe some people would notice, maybe someone won't, but if you've got a big screen downtown, and then your customer is there showing his friends or their customers, say, look, check out our ad down in some public place when it goes wrong, it's really bad because it's so visible, so those two things are combined. So I guess they had to learn quickly and yes, I think it's certainly, it's no longer the situation where you've got someone from Marketing making IT decisions.  So describing your product mix or suite now, what would it be, and is there a particular market that you focus on? Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah. I remember before I started the company I read how to write a business plan, and one of the things was identifying your customer, and I thought, wow, there are so many, anybody who wants to display a message somewhere publicly… Anybody with money.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah. That was the prerequisite. Going back to what I was referring to with the learning curve in the early days, it became apparent to me that there's only so much gilding of the lily you can do in terms of the content management side. I sometimes bristle when we get described as a CMS, because really most of the value of what we do is it's fuller than that. Content management is its raison d'etre, but it needs to do an awful lot of other stuff, and I always believed that for us, that was a strength of ours in our kind of relentless focus on manageability and Edge device management. I saw it just again, through the growing pains of helping an out-of-home company get through the early days of it. That's really where we needed to focus on managing the device and just being absolutely bomb-proof when it came to reliability.  What that has led to, I would say organically is: so are we a digital signage company? We are, but we're other things too. So what this hundred of man years of effort, of the device management side and the remote manageability side of things, we have customers now, who don't use us for digital signage at all. They're using us as a remote management platform for devices, and that has led us, over more recent years, probably since the time I moved from Sydney to the West Coast here into IoT, into Edge AI, into sensor management, and device management.  So I guess what I'm trying to say is what started as an organic reaction to needing remote manageability and not saying to your customer, yeah, you have to fork out an extra 15 bucks a month brand point for some other tool that's going to help you manage the device. That led to that side of the application becoming so developed that it could stand on its own even for folks who didn't need digital signage. So we're on lots and lots of things, where we're not controlling the screen, but rather they're using us as the plumbing, right? For example, for AI and stuff like that. It can identify a Coke can versus a Pepsi can or whatever it might be. But how do you deploy that model to 16,000 different endpoints and how do you collect information at the edge about how you do AB testing? How do you manage the versioning of AI models at the edge? All that kind of stuff. So there's lots of sleep-inducing, boring, but absolutely critical stuff where the product focuses. And yeah, that's on device management, and we're also used to deploying other kiosk-style applications. So the person interacting with the device could be a piece of software running there. It doesn't matter what it is, but it's RYARC that is forming the plumbing that enables all that to work and go together.  Back at Infocomm, a few weeks ago, I hosted a little discussion panel where we talked with three people, both attendees, and executives, about what they saw and everything else, and I asked one of the guys who is actually from an LED company. What he saw that he thought was interesting, I thought he would talk about some other LED product or whatever, but he started going on about this idea that you could use datacasting to distribute content, and he bumped into a company that was doing that, and described it, and I thought, that's interesting but I'm not sure who he's talking about. So I asked him after the fact, who was that company? Eventually came around that it was RYARK. I thought, oh, interesting!!! Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Those guys are still around?  There was that too because I don't bump into your name very often, but can you explain what he was talking about this whole idea of ATSC and using datacasting to move content around?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, sure. The ATSC thing, so the whole TV industry is they've gotten together and they're pushing the ability of the traditional broadcast channels to be able to carry data. The ability to push data across has been around for quite a while.  Yeah, it happened when when TVs went from analog to digital, right? Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Right, but the ATSC 3. 0 upgrade, which was the thing that was being marketed and pushed, just greatly expanded the ability and the bandwidth available to push data across. Again, I think this is likely to be limited in some respects globally because of the ubiquity and cheapness of being able to push data across cellular, right? So in other areas, cellular is the cheapest chip, right? If you go to places like Korea or India or Singapore or countries that have recently developed, they tend to get saturated with cellular very quickly. The situation in the United States is that cellular data is significantly expensive compared to the rest of the world. Canada, it's the same story, right? What pertains in North America is a situation where it is so expensive that alternatives are becoming more attractive. Anyway, that's not really a signal to what ATSC three is all about, but essentially, working with some of the hardware and software providers in the broadcast industry. We've been able to plug into the broadcasting software and hardware side of things such that in addition to using our software, you can use our cloud service or install our software on your own infrastructure if you want to do that. But in this case, in addition to publishing it to the cloud, which is what happens when you create campaigns and do that kind of thing, we can also add another pipe to the mix, and that pipe is the broadcasting station. So when someone clicks the publish button, it's seamless from the user's perspective. But if it's set up in such a way, in addition to pushing stuff to the cloud and having it dribble down over cellular that way, we can also have these files broadcast. So that's a kind of one-to-many, very effective way of getting data across that doesn't require large bandwidth bills. We've worked with some companies with large numbers of devices. It was another example of us learning by doing, where their cellular data bills were a huge factor. So, we worked pretty intensely to make the handshake and everything else in our software super parsimonious. I think with 20 megs a month, I think what the chatter that our software has in maintaining connectivity with the server. So we worked relentlessly and got that down.  But anyway, that's all to show how much of a factor the data cost is, and that's that was the impetus that led to wanting to see if we can offer customers a much cheaper way of getting data across and it works seamlessly. We had a working example at that show at Infocomm. I wasn't there, but I think it was an EV station or something like that, which would allow them to do all the heavy lifting so that they've got video and stuff like that. You can push that over the air. So what's at the far end of it? Is there a receiver or special hardware?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, TV tuner.  It's like a cable box.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: What we've been working on over the past year is ensuring that our software can run on these tuners. So you've got the prospect now of not having to buy an ARM or an X86 chip and put it in a computer running Windows in the back at the back of the TV, but we can squeeze our stuff now onto many of these tuner devices. So you have a small but capable box, that started life as a tuner, but we can have our software running on there. That's a big step in terms of cost-per-unit reduction.  For customers, the main difficulty, I think, with the ATSC 3.0 thing is that it's very easy to go to a Verizon or whomever and be able to estimate what your data cost is going to be. If I need to push across three gigs a month to 11,000 devices. I can work out how much that's gonna cost me. The data cost element in the broadcast space isn't quite as commoditized yet. So there's still some ambiguity there and, perhaps, lack of clarity, and I think the cellular companies are awake to this too. It has the potential to eat into or take up a lot of the enterprise pushing off large amounts of data, and there are many industries that can use that, but digital signage is certainly one of them. This is reminiscent of the late 2000s or mid-to-late 2000s with satellite and multicasting through satellite.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Oh, yes, I remember that.  Is this the same idea, or is this different?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: The similarity I suppose would be in its one-way communications and you need a back channel to be able to do the other stuff. So you still do with this?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: You can deploy with just broadcast, so we could get the software running so that there's zero coming back. The obvious thing with that is that you don't know if a meteor struck the sign, right? But it is similar to satellites in that it's one-way. One of the things that we do actually—I don't know if we know—is we do a lot of in-store music. So we use the CMS side of our product suite to organize what is essentially a radio station template and the thing about audio is you can get away with having six ads running for a week on a sign, right? But if you play three Alton John and five others in a retail environment, the staff in the shop, they'll climb ladders to rip the speakers out of the roof because it'll drive them crazy and that's understandable. So ironically, MP3s are fairly small, but you need thousands and thousands of them. So we often found, for the in-store audio deployments we were doing, we had to work with that. We did Woolworths in Australia, which was the largest retailer, I'm not sure if they are anymore, but they're one of the big two there, and we did all their in-store music for years and that was all via satellite, which was really painful actually. But this seems to be working. It's a lot easier and it's a lot better as you would expect, it's nearly 20 years down the line from that.  So is it the same feed, so to speak, the same set of files that you're sending to everybody, or can it be addressable by location, setting different things? Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, we've done some work on that. I can't get too deep into the way our product works because most people won't be familiar with it, but essentially, in our software, we've got this concept called a channel and a channel is an abstract entity that represents an endpoint somewhere or multiple endpoints. We have an engine that will categorize those things.  Let's say you want a national rollout. Now like a lot of other things in the United States, the broadcast market is really quite fragmented. It's not like the UK or Europe, where you've got a single national broadcast or a few commercials and you can go live everywhere. You've got a real kind of mix right across the country.  So obviously you don't want to be pushing, essentially what I'm getting into here is that we know where the data needs to get up. So there's a layer in the software that will go, okay, you need to go to station X, you need to go to station Y and I guess broadcast, but once it just gets pushed out, right? And it's the same kind of files, and again, from the user's perspective, when they're using our software, if it's being set up and configured in the back, in the backend to utilize ATSC 3.0 broadcasts that all happen seamlessly under the hood. So they're just clicking a publish button, and in the case of where they use an ATSC 3.0, instead of it just going to the cloud, it's also going to the broadcast station where we work with the some of the ATSC 3.0 technology companies, goes into their queue and then gets broadcast out and then it goes down to the tuner and then we're sitting on the tuner too, so we can watch the files come in and do whatever assembly and decryption that we need to do, at the edge and playback. So is this something that could be done or are you supporting active networks that are now using this?  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: They are all at the POC stage. I alluded earlier to it being early days as well from the people wanting to utilize this, I think the industry is still working out how to package this and sell it. If they're successful at that and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be, it'll be great for North American enterprise because there's finally a competitor out there to cellular. I don't know what the word is, a triopoly? But yeah, the situation, that a reason why data is so expensive in North America. We could talk for a very long time. We'll probably have to do this again at some point, but that was super interesting and great to finally meet you.  Fergal Ó Ceallaigh: Yeah, I'm happy to talk, and I'm happy to do it again if you think there's more interesting stuff we can chat about. I am probably at risk there doing a lot of reminiscing, but, I feel entitled to that now. I've been in the industry for a while.  Exactly. All right. Thank you. 

(Disclaimer: erstellt mit Chat GPT)

On this episode of On The Road at Pure//Accelerate 2024, we are joined by Pure Storage's Prakash Darji and Shawn Hansen, GM Digital Experience Business Unit and GM Core Platforms, respectively, for a conversation on Pure Storage's latest digital experience initiatives, storage solutions, and AI strategies. Their discussion covers: Insights into Pure Storage's latest digital experience initiatives The impact of evolving storage technologies on enterprise IT strategies Pure Storage's approach to sustainability in data management Challenges and solutions in current data storage trends The future of data storage and Pure Storage's roadmap Learn more at Pure Storage.

Guest Bio: Mark Schwartz joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist and Evangelist in July 2017. In this role, Mark works with enterprise technology executives to share experiences and strategies for how the cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers. Mark has extensive experience as an IT leader in the government, private sector, and the nonprofit world, and with organizations ranging from startup to large. Prior to joining AWS, he was CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (in the Department of Homeland Security), where he led a large digital transformation effort, moving the agency to the cloud, introducing and refining DevOps and Agile techniques, and adopting user-centric design approaches. From his work at USCIS, he developed a reputation for leading transformation in organizations that are resistant to change, obsessed with security, subject to considerable regulation and oversight, and deeply bureaucratic. Before USCIS, Mark was CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, a leader in global youth exchange programs, and CEO of a software company. Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value , A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, War, Peace and IT and The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark speaks at conferences internationally on such subjects as DevOps, Leading Change, Driving Innovation in IT, and Managing Agility in Bureaucratic Organizations. He has been recognized as a Computerworld Premier IT Leader and received awards for Leadership in Technology Innovation, the Federal 100 IT Leaders, and a CIO Magazine 100 award. Mark has both a BS and MA degree from Yale University, and an MBA from Wharton.   Social Media/ Website: Mark's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/innovativecio Mark's AWS Executive Insights page with links to all his blogs posts and books https://aws.amazon.com/ar/executive-insights/enterprise-strategists/mark-schwartz/  Books/ Resources: The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy: Digital Transformation with the Monkey, the Razor and the Sumo Wrestler by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delicate-Art-Bureaucracy-Transformation-Wrestler-ebook/dp/B086XM4WCK/ The Art of Business Value by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Business-Value-Mark-Schwartz/dp/1942788045 A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seat-Table-Leadership-Age-Agility/dp/1942788118/ War, Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Peace-Business-Leadership-Technology/dp/1942788711 Reaching Cloud Velocity: A Leader's Guide to Success in the AWS Cloud by Jonathan Allen et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reaching-Cloud-Velocity-Leaders-Success/dp/B086PTDP51 Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT by Stephen Orban https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ahead-Cloud-Practices-Navigating-Enterprise-ebook/dp/B07BYQTGJ7 Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineers-Victory-Problem-Solvers-Turned-ebook/dp/B00ADNPCC0 The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-Devops-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290/ The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unicorn-Project-Disruption-Redshirts-Overthrowing/dp/1942788762   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku:  Mark, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. Mark Schwartz: Thank you, my pleasure. Ula Ojiaku: Great. Now let's start with you know, the question I usually ask my guests: who's Mark? What makes him tick? Mark Schwartz:  And they can answer that question. It's not a hard one. where to start? Um, you know, I always enjoy my work. That's a thing about me. I like to think that people have fun working with me because I tend to laugh a lot. And even you know, when the work is boring, I find ways to make it interesting. I just enjoy doing things and accomplishing things. I think if we're going to talk about my books, and some of the things I've done later, an important thing to realize is that, I started out, you know, when I went, when I was in high school, when I went to college, I was pretty sure I wanted to study computer science and get involved with these computer things. But when I was actually studying, I realized there were all these other interesting areas, I'm just, you know, endlessly curious. And so, I wound up studying all kinds of other things, in addition. And the result was that when I finished college, I decided to go to graduate school in philosophy. And I spent a few years getting a master's degree in philosophy. And the fact that I'm curious about so many things and read so many different things, I think it enters into a lot of what I do. I like to pull analogies from non-IT related fields and, and, and I'll call upon all the things I've learned in all sorts of different areas, as I'm writing and speaking and working. Ula Ojiaku:  It shines through in your book, definitely. Mark Schwartz:  Yes, I think it does. That's partly an explanation for what you see in my books. I think, um, you know, I sometimes say that I have trouble reading business books generally. Because I kind of find them boring. They tend to make the same point over and over again, and to be very just so one directional, you know, just on the same subject, and it's a little bit odd because in every other subject, the books tend to refer to other books in other fields and there's this extra dimension and that helps you understand what the author is getting at. But in business books, they, you know, aside from having a quote now and then from a famous leader or something, they don't tend to do that, they don't, they don't sort of call upon the whole history of literature and writing. And so, I have a little bit of fun in writing my books in trying to see if I can add an extra dimension just by reference and by bringing in other things that are a little bit orthogonal to the subject matter. Ula Ojiaku:  And that kind of, you know, brings home the point that life isn't black and white. It's actually a complex or a complex kind of, you know, maze and of different disciplines, different ideologies and different viewpoints that make it what it is really. Mark Schwartz:  Yeah well, of course, that was part of the fun of my recent book on Bureaucracy. You know, because I know we all, we want to throw up when we encounter bureaucracy, you know, it disturbs us in so many ways. And one of the things I wanted to say in the book is, well, actually bureaucracy is all around you all the time in unexpected places and it usually doesn't drive you crazy, actually. Yeah... Ula Ojiaku:  Well, I have a lot of questions for you on your book, The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy, which is a catchy, catchy title on its own, very clever. But before we get to that, what do you do when you're not working? I know, you said you love work and you've also said that you're curious about so many things, which means that you read broadly - that's my interpretation. So, what do you do when you're not ‘working'? Mark Schwartz:  Yes, I read broadly, is one thing. In the past, I played the guitar a lot. And I don't quite as much lately. I don't know why, you know, I'll start doing it again. I'm sure at some point. But while I was living in San Francisco, I was actually playing in bars and coffee shops, I have a singer, who I performed with. Ula Ojiaku: Really? Wow! Mark Schwartz: And that was really fun. And then the other thing I do is travel, I've really traveled a lot. And, yeah, there was one period in my life where for about five years, I was bumming around the world with a backpack with you know, occasional returns to the States to work a little bit and make some money and then go traveling again. So, one of the joys of my current job is that, I get to do a lot of traveling to interesting places. Ula Ojiaku:  So, where would you say is your ideal getaway destination? Mark Schwartz:  Oh, let's see. I'm a big fan of Brazil. That, I have good friends there and it's really nice to see them and the atmosphere is always kind of fun there. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Mark Schwartz: I don't know what I've discovered so many places around the world that I've really loved being. I lived in Japan for a year and that is a place that I love to go to, especially for the food. Yeah, I like good food. But I don't know I've found so many places that made me feel like I'd like to spend more time there. And of course, you can't really spend more time everywhere. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting. So, let's, let's go to your book, “The Art of Delicate Bureaucracy”. What was the inspiration behind that book? Mark Schwartz:  Well, for all of my books, before I wrote, before I wrote them, I was thinking, ‘why hasn't anybody else written a book on this topic?' People don't write books on bureaucracy, at least not, you know, popular books, there are academic books on bureaucracy. And the same thing happened to me with my first book, “The Art of Business Value”, where I said to myself, we keep talking about business value in the IT world, like, is it obvious what it means? You know, what, why isn't anybody writing a book about what business value means? So, bureaucracy is one of those things. I have a lot of experience with it first of all, I was a CIO in a government agency. But it turns out, it's not just the government, whenever I tell people about my government experience, when I speak at a conference, people come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Oh, my company's just like that. I work for a financial services company; we have lots of bureaucracy'. And I work with a lot of people who are trying to pull off some sort of digital transformation, which is change on a big scale, that's changing traditional organizations on a big scale. And bureaucracy is always in their way because bureaucracy tends to resist change; it strongly tends to resist change. So, if you're doing a big change, then you're probably going to come up against it. So, I thought maybe with my experience as a bureaucrat, or at least experience in the big bureaucracy, I could give some pointers to people who are trying to cause big change, and yet are facing bureaucratic obstacles. And I can't imagine that there's any organization, at least any large organization that does not have bureaucratic obstacles to digital transformation. So, that got me started on it. And then as I started to think about bureaucracy and research it, I realized this is actually a really interesting topic. Ula Ojiaku:  You had an interesting introduction to the book. You said, “we are bureaucrats all.” Why that claim, you actually were saying, everyone is a bureaucrat, and I know you made a statement that's similar to that earlier on in this conversation - why? Mark Schwartz:  Well, of course, I have to define in the book, what I mean by bureaucracy and all that. And I follow the generally what's accepted as the academic definition. It mostly comes from the sociologist Max Vabre, who is writing around 1920. And, and he talks a lot about bureaucracy, and it's fairly complicated, but I simplify it in the book. Basically, what it comes down to is a bureaucracy is a way of organizing socially, that has rigid formal roles for people and rigid formal rules. And that's the essence of it. You know, bureaucracy, there are rules and they have to be applied uniformly to everybody. And there's a division of labor and you know, a hierarchy. So, it has rigid roles of people who have to sign off on things and approve things. So, with that is the definition. I think it, it connects with the very human tendency to try to structure things and constantly improve them and optimize them. So, if you find a good way of doing something, you tend to turn it into a rule, you know, this is the way it should be done from now on. Ula Ojiaku: Best practice! Mark Schwartz: It's the best practice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, we, in, social organization, we'd like people to be accountable or responsible for things. And we know that you can't hold somebody accountable unless they have authority to perform their role. So, when you put those things together, it's very natural for us to set up these organizational systems, where we assign roles to people, and give them authority, and we make rules that encapsulate the best way to do things. And, essentially, that's bureaucracy. So, bureaucracy, I find, is everywhere around us in one form or another. But it doesn't drive us crazy most of the time, so we don't notice it. Ula Ojiaku:  Maybe if it's serving us, then we wouldn't notice it. But… Mark Schwartz:  It does serve. And if you look at the cases where it does drive us crazy, they have certain things in common. And in the book, I say there are three characteristics that bureaucracies often take on which they don't need to, it's not part of the definition of bureaucracy, but they often take on these characteristics. And it's those three characteristics that are what drive us crazy. And so, the goal, ultimately is to eliminate those three characteristics or turn them into something else. Ula Ojiaku: I know that the listeners would be curious to know what the three characteristics of bureaucracy that drive us crazy are? Is that so or should I just tell them go buy the book? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, go buy the book! Well, let me tell you the three characteristics, and also their opposite, which is what we really want. So, the first characteristic that drives us crazy, I think, is that bureaucracies tend to be bloated instead of lean, that would be the opposite in my view. There's no reason why a bureaucracy has to be bloated and wasteful. It could be lean, but it's one of those things that bureaucracy tends to become. So that's the first one. The second one is that bureaucracies tend to petrify, as opposed to learning. So, when I say petrifies, I mean that the rules and the bureaucracy don't change, or don't change as often as they should, or don't change continuously, which is really what rules should do. Now, that's not necessarily a characteristic of bureaucracy, but the definition, the definition says the rules have to be applied rigorously. You know, once you have a rule, everybody has to follow it. But it doesn't say that the rules have to stay the same forever, they can change. The opposite of a petrified bureaucracy is a learning bureaucracy, where the rules are constantly adjusted, based on what the people in the organization learn. And there are plenty of good examples of learning bureaucracies out there. And your goal is to transform the one into the other, the petrified into the learning. The third is, bureaucracies tend to be coercive, rather than enabling. Coercive, meaning that they're there to control employee behavior, to force employees to behave in ways that otherwise they wouldn't want to. They tend to be ‘no' saying, they say ‘no', a lot. Your bureaucracy for your expense reporting policy in your company probably says, ‘no that expense is no good because X Y and Z.' There are plenty of examples of enabling bureaucracies, where the point is not to stop you from doing things or force you to do something you don't want to. But the bureaucracy provides a support structure, provide best practices, as you said, that help you do your job well. And there's no reason why bureaucracies can't do that. So, the three bad characteristics are bloat, coercion, and petrify. Ula Ojiaku: Okay, nice. So, it sounds like the way you've described bureaucracy, when you look at it from a positive slant, would it be the same thing as guardrails, putting guardrails in place, or giving people the right degree of freedom? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, that's exactly the idea. What I find is that guardrails and automation are ways of implementing bureaucracy, that lead to those three good characteristics rather than the bad ones. Let's say in software development, in DevOps, for example, it's a good idea to put guardrails, security guardrails, for example, around what people can do, and automated security tests and things like that. Because then the developers or the DevOps teams, they can go charging ahead full speed, knowing that they can't do anything wrong, you know, because the guardrails are there. And they get immediate feedback, if they do something that's going to put them outside the guardrails and they can just immediately fix it. So, it's very empowering for them, lets them move fast. And it also gets rid of that coercive element of you know, I write some code and then somebody comes in afterwards and says, ‘no, you can't deploy that'. That's annoying. Instead, I can run the security tests myself, as a developer, see if there's anything that's problematic, fix it right away if I want to, so it's all under my control. But the end result is still the same. The bureaucracy is still there. It's just automated and implemented as guardrails. Ula Ojiaku:  It's enabling, like you said before, instead of hindering. Mark Schwartz:  And it's lean, because it's very inefficient and wasteful, if you write some code, and then at the very end of the development process, somebody finds a security flaw. And now you have to remember what you were doing. And, you know, go back and relearn your code and make changes then, so that's wasteful, as opposed to lean. It's coercive, as opposed to enabling. And if you're good at doing these things, then you keep updating your guardrails and your security tests based on new security threats you learn about or new policies or whatever. So, you make a learning bureaucracy as well. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting. In the book as well, you said you want us to be calm, chaos monkeys, knights of Ockham, lean sumo wrestlers, very interesting oxymoron there. And you know, black belt experts, could you tell us more about those terms? Why did you use those terms? Mark Schwartz:  Because they made me laugh of course. Ula Ojiaku: Well, they made me laugh too. Mark Schwartz: So, I thought about what I learned about coping with bureaucracy, especially in my government job, but also from reading and from talking to other people. And I realized I had about, you know, 30 techniques for coping with bureaucracy, I call them plays. And I just grabbed those 30 techniques, but I thought about it, and I realized they divided into three. And the three, I could sort of associate with a personality, almost. You know, that these 10 plays are associated with this personality, these 10 plays are associated with this one. And I came up with these three personalities that I thought describe those plays. And the three personalities are the monkey, and the razor, and the sumo wrestler. And, you know, I think, I could stop right there, because it's probably obvious why I associate those with these plays, but I will go a little further. Ula Ojiaku: Please… Mark Schwartz: So, I realized that some of the things we did, the ones that I call the plays of the monkey, the way of the monkey, those things had to do with provoking. You know, monkeys are mischievous, provocative, and sometimes annoying. And a bunch of the techniques had to do with trying to be provocative. And the razor and I'll give you some examples in a minute. The razor, to me is all about being lean. It's about trimming away waste. And it also refers to the philosophical principle of Ockham's razor. Ockham was a medieval philosopher, right, William of Ockham. And he's generally credited with an idea that something like if you have a choice between a simple explanation, and a complicated explanation, you should prefer the simple one. That's not really what he said. But that's, that's what most people associated with him. That's the principle of Ockham's razor. And, and so it's called a principle of ontological parsimony, meaning, you shouldn't presuppose the existence of more things than you need to, in order to explain something. So, you know, don't make up nymphs. And you know, I don't know, water dryads and whatever's to explain something that you can equally just explain through simple physical laws. Ula Ojiaku:  Just saying, 'keep it simple...' Mark Schwartz:  Yeah, keep it simple, in a way, right? So that's called the principle of ontological parsimony. And I said, there's a similar principle of bureaucratic parsimony, which says that if you're trying to implement a control, and you can do it in a simple way, or you could do it in a really complicated way, do it a simple way. And so, it's a principle of leanness because I find that bureaucracies, when they get bloated, they have these really complicated wasteful ways of doing something that they could they could accomplish exactly the same thing, but in a simpler way. So that's the razor. And then a sumo wrestler. Well, Sumo is the sport where, you know, two massive people sort of bang into each other, right? And the goal is you want to push your opponent out of the ring, or you want to make them fall and touch the ground with something other than their feet. And if you can do either of those things, you win. So, if you're a big massive person and you're trying to accomplish those things, you might think that the best thing to do is charge your opponent and push really hard. But if your opponent then just either dodges or just is soft and lets you push, well, you're probably going to go flying out of the ring, right? So, one of the principles in Sumo is you want to use your opponent's strength against them. And if they push hard, now, go ahead, give them a little pull. And, you know, let them push even harder. And I realized that some of these techniques for overcoming bureaucracy have to do with using bureaucracy actually, on your side, you know, the using the strength of bureaucracy against it. So that's why the sumo wrestler. So, I'll give you examples now on each one, now that I've described my three personalities. So, the monkey does what is sometimes referred to as provoking and inspecting or provoking and observing, in parallel with the Agile principle of inspect and adapt. So, provoke and observe, what the monkey does is try something that's probably outside the rules, or at least is, you know, a borderline and watches what happens. So, an example where we use this is that we have these rules in Homeland Security that essentially said, if you were going to do an IT project, you have to produce 87 documents. And each document had a template, and you have to fill in each section of the template. And these documents would run to hundreds of pages. And so, using the persona of the monkey, let's say, we started to turn in these documents. But in each section of the template, we just wrote a one sentence, one sentence answer, you know, we're very short answer instead of writing pages and pages. And we wanted to see what would happen if we did that, because there was no rule that said, it had to be a really long answer. And eventually, we started to provoke even more, we just left out sections that we thought didn't make any sense for what we were doing. And all of this was unprecedented, you know, it caused a lot of fear. It turned out, and this sometimes happens, that the enforcers of this policy, they were happy when they said, “We've never wanted anybody to write these really long answers to these things, we have to read them. And you know, the intention wasn't to slow people down. As long as you're giving us the right information. That's all we need.” So, in this case, provoking just it turned out that we could defeat a bunch of bureaucracy there, we could, we could make things a lot leaner because nobody objected. But sometimes people do object. And if they do, then you learn exactly what the resistance is, who it is, is resisting, and that gives you valuable information, when you're trying to figure out how to overcome it. So that's the monkey. You know, let's try something a little playful and mischievous, and see what happens. The razor, well, that one follows also on my 87 documents, because we then set up an alternative way of doing things that had only 15 documents. And where there had been 13 gate reviews required for each project. We reduced it to two. And so, all we did, you know, we just used our little razor to trim away all the excess stuff that was in the bureaucratic requirements. And then we showed people that those 15 documents and those two gate reviews accomplished exactly the same thing as the 87 documents and the 13 gate reviews. That's the principle of the razor, that's how the razor works. The sumo wrestler, also a favorite of mine. So, we were trying to convince the bureaucracy to let us do DevOps and to be agile, and it was resisting. And people kept pointing to a policy that said, you can't do these things. And so, we wrote our own policy. And it was a very good bureaucratic policy looked exactly like every bureaucratic document out there. But it essentially said you must use DevOps and you must be agile on it, you know, it set up a perfect bureaucracy around that it's set up ways of checking to make sure everybody was using DevOps. And the theory behind it was the auditors when they came to audit us and said we were being naughty because we were doing DevOps. Their argument was we looked at the policy and we looked at what you're doing, and they were different. And that's the way auditing works. That was the, you know, GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and the Inspector General and all that. So, we figured if we had a policy that said you must do DevOps, and they audited us, well, they would actually be enforcing the policy, you know, they'd be criticizing any part of the organization that was not using DevOps and I thought that's great. So, this is how you use the strength of the bureaucracy against the bureaucracy or not really, against even, you know, it's perfectly good, perfect… Ula Ojiaku:  To help the bureaucracy yeah, to help them to improve, improve the organization. But thinking about the monkey though, being provocative and mischievous, do you think that there has to be an element of you know, relationship and trust in place first, before… you can't just you know… you're new, and you've just gotten through the door and you start being a monkey… you probably will be taken back to wherever you came from! What do you think? Mark Schwartz:  Well, it helps if you're giggling while you do it. But you know, I think the goal here is to figure out the right levers that are going to move things. And sometimes you do have to push a little bit hard, you know, you do need to take people out of their comfort zone. Usually, you want to do these things in a way that takes into account people's feelings, and you know, is likely to move them in the right direction, rather than making them dig in their heels. But I'll give you a couple of examples of Monkey tactics that are less comfortable for people. One is simply, you know, there's a status quo bias. It's a known, well-known cognitive bias; people tend to prefer the status quo or look the other way about it's failings and stuff. So often, when you're trying to make a change, people say, we're fine the way we are, you know, everything's okay. So, one of the things the monkey tries to do is, is to make it clear that the status quo is not acceptable, you know, to show people that it actually if they think about it, it's no good. And so, for example, when we decided to move to the cloud, instead of working in our DHS data center, people said - of course at the time it was a big concern, ‘was the cloud secure enough?' And in the persona of the monkey, the right response is, ‘are we secure enough now?' You know, ‘don't you realize that we're not happy with our security posture today?' ‘It's not like, the cloud has proved itself. I mean, we have to compare our security in the cloud versus our security in the data center. And yes, I'm very sure it'll be better in the cloud and here's why…' But you can't start from the assumption that you are fine right now. In general, when we're talking about the cloud, that's the situation. Companies are using their own data centers. And it's like, you know, we have to teach them that they can do better in the cloud. But the truth is that they're not happy in their own data centers, if they think about it, right? There are security issues, there are performance issues, there are cost issues. And they're aware of those issues, right, they just look the other way. And because they're comfortable with the status quo, so the monkey has to sort of shake people up and say, ‘It's not okay, what you're doing now!' Another example, and this is really harsh, and I wouldn't use it in most cases. But let's say that this was in Homeland Security. Let's say that Homeland Security is enforcing a very bureaucratic process that results in IT projects, taking five years instead of six months. And let's say, you know, the process is there on paper, the rules say, ‘Do this', the people are interpreting the rules in a way that makes things take five years. Sometimes, the monkey has to go to somebody who's in their way and say, ‘We are in the Department of Homeland Security, this IT project is going to make people more secure in the homeland. Are you comfortable with the fact that you are preventing people from being more secure for the next four and a half years, when we could…' You know, it's a matter of personalizing it. And that sometimes is what's necessary to get people to start thinking creatively about how they can change the bureaucracy. You know, ‘I hate to say it, but you're a murderer', you know, essentially is the message. It's a monkey message. And like I said, you know, it's not the preferred way to go about doing things. But if you have to, I mean, the lives of people are at stake, and you've got to find a way to get there. Ula Ojiaku:  So how can leaders because your book, The Art of Business Value, in your book, you said that “leaders create the language of the organization, and they set up incentives and define value in a way that elicits desired outcomes.” So, in essence, I understand that statement to mean that leaders set the tone, and you know, kind of create the environment for things to happen. So, how can leaders implement or apply bureaucracy in a way that enables an organization where, before it was seen as a hindrance, how can they do this? Mark Schwartz:  My thought process was, if we all agree, we're gonna try to maximize business value? How do we know what we mean by it? And I realized, a lot of Agile people, you know, people in our Agile and DevOps community, were being a little bit lazy. You know, they were thinking, ‘Oh, business value, you know, it's returns on investment, or, you know, it's up to the business (to define) what's business value.' The tech people just, you know, do the work of providing a solution. And to me, that's too lazy. If you're going to be agile, be it you have to be more proactive about making sure you're delivering business value. So, you have to understand what it means. You have to actually do the work of, you know, figuring out what it means. And what it means is not at all obvious. And, you know, you might think it has something to do with return on investment or shareholder value or something like that. But when you really closely examine it, that is not the right way to define it, when it comes to deciding what its efforts to prioritize and all that that's, you know, the case that the book makes, and I explain why that's true. Instead, I say you have to think of business value within the context of the business's strategy and its objectives as a business. There's no like, abstract, this has more business value than this because we calculated an ROI or something like that, that doesn't work reprioritizing. It's always asked within the context of a particular business strategy. And the business strategy is a direction from leadership. There might be input from everybody else, but ultimately, you have leaders in the organization who are deciding what the strategic objectives are. So, for example, if you are a traditional bank, or traditional financial services company, and you look around you and you see there are all these new FinTech companies that are disrupting the industry, and you're worried, well there are a lot of different ways you can respond to those disruptive FinTechs. And how you're going to choose to respond depends on your preferences, it depends on the situation of your company, in the industry, the history of your company, all of those things. But of the many ways you can respond to that disruption, you're going to choose one as the leader of your enterprise. Well, what adds business value is whatever supports that direction you choose to go. You can't think of business value outside of that direction, you know. That's the case that I make. So, leaders don't just set the tone and the culture there, they're actually setting strategic direction that determines what has business value. And then the people who are executing the agile teams have to take it upon themselves to make sure that whatever they're doing is going to add business value in that sense.   So, the role of leadership then becomes direction setting and visioning for the future and communicating the vision to the people who are working and providing feedback, you know, on whether things are actually adding business value or not . And that's the key responsibility. Now, in order to do that, in order to motivate people to deliver according to that idea of business value, there are certain techniques as a leader that you have to keep in mind, there are ways that you get people, you get a big organization to sort of follow you. And one of the ones that's become most important to me to think about after talking to a lot of leaders about how they're running their organizations, and what's working, is using middle management as a lever for accomplishing those things. So often, I'll talk to leaders of a business, and they'll say, our problem is the frozen middle, middle management is, you know, they're just not changing the way we want, we want to, we want to cause a big transformation, but middle management is getting in the way. And I tell them, ‘that's pretty much a myth.' You know, ‘that's not actually what's happening, let's look more closely at your organization.' Almost always, middle management is still trying to do the best they can, given the situation that they're in. And the way that you get them to align themselves behind the change is, you change their incentives or their role definition, or how you tell them what you're expecting from them, you don't say “change”, you know, and start doing X and Y, you change what success looks like for their position. And then they adapt to it by becoming engaged and finding ways to get there. So, there's almost always a leadership problem when you have that frozen middle effect. And, and I've seen it work really well that, you know, all of a sudden, you get this big leverage, because you just do a little bit of tweaking of role definitions, and bring everybody into solving the problem. And actually, there's an example, I love to talk about a history book, like I said before, I like to bring in other things, right? It's called the Engineers of Victory. And it's about World War Two, the Allies realized that they had to solve a set of problems, I think there was six or so problems. One of them was how do you land troops on a beach that's heavily defended? They realize they were just not going to be able to win the war until they could do that. But nobody knew how to do it. Because, you know, obviously, the bad guys are there on the beach, they're dug in, they put barbed wire everywhere, and mines, and you know, all this stuff. And it's just going to be a slaughter if you try to land on the beach. So, this book, Engineers of Victory, makes the case that what really won the war, was figuring out those solutions. And who was responsible for figuring out those solutions? It was middle management, basically. It was the, you know, within the structure of the army, it was the people not at the top who had big authority, you know, the generals, and it was not the troops themselves, because they weren't in a position to figure out these things. It was middle management that could see across different parts of the organization that could try things and see whether they worked or not, that, you know, essentially could run their own mini skunkworks projects. And eventually, they came up with the solutions to these problems. So, I think that's very encouraging for the role of middle management, you know, that a lot of problems have to be solved at that layer in order to pull off a transformation. And it really can be done. And this is a beautiful example of it. Ula Ojiaku:  It reminds me of, you know, my experience in a few transformation initiatives. So, the middle, the people who are termed to be in the frozen middle, are, like you said, they want to do what's best for the company, and they show up wanting to do their best work, but it's really about finding out, ‘Where do I fit in, (with) all this change that's happening?' You know, ‘if my role is going away, if the teams are going to be more empowered, that means I'm not telling them what to do, but then what do I do now?' So, the clarity of what the ‘New World' means for them, and what's in it for them, would help, you know, make them more effective. Mark Schwartz: And the mistake that's often made is to say to them, ‘start doing DevOps' or, you know, ‘start doing agile or something.' Because if you don't change the definition of success, or you don't change the incentives that, you know, then it's just, make work and they're going to resist it. You know, if you say your incentive is to get really fast feedback or you know, one of the other goals of DevOps, because of the following reasons, it helps the business this way, so let's try to reduce cycle time as much as possible for producing software. Okay, that's a change in the incentive, or the, you know, the definition of success, rather than just telling somebody you have to do DevOps, you know, read a book and figure it out. Ula Ojiaku:  So, what other books because you mentioned the Engineers of Victory, are there any other books you would recommend for the listener to go check out if they wanted to learn more about what we've talked about today? Mark Schwartz:  Well, I think, you know, obviously, my books referred to War and Peace by Tolstoy, Moby Dick, another great one. You know, you probably need to read my books to figure out why those are the right books to read and Engineers of Victory. As I said, I think that one's a great one. Within the field, there are some DevOps books that that I like a lot, of course, Gene Kim's books, The Phoenix Project, and now The Unicorn Project, the sequel to that. Because those are books that give you a feel for the motivation behind all the things that we do. The Mechanics of Things, there are plenty of books out there that help you learn the mechanics of how to do continuous integration and continuous delivery. And then the cloud is I think it's really transformative. You know, it's the cloud itself is a tremendous enabler. I work at AWS, of course but I'm not saying this because I work at AWS, it's more than I work at AWS because I believe these things. And my teammates have written some good books on the cloud. Reaching Cloud Velocity, for example, by Jonathan Allen and Thomas Blood is a great one for reading up on how the cloud can be transformative. But my other teammates, Gregor Hope, has written a number of books that are really good, Stephen Orban did A Head in the Cloud. So, I think those are all… should be at the top of people's reading lists. And then, of course, I recommend my books, because they make me laugh, and they might make you laugh, too. Ula Ojiaku:  Definitely made me laugh, but they've also given me things to think about from a new perspective. So, I totally agree. And so, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you? Mark Schwartz:  Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. If you're with a company that is an AWS customer, feel free to talk to your account manager, the sales team from AWS and ask them to put you in touch with me, is another easy way. LinkedIn is kind of where I organize my world from so find me there. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Sounds great. And any final words for the audience or for the listeners. Mark Schwartz:  Um, I, I have found that these things that you want to do to take advantage of the digital world, and I think we're all sort of pointing ourselves in that direction, there are these amazing things you can do in the digital world. They're sometimes challenging to get there, but it's very possible to get there. And one thing I've learned a lot at Amazon is the idea of working backwards, you know, you get that picture in your head for where you want to be and then you say to yourself, ‘I can get there. Let me work backwards and figure out what I have to do in order to get there.' And you might be wrong, you know, you should test hypotheses, you start moving in the right direction, and of course, correct as you need to. But you can do it with confidence that others are doing it and you can too no matter what your organization is, no matter how much you think you're a snowflake and you know different from every other organization. You can still do it. And with just some good intention and good thinking you can figure out how to how to get there. Ula Ojiaku:  Thank you so much, Mark. That was a great close for this conversation and again, I really appreciate your making the time for this interview. Thank you. Mark Schwartz: Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku: You're welcome.  

Mit unserem Gesprächspartner Erhard Simdorn, bis vor kurzem CIO beim Deutschen Fachverlag, unterhalten wir uns darüber, warum er nach 33 Jahren als CIO aufgehört hat und welche Ereignisse und Entwicklungen ihn beeindruckt haben. Dabei erzählt er nicht nur darüber, welche Technik ihn besonders begeistert und wie er sie für sich uns sein Unternehmen nutzbar gemacht ha. Wi sprechen auch darüber, wie sich die Enterprise IT und die Rolle des CIO aus seiner Sicht in den vergangenen Jahren gewandelt hat. Es hört sich in diese „Tour de Leben“ reinzuhören.

A Web3-based CBDC (central bank digital currency) is a solution that bridges the gap between traditional finance and the innovative world of Web3. This would not only create a secure and efficient way to make payments but would broaden the scope of inclusivity in the financial space. Carmelle Cadet, a beacon of innovation and Founder of EMTECH joins us today to share how her company is working to widen the adoption of blockchain technologies that enable financial inclusion. This week, episode 201 of the Tech Intersect™ Podcast is about unlocking financial access through Web3 CBDC.POWERED BY ADVANTAGE EVANS™ ACADEMY Unlock Crypto Secrets with Digital Money Demystified!

Hyperscale-inspired technology is everywhere in enterprise IT, from Kubernetes to S3 to OCP, but these technologies may not be applicable. This episode of On-Premise IT features Cloud Field Day 18 delegates Allyson Klein, Eric Wright, and Nathan Bennett discussing the cloud gap with Stephen Foskett. Looking at AI, we see a very different deployment model in hyperscale cloud as opposed to enterprise cloud, with this gap in technology, implementation, and talent widening. One impact of the needs of hyperscalers is an increased focus on sustainability, specifically energy consumption. We should also consider how the hyperscale use case distorts the development of technology, which is obvious in CXL, GPUs, and networking technologies. Looking at Cloud Field Day, we see that many of these companies are attempting to bridge this gap, connecting hyperscale cloud technology to the enterprise. This is what makes the event so interesting! © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Mind the Gap Between Hyperscale and Enterprise IT

Hyperscale-inspired technology is everywhere in enterprise IT, from Kubernetes to S3 to OCP, but these technologies may not be applicable. This episode of On-Premise IT features Cloud Field Day 18 delegates Allyson Klein, Eric Wright, and Nathan Bennett discussing the cloud gap with Stephen Foskett. Looking at AI, we see a very different deployment model in hyperscale cloud as opposed to enterprise cloud, with this gap in technology, implementation, and talent widening. One impact of the needs of hyperscalers is an increased focus on sustainability, specifically energy consumption. We should also consider how the hyperscale use case distorts the development of technology, which is obvious in CXL, GPUs, and networking technologies. Looking at Cloud Field Day, we see that many of these companies are attempting to bridge this gap, connecting hyperscale cloud technology to the enterprise. This is what makes the event so interesting! © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Mind the Gap Between Hyperscale and Enterprise IT

 In this episode of the Business Excelleration® Podcast, how can IT organizations most effectively vet, evaluate, and integrate AI into their enterprise? A discussion with Tammy Pinter (Practice Leader, Global IT Advisory), Ron Exler (Senior Research Director, Enterprise IT) and Todd Musgrove (Associate Principal, Technology Transformation). Part of a series of podcast episodes covering issues related to Generative AI. A complete list of show notes is available here for download.

The New Modular Data Center by Redivider w/ Tom Frazier BRT S04 EP31 (194) 8-6-2023   What We Learned This Week · Redivider Data centers are smaller modular size like a shipping container vs a standard data center which could be a huge warehouse The new data centers are mobile, eco friendly, carbon neutral, plus allow for both scale & cost savings ·    Technology will be used to help the growth of the smart city or cloud and edge computing services · The growing use of AI programs like ChatGPT impacts the water supply as the needed cooling for data centers is massive, and not sustainable long term ·  Re-divider: Focus on The Three P's, People, Planet, Profit     Guest: Tom Frazier - Co-Founder & CEO Tom Frazier, the co-founder and CEO of Redivider, boasts an impressive 25-year career, driving transformational and disruptive initiatives in future tech, B2B, and public sectors. Committed to prioritizing people, planet, and profits, Tom is devoted to spearheading innovation in the digital economy. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfrazier/      Meet Redivider and Tom Frazier     https://www.redivider.co/products/data-centers    Leading with People, Planet and Profits , Tom Frazier and Eric Appelblom are flipping the traditional enterprise data center on its head with hydrogen powered data centers—reducing carbon foot print and increasing jobs.  The companies advisory team is a shows who in environmental and ESG.     Tom has more than 20 years building infrastructure from Verizon to early data center infrastructure.  He is also a Pebblebee advisor.        Exclusively focused on the United States, Redivider is a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund investing in assets related to data center services and specialty computing like Bitcoin, AI, 5G and cloud edge.    About Us  Join Redivider on our mission to uplift humanity and revolutionize the datacenter industry through cutting-edge, sustainable edge computing solutions. We're committed to empowering your organization with unparalleled efficiency, security, and tailored technology, while embracing our core values of stakeholder capitalism, radical innovation, and prioritizing people and the planet. Together, let's shape a brighter, more connected future for all.    Data Center Solutions  Edge computing is the future, enhancing and complementing traditional data centers. To realize this future, innovations beyond conventional methods are necessary. We firmly believe that pre-fabricated modular facilities are the key to unlocking success for several domains.    Notes: Redivider Data Centers are smaller in module, size of a shipping container versus a standard data center which could be a huge warehouse   Technology will be used to help the growth of the smart city or cloud an edge computing services   The growing use of AI programs like ChatGPT impacts the water supply as the needed cooling for data centers is massive, 5 mil gallons of water are used per day, and 40% of that water is lost due to evaporation   Social impact of data centers in the tech industry, being outsourced by corporations to other corporations     Seg 1 The data center industry is enormous. The enterprise part of the business uses very large facilities, thank warehouse size. The data industry started in the 1970s, and by the 1980s it was growing fast.   Currently it is 3 to 5% of the worlds power consumption. 90% of the historical data was created in the past three years. It will be five times that size in the next five years.   Current capacity cannot keep up. The solution by re-divider is to make smaller modular facilities. This would be the size of a shipping container and could be delivered to a site.   You will have the ability to get online and up and running faster. This also tackles the second issue of data centers which is what is the sustainability and environmental impact over the long term.   Large data centers use 200 to 300 MW power first one Mac a lot for a small re-divider facility. Also it is not tied to the powered grid, which is dated, complex, and hard to fix.   There is a high legacy cost in the current data centers. I'll re-divider would need is on site power. The components are modular so you can increase size if needed. Re-divider builds and a prefab set up.   The traditional data factory would be a two-year construction project with lots of planning. Prefab David data center plus prefab power could be installed in 30 days.   Facilities are pushed strategically around the country. This is to enhance speed and performance. You need your computing power closer. Examples would be edge programs for the cloud. Re-divider would allow your data center to be right on site.   Seg 2 Tom's bio, he worked in university in mid 90s. Then he worked in security to find vulnerabilities in data centers.   Redivider allows more work from home and the need for data flexibility. Since the pandemic and people working from home there has been a volume of data shift it's not just during the day anymore, it's when needed. Data management is the next layer of the Internet.   There is huge global demand and need new solutions to satisfy this demand. Problem, power for the current data center comes from the grid with maybe 1 to 2% renewable energy.   Corporations will need to do two things going forward. Number one, high transparency and carbon use in accounting. Number two cleaner tech from the start, natural gas hydrogen or batteries.   UPS or uninterrupted power is what most companies need. There is a need to adjust strategies and control your ecosystem better.   Regarding current eco-friendly power sources, solar panels are not practical as you would need too many. Wind is OK but you must be near a wind power source. Another possibility is hydrogen.   2016 yard 286 MW being used. By 2030 it will be one terawatt. Can the grid operators keep up?   Seg 3 Re-divider is trying to solve the problem for the enterprise customer. You have companies now that need so much data, hyper scholars. need more cloud data centers. Social media and big companies like Facebook or TikTok have huge demand and still growing.   Re-divider was started in 2021 with a focus on people in the environment. What are the needs of humanity and the corporate directives.   Tom's partner Eric, had a history of working in the supply chain. Re-divider works with contractors to build the modular data centers.   They also work with a partnership with NZ around who create software platform for carbon accounting.   Enterprise IT currently has a very large carbon footprint. It is actually two times the size versa data center. How to think about sustainability and accountability of corporate data use.   The goal with re-divider is to be cost neutral on carbon with added benefit of strategic alignment. Re-divider gives more data capacity and also keeps projects and skills moving.   Corporations in the future will align incentives and costs. There are many companies investing in AI and will need more data and computing capacity going forward.   Also you see an IOT or Internet of things more and more sensors and small chips in products. Manufacturing multiple tech products and adding tech sensors into things like radios, TVs, cars.   Smart cities use sensors all around the city to collect data. There's always governance and legal concerns. The idea of smart cities is to map out the city better, traffic flow, to then grow the city appropriately.   Seg 4 Opportunity of re-divider to help with the sustainability of technology companies. Current data centers are allowed and physically placed outside cities and away from people. There is high noise pollution with the data center as well as the previous cooling and carbon issues discussed.   Re-divide our uses immersion cooling inside their data centers. Put the technology in fluid that conducts heat better, move called air in the computer and hot air at out. In a traditional data center you need huge air conditioners to call the hot air and move the air.   Redivide early could use data centers with other buildings and literally build underground. You could have prime on site data computing with low to no emissions.   There are no fans in a re-divider unit. The die electric fluid used where a rack of computer equipment is literally put in the fluid.   This gives a chance for more economic growth, especially if you build these data centers in opportunity zones. Many opportunity zones are having issues, the so-called food desert where there are no supermarkets there.   Potential to help the environment as well as the neighborhood. Re-dividers data centers could be installed in any environment, have high portability in last nights pollution.   Microsoft I actually pioneered the field of dielectric fluid by testing a capsule in the ocean. High cost initially but now the cost of come down substantially. Another use of bitcoin mining. Currently consumes a lot of power but the articles are a bit misleading on bitcoin.   Bitcoin mining is actually a fraction of the data center power. As the expression goes it's just the canary in the coal mine. Future of crypto mining could change with redivide our data centers.   Re-divider, focus on people in the planet. The Three P's, people planet profit.     Tech Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Tech   More - BRT Best of Tech: Best of AZ Tech Council BRT of Tech 2022 BRT S02 EP52 (99) 12-26-2021 – Tech for the Holidays – BRT    Thanks for Listening Please Subscribe to the Podcast   Business Roundtable with Matt Battaglia The show where Entrepreneurs, High Level Executives, Business Owners, and Investors come to share insight and ideas about the future of business. BRT 2.0 looks at the new trends in business, and how classic industries are evolving.  Common Topics Discussed: Business, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Stocks, Cannabis, Tech, Blockchain / Crypto, Real Estate, Legal, Sales, Charity, and more…  BRT Podcast Home Page: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/ ‘Best Of' BRT Podcast: Click Here BRT Podcast on Google: Click Here BRT Podcast on Spotify: Click Here                    More Info: https://www.economicknight.com/podcast-brt-home/ KFNX Info: https://1100kfnx.com/weekend-featured-shows/   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts, Guests and Speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent (or affiliates, members, managers, employees or partners), or any Station, Podcast Platform, Website or Social Media that this show may air on. 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Weather can have a big impact on specific wagers for sports bettors. How does the time of day affect NASCAR races? What about wind direction and speed for golf and football? Does the thinner air of the Rocky Mountains really impact baseball games at Coors Field? Mike Szvetitz from Front Page Bets joins the show and discusses how weather changes the game  — football, baseball, golf, auto racing, and more. We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Hello, once again, everybody, I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette. And welcome to Across the Sky, our national Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital operations in 77 locations across the country, including in my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my meteorologist colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago and Joe Martucci in Atlantic City at the Jersey Shore. Our colleague Kirsten Lang taking some time off in Tulsa to be with family, for a few weeks. Gentlemen, we've got a really good interview today. Our pal here in Richmond, Mike Szvetitz , who runs Front Page Betts. And we're going to talk about weather and gaming. The weather and gaming industry. I think most of us kind of know about about the football situation, but there are other aspects out there as well. Joe, you are an AC man. So so talk a little bit about what you know there. Well, you know, we're in the actually the capital of sports gaming. Fun fact, Sean, New Jersey actually has more sports gaming revenue than Nevada. And it might sound crazy, but the difference is in Nevada. And this might have changed recently by not sure. You can only bet in Nevada if you sign up for an account at the casino in New Jersey, you don't have to go to a casino. You just sign up on your phone wherever you are. Does it matter if you're in Cape May or in Sussex County? So we we are very ingrained in sports betting here. And New Jersey, of course, do so responsibly. I do some myself. I did pretty good with our March Madness, you know, biting I talk about is dodgeball is March Madness picks should followed mine I had UConn wedding the sign out a future bet on UConn. But it'll be a it's a it's a good episode Mike makes a good guy too and we're happy to have him leading the charge over at front page bets. And what was interesting for me is that we didn't limited to just baseball, football because that's what you kind of think about in the sports. You know, we do get a lot of interest in the betting world, but it was interesting to think about all the different sports that are impacted by weather. And we covered them all. I think I think we got through all we talked about golf, we talked about NASCAR, we talked about horse racing. And you. First, it doesn't hit you. But then you realize, man, weather has. Such an impact on so many different sports and betting, therefore. So this is a really fun episode. Yeah. So we're going to talk to Mike's event. It's about all those things here. I was really fascinated by the NASCAR stuff, the horse racing stuff, tennis, golf, all of that. That's up ahead with our conversation with Mike's that it's general manager and content director of Front Page Bets here at the Enterprises. Our guest this week is Mike Stead, its general manager and content director of front page Vets here at Lee Enterprises. That's our sports and betting portal, Educate, inform and of course, entertain sports fans from across the country, especially in this blossoming sports betting enterprise that is out there. Mike, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. MAN Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Awesome beer. So I think intuitively we understand that there is always going to be some kind of weather impact on a game, right? I know football comes to mind at first, but can you talk a little bit about some of the nuances that that aren't obvious to the to the casual observer? Could you speak to baseball first since that one might be even less obvious? Yeah, I think, you know, anytime you're playing outdoors, you know, you always got to take the weather in effect, as you guys you know, as you guys know, I mean, some of the most popular are and the most popular content on any of our websites here in the enterprises or even in your local TV market is the weather. When you know with what's going to do today our apps everybody's got the weather app. So then when you put sports into it, you're always are you know is it going to rain. How cool for just for the fan perspective right. Is it going to rain? How cold, How warm? You know, what time's the game? What what's going on with all that stuff. So it's so important. And then when you come in from a competitive perspective, from players to, you know, coaching in the way you game, the way you scheme and then, you know, and then what we do in sports betting, if you are going to place a bet, if you're if you're looking to wager on a game legally and now it's legal, it's legal across, you know, sports betting is legal and more than 30 states across the country, including Washington, D.C. So, you know, if you place a legal ban, you're looking and all that kind of stuff, you want to know, how can I get the best advantage? Right. So where is where is the best advantage? How can I how can I maximize what I know versus what what intangibles are out there in sports? We all know you can't predict. That's why, you know, sports, even even, you know, the underdogs have their day. But in sports betting particularly and in competition, you want to be able to control or at least know about everything that you can and can't control the weather. But if you know going in, how this is going to affect whether if you mentioned baseball, whether it's going to affect the ball fly at the pitching, you know, just kind of how cold or warm it is, all that stuff takes into account. Now, baseball is a little bit different. Football probably is has the most impact. The weather has the most impact, and football, just because you're putting the ball in the air a lot, kicking game planning, how hot, how cold, all has an affect on everybody across across the board. Baseball. It's a little bit different because there's not so much margin going on. There's not you know, you pitch, you hit, you catch. And and I think and I'm not trying to simplify baseball and saying it's less complicated, but I think the impacts on weather are fewer at a baseball game than they would be less than a football game. So but there are some things that do happen that can control that. But it's not so much almost who's going to win or lose because of the weather. It's more on the proposition bet, more of a player bet. How is this pitcher going to perform in the heat? How's this pitcher going to perform when it's raining? How's this batter going to perform at Coors Field in Colorado with thinner altitude versus in Miami, where it's really humid and moist? All the time? How is all that going to play an effect in the proposition bets? And those you know, for anybody who doesn't know what a prop bet is, it's a it's a proposition of a player or a team will do X win or lose. That's that's not a prop. And that's just the MONEYLINE or against the spread over under. You know how many points they'll score you know over this or 100 that. But a prop bet is, let's say, you know, Aaron Judge will hit two home runs tonight, plus or minus. You know, the odds are and if it's minus, you know, 100, that means for every hundred dollars, you bet you get that back. So -100, basically, you have to bet 100 to just stay even to get it to get 100 back. If it's plus. So if it's minus anything in the minus means it's pretty good. That probably going to happen. The odds are that it will happen. Anything in the plus means it's not as likely to happen. So, you know, and that's why you see a lot of these proposition bets at 1.5 instead of two home runs, it's 1.5. So you can't you get two homeruns you pushed. If you bet it's at 1.5 you over one, which is two obviously, or under which is, you know, one or less. So you look at those kind of bets in baseball and how the weather's going to affect you all right. So we're playing in Wrigley Field. The wind's blowing out. It's a day game. You're going to have a better, you know, opportunity to hit home runs versus if you're playing, let's say it at old Candlestick Park in San Francisco will wind swirls and you never know which way it's going to go. So all of that comes into effect, but it's not so much who will win or lose. Yes. And that that all depends. If you got a guy that hits five home runs, chances are that teams can win. But more for the proposition bet more for the player, individual bet, how they're going to perform in the weather and in that time in space. So we can talk a lot more about individual things like that. But overall, I think that's kind of how weather will affect baseball in particular. And, you know, obviously any outdoor sport, an indoor be that as it may, you know how much does the weather affect the indoor. Well there's there's been times where at hockey games weather has affected the ice and you know I remember what the Philly the fliers and I think it was the islanders back in the eighties in a playoff game it was so warm that the condensation was coming up from from from the ice. And it was almost like the fog bubble inside, you know, And, you know, times I remember even in Richmond, Virginia, there was a basketball game played at the old Richmond Coliseum right up the road from where we're at, from where I'm at, I'm at. And they had the ice underneath. They did clear the ice and the ice was too much condensation on the floor. They had to stop the game. I think it was Michigan and UVA. This was back in the in the eighties or nineties where they had to they couldn't play the game because the floor so slippery because the ice was coming coming up through the floorboards. So it happens on indoor events, just less likely, more so than outdoor. Hey, Mike, it's Joe here. And on behalf of everyone, stay in New Jersey. We just want to say you're welcome for having sports betting across the country. Here we were. You guys are the ones who really broke it open. Appreciate it. But. But do questions for a year. Yo, out of all the sports mess that are place, do we have a percentage or a number? How much is placed on baseball? And then my second question is talking about the weather. Right. And I have to imagine oddsmakers are factoring in this weather into play. But I see you know, I've seen a host of Twitter accounts that show where the value is in comparison to what the lines you know, what the lines are placed. As anecdotally, you know, you'd have to talk to a sportsbook to give you the breakdown of how much in every book is different right now since especially since mobile betting legalized where you don't have to go to Atlantic City anymore, you don't have to go to Vegas to place a legal bet. You could do it. You know, you could take your phone out. If you're in a legal state and and download an app, whether it's DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, MGM, you know, whatever it is. Even certain states have certain ones Bet365, which is legal in New Jersey and Virginia and Colorado, but nowhere else. So anyway, depending on where you are, you could sit from the comfort of your own home on your phone and place a bet which has increased betting across all sports. You know, we do know anecdotally, at least from doing this the last year, there's more. NFL is the most popular sport to bet. You know the Super Bowl and opening and opening weekend of the NFL are the two most bet days of the calendar year across the board. Now, baseball's a little bit more, I think more maybe more people per capita bet football, but baseball has a lot of you know, I guess it's almost more consistent betting. You know, you got guys that are betting and ladies who are betting on baseball prop bets. You know, every day you got 262 games a year. So probably, you know, pound for pound, that's probably more bets. But I think the popularity of football, college football, NFL, just because it's I think it's a little bit more mainstream for a lot of people to bet and and and it's more popular. You know baseball used to be America's pastime. I'm in the I'm in the camp where now football's America's pastime. But, you know, we will get into that that debate. But I think, you know, if you're betting on 162 games and you have 32, you know, NFL t excuse me, Major League Baseball teams or wherever we're at now, you know, you're going to have more bets per year, per game, Per season in baseball. But again, I think you're seeing more prop bets, more bets on strikeouts with this pitcher strikeout X number of players with this player hit X number of home runs rather than are the Phillies going to be, you know, the Mets tonight just because that money line and the run line is you know, it's it's it's negligible and you're you know, the value that you'll get by betting the Phillies to win is probably not as if you parlayed you know, how many home runs is Bryce Harper going to hit versus you know, how many strikeouts you know, Max. Charles Gosh, I'm sure anyway, I'm I'm not sure that goodness, I get like seven names popped into my head at one time. This is hard. This is. But yeah, so Scherzer strikes out X and Harper hits X, you're going to you can parlays those together and make more because the odds of both of those happening at the same time are less than if the Phillies would win. So all of that to be said. I think you know the the I guess the percentage of bets are what you also like to bet. Do you like to bet? Are you are you a better who just wants to, you know, watch the game and bet you know who's going to win because you get right then you've got a lot of like I think you know emotional ties to that. If you're a fan, you want your team to win. You might place place more bets on them to win versus how this player's going to do. So. It also depends on on what you like. Are you going to go are you going to live back to which the the influx of live betting. Now you can say on your phone and bet the next inning, third inning, how many outs, how many hits, how many strikeouts for both is this? You know, who's going to score first? What's a halftime score going to be in golf? Probably one of my favorite things to do, sit on the couch on a Sunday and just go home for a whole like, all right, is Jon Rahm going to beat Max Homa on this whole today? You know, and and, you know, taking all that into consideration and, you know, it's a it's a pretty, pretty enjoyable way to watch sport, especially if you're not that big of a fan of that sport. I find myself watching more NBA basketball because of individual bets like that than I would if I was just, you know, a casual fan. And Joe, your second question, it escapes me because I talk to my so I completely forgot what that second question is. You kind of intertwine both on him. I was, I guess, my guy. You're fired. I was really kind of wondering, do we have a dollar amount and how much you actually bet on baseball across the country? I don't know. I would know. It's it's pretty significant, I'm sure. Yeah. Mike, you mentioned golf, and that's what I kind of want to talk about. You know, baseball, football, cause they lots of attention, lots of bets going there. But the betting in golf and maybe other outdoor sports like tennis, What can you say about that? And weather's influence? Do you see weather impacting any bets on golf, tennis, other outdoor sports besides baseball and football? Yeah, I mean, I think tennis I think it's a little bit it's harder or something like that. That's smaller space, more confined the way the arenas are. And obviously rain is probably win not so much, maybe a little bit in tennis, but I think I think golf probably is the sport that is most affected by weather. Just on rain versus no. Right. Because now you're talking about with a ball run out on a wet fairway. If I hit the ball, will it stop at plug greens? Green's green speed is a huge deal. You know, if it's colder, the ball's not going to fly, you know, obviously saying that kind of thing with baseball, anytime a ball is in the air for a long period of time, more weather can affect that. You guys know that better than you know. I mean, you guys are that you guys are the meteorologist here. I'm just I just know when I hit a ball high in the air like I was doing yesterday on the golf course and it's 30 mile an hour wind, if I'm hitting it into the wind, is not going as far as I'm hitting it with the wind. Right. So you have to be a genius to figure that out. We saw it in the Masters, too, with the rain. How will the scores be affected at a course that everybody knows? But it's really hard and then it rains, it's colder. How does that affect it versus if you're playing, let's say, the U.S. Open on Father's Day weekend somewhere in southern states where it's nicer, a little bit more humid, the ball travels a little bit further. So it all takes into account. But again, it depends on what kind of bet you want to make. If you want to do a player bet, proposition bet, or if you want to bet overall on a MONEYLINE, who will win or will lose that all that all into consideration. And Joe, you had mentioned, you know, Twitter accounts and everything like that and taking in, how does this affect I think that was part of your second question. There's so much data that goes into it and so much research that goes into this buy by bettors, by people who make the bets, by people who set the lines, by the oddsmakers that go into this. Again, you know, and baseball, as you guys know, has stats like what a left handed batter does on Wednesdays during day games in January or June, I guess whatever you make, you throw it out there. There's a stat for it there. Now, if you're going to bet a lot of I'd bet five or ten bucks maybe I don't dig into that. But if I'm betting five or $10,000, which some people do now, I want to know where am I? You know what? What's the affected? Okay, This is a day game on a Wednesday. How again, educating yourself to be able to place the best bet that you can to maximize your potential of winning. Man It's all about the stats, Mike. That's that's for sure. Now, I want to go back to two prop bets for a minute. How these things you have, these prop bets that are happening almost instantaneously, right? Like the next inning, the next hole to the best of your knowledge, when you have these types of bearish short term bets like this is bet the next 15, 30 minutes and the weather sometimes, you know, change is really, really fast. I mean, we all know that especially in the summertime, in the spring, it could be fine for ten or 15 minutes and then boom, you got a gusty wind and a shower that kicks in for an hour or whatever. But, you know, if those rapidly changing weather conditions are incorporated in some of these prop bets, in these different sportsbooks. So, for example, if I don't know, I'm a meteorologist and I know there's a really good chance a squall line is coming through in the seventh inning and that game is going to be canceled. Do you think the oddsmakers know those things as well? I mean, do you have any inkling about that yet? I'm sure they do. You know, they they've got people who are a lot smarter who do this, have been doing this a long time. And they take a lot of information. And they where they get the information is places like us. Right. So they come to Richmond dot com or the president Lantern City and they say okay what what is Martucci saying today about this weather. Okay so if I'm making an odds, if I'm making a bet, I'm say, okay, what is what is Martucci saying about X? Okay, I'm taking that. Then we're going to say, okay, what is Michael Phillips at Richmond? You know, Richmond Times-Dispatch. What is he writing about this? Let me take all this information because where else are they going to get it? They don't want boots on the ground. So they're reading our information. They're taking all that. They're talking to sources, talking to players, talking to people, not players, but people, you know, as much as they can figure out. And then that's what's educating the lines that they said. And then people are also reading up and saying, okay, how is that going to affect this bet or this situation? I think you got a lot of that happening pregame going in now. I will. What you get in the game sometimes you don't have enough time to to really research a lot of that. Now if you know if you have an insight or if you're paying attention, you know, and you have the ability to check something real quick and make a bet, you know, you're going to you're going to get that. But I think live betting is all kind of about the feel, a feel of the game, how the game's going, the feel about like, okay, it is the wind is blowing. Now we've seen a lot of we've seen, you know, this player every time he gets up, he said that he said, no, you know, it's foul, just barely down the right field line, you know. And so you've seen how the games go in. You're seeing all that and you've taken that in consideration in your life. Bet. Are you just have a gut feel or you are you're chase it right. You lost a big bet in the first inning. Now you're chasing the rest of the game, but trying to make your money back. Right. So you've got a lot of different scenarios happening at the same time. The reason golf is for me kind of fascinating is because you're playing the same course over four days. So by Sunday, I have a pretty good idea of how, let's say Jon Rahm has played the second hole, right? I know he's birdied it three of the last four rounds. I know that, you know, the teams are back now. The wind's blowing downhill. If you watch a golf broadcast, it's all about the wind, all about the direction, all about where the holes cut, all about where the tee boxes are. So now I've got three days of data that I can say just as a novice, just as somebody who's not doing any research on that crunching numbers. And I have a spreadsheet that I'm a abacus out on my protractor, right? I'm just there watching the game, watching the match, and now I can say, Oh, I bet he's going to do this. But if I'm more in-depth in that I've already done my research going into that now I can make more of a feel better of how things are going by for the novice. And that's what really what and again, we're not we're not advocating betting as much as we are saying people are doing it. Lots of people are doing it. Lots of money is being spent doing so. If you are going to do it, here's how we can educate you to make the best bet or to at least inform yourself enough to where you feel comfortable maybe stepping out there if you don't want to. Hey, that's fine too, because you can read our stuff and talk about it at the water cooler. You can get on the podcast with your friends to talk about it. You can go have a beer and say, Oh, guess what severity would you know? It's some of my favorite. Not favorite. Some of the most funny things are is last year when we first started doing this, you know, we launched Super Bowl week of last year and then March Madness was right around the corner. So I filled out my bracket, you know, and I posted online and I everybody. So I was I was hanging out to dinner on a Friday, the Friday night of the week of the first round of the tournament. And a buddy of mine comes up and he's like, Man, I thought you knew what you're talking about. I didn't have time to fill in my bracket, so I just copied yours, have filled it out. You suck. And, you know, and it. And I did it. It was terrible. But he, you know, so it's kind of like you've got you've got people who pay attention to this and they're like, oh, this event is really nobody's talking about though he does it. I keep track of every winner lost and I have then a football season I pick against the field, against the spread and straight out MONEYLINE and you know and so if you go by my picks some weeks, you're happy with me, some weeks you're not. But again, I try to do as much research and educate myself as best possible to provide that, just like you guys do. Right. You're not waking up one day going, Oh, man, it's cloudy. It is probably going around you guys, you know, you guys are doing your research. You have all the tools at your disposal. You know, you've been around the game. I've been around college and professional sports for more than 20 years. So, you know, you mean you kind of get that feel into it and just like, you know, fans, you know, you want some people only bet on the team that they know. Some people that only bet on their team because they're like, I watched this team long enough to know what's going to happen. Yeah, exactly. You really want to have as much information at your disposal as possible. We'll get more into that on the second side of this break to stay with us. We'll be right back with Mike that it's general manager and content director front page BET's your lead enterprises on the Across the Sky podcast. We'll be right back. And we're back on the Across the Sky podcast. Our guests this week, Mike Sweat, its general manager and content director across the hall as we're over it, front page that's here at the Enterprise IT that's our sports and sports betting portal educate, inform and entertain sports fans and the blossoming sports gambling and gaming enterprise. Mike We talked a lot about sports with golf balls, baseball basketballs, footballs. Well, what about auto racing, right? I got to think NASCAR racing is specifically track temperatures, things like that. Do we see much of an impact in the weather impact, knowing how that's going to play out with specific drivers or specific tracks? Any information on that? Yeah, I think, you know, anytime you're talking about 45, 43 vehicles going very, very fast in close proximity to each other, any little change in weather track temperature, tire wedge adjustment, you know, tire pressure is going to affect something massive, right? You get that big speed, that many things happening at one time, one little degree, £1 a wedge, one half a pound of of of torque here, whatever it is, it could have a big impact. We see it a lot, especially at the super speedways like Talladega was two weeks ago. You get the fastest track in NASCAR, two and 5.2 and a half, 2.55 mile track. Right. And the the the drafting and the amount of speed that they can garner up when they're in line with each other, nose to tail. And if you watch it, I mean, they are touching each other going 200 miles an hour. So everything is, you know, you got to take into consideration for an outcome there for safety reasons. One, But then also what car is doing the best in that condition because some cars really run well. One, they're by themselves. Some of them run better in a pack, some of them run better in front, back side left, high line, low line. So all that kind of stuff take into consideration. We talked about the weather, obviously. Are they going to even race? We saw Dover was postponed, you know, the Dover and they said the mastermind was supposed to be Sunday afternoon. He got postponed to Monday. So will they race? They won't race if it's wet, if it's raining, too much danger. They're talking about wet, wet racing conditions with tires and stuff. That's still we have not seen that. And I think if you ask any driver, they don't want to take any more chances out there. Safety hazards, all that kind of stuff. So if it's rain, if it's cloudy, sunny, the track temperature warm up. A lot of things happen when a track goes from day to night and we don't see it in too many races. Charlotte is probably one of the only tracks on Memorial Day weekend that we see. The race starts in the days a 600 mile race, the longest race that they have on the NASCAR circuit, starts in the daytime track. Temperatures are usually a little bit hotter. They're rolling and then it goes to night. Track cools off. You see the track changes to almost two different races at Charlotte from night and day. We saw it even at Richmond. Richmond races used to race at night. Not the best racing cooler track temperatures. Tires would get eaten up a little bit more, kind of somebody would get out front, stay out there, better racing in the day, hotter track temperatures, tires, you know, matter a lot more. So you have you have that. So when are you racing? Are you racing the day? Are you racing at night? Are you racing day into night? We see the Darlington and as well Labor Day, you see a lot of those track temperatures, the early spring races, you know, it's cold out there. How does that affect, you know, in the fall? How does it affect running, you know, a race, you know, in 90 degree, 90 degree heat? And then what? The track temperature is probably 120 inside the car. You know, it's even hotter than that, you see. How does that affect the driver? So there's so much in NASCAR Now when it comes to betting, it's hard to really gauge that unless you're super into it, unless you really geek out. But you can tell talk. Well, I bet you see how a driver or car is doing at a certain track. You go in and saying, this driver's got a lot of success there. Maybe the car's not running real well in the corners. You know, somewhere like Bristol, where you have to have a better turning car into the corner, a smaller track versus a superspeedway like Daytona or Talladega, where you don't have to have much turn. You just have to find the right line and hold it steady. So all out of that comes into play. But you could see that more live than you do pre pre-race going into that because you want to see how that car is going to perform, especially when there's, you know, 40 other cars around it. And Mike, sticking with the racing theme, let's talk about horse racing a little bit because I imagine there's some similarities here, but also some important differences about whether in horse race. Yeah, I mean, you know, track surface like, you know, are they running like they get the Kentucky Derby, the run on dirt and mud, Where they running grass are they running on, you know, what kind of dirt, what kind of sand? You know, all of that plays into a fact. If it's raining muddy vision, how do the horses run? Do they like to get wet or is it hot? How do the horses fare in the heat and when you're talking about again on it's not like the horse can tell you, like, yeah, I feel great today, right? You could tell by how it how just like a car you can't tell how it's going to run until you kind of get out there. Maybe you hear something, you feel something. That's why the jockey is so important. I think in horse racing, we got the Kentucky Derby coming up on Saturday. What's the weather going to be like that for that? How is that going to play even the wind like running into a headwind? How is that going to affect, you know, also, you know, you want to get on the pole too early, you get on the rail, you're in trouble too late. You you've got to make up a lot of ground coming, you know, coming across the field. So all of that plays, plays it into effect. And, you know, you talk about the Kentucky Derby coming, one of the most fun days, one of the most bet days as well, because even if you're not a horse racing fan, you're there. You're like, I'm, you know, throw. And if you bet last year on the longshot to win the Kentucky Derby at 80 to 1 odds. You know nobody did that on purpose by the way they were just doing a up ten bucks on the long shot. But nobody who knew what they were doing actually bet you know, the long shot. And so I think I think you've you have you kind of have again, what bets are you going to make? And then are we going to have some fun? You know, you want to watch the Kentucky Derby, you want to watch a sporting event. It's a little bit more interesting or a lot more interesting if you've got money on it. Right. If you're not bet on it, you know who has it doesn't matter. You throw a couple of bucks down, now you're vested. You want to know, all right, this better win. We do. And so but you look at you also got to look at the history, right? We talked about the dad of horse racing, especially. How do they run? How do they run at this mile? How they run? You know, do they have any other races that we could, you know, look at? What about the jockey? What about, you know, the track conditions, some race better on grass, those kind of things, too. So you're looking at all that information as you go. But, you know, horse but horse racing, you can't bet live post time you're in and whatever. You bet. That's what. You bet. Hey, Mike, talk to us. This is no bother, per se, but tell us about the difference between betting and horse racing. I think it's called parimutuel betting as well. So what you see when you are, you know, betting on baseball or football, you know, you could bet on a horse to win. You can bet on a horse to win place to show which is first, second or third. You can bet trifecta boxes. Where are super factors? You can bet. All right. These three horses are going to finish in the top three somewhere, right? You can bet exact that this horse is going to finish exactly in this position. Right. So and the more you add to that bet, the worse the odds are going to get. So the more payout you could have. So, you know, you in. It's more fun to bet horse racing, in my opinion at the track. Right. The buzz everything's going around you're you know you might have a mint julep or two and you're feeling great. You get to the window and you're like, All right, here we go. Six horse in the seventh race, you know, whatever, whatever. And then you got the, you know, the person behind the counter. If he screwed up, they look at you like you can't make that bet. So that's really kind of intimidating. So you got to know what you're talking about. You got to get in there. But it it's really fun. My brothers and I took my dad two years ago to Kentucky for a bourbon trail tour. Right. We somehow ended up at Churchill Downs on a Friday, you know, matinee race. We somehow found our way to the ticket line and with a few drinks in our hand and had a really good time. Now, had my brothers ever bet on horse racing prior to that? No, because they'd never been to our they had it. They never went in. But since we were there like, oh man, we got a bet. We got we're here, right? So you get caught up in that kind of thing. And I think that's where you start. Talk about the popularity, Sean. You mentioned if you know, the blossoming sports betting world, people are finding out that, you know, if you do it responsibly, you make you make wise choices. You don't get yourself into trouble. You set a limit. All those things. It's fun, You know, it's enjoyable, it's populated. The sports have gotten more popular because of it. I think you're seeing a lot more. You can't watch a sport now without seeing a DraftKings ad or FanDuel ad, and obviously their marketing to that, to that, to those constituents. But they're also because people people are finding like, hey, this is fun and the sports are growing and more people are being evolved in and I think, you know, as long as you do it responsibly and make sure that you set yourself limit, it's fun to do. That's why when I go to a horse track, I carry the cash that I'm going to spend. I leave my wallet in the car because I know, like if I especially if I lose it now, I start chasing. I'm like, Oh man, I got my money back. It's just like you go to the tables of Vegas or Lake City. John Are you, you know, I've been down to the Borgata. You've been sitting there. You know, I get around, I get around and, you know, I'll just say it, You know, you're there. You bet. Long enough. The house is always going to win. So you got to make sure you're setting yourself in position to at least, you know, maximize your losses. Yeah. You know, the one thing I remember when I first went to go was to a casino in Atlantic City when I was 21 years old. Back in the day, I still remember the signs all over the place and and I forget which casino it was, but it was the sign was there. Said bet with your head not over it. Yeah, that. That is what you always have to remember. Get. Don't bet any more than you think you can lose or you plan to lose. A few times I've been to casino, whether it was in Vegas or in a see, this is exactly right. You take this amount of money this is it. After that, the party's over. Go home, spend it wisely, risk it wisely. Else you get into a lot of trouble really fast. I'm like, Shawn, real quick. Just a just a plug for that, though. You know, now, these sports betting mobile apps, they have these parameters on there. They have these you know, it's almost like a it's almost like a child lock. Like if you gave your kid a cell phone, you could lock it down. You can set parameters where you could set a bet limit per day, a number of bets per day. You go in there, you set that stuff. So when you're at your limit, it will let you do any more. And you can't you can't bypass that unless you have the code. But if you're doing it right, have somebody accountability partner, somebody set that up for you. So there are there are these things that I take into account where you can't get in over your head. And so that's why I think it's so regulated. Sports betting is so regulated, especially in New Jersey. Joe You guys got some of the the strictest rules, which I think are really valuable to have because you've been doing it for so long, you know, the pitfalls. But again, you want people to do it responsibly. So the more you regulate it and you could talk about whether it's alcohol or marijuana or anything, regulation is going to really help police some of the stuff where people are doing it anyway. Might as well, if you're going to do it legally, do it responsibly. So it's one of those things, too, where we're Sean to you know, to your point, if you're mobile betting, there are those there are those safety. You know, features on there to help you, you know, really, really be responsible. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to to focus in on as we wrap it up for somebody who just is entering this this space, they're curious. They want to get involved, but they're going in kind of they're putting their proverbial toes in the water. Well, as we as we close out, what is some of your suggestion? What are some of the ways they should approach this carefully, tactfully, so it doesn't get out of hand in a hurry? Yeah, I think I think what we just talked about. Right. No, no, your limit. Right. If you are if you are if you struggle with an addictive personality, I think you got to know going in that like you need to make sure that you have some guardrails right for anything. Right. Like, you know, don't drink. You drive right. Just stupid. Not stupid, but just baseline rules of like, you know, don't be dumb. Right? And so I think there's you got that. But I think also, you know know what? You know what you're doing right? If you are if you don't know about a lot about a sport, maybe watch it, figure it out. Try to educate yourself as best as possible before you put before you put money down on it. And I think, you know, it's just being responsible, educating yourself, making sure that you're not that. And also don't do it in the dark. Make sure people know, you know, don't try not to hide things. You know, things that are in the light tend to stay in the light and tend to have a lot more of a of a better outcome where people can ask you about it and those type of things and and seek help if you find yourself, you know, in a position in chasing is one of the things we kind of joke about. But you know, if you lose early, you know, it's probably best not to chase, right? You go to it, you go to the casino. You bet. Place a bet. You take your money in there, you lose it in the first 5 minutes. You know that that that's a that's a tough that's a tough pillar for a lot of us to swallow. Hey, I'm in Vegas for the next three days. I lost all my money in the first 45 minutes. Well, you didn't have a plan. Have a plan going there saying, here's the deal. It's kind of like I tell my kids right before you go out, already know what you're going to do if you find yourself in a situation, right. You got to have a plan. You got to make sure that you're you have an exit plan, you have a plan to talk to. And if you do, what happens if you win, right? That not just lose, but what happens if you win? And you got to know when you know, Kenny Rogers was alive, You got no one to hold him. No one to fault him. Because if you stay long enough, you're going to you're going to lose. And so I think that's why you just got to be be smart, talk about it, educate yourself. You know, listen, stuff like this, this is the again, there's plenty of podcast, there's plenty of information out there about about sports betting, but also about how to make sure that you're doing it responsibly. So so just do that, you know, and and don't don't, don't. And the other thing I'll say is don't take my March Madness picks. So many other thing what you said there have a plan that is something that is very good for all kind of risk. Right. Well, because all risk is gambling. There is risk in the world, whether it's weather risk, whether it's sports gaming risk. There is risk. Have a plan B ready for whatever is out there and so that you are prepared when it does hit, whether it's good or bad. Mike, for we wrap up, where could people find out more about front page bets? All right, front page, Pets.com, all one word, front page, Pets.com. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. That front page bets. You know, it's just we've been doing this a little bit more than a year here. Lee Enterprises would grow an audience for having a lot of fun with it. You know, we're getting really good feedback and so I'm excited about it set about, you know, educating, informing people, having fun too, as well. Doing podcasts like this, doing videos that we do, you know, it's really fun. And sports just must be fun, right? And especially, you know, when you take the weather in consideration, there's a lot of times that weather is is not fun. And it's it's you know, there's there's a lot of things that can go wrong. Same thing in sports betting. But, you know, we're here to educate and we're here to inform you guys. And so just like these fine meteorologists that that are on with me, you guys, you know, I check out shorts. You know, I live in Richmond. I check out Shaun every morning as weather video. What I what do I need to do? And so I just I really appreciate you guys having us on in front page BET.com and on social from page bats and you know we hope to see you guys soon. Thanks Mike so much. So much good information for those getting into this space, understanding this space, because it can be overwhelming. So thanks so much. We will talk to you again soon, Mike, Our guys, thanks a lot. So I learned a lot from that interview, that discussion with Mike. You know, I had not thought about that much with tennis and golf. As we said at the outset, the classic baseball and football immediately come to mind. But I really had not thought about those those immediate bets during a golf tournament, guys. Yeah. So in other words, interesting. I actually really like the NASCAR, what with the difference in the track between a day and night. Am I like a big NASCAR fan? But I didn't I didn't realize the impact that the day and night time timing had on, you know, the track conditions and how you bet for it as a result. So I thought that was pretty cool. I tell you what, I'm not a big sports better. I did it once when I went to the Kentucky Derby, I had to place a bet being at the Kentucky Derby. I've also done it a couple of times when I've been to Vegas, just because, you know you're in Vegas and got a bet. Let's do some sports betting. College football, that was kind of fun. But every time I've done it, I have I've not well, I've won, but I placed multiple bets and that's where I've I fail and I lose money. So I am not a big sports bettor. And boy, after listening to Mike, I'm more intimidated now, thinking about all the different things and all the ways whether it could impact the outcome. I'm like, now that I'm making the right choice and not engaged on it, that's sports betting on a regular basis. It would not end well for me. Yeah, as you said, got to be very careful. This stuff has gotten so big so fast. If you don't go into this very carefully and very deliberately, it can take hold of you and go go very bad. So his his recommendations are certainly, certainly well taken as I'm like you. I mean, I used to be much more of a big sports head when I was in my twenties and very early thirties, but I just don't pay as much attention as I used to. So the temptation is there for me. I you know, I do the occasional football wagering, but but this is not that is not that big. Certainly not as big as it is. Jersey there. Mr. Martucci Hey, listen, man, I'm going to grill I have a group chat with like nine of us today, and there's a lot of sports betting talk, and I think it's just a different Yeah, we're just used to it, you know, with Atlantic City here for so long, it's just. It's just a different way of life. But I have to ask you, Sean, what is what what determines very early thirties? And I'm wondering if I'm exiting that that scope of very early thirties, I'm going to say 32 after 32. You're not in your early thirties anymore, you toward the mid-thirties. Okay. All right. So I got another year because I'm 31 now. You know, the other thing, like I'm like sport is you also don't have children, at least not yet. And that will take up a lot of time if you and Seany decide to go in that direction. Yes. That also takes up a lot of time that I used to use a lot of brain cells I used to use to pay attention to sports. I had to start paying attention to to two small, small children. Right. So that's another big thing, right? I do that, you know, one thing, too, and I forgot to ask him whether impacting the hot dog eating contest on 4th of July, that makes dinosaurs shaking his head at me. I'm telling you, there's a difference. And I think I'm going to reach out to majorly eating. I think we're going to do a podcast on that. We're going to see. But there's something there because you can bet on the hot dog eating contest, too. You know, there are lines out there. That's nasty. I'm sorry. That's nothing nasty. I can't watch that stuff. I can't I mean, if they all want to do it, knock that stuff out there. But that might be a lucky one. As to what they do to that, though, the pods you get the pod bones in the one is that me? And I'd rather do almost anything else a nap. It's just off and that's enjoyable at all. I go, Oh man, I mean, no. My gosh. So okay, let's wrap this up as I don't want to I don't want to get into that any. We've got some cool things coming up in the pipeline. Tropical cyclones in the Mediterranean Sea. We don't think a lot about hurricane formations, tropical type formations and the Mediterranean. We'd be talking about that in the coming weeks. And also we've got a guest in the pipeline from Penn State who has been studying for ever. So we're going to talk about hail in the weeks to come. So lots of good stuff coming up there in the next coming a few weeks here on the Across the Sky podcast. But for now, with my colleagues in Atlantic City, Joe Martucci, Matt Holiner in Chicago, our meteorologist Sean Sublette at the Richmond Times Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia. Thanks for joining us on the Across the Sky podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Enterprise IT is constantly oscillating between centralized and distributed, and we're currently in a period of repatriation of workloads from the cloud. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast features three delegates from Cloud Field Day 17, Joey D'Andoni, Eric Wright, and Jason Benecicic, discussing the reality of repatriation of cloud applications with Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT. Pundits constantly tout the money they save by repatriating from public cloud, but this might not be the best choice especially for smaller organizations. The only way to ensure functionality between on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud is to use them and use each where it is the best solution. Repatriation is especially challenging for today's SaaS-oriented businesses, since most of these solutions can't be run on-prem. But even workloads that can be run outside the cloud will likely require re-architecting to run locally. Yet many companies are developing software to ease the transition to and from the cloud, and these make it much easier to repatriate. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Cloud Workload Repatriation is a Real Problem

Enterprise IT is constantly oscillating between centralized and distributed, and we're currently in a period of repatriation of workloads from the cloud. This episode of the On-Premise IT podcast features three delegates from Cloud Field Day 17, Joey D'Andoni, Eric Wright, and Jason Benecicic, discussing the reality of repatriation of cloud applications with Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT. Pundits constantly tout the money they save by repatriating from public cloud, but this might not be the best choice especially for smaller organizations. The only way to ensure functionality between on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud is to use them and use each where it is the best solution. Repatriation is especially challenging for today's SaaS-oriented businesses, since most of these solutions can't be run on-prem. But even workloads that can be run outside the cloud will likely require re-architecting to run locally. Yet many companies are developing software to ease the transition to and from the cloud, and these make it much easier to repatriate. © Gestalt IT, LLC for Gestalt IT: Cloud Workload Repatriation is a Real Problem

When it comes to Enterprise IT (and especially the security sector) we have our work cut out for us. As the workload increases, we look for tools and utilities to help us keep up with the demand. But what about artificial intelligence? As we discussed in a previous episode, AI is here to stay and will be making waves in security. In this episode, Jay and Joao dive in to just a few of the ways this tech might transform the security field and those that work within it (directly or indirectly).

Today's guest is John Cullom, CEO at Northcraft Analytics. Founded in 2008, Northcraft Analytics is the leading provider in the U.S. of Analytical Applications for Enterprise IT departments. They offer a broad suite of HOLAP BI applications for IT Service and Operations Management, including coverage for 10 of the 24 ITIL process areas on more than 12 enterprise applications. Northcraft's vision is to provide Business Intelligence applications for all of the industry-leading solutions for IT automation with platform portability for our customers. Their solutions are unique in that they require no BI development whatsoever, which is backed up by the most comprehensive maintenance and support package in the industry. In the episode, John will discuss: The interesting work they do at Northcraft Analytics, Current trends he is seeing in the market, Why ServiceNow is the platform of choice, How they are using ServiceNow and the benefits it brings to the organization, What he's learned from implementing ServiceNow and What the future holds for the platform

The Transformation Ground Control podcast covers a number of topics important to digital and business transformation. This episode covers the following topics and interviews: Top 9 Challenges IT Leaders will Face in 2023, Predictions for Enterprise IT for 2023 (Eric Kimberling and Kyler Cheatham) Common Fallacies of ERP Software and Digital Transformations (Darren Roos, IFS Software) Revisiting Trends of 2022 (John Reed, Diginomica) We also cover a number of other relevant topics related to digital and business transformation throughout the show. This weekly podcast series premiers live on YouTube every Wednesday at 8am NYC time / 1pm London / 9pm Hong Kong. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Pandora, or your favorite podcast platform. Register here 

Learn from the top 1% of sales professionals in 5 minutes per week through the Elite Level Newsletter: https://www.elitelevel.co

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT.

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT. The post HS016 Team Structure for Technology Teams appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT. The post HS016 Team Structure for Technology Teams appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT.

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT.

Discussing what might drives team structure in Enterprise IT. The post HS016 Team Structure for Technology Teams appeared first on Packet Pushers.

There’s a term one hears to describe the venture capital market in 2021—frothy. What does that actually mean and what does it mean in the larger historical context of Venture Capital? We speak with Phil Boyer, a partner at Crosslink Capital since 2014. Crosslink was founded in Silicon Valley in 1989 and has institutional memories of the beginning and end of Dot-Com bubble 20+ years ago and the global financial crisis in 2008. How does the firm’s deep history inform what is happening today, what is the outlook for the future, and how can founders pitch their companies to funds like Crosslink.About Phil Boyer:Phil brings over a decade of experience as a technology investor with deep sector expertise within enterprise and vertical software (AI, cloud, developer tools, SaaS, security). He is passionate about serving as a partner with early-stage founding teams, with an eye towards helping strong technical teams build category-defining companies. At Crosslink, Phil’s investments include Armory, BetterUp, Iron Ox, Molekule, Overjet, Verodin (FEYE), and Weave (IPO NYSE: WEAV), among other companies.Prior to Crosslink, Phil was an investor with NYC-based venture capital firm Tenfore Holdings, with early investments in Optoro and Trulioo during his tenure. Before beginning his venture capital career, Phil wrote and published research on the technology sector at Credit Suisse and RBC, where he covered companies such as Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, eBay, Priceline, Yelp, and many others.A word from our sponsor:Ripple Ventures is always focused on helping our founders and CEOs find the best partners to work with. But before we introduce any provider to our companies, we always make sure we try the product first. And when it comes to managing business expenses at Ripple, we were super excited when the team at Jeeves came knocking on our door.Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at any time. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or pay any setup or annual fees either. Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cashback on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part,  Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves offers a truly all-in-one expense management corporate card program for international startups and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of a $700 discount and skip the waitlist  by visiting tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.In this episode we discuss:02:49 The evolution of metrics founders need for later round financing07:34 Why Team is so important to investors at the series A round12:17 How growth velocity can be just as important as size of ARR16:27 What is Net Dollar Retention and why is it important to investors22:49 How to properly calculate CAC/LTV25:03 Deal velocity and speed to close as a metric28:17 Is it better to land and expand deals or to hunt for bigger deals from an investor perspective32:06 Conviction in your model is important and knowing what you want to build33:49 How the speed of venture rounds is affecting the market and larger considerations for founders36:46 How Crosslink is dealing with the market39:55 The Crosslink Alpha network and how it brings value to its foundersFast FavoritesAcquiredHow I Built ThisNewsletterWhat’s Hot in Enterprise IT by Ed SimTech GadgetAirpodsTrendxOpsBookThe Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben HorowitzLife LessonThe only thing that stays constant is change.Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

A geek in denial and a financial management graduate, Antonny started off his professional career in Enterprise IT and Solution Services, a journey that took him to several other IT companies and a President Director position when he was 27 years old. He then pursued his passion in marketing & branding by joining a then small 14 people startup agency called SemutApi Colony as a partner and Managing Director in 2005. Together the company grew into a Group which operates several agencies, a tech incubator/investor, and technology startups. Antonny still has a dream that one day he can play piano and own a Coffee and Steak House. Read more about GDP Ventures here https://www.gdpventure.com/#start and connect with Antonny on LinkedIn here https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonnyliem/ If you enjoyed this podcast, would you consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts here? It takes less than 30 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince new amazing guests to come on the show, and on top of that, I love reading the reviews! Connect with Andrew: Email: hello@andrewsenduk.com Website: https://andrewsenduk.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.senduk/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-senduk-1980/

Stephen Orban, GM of the AWS Marketplace, talks with World of DaaS host Auren Hoffman. Stephen previously served as the GM of the AWS Data Exchange and CIO of Dow Jones. He's also the author of Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT. Auren and Stephen cover the launch of AWS Data Exchange, Amazon's role as an industry-wide innovator, the advantages of Amazon's leadership principles, and what the future of data discovery could look like.World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph. For more episodes, visit safegraph.com/podcasts You can find Auren Hoffman (CEO of SafeGraph) on Twitter at @auren

3 Takeaways:When moving an application to the cloud, focus on the velocity of the move and the ability to revert rather than doing a lot of the optimization work on paper beforehand. Move and then optimize.Try to consolidate layers of redundant regulation that may have built up within an application over time. It saves customers time and money.Make sure the IT teams are seen as the heroes of the cloud transformation process because the applications they support typically produce some of the most critical business data for organizations.Key Quotes: "I'm incredibly excited that the industry has turned around to the importance of technology. We see more and more CEOs declaring themselves to be technology companies even though they're in non-technology industries. I think right now is just a fantastic time to be in tech.” - James“I think what's so compelling about where we are now is that we can really make heroes out of enterprise IT because of the cloud.” - James“When there's an excessive focus on trying to simply recreate a data center environment in the cloud - lock, stock, and barrel - that can very quickly impact the economics of moving to cloud in the first place.” - James--LinksJames Forrester LinkedIn--About the HostsMatthew O'Neill is a husband, dad, geek and Industry Managing Director, Advanced Technology Group in the Office of the CTO at VMware.You can find Matthew on LinkedIn and Twitter.Brian Hayes is an audiophile, dad, builder of sheds, maker of mirth, world traveller and EMEA Financial Services Industry Lead at VMware.You can find Brian on LinkedIn.

Enterprise IT must adapt to a new landscape created by the COVID19 pandemic. DCF Editor Rich Miller outlines why this will matter to data center professionals and end users.  This is the first in a series of broadcasts outlining the Eight Trends That Will Shape the Data Center in 2021. In 2020, when cloud technology enabled society to retool to survive the pandemic. As the world slowly defines the contours of the “next normal” in its battle with COVID-19, flexibility and resiliency are the business attributes that will matter most. Many organizations are not yet wired for this. BONUS RESOURCES on Enterprise IT trends Data Center Roundtable: The Year Ahead in Enterprise IT Spending https://datacenterfrontier.com/roundtable-the-year-ahead-in-enterprise-it-spending/ The Enterprise Cloud Shift Accelerates in 2021 https://datacenterfrontier.com/data-bytes-idc-sees-enterprise-cloud-shift-accelerating-in-2021/ Be sure to check our our free Annual Forecast, outlining the DCF take on the most important trends to watch this year: The Eight Trends That Will Shape the Data Center Industry in 2021 https://datacenterfrontier.com/eight-trends-that-will-shape-the-data-center-industry-in-2021/ To hear about the other trends in future episodes, please subscribe. 

The question: Is open source is viable for Enterprise IT ? The discussion resulted in describing the mechanics of onboarding new products as infection repsonse. Did the metaphor work ?

The question: Is open source is viable for Enterprise IT ? The discussion resulted in describing the mechanics of onboarding new products as infection repsonse. Did the metaphor work ? The post Heavy Strategy 005 – Infection Handling Open Source In Enterprise IT appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The question: Is open source is viable for Enterprise IT ? The discussion resulted in describing the mechanics of onboarding new products as infection repsonse. Did the metaphor work ?